Flights of Angels (Exit Unicorns Series) (105 page)

The priest sighed, and it was a sound that came up from the depths of his being.

“Because there’s something here, isn’t there? That even if we left, we’d long for it all the time, no matter if there was an ocean between us and this bloody little bit of land or merely a false border and an hour’s trip by car. This place is like a siren that lures you onto the rocks repeatedly and yet you can’t stay away, because there’s no one like her in the end.” Father Jim slapped his hands against his thighs as though he could dismiss his strange melancholy by sharp movement. “But you’ve not come to listen to an old priest blather away like some great sentimental poet, not that a man can escape poetry in this land. It might be better for us all if we could. What is it that you really want to say to me, Casey? What is the favor you need?”

Casey looked into the priest’s stark grey eyes and saw fear and worry there that matched his own. He had come to the right place, for if anyone understood the darkness that lurked on the other side of everyday life in Belfast, it was this man here.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out an envelope. It was simple, plain white and there was no address adorning it, only a name. He handed it to the priest, who looked at him questioningly as he took it in hand.

Father Jim raised a heavy brow. “This letter is for James Kirkpatrick.”

“Aye,” Casey said quietly. “The fact of the matter is, Father, we still aren’t certain where the man is, but should something happen to me an’ he is returned by then… well, there’s certain things I would have him know, an’ I don’t think my wife is a likely messenger for that, do you?”

“No, she isn’t.” Father Jim tucked the letter into his pocket. “Now tell me, Casey,
is
something likely to happen to you?”

Casey gave the priest a hard look, and decided that truth was the best route, for Father Jim would know half-truths and obfuscations when he heard them.

“Well, a man never knows really when his last dance comes up on the card, but in my case just now, there’s a bit more to it.”

So he told the priest all of it, about how he had been out delivering contracts and had seen his name and dates of birth and death painted on the wall of the two-up-two-down he had lived in as a boy. About the men who had held his wife and children hostage in their own home, about the graft that had been going on now for months on the construction sites, and about the job he had taken on for the Simon brothers.

Father Jim was silent when Casey finished. Then he let out a long breath and shook his head.

“How much of this does Pamela know?”

“Everything except the writing on the wall, so to speak. I can’t tell her. She’s only just had Isabelle and she’s fighting tooth an’ nail to keep Jamie’s companies together. The police haven’t outright accused her of the murder of Jamie’s uncle but the suspicion is there. She’s too much to deal with as it is. I need to be her sanctuary right now, not more trouble.”

“Casey…”

Casey put up a hand to halt the words. “I know, Father. I know the sensible thing. It’s not as bad as I’ve made it sound, only that should somethin’ happen, I’d like ye to pass along that letter to Jamie.”

“You’re a good man, Casey. A good husband and father, and those are no small things to be. Pamela and your children need you, so be careful and do what you must to be there in their lives.”

Father Jim poured him another cup of tea though Casey had not asked for it. He knew a delaying tactic when he saw it.

“What is it, Father?” he asked, for the weight was still there in the room, and not all of it was his.

The priest smiled, but it was a thing of exhaustion.

“It’s nothing really, only I have come to understand that a person, even a priest, perhaps most especially a priest, can’t really ever separate God and the gun here. No matter how a man might try, they come together, don’t they?”

“Aye,” Casey agreed, wondering what terrible strain was upon Father Jim, and knowing just as certainly the man could not tell him. Only then he did.

“You know wee Liam O’Neill?”

Casey nodded, a dread chill running up his spine, for suddenly he understood the specters that haunted Father Jim all too well.

“A week back, I was taken from here, blindfolded, to a small hut heaven only knows where to hear his last confession. All I could tell was that we were out in the countryside, because it was dreadfully quiet when we got out of the car but they didn’t take the blindfold off me until we got inside the same room as Liam.”

Father Jim paused, broad hands spread out on his lap, but Casey could see how they trembled.

“When they took me into the room, he was tied to a chair and he was so still I thought he was dead. I was relieved for a split second, thinking it was over already and I wouldn’t have to look in his face and tell him there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to help him. But he wasn’t dead, though he could barely speak and was in and out of consciousness while I sat with him, so it was a patchy thing altogether. The only words I could even make out were, ‘help me, Father, help me.’ Poor laddie thought I could get him out of there somehow, but even the one window was impossible, tiny and opened the wrong way, no doubt placed in that manner to prevent any sort of escape.”

The priest’s hands were clenched now as though he were still there in that cottage that would smell of death and all the fear that preceded it in such executions.

“I took that boy in off the streets, found him work, watched him get on his feet, and for what? So that I could stand by like I wasn’t even human when they put a bullet through his head after torturing him for two days straight?”

“If ye’d tried to help him, or even told anyone after, they would have killed ye.”

“I know that, but at three o’clock in the morning, when I can’t sleep, it’s not of much comfort.”

“No, I don’t imagine it is, but it’s the reality of it, Father. Would two dead men rather than one make it better?”

“Oh, I see the sense of what you say, man, but it makes no sort of rational sense in a man’s mind, this killing of one’s own over and over, and for what end? The lines in this country are so blurred that you’ll have to forgive me, because I cannot find a purpose that holds the center together.”

“Ye’ll drive yerself mad, thinkin’ there’s a purpose to any of it in Belfast. I’ve lived here most of my life, Father, an’ I can’t make anything pure of it. Life isn’t that way. Life is chaotic and a wee bit crazy an’ this city is magnified in those qualities a thousand times over. I wish I knew the key to stoppin’ the madness, but I think peace of any sort will be a very long time coming to this land.”

“Why did you get involved in the first place?”

Casey shrugged. “My family was always part of the Republican movement, goin’ back to before the Famine. It was who we were, just like havin’ dark hair an’ eyes. It seemed that simple, but of course it’s not. The reality is it’s a twilight sort of world where things shift an’ ye can never really see the horizon an’ ye know on some level yer not goin’ to reach it ever. When yer young an’ impressionable it seems a place to belong, as though it makes ye special, outlines yer life an’ sets it apart. There’s this shimmer in the air, a sort of transcendent place that is a promised land for a good Republican boy. But if we ever did achieve peace, what happens to all these amateur warriors? What makes us special at that point? An’ that’s maybe the real fear, more than any other.”

“It has to change at some point. A man like yourself, a man who people listen to, could be at the forefront of that sort of change.”

“Anyone who pushes too hard for reform at this point is goin’ to find himself with a bullet in the brain—an’ that’s only if he’s lucky. I have a foot in two worlds, Father, an’ therefore I am standin’ firm in neither. That means those pushing for reform, for peace, are only going to see me as a former member of the IRA, an’ my old colleagues see me as a traitor, pure an’ simple.”

The priest looked at him long in the way that priests often seemed to have, as though they saw through to the soul and read it as clear as light upon water.

“Casey—go. That’s the only advice I have for you. Get away from it. Run if you have to, but don’t let me ever be in the position of hearing your last confession in a little hillside hut. Do you understand?”

“Aye, but I’ve no intention of any such thing. I’ve a family to raise here. Doin’ that is all that really matters to me anymore.”

“Would that it were that simple for either of us,” Father Jim said bleakly, and Casey felt the chill of it deep in his bones as though the words carried the weight of a seer’s prophecy.

It hardly seemed the time to tell the man something he likely already knew anyway—that here in this country, there wasn’t anywhere to run. There wasn’t a corner in which it was dark enough to hide.

He made to leave then, but hesitated in the doorway. The weight was still there, on his back, in his limbs, thick as lead in his heart. For his confession, if it could be considered such, was not complete.

Father Jim waited, allowing him time to weigh and measure the cost of his next words. Priests, in his experience, had waiting down to a fine art.

He turned back to find Father Jim’s grey eyes filled with a deep sympathy, as if he already had a good idea of what Casey had to say. He took a deep breath, for he would need his courage intact for the next few moments.

“There’s the one more thing I need to tell ye, but this thing I wish to speak of, it will, ye understand, need to be under the seal of the confessional.”

From the Journals of James Kirkpatrick

November 11th, 1972

The moon is wreathed in smoke tonight, that eerie green-grey smoke of autumn. It is my final night here for a time, and the house is quiet around me, with only the soft pop of the peat in the fire behind me interrupting a silence that feels too vast.

Moonlight spills through the oaks, pouring soft gilt in through the windows, the light sifting over the spines of the books, dusting the shelves and drifting across the floor. It is the time of day I love best, just past twilight, where time itself is absorbed into the atmosphere and everything hangs still and perfect for a solitary moment.

My mind is wandering tonight, to other evenings spent here, times when I was only a child and times when I was a father for a delicate heart-stopped moment. I know this house so well, the land that surrounds it, the city below that beats with such a dark and bloodied heart.

I think of a spring long ago, spring when the dark green rolled up from the earth, tendriled and vined, thick shoots and frail white ones, all smelling of dirt and water, all smelling oddly like fire. The leaves were a-shimmer, a verdant mist tumbling up from the valley into this mountain retreat. I can still taste them on my tongue, promising so much, as they do every spring even if the promise always fails. Still, it was and is only the idea that matters, not the reality.

I remember myself standing there now, near the windows, feeling the dark rise up in hollows and ribbons, purling from earth, root and water merging with the glass, gathering around me until the dark was in me and I felt as insubstantial as a moth rising into the air, born, living and dying in a matter of days but flying all the same. I thought a breath might dislodge me, send me spinning up into the pale fire of the early stars and strand me out where there is nothing and everything. Where everything spins and nothing breathes, but all dances with a terrible beginning and finality that strikes both awe and terror with a single chord.

I ran away that night, ten years old and in a fit of pique over something I felt my parents did not understand. In truth, looking back on it now, I think I was beginning to realize that my mother was dying but no one was admitting it to me.

I packed up a few things, bread, cheese and water, and headed off into the woods of my childhood. I wasn’t afraid, though it was twilight as I tramped off through the forest, for my anger sustained me and chased away the shadows of that woodland realm.

The moon was full that night, so silver as to be almost a strange powdery white. I was hypnotized by it and by the very planet itself.

I came upon a pond I had not discovered before, an oasis in the midst of the forest, lit dappled silver, kissed by the shadows of willows bending to their own reflections. I sat down there by the shore and thought I might grow roots right into that saturated soil.

It became one of those times that come too rarely in a person’s life, something of awe and wonder, something that is distilled by time but not diminished. Some moments, fleeting as they are, are thus, even time and the human mind cannot make less of them. For that night I was just another creature on the shores of the universe, the stars small wayposts on an infinite journey.

I stayed all night by the shore of that pond, listening to the sounds the night makes: the sigh of the mosses, breathing out water, the dark earth rolling soft in its sleep, and the scurry and slip of creatures not seen, only heard. I slept too at some point, for when I awoke it was to a morning hung with gold and crimson, as fresh and whole as the very first dawn. I was cold and hungry, but not afraid.

The day did what it always does, restored me to the world of men and math lessons and Latin translation and the need for clean socks and hot tea. I took that night with me, carried it inside, pulling it out now and again when it was needed. For this I know, if I know little else, that each man has his own geography, the one that lies inside, within the vast country of a human soul. It is an unknown land even at the last, though there are roads and half-cut trails, way signs and crossroads where the grass eventually overgrows and the words upon the sign are long since faded into illegibility. But sometimes, late at night, in those still hours so familiar to the insomniac, when the shadows stop and turn slowly upon the floor in a ghostly pavane, one remembers what the signs once said, the turns made at the crossroads and one feels the bittersweet taste of regret and loss for the boy who was left behind on the road.

Chapter Seventy-seven
October 1975
His Father’s Son

Pamela closed the volume and sighed
. The hour had grown late as she read this last entry in the journals and she needed to be home. She lingered for a moment, caught in the bittersweet spell of Jamie’s words.

Reading the journals had become a secret pleasure, one she anticipated all day as she made her way through the piles of paperwork that sat on Jamie’s desk every morning. Opening the journals had become akin to saying ‘Open Sesame’ at the mouth of Ali Baba’s cave. She never knew what wonders would confront her that day, what adventure or flight of thought would absorb and enchant her. Through the pages she had come to know Jamie in an utterly different way. She was seeing the man who had often lived on the edge of both his nerves and his own mortality, a man who cared too much though the face he presented to the world rarely betrayed that.

Like Ali Baba’s cave, the pages were scattershot with pearls and diamonds as well as the more prosaic events of a normal day, the record of a horse newly bought and how it was coming along with its training, repairs that were needed on the house or grounds, or lists of books, plants, parts for a sailboat or plane. In the margins he would occasionally scribble bits of poetry, random thoughts and phrases thrown upon the air like sifted silver, sparkling and transient. A few lines here and there she recognized from the works of Jack Stuart. Most were entirely new to her and she reflected how like Jamie it was to scatter beauty in such a way. He was often profligate with it.

During these last days, Jamie’s final journal had been a sanctuary away from the troubles that roiled thick and deep every time she stepped foot into the world. The police had been asking a lot of questions about the fire, in particular questions about her relationship with and animosity toward Philip Kirkpatrick. Though she knew it was routine in some ways, in others she suspected it was not. She had contacts within the RUC from her days of photographing crime scenes. She had been warned—circumspectly—but warned nevertheless, that the police were considering her very seriously as a suspect in Philip’s death. Other than telling them the truth, which was that she had not liked Philip in the least but did not wish him dead, there was little she could say to convince them of her innocence. Nor could she voice her certainty that the Reverend Lucien Broughton had arranged the fire and left the corpse in the ashes in the hopes of implicating her.

She stood and stretched. Outside, the setting sun bronzed the black bark of the oaks, the leaves of the lone maple as crimson as a Chinese vase. Casey had warned her that he would be home late tonight, and Conor and Isabelle were safe in the kitchen with Maggie, but she felt a sudden longing to be home in her own surroundings, with the kettle on the hob and the firelight flickering cheerily on the walls. She was just stepping toward the door when Julian walked into the study.

He wore a pair of worn denims and a deep blue sweater that almost matched his eyes. He smiled at her; a quicksilver dazzle that was so like
Jamie’s that she had to steel herself against it. He brought with him the scents of the stables and fresh air. He had been riding.

He had arrived here at Jamie’s house a few days after the fire, startling her and leaving her little choice but to introduce him to the estate staff. Robert had taken it in his usual implacable manner and been polite but not overtly friendly. Maggie, on the other hand, had looked as though she had seen a ghost for a moment and Pamela had feared that the woman’s heart was going to fail from sheer shock. She had maintained a reserve with the boy, but Pamela saw her face when she looked at him, and knew the expression for what it was. She felt it too often on her own face not to recognize it when she saw it in another.

They had spoken for a long while that afternoon, she and Julian, a conversation of feint and counterfeint. It became clear over the course of the discussion that if he had not known at Christmas, he knew now that Jamie was his father. Since then he had hired a solicitor, and she knew it was the Reverend pulling the strings, getting ready for his next move in the game. In the weeks that ensued, Julian had gone on to make himself very much at home in Jamie’s house. Which might be his right, but she was not comfortable with it. It was not his fault that Jamie wasn’t here to meet him, to decide what the parameters of their relationship might be, and she felt that in his absence it was up to her to keep relations as cordial as possible—cordial, but careful, for he was the Reverend’s animal whether he understood that fully or not.

This afternoon she had not been prepared for his presence. Going from the suspended beauty of Jamie’s words to the chill presence of his son was a little like being showered with a bucket of cold water. She needed a minute to catch her breath but knew she did not have it.

“I’ve asked Maggie to bring us tea,” he said. He sat in the chair Jamie favored, something she suspected he knew. One long leg canted over the other, ankle resting on knee in a pose that was so like his father it caught her breath in her throat.

She fetched the tea herself, not wanting Maggie to carry the heavy tray with her arthritis as bad as it was these days. It also gave her a chance to check on the children. Conor was happily playing with a set of wooden trucks on the kitchen floor and Isabelle was snug asleep in her cradle. She could spare a few more minutes before taking them home.