Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears (Exit Unicorns Series) (106 page)

The IRA took responsibility for the bombing, though not for the fact that adequate warning was not given for the twenty-seven bombs that were planted, and that it was next to impossible for the areas to be cleared with the short lapse time between the warning calls and the detonation.

In bombing their own city, the IRA had sought to bring an end to ordinary life in Belfast, to try and force a people who had already suffered too much to rise against the perceived oppressor.

What they really succeeded in doing was to hand the British the excuse they had been looking for to launch forces into the formerly sacred Republican no-go areas of the Bogside and the Creggan. Operation Motorman was launched, and an extra 26,000 troops were deployed.

In the end the IRA had rather effectively, with the events of one bloody hour, turned the racing tide of freedom and unity fully against themselves.

PAMELA WAS IN THE KITCHEN separating out the several lemon frost thymes that grew in profusion in the big clay pots on the porch. The sharp citrusy scent was pleasing and tended to clear the head when working with them. Working with plants always gave her a feeling of calm, the soil under her fingers soothing. Such small chores were a world away from events such as Bloody Friday, now a week ago, though she still saw the gruesome images every time she closed her eyes.

The newspapers had indulged in a melodramatic field day in the wake of that terrible Friday, the headlines blaring out black from gritty pages about the
‘Massacre—Wanton Murder, Hour of Terror, Day of Infamy
and so forth. However lurid the headlines, no one offered any solutions to an untenable situation. The British continued to pour more young men into the narrow city streets, to stumble through tiny back gardens while women and children clanged bin lids in warning to the snipers that took potshots at them from the steeply inclined roofs and then disappeared back into the small jungle that was West Belfast.

Living away from the city provided some small measure of relief, though the tension lived in both she and Casey on a constant basis. It manifested itself in countless ways that became a part of one’s daily routine without an overt consciousness of it. This frightened her more than anything—that looking over her shoulder, that jumping at every loud noise, that looking at every person with whom you were unfamiliar with a jaundiced eye was becoming ingrained in her, and as natural as brushing her teeth.

Suspecting her husband’s long hours were not strictly confined to his work and time at the youth center didn’t sit easily with her either, and yet just such a suspicion had been growing like a tiny weed in her for some time now. She knew he was spending more time with Robin of late than he had before internment, and she had a feeling their activities weren’t strictly confined to lifting pints or playing at horseshoes.

The door opened, startling her. She jumped and knocked over the bag of potting soil that sat on the counter beside the clay pots.

“Damn it all to hell!” She exclaimed as a dark pour of soil fell out onto the wooden floor. The floor she’d finished washing no more than an hour ago.

“Lawrence, is that you?” she called out.

“No, ‘tisn’t,” came back the reply.

She glanced over at the big wooden clock that sat atop the mantelpiece. It was early for Casey to be home. She wiped her hands on a linen tea towel and craned her head around the door to the boot room.

He was sitting on the narrow boot room bench, work boots still on his feet, lunch bag lying in a heap by the door.

“You’re home early.”

“Aye, we’re waitin’ on a load of schist from Derry, truck had an accident near Maghera an’ went into the ditch. They sent us home for the rest of the day.”

He pulled his boots off, his movements unnaturally stiff.

“Did you have an accident yourself? You’re moving oddly.”

“Not an accident as such, more of an intentional head-on, ye might say.”

“What do you mean?”

“I got in a bit of a fisticuffs with one of the other men.” He cricked his neck as though it pained him and stood, stocking-footed. “Will ye put the kettle on, Jewel? I could use a hot cup, an’ maybe a bite of somethin’.”

“What do you mean ‘will ye put the kettle on’? Why on earth were you fighting?”

“Can I come in the house first, woman? Then I’ll explain it to ye.”

She gave him a gimlet eye and then stood back. In the bright light of the kitchen, she could see clearly that he’d been in more than a ‘slight fisticuffs’. His shirt was torn and he still had traces of dried blood on his knuckles, which were skinned and puffy. She pulled his shirt—what was left of it—up out of his jeans and pushed it up to his chest, amid protest on his part.

“Good Lord! How long were you at it?” His ribs were a mottled black and blue down his entire left-hand side.

“The ribs aren’t the man’s fault—we fell onto a pile of concrete blocks from above—ye should see his one leg, ‘tis a deal worse than the wee bruise I’ve got.”

“Wee bruise my arse,” she exclaimed, “your ribs look like you’ve been mauled by a grizzly bear.”

“Well I daresay I feel about as bad as if I had been, Tim Piggott not bein’ particularly small.”

“You were fighting with
Tim
? What on earth for?”

Tim was a big, bluff good-natured fellow that worked hard, and drank harder. Casey had always gotten along quite well with him. How the two of them could have come to blows was something she found hard to countenance.

“He said somethin’ I took offense to, an’ I smacked him in the mouth but good. An’ then he took offence to
that
.”

“Yes,” she said dryly, “I imagine he would. What exactly did he say?”

“He said my wife was after getting’ herself a reputation as the RUC’s whore.”

“What?!”

“Aye. He said he’d a cousin lives down near Crossmaglen, an’ yer name came up in conversation recently amongst a certain group of men. An’ that there were rumblins’ about ye an’ that burned out RUC car. Those South Armagh boys are mad as friggin’ hatters woman, can ye not stay clear of trouble for more than a minute altogether?”

“Don’t deviate off topic here, how exactly did he get round to calling me a whore?”

“His cousin is South Armagh IRA, Pamela, an’ if they get a bee up their nose about ye, ye might as well go pick out yer coffin. They’ll kill ye for having the temerity to walk about breathin’, never mind that yer pokin’ yer face into things they don’t want found out. An’ twas them called ye the RUC’s whore—a Catholic woman doin’ the policeman’s dirty work. Tim was repeatin’ it. I think he meant it as warnin’ but it took me the wrong way an’ so I hit him.”

“I just asked a few questions, people will talk to a woman sometimes when they won’t talk to a policeman.”

“It’s my understandin’ ye asked a rather direct question about Noah Murray.”

She swallowed, feeling slightly nervous. The truth was she
had
asked if anyone had seen Noah Murray about. Which, in hindsight, had seemed more than a little foolish. Noah Murray was, for all intents and purposes, the godfather of the South Armagh brigade of the IRA. He was known for his ruthlessness and his ghost-like ability to elude the police and prosecution of any sort. It was rumored that even his neighbors never questioned him about the strange nocturnal activities that took place on his farm, for fear they would end up in a body bag in a lonely country ditch somewhere.

“I did.”

“Are ye tryin’ to commit suicide, woman?!” Casey drove his hands through his hair in frustration, ruffling the short curls into spikes. “The man runs the ‘Ra down that way.”

She could feel her shoulders creeping upward in defiance and shrugged to ward it off. “If I worried about displeasing them I’d never get my job done.”

Casey snorted in disgust. “Displeasing is it? Those men are the law down there, yer wee policemen friends can’t protect ye from the likes of them. An’ nor can I.”

“So we should just stand by and let people be killed, leave murders unsolved?”

“Ye don’t understand because ye didn’t grow up here,” he said, eyes turning smoky gray.

“And that’s my greatest sin, isn’t it? That I wasn’t born here, so I can never understand all the rules.”

“Ye damn well
don’t
understand the rules, an’ that’s the plain truth of it.” In moments of great emotion his Belfast street brogue got the better of him, rendering his words harsh and angry.

“Sometimes I feel like I don’t know you at all,” she said, stung by his tone as well as the words.

“Aye well, there are days the feelin’ is mutual in that respect.”

“I am not talking about my job anymore,” she said, with a certain mulishness that had become ingrained over her months of employment.

“My point exactly. Ye have your bits that belong only to you and I have mine. I come from a world, Pamela, where a man’s wife would never dream of hiring out to his enemy.”

She started back as if slapped. “Is that how you see me? As working for the enemy? If you’re not involved with the IRA again, why should anyone be the enemy? And while we’re on the topic, exactly what the hell were you doing coming in the house in the wee hours looking like you’d been dragged in by the cat, with charcoal all over your face and brick dust on your shoes?”

“Yer checkin’ my shoes after I’ve been out? Christ, it’s good to know ye trust me.”

“I do trust you, I’m just saying not all your activities seem designed to keep you alive and breathing, either.”

“That’s different.”

“How is it different?” She stuck her hands on her hips, a full rolling boil of anger starting to bubble in her veins.

“Because I’m a man, I can take care of myself.”

It was her turn to snort derisively. “And I can look after my own self as well. I’ve had plenty of practice, after all.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“You know what it means,” she said coolly, while inwardly quaking at the thunderstorm that was brewing up dark and violent in his face.

“Jaysus woman!” his fist struck the countertop, making crumbly bits of earth roll across its polished surface. “Do ye not realize the ‘Ra will have yer address on file now? That they’ll have established yer routine about a week after ye started yer work an’ may decide that ye constitute a good hit one of these days?” He was breathing in short angry bursts. “Ye can’t be the naïve American over here, it’s goin’ to get ye killed.”

“As,” she said acidly, “I’m not allowed to be the naïve American in my own country, I guess you’ll have to put up with me here, where I never seem to put a foot right.”

Casey’s eyes narrowed. “Not
allowed—
what the hell are ye inferrin’ by that?”

“I’m not bothering with inference,” she said, anger making her feel as if she was floating up off the floor, “I’m saying it straight. You couldn’t handle living in Boston, so I brought you back here, where you promptly got in trouble again.”

“I knew ye resented leavin’ Boston, but I really didn’t think ye’d go to these lengths to punish me for it.”

“
Punish you
,” she sputtered, “is that how you view my job? As a punishment to you?”

“Job,” he spit the word out, “yer
job
almost got ye killed. Yer still limpin’ from it. Next time yer not likely to be so lucky.”

She shook her head in mute obstinacy. “I don’t come from a world where a woman has to quit her job because it annoys her husband.”

“Is that so?” Casey smiled, but there was nothing pleasant in the expression. “Well what do the rules in yer world say about entertainin’ another man when yer husband is locked away from the world?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Jamie.”

She sighed. “Jamie?”

“Aye Robin tells me he was always about when I was gone.”

“Robin?” she said in disbelief. “This is ridiculous. You asked Jamie to keep an eye out for me, which he did. I don’t know whether to be flattered at what you seem to think is my ability to attract so many men at one time, or insulted by what you seem to be implying. But if you must know, one man seems more than what’s required to plague the life from a woman.”

“One man ought to be enough, but is he?” Under the fury that flushed his skin, there was a hesitancy in the words, as if he were afraid of getting an answer to the question.

“What are you saying?” she asked, the blood leaving her face in a rush.

“Only that Robin seems to have been about enough to be annoyed by Jamie, an’ Jamie enough to feel Robin was on his territory. In fact the both of them seemed to get a wee bit territorial about ye.”

“What’s really bothering you here?” she asked, knowing he was skirting the edges of what he actually wanted to say.

He looked at her for a long time, the anger draining from his face to be replaced by something ineffably sad. She was suddenly very afraid of what he was about to say.

“Both you and I know, Pamela, that something is wrong at the core of our marriage. I’ve racked my brain for two years now trying to decide what it is. After we came back here I wanted to lay the blame at Jamie’s door, but I knew something wasn’t right between us even in Boston. Can ye tell me what it is? Because I tell ye, woman, I cannot live with not knowin’ anymore. If ye let a worm chew at something long enough, eventually there’s no substance left.”

“I—I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, feeling a wave of panic pass over her and lodge itself in the pit of her stomach.

He looked at her for a very long time across the expanse of kitchen that lay between them. “I wish I could believe ye,” he said quietly. “But I find that I no longer can.”

He moved past her and removed his coat from the hook beside the door.

“Where are you going?”

“I need to think,” he said, “an’ it wouldn’t hurt you to have some space either.”

“You’re
leaving
?” she said in disbelief. “For how long, exactly?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Until I find I can live with secrets or you decide to tell me what it is that’s gone wrong between the two of us.”

“If you go,” she said in a desperation that was half anger and half panic, “don’t bother coming back.”