Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears (Exit Unicorns Series) (62 page)

He didn’t respond to their questions. He couldn’t have even if he’d wanted to. He didn’t know anything about the things they asked him. Was the IRA planning a large scale campaign? Where were the 2
^nd
Belfast Battalion’s weapons cached? Where were the safe houses along the border? He had no clue, but his captors either didn’t believe him, or they just enjoyed inflicting a lot of pain.

He couldn’t even remember what proper sleep felt like. Every time he managed to lose consciousness here, he was slapped awake, had bright lights beamed in his eyes or someone shout in his ear. All of it designed to keep him off balance, to make adrenaline stream through his body, keeping him in a constant state of panic.

Pat lay now where he’d collapsed some time ago. He didn’t know how long, nor did he care. They’d threatened him with any number of things if he didn’t get back up, but he simply couldn’t, in fact if they’d said they were going to kill him, he’d have seen it as a means of escape. Finally after several threats and a few kicks to his ribs they’d abandoned him in the wee shed, where he lay grateful for the cessation of noise and freshly inflicted pain.

He wasn’t aware of having fallen asleep until he heard a voice.

“Here man, have a drink.” The voice seemed to come from a very great distance, muffled and fuzzy. Pat turned away from it, wanting only to sink back into unconsciousness. It was the one safe place in this unending nightmare. But the voice persisted. “Come on, we’ve only a few minutes, you need the water.”

He’d the vague sensation of the cord being loosened around his neck and then the hood was pushed up to just below his nose and the cool rim of a canteen was pressed to his split lower lip. He found, to his consternation, that despite his ravening thirst, he couldn’t open his mouth. His jaw, tensed for days, was locked tight.

The man seemed to sense his difficulty, for a hand, smooth and warm, touched the knotted muscle, then pushed into it with increasing pressure until it gave.

The water tasted like rain directly from heaven, sweet and chill, it trickled down the back of his tongue causing his throat to spasm in shock. Much of it spilled back out onto his coveralls, but eventually some made it past the bruised constriction of his throat.

“Th—thank you,” he managed to stutter out, vocal chords protesting even the one small word.

“You’re welcome,” the voice was soft, gentle, and undeniably British. The double-layered hood was as effective as complete blindness, and Pat had learned in a few short days to rely on his other four senses. His hearing had heightened considerably, and he was able to sort noises out, separating them, categorizing—dangerous or not dangerous, immediate threat or postponed agony. He knew one soldier from another. The one with the clipped upper class accent had a mean kick on him, the harsh Geordie accent belonged to the one who specialized in squeezing testicles, the Cockney voice belonged to the one with a penchant for putting out cigarettes on any bare bit of skin that was handy. But this one wasn’t familiar, there were no telltale regional epiglottal stops and starts or lilts to his words, just a smoothness as though it had been carefully trained to be free of such clues.

“Could ye take th—the h—hood off?” he asked, tongue stumbling still over small syllables.

A long stretch of silence greeted his question and then the voice, still soft and calm, said, “I’m not supposed to. If someone were to come in—I—well just for a minute, alright, and then you can’t resist when I have to put it back on.”

“I w—won’t,” Pat promised, his whole body trembling in anticipation of this small bit of freedom.

The man loosened the knot further, the hood slipping with no more than a passing sigh against Pat’s face and then all was light—blinding, consuming, agonizing light. His eyes throbbed and burned with it, felt as if they might burst from his head with it but he forced himself to keep them open, to absorb the dazzling brilliance for as long as he might.

“Are you alright?” the man asked, no more than an indistinct blur in front of him, outlined in a hazy blue aura. Pat blinked several times and then squinted his eyes down to narrow slits in order to achieve some sort of focus. It worked.

The man was not as young as Pat had thought. Though with his slight build, soft brown eyes and fine blond hair, he retained a boyish aura. Still he was at least in his twenties, possibly early thirties.

“Hello,” the man said, smiling. “I’ve brought you some tea, strong with lots of sugar. We need to get it down you quickly before someone comes along.”

“Why?” Pat asked stupidly, feeling like a stunned owl knocked from its perch and left to the mercies of the sun.

“Because you’re not allowed sugar, it’s all part of the program. The brain needs three things to function properly—oxygen, sensory stimulation, and sugar. So drink up.”

Pat gulped the hot, sweet tea that the man held to his mouth, scalding his tongue in the process and not giving a damn. He could feel it go all the way down through his esophagus and into his stomach, burning a path through the chill that seemed to have settled permanently in his center.

“Good man.” The man didn’t take the tea away until Pat had drained every last drop. Then from a satchel on the floor he produced a sandwich, cookies and an orange.

He unwrapped the sandwich and Pat, sense of smell painfully acute, caught the scent of ham, his stomach contracting painfully at the idea of food. The man held the sandwich to his mouth but as much as he longed to take a bite, to devour the thing whole without even bothering to chew, he turned his head away.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked, watching the man out of the corner of his eye.

The man colored slightly, he’d very fine skin that flushed easily.

“You don’t have to worry you know,” he smiled faintly, “last time I checked neither pork nor tea was on the list of brainwashing tools approved by the British government.”

Pat, too hungry to care, too tired to second guess what seemed a random act of kindness took a bite and then another and another.

“Go slowly,” the young man advised, “your stomach, much as it needs it, won’t be inclined to treat the food gently.”

“I don’t suppose ye’d consider takin’ the handcuffs off so I could feed myself?”

“No, I don’t suppose I would,” the man replied, “I saw what you did to Johns and Diddy the last time you were out of handcuffs. Being that I’m somewhat smaller than them I imagine you’d make short work of me.”

Pat smiled ruefully, face stinging as several half healed cuts re-opened, and looked the man directly in the eyes. “How did ye know what I was thinkin’?”

“I didn’t,” he replied calmly, “but nor am I a complete fool.” He neatly peeled the orange, segmented it, and held a piece out to Pat. It was an oddly intimate act, to be fed by a stranger’s hand.

“David,” said the man, peeling off another segment of orange.

“Mmgghpm?” Pat enquired around a mouthful of sweet, tart fruit, juice leaking into the split lip and stinging like fire.

“My name is David,” he reiterated, retrieving a napkin from his satchel and dabbing Pat’s lip with it.

Pat eyed him warily. “Is this some sort of new torture the Army’s instituted, death by table manners?”

“No, I was just raised well.”

“Oh,” Pat said, feeling suddenly awkward. The hate, the violence—these things he could handle summarily, retreating into a corner in his mind and holding that small part safe. Simple kindness, though, disarmed him and left him feeling terribly vulnerable.

“It’s alright, I wouldn’t trust me either if I’d been in your shoes for the last two weeks, but I really mean no harm.”

“Won’t ye get into trouble if they find ye feedin’ me?”

“Yes I would, a great deal I imagine, but I’m willing to take that chance.”

“Why?”

David sighed and looked Pat directly in the face. His eyes were hazel, brown around the center, then ringed with green and flecks of gold. Pat found himself oddly mesmerized by the colors.

“I did it because I’m absolutely appalled at the tactics being used over here and cannot sleep as a result. I know feeding one man doesn’t balance the scales out but I thought perhaps it would help me to rest at night. So you see,” he broke off a piece of one cookie and held it out to Pat, “it’s really a rather selfish act.”

Pat took the bite between his lips and felt the brush of the man’s finger, warm and dry, against his bottom lip. He hesitated, oddly frightened by the first gentle touch he’d known from another human in days. David’s hand smelled of rifle oil, ham and something far softer, not sweet but warm and comforting. His own smell.

“Why me?” Pat asked quietly. David drew his hand away slowly, dropping his eyes down to Pat’s bare feet. There was an odd tension in the air and Pat wished he hadn’t asked the question, for somehow it had brought down his own barriers a bit, put a chink in the brick wall that he needed to keep impenetrable in order to survive what had happened and what was likely still to come.

“Because you have a good face and—and,” he glanced up, giving Pat a glimpse of flushed cheeks, “you remind me of someone.”

“I see,” Pat said, thinking he’d seen altogether more than he was comfortable with. “I’m not—you—it’s just that—” he closed his mouth in frustration knowing there was no polite way to string together the words that he’d been about to say.

David looked at him candidly, eyebrows raised and an amused smile playing about his mouth. “It’s alright; I don’t want anything in return.”

Far down the corridor came the faint sound of clomping boots headed in their direction.

“We’d best get the hood back on,” David said, businesslike once again.

“What were you supposed to be doing in here with me?”

David laughed. “If anyone asks I grilled you brutally about the mythical arms dump at Toome, to which you, being stubbornly Irish, refused to give an answer. At which point I beat you mercilessly about the head and face with my fists. You’re so bruised up that it’ll be difficult for them to prove otherwise.”

Pat nodded, and then took his last glimpse of light in the form of David Kendall’s eyes.

“Thank you,” he said, then surrendered to darkness.

PAMELA STOOD IN THE STREET OUTSIDE Pat and Sylvie’s wee house, horror struck. She had awakened that morning to the sound of someone pounding on the door, Finbar barking like a mad thing, and Lawrence sleeping straight through it all.

She’d opened the door with adrenaline racing through her, disorienting the normal waking process and jumbling her usual precautionary nature, now that she and the boy were living alone in the house.

Jamie stood outside, face grim.

“You shouldn’t open the door without being certain you know who is on the other side first,” he said in an admonitory tone.

“It’s five o’clock in the morning—what on earth are you doing here?” she asked, ignoring his statement.

“Can I come in?” he asked, a trifle impatiently, considering he’d just woken her from the soundest sleep she’d had in weeks.

She stepped aside and he came in, bringing with him the smell of morning rain, which lay in crystals upon his coat and hair.

Since the morning Jamie had told her just what had happened with Casey, their relationship had danced on the most fragile of eggshells. In fact if she looked closely enough, she could still see the trace of blue beneath his left eye, where she’d slapped him hard enough that she’d shocked them both into a stunned silence. But then Jamie had regained his equilibrium and said, “You’ve a helluva right hook on you.”

Since then they’d been wary as cornered cats around each other, though Jamie had done his best to explain the events of the night that had led to Casey being incarcerated on the Maidstone, a prison ship of which she’d heard little good.

“They were waiting at the top of road leading out from the mounds. Four soliders in a jeep. Someone had gone to a bit of trouble to make certain that Casey wasn’t going to get away, if they didn’t manage to kill him. We would have made a run for it, but they were fairly persuasive with their guns held to our heads. Otherwise, I would have found him a safehouse in which to ride out the time.”

Instinctively she knew that there was a great deal more going on in the interstices of events than either Jamie or her husband thought she needed to know.

She’d left his home that day and hadn’t seen him for a week until one morning he’d shown up, tools in hand and set to finishing the roof on she and Casey’s home.

When she’d gone outside in her nightgown to protest, he’d merely said, “It needs doing. Would you prefer to have the rain falling on your head and belongings?”

Grudgingly she’d allowed him to finish it. When he came down the ladder several hours later, she invited him in for dinner. A dinner that he ate with a good appetite, considering Lawrence glared daggers across the table at him and made comments about people showing up where they were neither welcome, nor invited.

Jamie merely arched a golden brow at him and took another helping of potatoes. He really could be the most implacable bastard at times, she thought, banging the teapot down on the table and slopping hot liquid onto Jamie’s sleeve.

He had looked at her then, green eyes candid, and said, “I would never cause you deliberate hurt, nor, I believe, would Casey.”

While she doubted that their definitions on what constituted deliberate hurt matched up, she knew his words were not uttered lightly, and so they had mended their fence as best they might. The air still hummed with tension, but she had advanced to a cool civility, despite her inability to get a visitor’s pass to see her husband. Knowing where Casey was and that he was relatively unharmed had gone some way to softening her attitude, a crumpled and terse note from Casey, somehow smuggled off the ship under the guard’s noses, had gone another stretch towards relieving Jamie of blame.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, as Jamie shook the droplets from his hair. There was always a heart-stopped moment for her when she awaited news.

“It’s not Casey,” he said, relieving her of her initial and foremost fear. “I heard on the radio that soldiers ransacked the Ardoyne last night. I think it’s likely Pat and Sylvie’s place has been hit. I stopped to bring you with me, I think Sylvie may well need your sympathy right now.”