A Mad and Wonderful Thing (33 page)

‘Is she at home these days?'

‘No,' he says. ‘She is back in California.' And he signals to a letter on his writing bureau.

‘And how is she?'

‘Oh, you know her, John. She is her own particular person; she likes her own peculiar comforts. She's a mercurial sort — she'd be hard for any man to please. I thought she might be seeing someone here the time she was home, with her comings and goings, her secret dalliances. I think she might have had someone back to the house here. I thought she might stay, but she returned to the States in the end.'

I am probing, but, with other matters on his mind, the Chief is undisturbed by this.

‘Why did you call her Loreto?'

‘It's after a little hilltop town near Ancona. We visited a church there when we were on honeymoon in Italy. What was it called again? The Basilica Della Santa Casa. When we stood there in the Piazza Della Madonna, the square in front of that beautiful church, Delores said that if we ever had a girl we would call her Loreto.'

I stand.

‘You sit where you are, Chief. I'll make us some tea.'

I think about Loreto as I boil the kettle on the gas stove. I know the Chief is not lying; I know he thinks Loreto is in America. But I'm not so sure. I scald the white-porcelain teapot with hot water and empty it into the sink. I spoon loose tea into the warmed pot and fill it with boiling water. I stir the tea, replace the lid, and put the teapot on the table to draw. I lift a ball of green wool that must have been absentmindedly left on the table in what was always a spotless kitchen. I wonder why the Chief keeps the wool, as Delores is now beyond needlework. I guess we all have our sentimentalities; we all have our peculiarities. But we all go in the end. And each in our own way. What matter now the perfect arrangements?

And I wonder. I wonder why the Chief is so coy and guarded. I wonder, but I know. There can only be one reason. I know Delaney will never agree to a ceasefire. I know he believes a ceasefire will be the end of it. And he is right. A ceasefire with no ground won is more deadly than an enemy attack: it legitimises the status quo. Delaney knows this, he understands the consequences, and I know he will fight it. And he will fight it to a bloody end. And if the fight doesn't involve me — and I am the only shooter he trusts — then it can only mean one thing: it has to be a return to the bomb.

I lift the lid of the teapot and stir the tea again. I know bad things are going to happen. I know that concentrating on me hasn't given him the time to replace the volunteer bombers who died when the bomb they were preparing exploded. The recent bombs in England were by Delaney's men, his new men. It was a disaster — two young boys were killed. I step out into the garden and take a twenty-pack of Carroll's No. 1 from the Dunn & Co. I light a cigarette. I am thinking of those two boys. I can still see
their faces on the television. I can still see
their families. One boy was only three years old; the other was twelve — the same age I was when I first came to this house.

I pull hard on the cigarette. I go over what I know about those bombs. The London bomb was big — it took a tipper truck to deliver it. The Warrington bombs were small, and hidden in town-centre litter bins. The IRA blamed the British for not acting on the warning. But that's not good enough. Putting a bomb in a town-centre litter bin is not war. There are many in the IRA who discredit these distinctions: Irish, Republican, and Army. There are those who bring us no good, and I have warned Delaney before about this. But what's it to do with me? It's not my war any more. I am sure Delaney will now take his battle to the north, and if the bomb is for Ireland, who'll care? What's one more bomb in a northern town? Who cares about any of it anyway? There were bombs before; there will be bombs after. People don't care, not really. I finish the cigarette, and blow smoke high into the town air.

You wouldn't get involved, Johnny, would you?
she asked me.
What about those terrible bombs? You wouldn't do a bad thing, would you
?

No, Cora,
I told her.
I wouldn't do a bad thing.

I re-enter the house, and, as I open the back door, a draft enters and the ball of wool falls from the table. I reach to catch it and miss, and it rolls across the grey-tiled floor, leaving a green thread behind.

‘You are the best ever,' Delaney says, as I bring the tea. ‘How Delores and I wished to have a son like you.'

I tell him about the remainder of my walk, about the long journey home from Donegal, and he laughs and shakes his head at every incident. He wants me to recount every town and village. But something is happening as I talk: one half of my brain has removed itself to another consideration. And that consideration is
L'Heure Bleue.
I just can't get the fragrance from my senses. I think of Loreto Delaney, of the Margaux and the expensive coats, of her own particular wants, of her peculiar comforts, of her mercurial sort, of the secret dalliances, of someone back at the house here, of the letter from California, of the framed photo. Could Loreto Delaney be turned? Or bought? Or seduced and used? But why? How and what could she know? How could anyone know when I would call again on Delaney? That could be a long and useless wait. And how would they know to suspect me of the shootings? Loreto doesn't know what I do. I am being paranoid. I am unbalanced since shooting Declan — that must be it. I try to focus on the conversation with the Chief. But then I think again. What if it isn't me that this is about? What if I have walked into another game? What if …? All the training and the long hours in the fields of South Armagh have cultivated hard instincts, survival instincts. Something here isn't right. I know something is wrong. But what?

Suddenly, the fog of rambling thought is gone. A cold blade of clarity falls, and I turn to what was in my peripheral vision all along — I look to the wall, to the copy of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic that hangs there, to the aged print encased in a simple wooden frame, to the page that has dropped on one side and sits at a slight angle within the frame, to the only thing in this house or about Delaney that is not perfectly neat and aligned. But it is aligned now; inside the simple frame, the document sits perfect and square. And now I know. I know I have surrendered myself to a trap, to a trap that wasn't even for me. I know it's about the bomb. I know the fuckers know about the bomb. That they would use the framed Proclamation must have been their little joke. And that was their mistake.

Delaney is still talking about Tipperary, and only now does he notice my inattention, but I signal him to keep talking.

‘How about some music, Chief? What will we listen to?'

I turn the volume to full on Delaney's cassette deck and press ‘play'. The slow, dragged intro to Mahler's Symphony No. 1 fills the room. I let it run as I walk to the wall, and when I return I lower the volume.

‘Sorry about that, Chief. A bit too loud, even for an old fogie like you.'

The Chief is grey, then pink, but I insist he keeps talking as we look into the rear of the frame that I have taken the hardboard backing from. We both recognise a short-range radio transmitter.

‘I didn't make Tipperary this time, Chief. I stuck to the coast. Maybe we'll make a trip down there together. Where will we visit?'

Delaney is shocked, and rattled, but recovers as I force him to talk through a trip to Toomevara.

As he talks, I am thinking that whoever is listening is not far away, and, whatever information they came for, they now know that I am the shooter, and I am sure they will not let me go. Whoever is listening will already have called for back-up; I have to act now. My only option is to find them fast, and attack. I reach across and lift the newspaper from the floor beside his chair.

‘Hey, Chief, how about the crossword?'

I lift a pencil from his bureau and write:
New Neighbours?

‘Tricky,' I say, handing him the newspaper.

He writes and returns the newspaper to me.
Yes, No. 5, two men. White Nissan Sunny
.

‘Yes, tricky indeed,' he says, rising. ‘Have a go from there yourself. I need to use the loo, being an old fogie and all that.'

In the three minutes he is gone, I write the plan on the newspaper. Delaney returns, carrying two Glock handguns. The Chief is a believer in the Glock.

‘How did I do?' I ask him.

He reads through my work. ‘Not bad,' he says. ‘It will do.'

I leave and say goodbye to the Chief at the gate. He hugs me before I go. I watch him return to the house. I walk to the house next door, number seven, and invite his neighbours to a surprise anniversary party that I tell them I am organising for Mister and Missus Delaney. The elderly Missus McKenna doesn't hear me at first but when I explain louder she thinks it a great idea and assures me of their attendance. I get the same response at number six. I approach number five, the first house in the block, without pausing. A white Nissan Sunny is parked by the pavement. From here on, I shall play it as it happens. If they are wise they will not answer, but they don't know that we know who they are, and so might think that not answering will bring some suspicion. At worst, my coming to the door will stall and confuse them, and it will bring doubt. And in war, doubt — and indecision — will kill you.

I press the doorbell. Nothing. No answer. I press the doorbell again and knock on the glass pane in the door. There is a gunshot. A man races into the hallway. He is raising a gun, but he is injured and slow, and I have the Glock ready. I shoot through the glass and he falls. I break through the door and I shoot him again. I hear another shot, and a second man falls into the hallway from the living room. He, too, is already injured and is on his knees. Delaney has shot them both through the back window. My Glock is still raised, and I shoot twice. I step over both men and take a towel from the rear kitchen. I meet Delaney at the back door, and he tells me to go, that he will take care of things.

‘They weren't here for me, Chief. They couldn't have known.'

He nods, but he doesn't reply.

‘It was you, Chief. Whatever it is, they were on to it.' I was just talking. I wasn't expecting a response — Delaney has kept me removed from the other stuff.

‘They must have some wind of the what, John. They came for the where and the when. It would have been a waste of time. The thing is already in play. And there's no one I would have been talking to; there's no one involved but the two fools.'

‘A sacrifice for the common good,' I say, remembering again his speech about foot soldiers, but he is already lost to other thoughts. It is not like the Chief to talk of action, but he is bothered, and has slipped from his usual self. And I know it is not the killing of the two spies that has the Chief bothered — it is the source of the leak.

Both neighbours from numbers four and six are in their backyards and approaching, but they quickly retreat indoors when Delaney gestures to them. People in Dundalk suspect who the Chief is, and nobody will have seen or heard anything. There is no movement from number seven. I guess old Missus McKenna didn't even hear the shooting.

He turns to me. ‘We cannot let the war die and leave them in place. What will be left will become the normal and the acceptable, and our long struggle will have been a waste. We must continue the fight with whatever we have.'

‘There's no getting clear of it, is there, Chief? It pollutes like slurry tipped into a well.'

He doesn't answer, and I leave. I climb the garden wall and walk north before turning east along the river.

I walk to Saint Joseph's, enter, and take a pew near the Sacred Heart shrine. I revisit the events of the day, and I think about how a day that started out simple became another killing day; and how quickly the whole thing turned, and how easy. I try to think about what to do. My plan was to exit the war, to finish with the gun, to finish with Ireland. Instead, I killed two men. Another two men. I didn't have a choice, I know. It was kill or be killed, wasn't it? That's what they say,
kill or be killed
. Like they ever knew anything about anything. But isn't that just it — you can step into war whenever you like, but leaving it …? I consider my options, and, as I think about things, about a day that started out easy, I see their faces again, those young boys in Warrington, those faces I saw on the television.

You wouldn't get involved, Johnny, would you? What about those terrible bombs? You wouldn't do a bad thing, would you?

I look up and see Siobhán McCourt.

‘No,' I answer. ‘I wouldn't do a bad thing.'

But Siobhán is gone, and a small girl stands by the shrine. I have seen her here before, I remember. The girl looks at me with her face held open. I look away, and when I look again to the shrine the small girl is gone, and an older girl is there, a good-looking girl, and this girl, too, I remember seeing once as she cleaned the windows of the chip shop.

Those bombs
, she says.
Those bombs kill people, ordinary people, men like Gerry and Éamon, girls like Aisling and Cora, children like Cormac and Clara — kill them as they wait on a parade or do their shopping. Children, mothers, fathers. You wouldn't allow that, Johnny. Would you?