Northern Spy(37)

“The first year is hard,” she says. I rest my cheek on the table, and she strokes my hair. “He’ll sleep through soon enough. You were the same as a baby, so you were. Absolute torture.”

Hearing that is inordinately comforting, for some reason. My mam looks down. “Are those my socks?”

“Oh.”

She sighs. “Give them back next time, Tessa.”

Before she leaves, I wrap some almond biscuits in foil and tuck them into her bag, next to a black smock. “What is this?”

“It’s my uniform.”

“You don’t wear a uniform.”

“I do now,” she says lightly. “The Dunlops fired me.”

“Because of Marian?”

“Yes.”

She found a new job at a chain hotel in the city center. At the Dunlops’, my mother was often alone in the house, and free to plan her own day, to take their labradors for a long walk in the woods every afternoon. She adored those dogs, she has a picture of them taped to her fridge. Now she’s indoors all day, cleaning one identical room after the other, and the work is more strenuous. The hotel times its maids, forcing them to finish a set number of rooms per hour.

“It’s just a change,” she says. “I’ll get used to it.”

“Are you applying to other places?” I ask.

“Most people don’t like their jobs, Tessa. Not everyone is as lucky as you.”

“There must be another position like the Dunlops’,” I say stubbornly, though maybe not for her, for the mother of a terrorist. “How are you not angry with her?”

“Marian asked me to forgive her,” she says.

“So?”

My mam gives me a look, less of disappointment than bewilderment. It’s easier for her to forgive Marian than it is for me. She has been prepared for this all her life, her whole religion is based on sin and atonement, expiation, remorse.



* * *



—

The next day, Tom is about to leave after dropping off Finn when my phone sounds. “Sorry, Tom. Could you stay with Finn for a few minutes? I’ve to run an errand.”

“What errand?”

“Oh, chemist’s. It’s about to close.”

On a lane behind Mount Stewart, I stop the car and Marian climbs in. No one comes here. It looks like a private road through the woods, hidden under mature oaks and elms. This forest might have been part of the manor once. Somewhere past the trees are the vast lawns, the ponds, the mansion itself, columned and covered in ivy.

The season has started to change. The ivy on Mount Stewart has turned red, and color is seeping through these woods. Above the lane, the oaks and elms are russet, and you can smell woodsmoke in the air. From the car, I watch the light slanting through the trees. In a different life, Marian and I might be meeting here to pick blackberries.

“An estate agent at Fetherston Clements is letting the IRA use their properties as safe houses,” says Marian. She tells me that the IRA members are shown into empty flats, like prospective tenants, and then left alone to hold meetings.

“Which broker?”

“Jimmy Kiely.”

“Okay, I’ll tell Eamonn.” I wait for Marian to climb out of the car.

“How’s Finn?” she asks.

“Good.”

“Can I see a picture of him?”

I press my temples. Marian stopped asking to visit Finn a few weeks ago, but the last time we met, she brought a set of sippy cups for him, since she’d read that he’s old enough for them now.

I’m so tired of being angry with her. It’s exhausting, having these endless arguments with her in my head.

“Do you need to get back to Belfast?” I ask.

“No,” says Marian, “not yet.”

“Wait here.”

When we return, Marian is standing in the exact same place, like she hasn’t moved a muscle in the last fifteen minutes. She must have been nervous that I’d change my mind. I open the back door and Finn turns toward me from the car seat, clutching his plastic toy buffalo, a blanket over his legs.

I open the snaps and lift him out into the cool air, and he swivels his head to study this new place, the leaves drifting in the wind. When he catches sight of Marian, surprise blooms over his face. His cheeks round and his eyebrows lift.

“Here we are,” I say, and she takes him in her arms. He beams at her with the tip of his finger in his mouth.

Marian is smiling and crying. I remember her in the waiting room at the maternity ward, holding her hand to her heart as she leaned toward him.

I watch my son lower his chin and mouth the tweed shoulder of her coat. I watch my sister close her eyes. She walks him in a slow circle, like they’re dancing.





23


THE WEEKS PASS. Marian tells me about robberies, arms drops, call houses, and I give the information to Eamonn. I meet with him on the beach for about five minutes, two or three times a week, ten or fifteen minutes in total. It’s nothing. I spend more time every week folding baby clothes.

Finn is nine months old. Everything about him is more emphatic now. His preferences, his stubbornness, his humor. He likes to play peek-a-boo with me, his small head popping up above the mattress on the far side of the bed. I’m woken every morning by a firm voice saying baba in the other room. When I carry Finn into the kitchen, he points at the fridge and says baba again, looking back to be sure I’ve understood.