Exit Unicorns (Exit Unicorns Series) (13 page)

Discipline, the one thing that had ensured his survival for so long, demanded that he unpack and wash up before succumbing to fatigue. Rituals, small and insignificant, had stood between him and despair while he lived a life apart.

When he finally lay down and closed his eyes, it was his daddy’s face that came to mind and it broke his breath just to see him there. He’d expected him somehow, not in a logical way, but just the ghost of him in Pat’s face. His brother was his own man now, though, and not a remnant of the father Casey could not think of without anger and bottomless pain.

Tired as he was, sleep would not come, so he lay awake watching night claim the sky through his window. Blue, pale to deep, then indigo and finally black. He got up hours later and hung a blanket over the window; it would serve as bars for now until he felt ready to wake to a sunrise. Freedom, it seemed, would have its own price.

Discretion, thought the Reverend Lucien Broughton, was indeed the better part of valor and the power of dominance was often in the display rather than the fact. Destruction of a country, a race, a people, a way of life was often in the details. These things he held to firmly, they were his credo, one might even say, his religion.

A delicate minx of a man, blue of eye, flaxen of hair, he sat now in the supremely upright position men who are uncomfortable with their small stature will aspire to. Outside the window to his left lay the grounds of Stormont, ostensibly the government building of Northern Ireland, beneath the veneer of gray respectability a Protestant palace for a Protestant state. The road of history in Northern Ireland ran through Stormont, the road of progress stopped abruptly at its doors.

As a denizen of Malone Road drawing rooms and country houses, Lucien Broughton felt himself British by birth, British by destiny. If you needed it, the proof was in the Queen’s head which adorned the stamp, the red pillar boxes that graced the roadsides and the weather which was as cold, gray and invariably dour as any proper British morning could be hoped to be. It was, in his opinion, unfortunate that the rest of Ireland insisted on hanging on to, or off, the bottom of the six states of Ulster.

Fanaticism could not be gleaned by the perusal of his parts, was not even betrayed by a telltale gleam in the eye. He was smooth, unruffled, lucent as a new moon and untrustworthy as a fox in a hencoop.

Mick Bigsby, exhausted civil servant, sometime advisor to a variety of politicians and at present feeling very much like a chicken, sat at a desk, papers scattered in weary abundance, under the calm, dissecting gaze of Reverend Lucien Broughton.

What he knew of the Reverend was little; a self-taught fundamentalist who’d acquired his doctorate honorarily from the Wilbur Walker College of Christianity in faraway Louisiana. An orator of impressive talent, his voice had been known to shake the walls of many an Orange lodge with the thunder of his rhetoric. Fear of the trampling Roman Catholic hordes was the rock upon which he preached and a solid rock it was found to be even at this late date in history.

What he felt of the Reverend Broughton was fear—pure, unmitigated, skin-crawling fear. The thing he couldn’t quite put a finger on was why he was here in his, Mick Bigsby’s office, on this early spring day as a faint mist of green was lacing the trees outside.

“I was given to understand,” began Lucien Broughton, placing one well-manicured hand over the other, “that you were the gentleman to whom I should speak to about a matter which has come to my concern.”

“Yes,” Mick said, wondering what on earth this man could possibly want his help for.

“I want to acquire James Kirkpatrick’s seat in the House.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” said Mick who was afraid he really did understand.

Lucien wore a look of saintly patience, “His death,” he paused for effect, “has left a seat open in Parliament, I believe. I was given to understand that an election would be called shortly as it cannot be left vacant.” He spoke slowly and precisely as if to an immigrant just learning the profundities of the English language.

“Well, yes, but it is hoped by his constituents that his son will fill the gap, left as you say by his,” Mick gritted his teeth, “death.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong but seats in Parliament are not a matter of inheritance.”

“Well, of course not, but Jamie, the younger Lord Kirkpatrick I mean to say,” Mick took a deep breath and attempted to sort out his verbs and nouns, “would be a favorite to win.”

“Are you suggesting,” Lucien blinked twice precisely, “a mock election or had you just planned to hand over the district to this man merely because he is the son of a popular father?”

Mick put a firm tamp on his temper and answered calmly. “Of course not, it’s only that, and you’ll forgive my saying this, but that district contains an overwhelming Catholic majority and even the Protestant contingent has been very happy with what Lord Kirkpatrick managed to do for them. Housing has been improved and is given out according to numbers and need, the streets have been cleaned up, crime is down and unemployment rates are lower than in any other district in Belfast and the environs have been brought into accordance with the strictest of health codes.”

Lucien smiled, the chilliest smile Mick had ever seen and said, “I’ve no doubt that Lord Kirkpatrick did an admirable job, however I don’t see how that bears on his son being a shoe-in for the position. Nor had I heard that he was stepping up, as the Americans say, to the plate.”

“May I be honest with you Mr. Broughton?” Mick asked, lacing his hands together and feeling as if he were breathing ice in, so frigid had the room become.

“It’s Reverend Broughton,” Lucien replied and though there was calm on his tongue there was no warmth in his aspect, “and honesty is always welcome, one indeed finds it refreshing, water to a fire if you will.”

“Indeed,” Mick echoed and took a sip of water that seemingly lodged frozen in his throat. It took a most undignified coughing fit to clear it and he emerged watery-eyed and red-faced from it moments later.

“More water?” Lucien asked, hand solicitously poised over Mick’s water glass.

“No thank you,” Mick replied hastily, jerking the water glass towards him and slopping its contents on several important documents in the process.

“I make you uncomfortable Mr. Bigsby,” Lucien said, polished hands once again rejoined on his lap. “Do not deny it, I have that effect on many people. It is my burden to bear and as burdens go a very small one.” His face assumed a beatific air and Mick mused that even St. Francis of Assisi could not have projected such an aura of triumph over torture.

“Reverend Broughton,” Mick said firmly, “if I may be honest I will tell you that a man such as yourself has very little chance, a snowball’s in hell really, of being elected to parliament in a Catholic district. Perhaps if you looked elsewhere, several terms will be up shortly—”

“It’s this district I’m interested in Mr. Bigsby.”

“I don’t understand why you’ve come to me,” Mick said, wishing he’d never laid eyes on the man.

“To submit my name, of course.”

“I see, well, there are channels you will have to go through, Reverend Broughton, formalities to be observed etc...”

“Giving you time to warn the remaining Lord Kirkpatrick that he’d best stop grieving and get in the arena?”

Mick wondered uneasily if the man was reading his mind.

“No of course not,” he said and had to admit that the words sounded false even to his own ears.

“You don’t approve of my entering the race, do you?” Lucien smoothed one faultless eyebrow with a delicate finger.

“I don’t agree with your tactics Reverend Broughton,” Mick said feeling the ball of ice reforming in his throat, “I’ve always thought the pulpit should be reserved for religion not politics. But it is a free country and you may do as you wish.”

“You are wrong Mr. Bigsby,” the Reverend Broughton rose from his seat in one unmarred movement, “it’s not a free country, but perhaps someday with the right leadership it might be.”

“It’s your choice,” Mick said hoarsely, straining to not succumb to coughing until the man was gone.

“Indeed, Mr. Bigsby, indeed it is.” Lucien performed his chilly smile again and Jack could feel frost spread through his throat and down into his lungs. “Good day Mr. Bigsby.”

Mick nodded tersely at the man and then as the door closed behind him gave in to the coughing that felt as if it would tear his lungs apart. Later that night he would be admitted to the hospital, coughing blood and diagnosed with a severe case of pneumonia. By the time he returned to his desk six weeks later, Lucien Broughton would be officially standing as the candidate for West Belfast. Unopposed.

“You are not getting your mouth around it,” Jamie said patiently, as Pamela feeling like an inarticulate lummox, bit her lips in an effort to put some feeling back into them. “Move your chin forward with the last sound,” he made a noise that sounded like the shushing of the tide sliding in over sand, “it’s a very soft language if you’ll allow it to be.”

“Yeuch,” Pamela said thumping back in her chair in frustration well mixed with equal parts of exhaustion.

“Perhaps,” Jamie said with the air of an overtaxed diplomat, “that’s enough for tonight.”

The Gaelic lessons, now grinding into their second week, were not a raving success. Jamie was a patient teacher, Pamela, at first a willing student, became increasingly angry and frustrated as it became apparent that linguistics was not her natural gift. She felt by the end of every evening as if her mouth were filled with thick, cold porridge. Helping him to translate his father’s unfinished work was at best a flimsy excuse for staying under his roof, it was, however, the only excuse she had. Unless one counted the endless number of errands, tasks and odd jobs Maggie, Liz and Jamie seemed to conjure up each day. Jamie’s contributions to her job list seemed the work of an inventive sadist. Today’s inventory had included: mucking out the stables before lunch, typing up a thirty page report on the last meeting of the European Linen Guild and, then, for the icing on the cake, beheading, gutting and cleaning the dozen trout Jamie had caught during a morning’s fish with some duke or other. She reeked of a heady combination of manure and fish guts, her fingers were stiff and sore and she was completely exhausted and uninterested in the complexities of the Goidelic branch of language. She yawned lavishly, barely managing to summon up the energy to cover her mouth.

Jamie, rubbing the crease in his forehead, always a sign she’d come to learn, of weariness, turned and gave her a quick, bright smile.

“Come on let’s go for a walk, clear the spiderwebs from our brains.”

“Now?” she said stupidly, looking out the windows which, braced by darkness, threw back their reflections and gave no glimpse of the external world.

“Now,” he replied firmly.

Thus, she found herself clad in a thick sweater Jamie had dug out for her, picking her way along the headlands that ran beside the Irish sea for some miles. Jamie navigated the rocky terrain as if he’d learned his first steps on a high wire. High wire being an apt description, she thought, trying to not calculate the hundreds of feet that plunged at a ninety degree angle into the water below. It was in just such a calculation, watching the rocks below, rather than the ones beneath her feet, that she lost her footing and with barely a millisecond for a sharp scream, saw the moon-limned sea arc dizzily upwards and closed her eyes in anticipation of a quick, brutal death.

“You have,” Jamie said with a firm hand on her shoulder, “to watch where you’re stepping up here.”

“Brilliant advice,” she muttered, eyes closed now in embarrassment rather than fear, “wish I’d thought of it.”

“Take my hand,” Jamie said patiently. Opening her eyes she did as she was bid, surprised at the warm, dry strength of his hand, long and fine-boned as it was. After another twenty minutes of hard climbing they emerged on a plateau at the summit of the headlands where it seemed the whole world was made of moon-blazed sea. The water swam with light, silver and dancing, gilt and perfect. Standing there on the plateau, earth slipping away on either side, one step from falling and falling endlessly into water, and above only sky, a fragile film between them and the universe that ran, ever and always, away from man, stars fleeing grasping hands and pleading hearts.