The Boatman's Wife(33)

‘He was only going fishing,’ she told Jesse now, turning to look at him. Her breasts were pressed against his bare chest, her eyes fixed on his. He looked back at her. She could already see the pity creeping in.

It had been about seven in the evening when Tadhg and her daddy had eventually met up, got into the small row boat and pushed out onto the mirror-clear waters of the lough. They sat at either end of the boat, casting their lines. A few words exchanged, and then the purity of quiet.

Meanwhile, Niamh and her mam had been making a sticky, sugary berry mess in their kitchen. Ladling sugar into the simmering pots of raspberries. The scent divine, the flavour intense, with an edge of tartness, when Niamh dipped in a teaspoon for a taste. She had stared into the pot, stirring the bubbling mixture, fascinated by the intense crimson of the raspberry pulp.

The sun was falling low in the sky, staining the air red as if with berry juice, and dark was seeping up from the land. Trees whispered out by the home lough. There came the lone hoot of an owl, and the sounds of all the night creatures coming out.

At this point in the story, Niamh stopped. She had been so lost in her memories, but now, Jesse’s face was right in front of her, his expression intent.

‘It’s okay. You don’t have to go on,’ he said.

She touched her cheeks and realised they were damp with tears. Nearly ten years, her dad had been dead, and she still wasn’t over it.

‘I want to tell you all about it,’ she whispered. ‘Because if I don’t, someone else will, and they might get it wrong.’

‘Okay, then,’ Jesse said, kissing her gently on the forehead. Niamh swallowed down the lump in her throat.

‘He never came home,’ she said. ‘My mam woke me in the night, and she was worried.’

‘“Did your daddy tell you what time he’d be back?” she asked me. And I said, “No, is he not home?” My mam must have had some kind of feeling, because she looked really shaken up and I said, “Mammy, don’t worry, he probably went out for pints with Tadhg and is staying over.”

‘“But he never rang,” Mam said, looking at me, all pale. And then she said, “I dreamt about him, Niamh, like he came to me.” And I know it sounds dramatic, but we both knew something bad had happened.

‘When the Gardai car turned up, we weren’t surprised. Mam had been on the phone to Tadhg’s house and his wife, Mary, had answered. Woken up Tadhg, who’d told Mammy that he’d said his goodbye to Daddy long before. Like, hours and hours ago. Daddy should have been back by dark.’

Jesse took Niamh’s hand, gripped it between his. She knew it was breaking all the dating rules to come out with such heavy stuff on their first night. He might bolt for it as soon as he could, but she was beyond worrying. Now that she was talking about the night her father had died, she couldn’t stop. She hadn’t spoken to anyone about it, apart from Brendan. Who had always had a different take.

‘When the Gardai knocked on our door, we knew something had happened to Daddy, but we still didn’t expect what it was.

‘Those Gardai, they lied to us. Said there’d been an accident. Said they were sorry. Daddy was gone. I remember Mam fell down onto a chair, and she was just staring into space. Couldn’t say a word. So, I asked them. I said, “What accident? What happened?” The younger Garda couldn’t look me in the face. They weren’t local. I don’t know where they were from. But then the older one told me that Daddy had been shot by accident up north, and they were talking to the RUC about it.’

‘What’s the RUC?’ Jesse asked her.

‘Royal Ulster Constabulary,’ Niamh told Jesse. ‘The police up north.’ She felt the fury return, like an old wound throbbing. ‘Mam came to her senses and she said to the guards she wanted to talk to the RUC man on the phone, right now. I can’t even remember that Ulsterman’s name, but it was him who told us the truth.’

Niamh took a breath. Looked into Jesse’s brown eyes and said it straight out, just as her mother had been told, so brutally:

‘Daddy had been shot at a fake checkpoint – most likely by a member of the UDF.’

Jesse frowned, and Niamh could see he didn’t understand.

‘Have you heard of the UDF?’

Jesse shook his head.

‘Well, it stands for Ulster Defence Force. They’re a terrorist Loyalist group fighting the republicans, or the IRA.’

‘I know about the IRA,’ Jesse said. ‘The Irish Republican Army, right? They want a united Ireland?’

‘Most of the troubles are in Belfast,’ Niamh continued to explain. ‘There’ve been the bombings in Enniskillen, about an hour away across the border in County Fermanagh, but not much trouble near us. Only the odd random incident.’

‘So was your father in the IRA?’ Jesse asked.

‘No,’ she snapped, defensive. ‘He was totally against violence. But some of his relatives were in the IRA.’ As Niamh said this, a memory returned to her of her daddy. Right here in this very shed, her father kneeling down, with his hammer in his hand, tapping her head gently. Making her promise never to get caught up in the Troubles. She’d broken that promise.

‘So why was your father killed?’ Jesse whispered, and she realised the expression on his face was one of awe. For a second, she was tempted to tell him her secret. But of course, there was no way she could do that.