Northern Spy(39)

“When you have the space,” he says, and I nod, squinting at the water, wondering if that time will ever come. Though this can’t go on much longer. It’s like walking on a broken foot and hoping the bone will somehow heal properly.

Ahead of us, the sea pitches, rough and disorganized. Ropes of black seaweed tangle in the waves.

“Was coming here a demotion or a promotion?” I ask.

He smiles. “Neither. It was a new posting. I’d been in Hong Kong for six years, it was time for a handover.”

“Was your work there more difficult?”

“The pace was different,” he says. “Most of my sources didn’t actually live in Hong Kong. I had to fly to meet them wherever they were.”

He tells me that the sources didn’t usually lead him to glamorous or notable places. Except for one time, when a meeting was arranged at a luxury resort, in a straw bungalow at the end of a jetty.

I stop myself from asking whether the source was a woman. I grab a fistful of sand and let it stream between my fingers, surprised by the flush of jealousy.

Eamonn wipes sand from his palms. We carry on talking, though all I can think about is if he’s ever slept with a source. I’m aware of myself, in a bikini top, the wetsuit rolled down to my waist. We’re alone on the beach. He could reach over and untie the knot at my back, push the thin fabric off my breasts, press me against the sand. Not him, I tell myself, for god’s sake.

Eamonn tugs his jacket closer to his chin. “It’s hard to believe that never freezes,” he says, nodding at the sea.

The sea doesn’t freeze, but the texture of the water does feel different now, thicker and slower, the way vodka turns viscous in a cold bottle.

I thread my arms through the sleeves of the wetsuit, and he helps me with the zipper. With one hand he moves my hair aside, and with the other he raises the zip. I can feel his knuckles against my bare back, and my throat catches. I’m no longer breathing normally. When he pauses for a second, I think he’s about to unzip the wetsuit again, and slide it off me with his warm hands. He’s behind me, I can’t see his expression.

Then he is fastening the wetsuit’s velcro tab, and I’m saying, “Thanks,” relieved at how casual my voice sounds, and standing up from the sand too quickly.

My feet burn with cold when a wave slips over them. Eamonn shakes his head, waving at me, then turns back toward the village.

I hold my breath while wading in, and only exhale after surfacing past the breakers. Around me, the gray water lifts and lowers. I drop under the surface again, blinking at the particles churning around me. My heart hasn’t steadied yet. When I come up, I force myself not to look back toward the shore, not to check if Eamonn is watching me, if he has stopped walking. Treading water, I lift both hands to smooth my wet hair.

A fishing trawler is far out to sea, its shape almost invisible in the glare along the horizon. It could be loaded with gelignite, and coming in to land. Marian hasn’t heard anything more about the transfer, and Eamonn said they still haven’t identified a boat carrying explosives. “How hard can it be?” I asked.

“Seven thousand active trawlers,” he said. “And that’s if it’s licensed here. They might be using one registered in Europe.”

I stare at the trawler through the glare, like I might be able to tell from here, while cold water slips under the collar of my wetsuit.

Later, while Finn naps, I press dough into a pie pan, then turn back to the cookbook for the filling ingredients. The recipe calls for six sweet, firm apples, like Honeycrisp, Pippin, or Northern Spy. I stop short, suddenly self-conscious, like someone is at the window, watching my reaction to those two words.





25


SMOKE RISES FROM THE chimneys of Mount Stewart. Cold gray clouds roil above the manor house and the black hemlocks on its lawn. Marian and I are alone on a bench by the fountain, watching Finn try to climb over its edge. She is telling me about their early safe houses. The first was a priest’s house in the glens. He insisted on blessing them with holy water when they returned from a robbery. “I didn’t like him,” says Marian. She remembers him cooking thin chops, the meat burning in the pan.

“He’d been at a murder that week,” she says. “An IRA unit brought him in to say the last rites before they killed a man.”

“And he didn’t stop them? Or tell the police?”

“No.”

I shake my head. “Do you go to confession?”

“Sometimes.”

“Want to hear something absurd? I went to confession last spring. I was feeling guilty about the divorce, for Finn’s sake, and thought it might help. I said, ‘I want to confess my divorce,’ and the priest said, ‘Oh, no, you can’t. You can’t receive the sacrament of confession as a divorced woman.’ I said, ‘But I’m trying to confess my divorce.’ He said, ‘If you want to avail yourself of the sacrament of confession, you will need an annulment or to pledge yourself to a life of celibacy.’”

“Oh,” says Marian. “That’s awful.”

“It’s fine. It was a good reminder.”

“So you’ll be asking Tom for an annulment, then?” asks Marian, and I laugh.

Finn stamps his feet, frustrated at not being able to throw himself into the cold fountain, and Marian swings him into the air. “Has your granny christened you yet?” she asks him. During my pregnancy, my mam said, “It doesn’t have to be a priest, you know. Anyone can christen a baby.”