Twisted Agendas (3 page)

“Are you jilting me?”

Her accusation had the effect of a slap on the cheek. Their fathers had contracted business together and eight months ago had arranged a first date between Danny and Susan. The affair was a
black tie dinner dance organised by Susan’s mother to raise funds for a missionary priest in Lima. That night, Danny found Susan easy to talk to and surprisingly attentive, extinguishing the
tiniest lulls in their conversation with questions about his family, his interests, his ambitions. While it was true his father pushed him hard to date her, alluding to her family’s two huge
dairy farms and Susan’s status as the sole heiress, it was Danny who’d ultimately formed a relationship with her.

Like a magpie, Danny had always been drawn to shiny things, and Susan’s hair was very shiny. In the fourth week of their courtship, during what he’d expected to be yet another
pleasurable session spent necking and running his fingers through her exquisite mane, she encouraged him to go the whole way. That night, sexual attraction galloped to infatuation. He was still
infatuated the following morning and would count the hours remaining until they met up again. Danny agreed with his father without reservation when he remarked Susan would be an ‘ideal
catch’ after cornering him for yet another pep talk before he left to go and see her. During more fantastic sex in Dublin two weeks later, Danny bellowed, ‘I love you’ amid the
ecstasy, Susan admitted she felt the same way, and asked what he felt they should do about it.

His father was ecstatic when Danny informed him he was engaged and immediately set aside a twenty-acre tract of his land for them to obtain a building permit for a house. Almost immediately,
Danny began to express the opinion he’d been too hasty but Mr. Connolly countered any reservations with articulate logic as to the soundness of the match. A few months later, when Danny
admitted to him that Susan and he were having sex, his father informed him there was now no option but marriage to save the girl’s integrity.

Danny gripped Susan’s shoulders. “Look at me.”

She refused.

“Look at me.”

Her eyes cut to an imaginary hole in the middle of his forehead.

“You’re not being dumped. This is something I really need.”

“How can I believe you?”

He began stroking the back of her head and said nothing.

She sighed, took out a tissue and dabbed her eyes. “I’ll resign from my job and come with you. We’ll get a flat.”

He was conscious now of the strands of her hair rolling and shifting under his fingers like silk. “I have to go alone.”

She emitted a strangled gasp, pulled away violently from him and began to weep. Two women turned back to stare after they passed by. Danny felt a familiar urge to apologise and placate her. He
resisted and laid his hand on her shoulder.

“Get
away
from me.” She shrugged him off, her cupped hands plummeting from her face to regard him venomously. “You’ve never wanted this. Take me home this
minute.” She strode toward the car park.

The journey home was silent.

“Let me out
here
,” she said when they reached her parent’s driveway.

“I’ll drop you at the door.”

“Stop the fucking car.” After climbing out, she held the door and leaned inside. “You’ve humiliated me and my family. You’re not a man. I never want to see you
again.”

She slammed the door shut.

Since relocating to study in London, Philomena Patricia Harris insisted everyone call her Piper. She’d loved the name ever since she’d first heard it in the eighth
grade when a family from Santa Barbara moved to Long Island and their daughter joined her class. It sounded so much better than Phila, the abbreviation her mother used whenever they chatted, which
wasn’t often now. Her father still called her Philomena when he called. He kept forgetting.

Acceptance of the name change hadn’t been automatic in England, either. Three lecturers and her dissertation supervisor regarded her very strangely at the beginning when she’d
insisted they call her Piper. They already knew her legal name from the class register, but ultimately had shrugged it off, attributing her insistence to American vanity and its penchant for
reinvention, foibles they were used to because of the large number of Americans pursuing a Masters degree at the London School of Economics.

The sound of the car horn blaring pulled Piper out of her reverie. Her driver, a young man called Declan, honked the horn again at a black cow ambling lazily down the middle of the narrow road.
The beast stopped and looked back at him, then lifted its tail and urinated before moving to the verge.

“The Glenties sure is pretty,” she said in a renewed effort to make conversation as she stared out at the barren, heather-clad hills. “It’s how I’ve always imagined
Ireland.”

“Americans would like Ireland to stay rugged and poor like this,” said the driver. “Nice place for a visit, but not to live.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean it that way, I know the Irish economy’s doing real good. The Celtic Tiger, right?”

“That tiger isn’t calling with every Irish family,” he said. “Some people are still dirt poor.”

She could see another famine house tucked in a shallow hollow. Like the previous one, it was also roofless and constructed of the same fieldstone that formed the crumbling walls enclosing the
tiny fields. The abandoned dwellings were smaller than storage sheds in the backyards of Long Island homes.

“Wouldn’t care to live out here, though,” said Piper. “Life must have been very lonely.”

“You’re right there.”

Wiry, with a pockmarked face, Declan was about ten years older then she, thirty-four tops, and taciturn. This was the most he’d chatted throughout the two-hour ride. Piper regarded herself
a people person, good at making folks feel comfortable, but all he’d uttered were monosyllabic answers to her questions. She wondered if he regarded her as a distraction. Or perhaps he was a
chauvinist and resented having to take her to the meeting place.

In any event she wasn’t going to say anything political and risk antagonising him. She’d networked too hard to commit that act of stupidity, working the telephones for nearly two
months as well as enduring a scary interview, before which she’d first been blindfolded, taken to a secret location and then made to sit on an uncomfortable wooden chair looking at a wall
with a cheap painting of the Blessed Virgin while two men grilled her. Eventually satisfied she was telling the truth about her objectives, they’d allowed her to turn around.

“Sorry we had to make you face the wall,” the older, ruddy-cheeked man with a pure white scar above his right eye had said when they’d finished. “We can’t take
chances, like.”

“Since the split, the Provos have gone to seed but the Brits are still hounding us,” said the other volunteer, a slim man with teeth in bad need of flossing. “We had to make
sure you’re not Special Branch or a Yank in cahoots wey them.”

The men were members of the Real IRA and she knew the volunteer was referring to their acrimonious split with the Provisional IRA four years ago at their 1997 General Army convention, the split
arising because disaffected volunteers did not want the Provos to lay down their weapons or consent to having their arms dumps inspected and destroyed as demanded by the Belfast Agreement. Though
only four-years-old, the Real IRA had already committed significant bombing campaigns and were, Piper was certain, actively seeking recruits and setting up cells in England to ramp up their
campaign.

“No problem,” she said, and gave him an easy smile. “You gotta do what you gotta do.”

Chills of excitement raced up her spine at the thought she’d passed their test and would soon meet a genuine female IRA volunteer. She thought of her late grandfather, of the times
she’d sat on his lap as a young girl listening spellbound as he told stories about his attacks on the British Army and days spent on the run sleeping in barns or the attics of
sympathisers’ homes. Though he’d never mentioned women fighters, as a young girl curled up in bed at night in her parents suburban home, Piper wished she’d been born in Ireland.
She’d definitely have joined the IRA to fight the British if she had.

The driver turned into a dirt lane flanked by long brambles that scraped against the sides of the car. Foot-long, silky grass swayed gently in the median. Through gaps in the hedge she glimpsed
plump lambs suckling their mothers. After rounding two bends in the lane, the car drew up to another famine cottage. It had a mossy thatched roof, an emerald green Dutch front door and two tiny
windows, one with an oil lamp standing on the window sill. A neat stack of peat stood by the side of the gable.

As Piper clambered out, menacing barks from what sounded like a huge dog started up as the cottage door opened. She retreated quickly inside the car. The driver laughed.

A lean, very attractive woman in jeans and oversized cardigan came outside, immediately followed by a tan and black Dachshund with a greying muzzle.

“I’m Maura,” she said, and extended her hand to Piper as she approached. “Karl heard yous pull in before I did.”

Her handshake was strong, almost masculine.

“He had me worried for a sec’.”

“He’s all yap and no bite.” Maura patted the dog’s head. “Isn’t that right my darlin’?”

Recognising the bond between dog and owner and seizing the moment to establish rapport, Piper stooped and ran her hand along the animal’s broad back. It was greasy to the touch. Despite
his layer of fat, she felt the brute stiffen. “He’s a real cutie.”

“Real fat, too.”

“You need anything from the shops, Maura?” the driver asked.

“A carton of milk.” She nodded toward the door when she caught Piper’s eye. “Come in.”

The dwelling had no electricity or running water, reeked of turf smoke and was sparsely furnished. Informed after they sat at a small dining table that Maura hadn’t wanted to meet her, but
had been ordered to do so by the Officer Commanding, Piper tried again to establish rapport by explaining her grandfather had been a gunrunner in the Old IRA before he and her grandmother emigrated
to America. Omitting her father had refused in the late eighties to offer temporary shelter to a volunteer who’d been sent to America because the British were closing in on him for the murder
of a soldier, she ramped up her Irish credentials by saying he marched every year in the annual Saint Patrick’s Day Parade in New York City and that he and her grandfather had helped raise
thousands of dollars for Sinn Fein over the years.

“What’s your opinion of the IRA?” Maura asked.

“Ireland must be united and they’re an important part of the solution to reach that goal.”

“Why the interest in volunteers like me?”

“Women played an important part in the armed struggle, didn’t they?”

“Played? Are you suggesting the struggle’s over?”

“No.”

“Happy to hear that. It’s not over just because George Mitchell, Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern have decided we must disarm.”

“Government demands during an insurrection are part of what I’m researching for my dissertation.”

Maura’s eyes became slits. “Why’d you go to England to study if you’re so Irish?”

“That’s a great question.” Clearly the woman had been informed Piper was doing an MSc. History of International Relations, but was ignorant of the stellar reputation of the
LSE. “You know, not everything English is bad.”

Maura threw back her head, slapped her palms against the top of the table and laughed. “I hear you.” She leaned over the table. “Tell me one thing before we continue.
It’s been bugging the hell out of us over here.”

“What’s that?”

“Al Gore won last year’s election so why the hell did yous not get him to contest Florida?”

“He should have.” Piper smiled. “That’s another reason why I left the States.”

“What’s the other?”

Ignoring the question, Piper signaled her desire to begin the interview by taking out her notebook.

The interview was conducted over tea – the peaty, strong Irish type Piper loved – and buttered digestive biscuits with thin slices of mature cheddar cheese. Her interest in the
contribution of female volunteers to the Irish struggle and dislike of the present US administration warmed Piper to the woman. Maura stated her initial reasons for joining the militant wing of the
IRA were a combination of romanticism, in that she’d been drawn to the story of a female university graduate who’d become a bomber and been murdered while on a mission, and a
deep-seated passion for an independent and socialist Ireland.

“How old was this woman?” Piper asked.

“About your age and a real beauty,” Maura shook her head and then readjusted her long hair around her shoulders. She had the type of rich dark red hair Piper saw only on Irish
people. “Such warm, big eyes. And you should have seen her cheekbones. A real head-turner, she was. Such a waste.”

It was an intriguing comment. Piper made a notation ‘Joined out of a sense of romanticism??’ in the notebook but then scribbled it out. A revolutionary’s personal whims or
reasons for joining the IRA would be of no interest to the lecturer marking her dissertation, which Piper had entitled
Ireland at another Crossroads: Can governments broker a durable
power-sharing agreement during successful insurrection
?

“Do you think the Provos will disarm as required under the Belfast Agreement?” Piper asked.

“If they disarm, what threat does the minority have to ensure Blair and the Unionists will do what they’re supposed to do?”

“So Mr. Paisley’s right when he says the IRA is not acting in good faith?” Piper’s pen floated above the page in preparation to write.

“Don’t get me started on that bastard,” she said. “Are you going to interview any politicians?”

“I’ve already spoken to the SDLP, Ulster Unionists and Sinn Fein’s political arm.”

“Gerry Adams or McGuiness?”

“Maybe.”

“You play a tight hand.” Maura leaned over to pat her dog. “What about Paisley?”

“He couldn’t see me when I arrived at his constituency office.”