Northern Spy(42)

My mam says, “Get away with you,” as she spreads her napkin over the stain. Her hands are trembling.

The waiters offer us bread rolls, and a choice of the chicken Kiev or the salmon. I seem to have forgotten how to use silverware. I keep jabbing myself with the fork tines, biting the inside of my cheek. My mouth tastes like iron.

During the dinner, Aoife sits in the center of the high table, between the two families. I wonder if she understands what she has gotten herself into, marrying into Cillian’s family.

When a waiter appears near the high table with a microphone, Marian glances at me. “Do you need the toilets?” she asks, and we slip out of our seats before the toasts begin. A few people are at the bar, and we walk past them, around the corner and down a hallway.

Marian pushes open a door and we step into a small room with wood paneling, flocked wallpaper, and a mounted stag’s head. From a shelf behind the bar, she takes down a bottle of tequila and two shot glasses and sets them on the counter. I press my ear to the door to listen for footsteps.

Something has happened to my eyes, making the light smear at the corners of my vision. Marian takes the listening device from inside her bra and uses a penknife to wedge it under the glass eye of the stag’s head. She presses the eye back in place with a small tube of glue, the kind meant for applying fake eyelashes.

“Marian,” I say, as she adds another drop of glue. She steps away to meet me at the bar, and I pour tequila into the glasses, too quickly, spilling some onto the bar. I wipe the liquid with my palm as the door opens. I recognize the man from outside the chapel earlier. He was standing shoulder to shoulder with Cillian Burke.

“What’re you doing in here?” he asks.

Marian holds up the bottle. “The other bar won’t do shots. Do you fancy one?”





26


FINN STANDS AT THE sliding door with one hand pressed to the glass, like a king greeting his people. I kneel behind him, my arms around his waist, and consider the garden with him. His snub nose touches the glass, as does the rounded curve of his forehead. He makes a series of short, urgent sounds, and I long to know what they mean. Past the garden wall, sheep move through the drizzle. Finn turns from the door and pats his hand, cold from the glass, against my face.

Raise the drawbridge, I think. Finn will be one year old soon. He will never be this small again. Everyone needs to leave us well alone. No more informing. No more work, no commuting, no day care, no friends, no answering texts or calls or WhatsApp messages.

I carry the baby, balanced on my hip, to the sink to boil water for tea. Through the parted window, the air smells like leaf loam and rain. This afternoon, I’m taking Finn to pick mushrooms in the woods, gold chanterelles with billowed edges.

Last night, I might not have left the Balfour. I might have died in that room. When the man came inside, I was so scared my body seemed to be molting, like my skin was turning inside out. Apparently he didn’t see any of that, he saw two wedding guests in nice dresses and a bottle of silver tequila. “Do you fancy one?” asked Marian, and he said, “So I would, a double, now.”

The listening device is in place inside the bar. The first word it transmitted was my voice, saying my sister’s name. If he’d opened the door seconds earlier, it might have transmitted our interrogations, or beatings, or executions. We’ve been lucky once. It might be time to stop. I pour water for the tea, thinking how if I were taken away now, Finn wouldn’t remember me, or any of this. He’d grow up without any idea of how much I loved him.



* * *



—

Seamus thinks you’re sound,” says Marian.

“Oh, good,” I say, then notice her expression. “Isn’t it? What’s wrong?”

“He wants to recruit you.”

“No.” The bus is only at Comber Road, miles from Greyabbey, but the panic makes me want to run out at the next stop. Marian says, “Seamus has wanted to recruit you for years. He thinks you’re a sympathizer.”

“Is that what you told him?”

She nods, and I clasp my hands to stop myself from slapping her.

“He can’t use me as a scout anymore,” she says, “since the police know my face from Templepatrick.”

“A scout?”

“Someone to drive ahead of the car on an operation, to warn them about police or army roadblocks,” she says. “And he needs someone for surveillance.”

It’s good, actually, that we’re having this conversation on a public bus and not, say, in my kitchen, where I would have thrown a pot at her by now.

Marian says, “He wants a woman.”

“That’s not my problem,” I say, and Marian looks down, twisting a thread on her sleeve. “What is it?”

“I’m so sorry, Tessa,” she says. “If you say no, he might wonder why. He might look at you more closely.”

“Then I’m moving. I’m done with this, Marian. It’s too much.”

“All right,” she says. “Of course. It’s your decision.” She presses the button for the next stop, and I watch her disappear into the crowd on the pavement.

Before collecting Finn from day care, I stop at Spar to use Eamonn’s gift card. I make a purchase for over ten pounds, so he will know we need to meet immediately. Then I bring Finn round to Sophie’s house, apologizing for interrupting her dinner, making an excuse about a work crisis, and drive to Ardglass.