Now and in the Hour of Our Death (3 page)

Through the tall bow windows, over the houses opposite, she could see the neon glare of the downtown towers and, beyond them, the lights of the Grouse Mountain ski run. They'd be getting it ready for the ski season.

She switched on a floor lamp and drew the curtains. It wasn't cold enough to light the false-log fire that sat flush in the wall flanked by two floor-to-ceiling bookcases where she kept her records segregated as classical or pop in the lower racks. She glanced at her books—old friends from Ireland and new Canadian acquaintances.

She looked over to a telephone and answering machine. No flashing red light. So Tim hadn't called and—no, she'd not call him.

She shrugged, selected
Carmen
, and slipped it onto the turntable. Modern science, she thought, is a wonderful thing, as she turned off the speakers in the room and turned on those in the bathroom. She'd done the wiring herself after she'd read about the option in an interior-decorating magazine.

The overture was finishing as Fiona switched on the bathroom light, threw a capful of Vitabath into the bathtub, and turned on the taps. At the sound, McCusker stuck his head round the door.

“Too hot, McCusker.” The silly cat loved to drink from a running tap. Steam filled the room. Fiona slipped off her shoes. She inspected herself in a full-length mirror. She rubbed a patch clear.

Deep-set, dark almond eyes, slightly slanted and set between little fans of laugh lines peered back at her. She turned to see herself in profile. Nose straight, not too big; lips—she pouted—full but not too full. Chin firm. Forehead smooth—well, two shallow creases, but not bad for a woman of forty-three. A few more silver streaks in the raven-black hair that was cut to frame her face. Tim had asked her not to dye the silver. Said he liked it. To tell the truth, she'd been pleased. Why should she try to pretend to be younger than she was?

She stripped off her clothes. The room was warm and steamy, just like Kiri Te Kanawa's Carmen, who was beginning to seduce Plácido Domingo's Don José. “
Près les ramparts de Seville
…” She hummed along and examined her naked body in the mirror. “Not the girl you were ten years ago—but you'll do.”

The telephone in the living room rang. “Go … away,” but then it might be Tim. She hauled open the bathroom door and raced for the phone.

“Hello?”

“G'dye.”

It was Tim. She'd know that Aussie accent anywhere.

“You all right? You sound a bit out of breath.”

“I'd to run to get the phone.”

“And I thought talking to me made you that way.”

“If you could see me now, you'd be that way yourself.”

“Why?”

“I'm naked.”

“Yeah. Right.”

The room was cold. She felt the goose bumps starting. “And you'd better tell me what you want. I'm going to freeze.”

“You really starkers?”

“I told you. I'm freezing.”

“I could nip over. Warm you up.”

“Not tonight you won't. I've an early staff meeting tomorrow.”

“Bugger. I'm working on Friday night. How about Saturday?”

“Love to.”

“Seven?”

“OK.” She heard the sound of a kiss and replied in kind.

“Remember that old song ‘put on your high-heeled sneakers'? Get a bit swank, and I'll take you to Bridges.”

“Fine.”

“Now go and get warm.” She heard him chuckle.

The phone went dead. She hung up, shivered, and scuttled back to the bathroom, into the tub and under the bubbles. Plácido sang, “
Parles à moi de ma mere
…” The water was warm and soothed her. God, but she was getting sleepy. Early to bed tonight.

*   *   *

Fiona rolled on her side, pulling the duvet under her chin. McCusker was curled in a ball at her feet. Sleep came softly, floating in on the pastel red and maroon clouds of tonight's sunset.

In her dream, she was wrapping herself in the sky's softness when lightning screamed over a black cloud that rose from a shattered building. One eye-searing flash, one single roar punctuated by the screaming of police sirens made Fiona thrash. She saw people running, silently openmouthed, faces grimed and bloodstained. There was shattered glass all over the street.

She flexed her sleeping legs and tried to run from the bed as she had tried to run on that day when she'd been shopping on Ann Street, not two hundred yards away from the blast. Above the street she saw the angel of death hovering, his tattered robe woven from the smoke of the burning building.

Her mouth opened, saliva dripping on her pillow. A low keening struggled from her lips. Her fists clenched and unclenched as she struggled awake, panting, the sweat clammy on her face.

She hadn't had that nightmare for more than a year. Why had it come tonight? She switched on her bedside light, her breathing slowing as she recognized where she was.

But why, safe in her own bedroom, could she still smell the smoke of the blast and hear the moaning of those left alive, see herself, hurrying away?

Fully awake she knew that her dream had been of the bombing of Belfast's Abercorn restaurant in 1972. The IRA explosives had killed two young women, ripped the right arm and both legs off Rosaleen McNern and wounded 130 others. And she hadn't stopped or tried to help. She'd hurried away to the house on Conway Street where she'd lived with Davy McCutcheon for four years.

She could remember letting herself in, tumbling into Davy's arms, sobbing on his chest. Big Davy, strong Davy, gentle Davy—Davy McCutcheon, the man she loved—Davy, who made bombs for the Provisional IRA.

“What's wrong, love?” She heard the concern, felt his hand stroking her hair.

“Everything.”

He waited. Whenever she was upset—which wasn't often—he would be patient, listen, find the right words, hold her.

“Another bomb.” She felt him stiffen. Why, she asked herself, why do I, a committed pacifist, stay with Davy when I know what he does? Why don't I just leave him, this house, and the whole of Northern bloody Ireland? Because—she felt his hand rubbing her back, insistently, comfortingly—because … She turned her face up to him. “Davy, Davy, I love you.”

“It's all right.”

But it wasn't.

“It's all right. Here.” He gave her a handkerchief.

She dried her eyes but began to tremble.

“I'll get you a cup of tea.”

Oh, Christ. Tea. The Belfast answer to every crisis from accidentally breaking an egg to just missing being blown apart. “I don't want a cup of bloody tea.” She heard the pitch of her voice rise until she was almost screaming. “I want out of this.” Before she could stop them the words came tumbling out. “I don't think I can go on living with you.”

He flinched as if she had struck him. “Don't say that.”

“Not unless you leave the Provos.” She saw him flinch again. “Look, I've asked at Canada House. I can get a job as a teacher in Canada. We could go together. Start over.” She saw his face harden.

“You didn't tell me.”

“Why should I? I was just asking. Just…” She moved away from him.

“Fiona, I've never lied to you. You've always known what I do.”

“Yes, but in the beginning you and the rest fought to protect the Catholics from the Protestant mobs when they started rioting, coming here to the Falls Road, burning houses. I didn't like it then, but I could understand. I've tried to close my mind to what you do. Just like a wife whose husband beats her. Pretend it's not really happening. But now…? God knows how many people were killed today, maimed, shattered. I could have been one of them. I was on Ann Street.”

“Oh, Christ…”

“… and it could have been one of
your
devices.”

“It wasn't.”

“But it
could
have been.”

“It wasn't.”

“Get out, Davy. Get out and take me with you.”

“I can't.”

“Why can't you?”

“You know why.”

“Because you believe? Because you gave your word?”

“That's right. I
believe
in Irish freedom. My da believed in Irish freedom. He died for it. I owe him and…” He put his hands on her shoulders. “And I owe it to myself. I promised.”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph … You promised. You're just being stubborn.” She made a fist and struck his chest. And she knew that one of the reasons that she loved him so was because his seeming stubbornness was merely the reflection of an integrity so deep that it was in his bones.

“What are we going to do? Davy, I do love you but I've had enough.”

He pulled her to him.

She could smell the old smoke of his Woodbine cigarettes. She didn't like his smoking, but she put up with it. It was as much a part of Davy as his devotion to Celtic Football Club, his friend Jimmy Ferguson, Davy's love for Jimmy's daughter Siobhan, for all children, his acceptance of Fiona's decision that there'd be no children for the pair of them until the lunacy of the civil war was over, his unshakeable belief that if his bloody Provos could just make one more effort that they would win, that Ireland would be one country again, and that he and she could go back to living a normal life. She knew he was a dreamer, but she loved his simple dreams. “Davy. Davy…” And her resolve faded. She kissed him.

He took her through to the parlour, and she followed obediently. She let him stroke her, kiss her, caress her until her need for him grew and, fumbling at each other, urgency rising, they made love on the old chesterfield that she knew, but Davy thought that she didn't, stood over the secret place under the floorboards where he hid his equipment.

They went into the kitchen when it was over. Davy made a cup of tea. He always did that—after—and in the mornings for her before she rushed off to work, and he—she'd not think about that now.

Davy carried over her cup, and as he did he broke wind. They laughed together. They were on what her father used to call “farting terms,” and Daddy had said no couple was really in love until they'd reached that state of comfort one with the other. And she saw that while she and Davy enjoyed sex—more than just enjoyed it—she loved him most for the little things.

The comfort of him. So what if she was better educated? Had established herself as an independent woman? Broken away from her slum roots? No matter what the crisis, Davy was her rock. Her “bridge over troubled waters.” She could no more leave him than cut off her right arm.

McCusker, her ginger tom, jumped up on her lap—

Her Canadian tortoiseshell, McCusker, butted at her, weaving over her crumpled duvet, demanding attention. Fiona stroked the animal.

Poor Davy, she thought, brushing the cat away as she got out of bed and went through to the bathroom. God, but I still miss you.

She'd stayed with him for two more years, but when a bomb he had made killed the father of two little girls in one of her classes, she'd snapped, given him an ultimatum, “The Provos or me.” And when he'd made his decision, she'd moved out.

Davy came after her weeks later, said he'd changed his mind, just one more mission and he would go to Canada with her. Those weeks without him had been the loneliest of her life. His promise about Canada had seemed to her then like having a doctor coming to her bedside and telling her that the diagnosis of cancer was wrong, that she'd live. She'd waited—but the mission had gone wrong. The court had given Davy forty years.

She could picture him the day she'd gone to the Kesh and told him she was leaving Ireland. His big hands twined and untwined on the tabletop, his face crumpled, and his eyes glistened with the tears that she knew he was holding back until she had gone.

She turned on the tap and filled a glass of water.

Inside her, the old pain whimpered. Oh, Davy.

She reached into the medicine cupboard for the Tylenol, found two, swallowed them, and put both hands to her temples.

Always when she had the nightmare, a migraine would start, the pain crushing like a woodworker's vice.

 

CHAPTER 3

THE KESH. LISBURN. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 1983

Davy McCutcheon clamped a piece of wood in a vice, picked up his plane, sighted along the board's short length, and began to work. Shavings curled and fell on the floor of the prison's carpentry shop. He and seven other prisoners working in the shop had earned the privilege of learning carpentry. He was aware of them around him but kept his gaze fixed on his work. Forward, keep the pressure steady, let the plane bite, move along the wood's surface, lift and start again. Forward, keep the pressure steady …

Davy liked the shop. In here the prison stink—disinfectant, boiled cabbage, half-washed men, clogged drains, backed-up toilets—was masked by the smell of freshly sawn wood and hot glue. The rhythm of his work pleased him, made him feel for the moment like his own man, in nobody's debt. But today he was beholden. There was that promise made to Eamon.

He glanced to the workbench and confirmed that the plastic protector was firmly in place on the blade of a chisel. A peek down the room. The screw had his back turned. The woodworking instructor, a civilian, old Mr. Donovan—Pa to the screws and prisoners alike—was deep in conversation with another apprentice. Pa was so ancient that they said he'd helped Noah measure up his cubits and spans of gopher wood.

Davy did not smile at the old joke. Why the hell had he let Eamon talk him into this? Eamon and his, “Look, Davy, it's only a wee favour.” Wee my Aunt Fanny Jane. He would lose his privileges and his remission time if they caught him. He wanted to learn this trade, and he didn't want to lose one day. He was going to be a different Davy when he did get out.

He put down the plane and picked up a set-square, but he used the back of his hand to nudge the chisel off the bench top onto a pile of shavings. Another quick glance round. No one had seen, or if one of the other inmates had, he was keeping that to himself. Davy kicked the chisel under the shavings.