Safe House (6 page)

To work in a circus was his dream. He would be a clown or an aerialist, an artist of some kind one day, and he would travel around the world. He would make his home in Dublin, or some other place in the Irish Republic where there were no bombs or bullets, perhaps somewhere away out in the countryside, away from the North of Ireland and the deadly cities of Belfast and Derry—called Londonderry by Protestants. One day he would do these things, he was certain of it.

And he would work in a circus.

He might even decide to become the most famous trapeze artist in the whole world. Like Mike Ribble in Trapeze.

…the spit of a snake…

Thoughts of Nicole and the Youth Circus had managed to push the funeral to the back of his mind for a few minutes, and then, amazingly, after already sleeping most of the day, he slept again.

The room was dark when he woke, but then it would be dark, because of the painted window. It was hard to know whether it was night or day. According to his bedside clock, it was a few minutes before six AM. Breakfast was at seven. He closed his eyes. How long would he have to stay in this place? It could be a long time before the Mole was caught and sent to jail. He might be stuck here with the less-than-cheerful Grogans for weeks—months maybe. All the police had to go on was his description of the killer. Many people had moles. They couldn't round up all the mole-faced people and parade them for him to identify; it was impossible.

He felt low.

Today was Thursday, the day of the funeral.

Then there was the question: Why should he trust the police? Inspector Osborne might have no intention of catching the Mole. Why should the police try to help him, a Catholic kid—a Taig? The police worked closely with the British army soldiers to send Catholics to prison. Police and soldiers constantly stopped Catholic kids in the street to search them, insult them, beat them. “Hey! You! Yes, you dirty little Taig, get over here and stand at attention.” They even searched their schoolbags. The police searched a boy from Liam's school and found him to have a knife, marker pens and glue for sniffing. They drove him up into the hills, miles from home, and dropped him off in the middle of nowhere, and he had to walk home in the rain. Everyone in the poor areas of west Belfast, Catholics and Protestants alike, despised the police. Small children, growing up under their constant contempt, name-calling and abuse, were terrified of uniforms.

Why the Prods and police called them Taigs Liam did not know, didn't even know what the word meant. Rory the scholar said he thought the word came from an Irish word, “tadhg,” an insulting nickname meaning “Irishman” or “two-faced person.” All Liam knew was that if you were Catholic in west Belfast you were a Taig. He hated the word and the way it sounded in Prod mouths, like the spit of a snake.

He felt very low, like a deep black pit was waiting to swallow him up.

He couldn't let that happen. He swung himself out of bed, switched on the light, sat on the hardwood floor and started a few of the stretching exercises he'd learned at the Ballymurphy gym. He couldn't get to his regular gymnastics practices but there was no reason for not keeping himself stretched. And focused.

The ribs still hurt, restricting some of his movements, but his foot felt fine. Delia Cassidy had done a good job on it.

Half an hour later, exercises finished, he kneeled and peeped through the patch of unpainted glass. It was light outside, but it looked like the usual Belfast rain.

He made for the bathroom. The one tiny window was also painted over. He showered and looked in the mirror at his left side where his ribs hurt: black and blue, just as he'd figured. He dressed and headed downstairs for breakfast, testing his injured foot against the stair; it felt good.

Moira was in the kitchen alone. “Did you sleep?”

“Yes, thanks.”

“You're a great one for the sleep, that's for sure.”

She didn't say anything further until their breakfasts— fried eggs, sausages, fried potato bread (called fadge), fried potatoes—were on the table. He was hungry, so he ate everything except the fried bread. He knew his mum would pull her lemon-sucking face at so much fried stuff. Breakfast at home was usually porridge, and fruit if they could afford it. His mum said fried stuff was bad for you.

“Where's Fergus?” he asked Moira.

“Leaves for work at half-five.”

“What does he do?”

“Hmmmph,” was all she said.

…the larger view…

Back in his room again, he kneeled at the spy hole and looked out the window. Gray gloom. And still raining. There wasn't much to see, just an empty postage stamp of a yard and a back alley beyond. It was a long drop to the ground, and no drainpipe to swarm down in an emergency. He tried again to open the window. The wooden frame wouldn't budge. The house was old. He checked to see if the frame had been screwed shut but saw no fasteners. It was obvious from the undisturbed layers of paint that the window had not been opened in a very long time.

He did fifty push-ups on the floor, taking them slow because of his bruised ribs. Next, fifty sitting triceps dips, palms on the edge of the bed frame, feet on the floor. Then he took a trip downstairs to the kitchen. Moira was watching the telly in the other room. He could smell her stale cigarette smoke. He grabbed a sharp, pointed potato peeler from the knife drawer, smuggled it back to his room and immediately started working on the window frame, gouging and peeling away the thick hard layers of paint between frame and casement. He needed to get the window open. Why? he asked himself. For fresh air, of course. And the work would keep his mind off today's funeral. Also, he hated the feeling of being closed in. What about escape? No: The window was much too high off the ground to risk a jump should something happen. But what could happen? It was a safe house, wasn't it?

He hadn't asked Osborne the time of the funeral—he'd said morning—but it was probably happening right now, right this very minute.

He worked away at the window for a long time, stripping away curling ribbons of paint. He had seen IRA funerals before. There would probably be two groups of six IRA men carrying the coffins on their shoulders. The potato peeler was an effective tool for the job, slicing easily under the old paint. Then there would be maybe ten or twelve uniformed and masked IRA men with guns surrounding the coffins. The paint peelings began to pile up on the floor. The British soldiers would be resting their elbows on the turrets of their armored vehicles, automatic rifles at the ready and watching the IRA men firing their guns in the air as the coffins were lowered into the ground. Finally, after much cutting and scraping and peeling, he was able to hook his index fingers under the grips and lift the window high enough to jump out. If he wanted to. If he wanted to break his neck. And then the masked IRA men would march away and the soldiers in the armored vehicles would continue to watch them, careful not to say anything that might start a fight. He carefully cleaned up the paint peelings and tossed them out the window. He closed the window, leaving just a crack open for fresh air. The police would be there too, sitting in their Land Rovers with binoculars and cameras with telephoto lenses. And not to forget the security forces' helicopter shooting video footage of the funeral from far above, out of the range of snipers' guns and hand-held anti-aircraft missiles. He felt satisfied about his open window. He propped himself up on his bed with pillows and went back to Space Monsters, but his mind was still clenched on the funeral and he soon put the book aside.

He wasn't allowed to go outside, couldn't go to the funeral even if he wanted to.

Did Fergus leave every morning at half-five? Then this really wasn't a prison after all, was it? Not exactly what you'd call a lockdown. What was to stop him from just walking out the front door if he wanted to? Fergus had gone to work. Moira couldn't stop him, could she? An old chain-smoking lady?

But where could he go? The funeral? Where the Mole was probably waiting for him? Could he go home? The house was empty but would the Mole or one of his fellow thugs be watching for him? And did he really want to go back there? The place where his mum and his da had been murdered? It was contaminated now by blood and horror, fear and hatred; it wasn't his home any longer.

He decided to stay where he was, for the time being anyway. He would just have to be patient; he couldn't go outside but he could exercise and read, or he could watch the telly downstairs if he wanted. This room was quiet and private; it would suit him fine until the Mole was put away for good.

It was, after all, a safe house. He would stay.

He picked up Space Monsters again. After only a minute, his eyes glazed over. The book worked better than sleeping pills. It was awful. He closed his eyes and after a while found himself hovering under the ceiling, looking down on his own skinny body, sprawled on a bed in a bare room, a book in his hands. He zoomed his mind out, like a camera, pulling away higher and higher out of the room, hovering for a few seconds over the roof of the safe house, then zooming out in the pouring rain over the gleaming wet rooftops of Belfast, looking down on the domed roof of the city hall and the downtown, and the row upon row of commercial buildings and houses radiating outward in every direction, and the streets, and the three motorways and the Westlink. He saw Rory and Nicole, tiny from the far distance. He zoomed out, up into the sky, and looked down on the North of Ireland. He kept moving out into space and looked down on the Irish Republic to the south, and then higher still until he could see Ireland itself as one country, without borders, surrounded by the sea, and there was Wales, the shape of a pig's head, and England too, a big boot, and now Scotland, a flying kilt, and the whole of the British Isles. He zoomed away more and more until he was hovering way out in deep space, watching the slow rotation of the planet beneath him, unable now to locate the tiny plot of earth that was Ireland.

“Isn't it splendid, Liam, up here, out of harm's way, taking the larger view of things?”

“It's brilliant, Da.”

“Distance enhances the view, son, according to…”

“I miss you, Da.”

“I know. But you'll be all right, son. We're remarkable proud of you, your mum and I. You're a fine boy.”

Suddenly he was back in his room, lying on a bed, staring at a book.

He didn't know how long he was staring at the book, but after a time he put it down and reached for the second book and looked at the title: White Fang by Jack London. There was a picture on the cover of a fierce wolf. White Fang must be the wolf's name. It was a good name for a wolf. It was not as easy to read as Space Monsters. The words and sentences were harder and he had to go more slowly; any words he didn't understand he skipped, plunging on, eager to meet the wolf of the book's cover. He read of two men in the wild frozen north, Jack and Henry, with a team of six dogs and a sleigh carrying a dead man in a coffin. This was much better than space monsters. He finished the chapter. There had been no mention yet of White Fang, the wolf. But his eyes were getting too tired to read anymore. He put his book down and closed his eyes.

…arms of a child…

One of his very earliest memories is of two red ladybugs and a deafening noise. The noise comes first. Then the ladybugs.

He is a little kid walking in the street, his mum holding him by the hand. The explosion terrifies him. He clutches his mum's hand fearfully and sees on his wrist two sudden small, plump red drops that he thinks are ladybugs. He goes to touch them and sees they are splotches of blood.

What he does not remember, and so does not know, is that a bomb kills a man named Sean McCoy, a father of six, as he climbs into his car not fifty yards in front of them.

When he is eight his mum says to his da, “What's to stop us from leaving Belfast and sailing to England? I hear there's work for them that wants it in London. Or Birmingham or Manchester.”

Liam joins in. “No way! I don't want to go to shitty England.”

“I'll not have that kind of language in this house!” his mum glares at him.

“Sorry.”

His da shrugs. “Well, we can't go to England, and that's that.” He returns to the salad he dislikes but always eats because Liam's mum says it's good for him.

“And why not?” his mum narrows her eyes at him across the table.

“Money, for one thing. There's ferry tickets, there's lodgings…”

His mum talks fast, interrupting. “We wouldn't need much, just enough to get started. A place to stay while you find a job. You haven't had a proper job in twelve years. Bits and pieces, that's all, nothing regular. We're mad to be staying here, living hand to mouth the way we do. I could find a job too. There's plenty of work over there for women. Liam will soon be old enough to take care of himself while I work.”

Liam sticks out his chest. “I can take care of myself right now.”

His da finishes his salad and puts down his fork. “Chasing off to England is not the answer, darlin'. Isn't that what the Protestant Loyalists want? For us all to leave? But we'll not leave. Things will get better here now that the Good Friday Agreement is signed. Be patient. There's an old Irish saying: ‘The waters wear the stones; patience is the pace of nature.'” He turns to Liam and says again, “‘Patience is the pace of nature.' What d'you think of that?”

His mum winks at Liam. “Sounds more like Shakespeare to me.”

His da's eyebrows disappear under his mop of hair. “And wasn't Shakespeare Irish?”

“As far as patience goes,” his mum says, “haven't we been patient for over thirty years? Nothing changes. Soldiers, barely eighteen years old, not much more than children, come over here from England with their cockney accents and search our houses whenever they feel like it and treat us like trespassers and refugees in our own country, and shoot at us with their plastic bullets. Like poor May Furlong, only thirteen and walking home from school with her friends, and now she's a permanent basket case, in and out of hospital with a shattered mouth and jaw, one operation after another, and she'll never be the same. Shot deliberately she was. The other girls saw it.”