The Living (27 page)

I found my concert clothes from Belfast still stuffed in a green supermarket bag, forgotten in a corner. I picked out the black dress, and underneath it I found my pinchy, sparkly shoes, still muddy – the shoes that Matthew had gone back to retrieve for me, even though I'd been running from him, even though he'd been the gunman, the spy, the betrayer of my trust and of my heart.

I cried, then, for what seemed like hours, kneeling on my bedroom floor, body draped over my bed.

When I'd finished crying, and before I could change my mind, I went and found my phone.

‘OK, if you still want to talk, let's talk.'

Send
.

W
E MET THE
next day at the Papal Cross in the Phoenix Park – Matthew's suggestion. He said he'd gone there when he'd first arrived in Dublin. I'd said, ‘Let's go somewhere we can walk.'

The wind whipped at us as we stood at the foot of the cross, craning our heads back to watch it fall towards us through the clouds. Matthew had a new coat, long, dark grey, with a broad collar. The ends of his hair brushed at the material in a way that made me ache.

‘You're looking well,' he said, after our initial greeting.

I glared at my feet, willing this treacherous wave of pleasure to pass.

We left the mound and walked slowly away from the cross, down the long flight of concrete steps to level ground. I was aware of every breath, struggling to keep myself on course, floundering. We said nothing as we made our descent.

At the bottom, I decided that enough was enough. I stopped dead and rounded on Matthew.

‘So are we going to talk, then?' I spoke like steel.

‘That's the idea,' he said.

‘Are you going to tell me the truth?'

‘I'll tell you everything I can.' He looked straight at me, and I realized – suddenly, startlingly – that he was being entirely open with me. Maybe for the first time since I'd known him, the barriers were nowhere to be discerned.

And suddenly, that cut no ice with me. It was too late. This whole thing was a bad idea. I was overcome by a wash of fury. ‘Is
Matthew Taylor
even your real fucking name, by the way?'

‘Yes, it is,' he said, and despite myself, I believed him.

‘Are you armed?' I sneered.

‘No!'

‘And what about the day you turned up at my uncle's funeral?' I put as much spitting and clawing into my words as they'd take.

He bent his head, brow furrowed. ‘Cate, I'm sorry, I know, that was stupid. I wasn't thinking rationally. It was completely insensitive. I shouldn't have gone.'

‘No kidding,' I said, and started walking again towards a likely-looking path. I had no route in mind. Ravens croaked in the old grey trees. I stuck my hands far down into my coat pockets, searching for a bit of warmth.

‘I missed you,' Matthew said.

‘Yeah, well, I bloody missed you too, that day in Belfast.'

‘I know.'

‘What the hell were you doing, anyway?'

‘I was drafted in at the last moment to …' He heaved a sigh. ‘Look, there was a lot of sensitive stuff going on in Belfast that day. I was there on the ground, and I had an assignment. It's not important now.'

I bit back my exasperation. ‘So why did you run away from the police when they were busy arresting me? Weren't you meant to be on their side, or something?'

‘It was complicated. I wasn't strictly meant to be at the Waterfront at all, you see.'

‘Why not?'

‘I'd … well, it was all a bit of a mess at that point. And you see, I couldn't allow myself to be searched, because they'd have found the gun, and then all hell would've broken loose. And most likely I wouldn't have been in such a good position to help you. So I made a risky decision, I suppose.'

I noticed how he hadn't actually answered my question. Old habits die hard. Still, he was clearly making some kind of an effort. ‘What did you do?' I asked.

‘Melted into the crowd.' He made a melty gesture with his fingers. ‘Got the hell out of there. I rejoined … I went back to where I was meant to be. But I had secured one crucial piece of data.'

‘Oh?'

‘Sergeant Hall's badge number.'

‘And?'

‘Well, that allowed me to find out where they'd taken you. I went there as soon as I could – after my assignment finished. They'd got their knickers in a monumental twist about that recording Nicky Fay had given you, but I was able to tell them what it was.'

I turned my head slightly to frown at him. He was looking terribly pleased with himself.

He went on, ‘I also had the privilege of seeing their faces when you started singing scales. I assured them that no terrorist …' He trailed off as I stopped walking.

So he had watched me on CCTV. I could think of nothing to say. I stood there, gasping for breath.

‘What?' he said. ‘Too soon?'

‘Too fucking right!' I got moving again.

There was a track leading up a bank beside the path; I took it. It was narrow, so that Matthew had to drop behind me. I felt a furious sort of affirmation as I reached the top, panting, and kept going, skirting a large playing field on which half a dozen weather-hardened boys were wielding hurleys, and making for some young woodland. I was not crying, though the wind was drawing water from my eyes.

Matthew caught up easily once we were on level ground again, his long legs scissoring along beside me. The path through the trees was wide enough for both of us. ‘Cate,' he said. He was out of breath, I was pleased to hear.

I twitched a shoulder at him.

‘Cate – oh, come on.'

‘Fuck off.'

‘Cate, please don't do this.'

‘I don't want to talk to you.'

‘Cate, be reasonable.'

I stopped dead, swung round. ‘You patronizing bastard.' I spoke calmly, the words wrenched from my stinging, breath-starved lungs.

‘Look, I'm just trying to—' A sharp exhalation, and when he spoke again it was softer. ‘I'm just trying to explain. You have to believe me. I've said I'm sorry. I am sorry. Cate.'

‘Noted.' Gritted teeth.

‘Look, I really want to work this out.' There was a rasp in his voice. ‘Can't you understand how hard this is for me?'

‘Oh, for fuck's sake! Are you completely stupid?' I ignored his raised eyebrows and pressed on. ‘Does it actually come as a surprise to you that I'm upset about this? You
watched
me in that room! You've been lying to me ever since we met! In what universe would my reaction be unreasonable? You're a fucking
spy
, Matthew.'

His face hardened, and he turned from me. ‘Well, I suppose I thought it might be safe to assume you'd be relieved that I was an intelligence agent rather than a terrorist.' His voice was full of controlled anger.

I kept quiet.

‘But then again, this is Ireland.' Muttered, just loud enough to make sure I heard.

I rose to it, too. Didn't even pause. ‘How dare you! How fucking
dare
you! You arrogant prick! You swallow whatever ridiculous propaganda they feed baby spies over there in your poncey, overfunded London Spy A-fucking-cademy, and then you come over here and assume you can make sweeping statements about the way things are. You don't have a clue.' I was clawing and spitting even more than before.

‘Oh, and you know the way things are, do you?'

‘I know how arrogant and blinkered and fucking
ridiculous
it is for a British bastard to say that Ireland is pro-terrorist.'

He sprayed laughter in my face. ‘Oh, don't come over all moral high ground now, Cate Houlihan. You're the one with a fucking gun-runner for an uncle.'

I tripped over my reply, as what Matthew had just said trickled
through to my brain. Our eyes met. Mine, treacherous, began to brim with tears. ‘What did you say?'

‘My god, Cate, do stop pretending to be so naïve.'

‘What? My uncle? What?'

He sighed, his expression disbelieving. ‘Your uncle the suspected bank robber? Your uncle the convicted arms smuggler? Your
uncle
, Cate – Fintan Sullivan, RI-fucking-P. For crying out loud, wake up!'

There was a long silence. I had no words.

‘Oh, my god,' said Matthew, in an entirely different tone. ‘You didn't know?'

The boil was lanced. Loops of deflated tension hung from the trees like opera-house swags. We couldn't look at each other. I cried silently. Matthew stood with his face in his hands.

Eventually, I took a step towards him. He looked up. ‘I didn't know,' I said.

But here was the thing I realized as I spoke: I did know. I'd known all my life. I'd simply kept it secret from myself until now.

I knew, in the way you know your address or your granny's birthday, that Uncle Fintan had been involved in some questionable activities in his youth. But somehow, I'd managed to assume that it was no more than what most people were doing at the time. My own law-abiding father, after all, had gone so far as to throw a half-brick at a window of the British Embassy after the Bloody Sunday massacre in 1972. Uncle Fintan had been a tearaway, was the impression I'd grown up with, who might have done one
or two things to blush about, all forgiven and forgotten now.

But gun-running? Bank robbery? I tried to reconcile these notions with the man I'd known. The mild, smiling uncle, whose sentences never quite, who had always tended, unlike other adults, to engage me in conversation, enjoying and encouraging our shared interests. The man who helped me out when the constraints of home life grew too great to be borne.

The man whose old associates made his widow flinch. Whose friendships, in life, were enough to rock his marriage. Whose sister … Why was I thinking about Mum now? I recalled her vehemence, all through my childhood – ‘This is about
blood
.'

But anyway! Everyone agreed that partition was a dreadful burden on Ireland – North and South – and that those who took up the armed struggle, while not exactly to be applauded, were nonetheless doing something that a compassionate person couldn't wholeheartedly condemn.

Except … of course …
not
everyone agreed, as I'd eventually discovered at university. Truth be told, I no longer agreed myself. And yet, it turned out, the ancient assumptions of my childhood had not caught up.

A memory from Irish college sprang to mind – the whole lot of us, singing the college song at one of the daily flag ceremonies. Declaring ourselves
in aghaidh gaill sa tír seo
– ‘against foreigners in this country' – belting out with muscular enthusiasm those rolling phrases full of cheerful xenophobia and vague exhortations to readiness. We'd sung it with such fierce, uncomplicated pride, and
followed it up with the national anthem, including the extra verse that felt like a shared secret. At fourteen, I'd swallowed it whole, along with all the other rhetoric.

It was a generational thing, I suddenly realized, this attempt to pass on beliefs and attitudes to a fresh cohort. But without the experience to underpin them, no matter how heartfelt, beliefs and attitudes ring hollow. Our parents' conclusions do not fit us: if we try to adopt them wholesale, we warp ourselves.

God, the sooner Mícheál got out of there, the better.

T
HE LIGHT WAS
beginning to fade, the tree trunks to turn blacker. A fine mist was contemplating turning into rain. Matthew spoke at last. ‘Cate, I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have lost my temper.'

‘It's OK,' I heard myself say.

‘Should I go?'

Should he go? The question seemed absurd, an irrelevant speck in this awful lump of knowledge I was chewing. ‘No, I want you to stay,' I said.

‘Do you think we could go somewhere warmer?'

‘My car is parked back by the Papal Cross.' We turned, oriented ourselves, and set off.

We did not speak on the way back to the car. My mind was boiling. Had Matthew really been sent to spy on me because my uncle was once involved in Republican activities? If so, it just showed how blinkered and small-minded these people were. Some
intelligence
service. I thought hard, and could not identify a single
thing I'd done that might suggest my sympathies tended in an unsavoury, let alone an illegal, direction.

He'd lost his temper. He must have been caught in the heat of argument. Exaggerating for effect – making me think all that nonsense about my lovely uncle, who was barely cold in his grave. Bastard. I felt a roar building in my chest, and balled my fists in my pockets to steady myself.

Think, Cate.
Be reasonable
, as the man said.

We reached the car; I opened it and got in. I watched Matthew fold himself into his seat and nearly started crying again. I wanted so much to clamber over the handbrake and hug him. He was a liar and a traitor. He was a spy. He had spoken ill of the dead.

I tried not to look at him. My face burned.

‘Cate, are you all right?' His voice was once again soft. Spoke to the centre of me. I did my best to push him out. But even as I tried to collect my thoughts to deliver the cutting arguments that would make Matthew take back what he had said about Uncle Fintan, I felt my anger dissipate.

He sat perfectly still, waiting. I started the engine and backed slowly out of my space, then rolled towards the car-park exit.

‘Not really,' I said. ‘Are you?'

‘Far from it.' We were silent for another few minutes, and then he said, ‘There is one thing you should know.'

‘What's that?'

‘I'm not – I'm not with the intelligence services any more. I resigned.'

We had joined a small queue to turn on to the main road. I looked at him. ‘Wow.' I moved out and headed downhill, towards the quays.

‘Well … to be totally honest, they offered me the option. I wasn't really cut out for it. I'd known that, even before. That life – it wasn't for me. But, well. Things got a bit more complicated after Belfast. I was pretty seriously out of line.'