Safe House Read online

  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 s
ix 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.”

  Liam knows May Furlong. She once was a pretty girl: red hair and lovely gray eyes. Now she never goes out, unless it is dark.

  His da says, “I thought we were talking about jobs.”

  His mum helps herself to the salad bowl. “There are no jobs.”

  Silence.

  Liam thinks his mum’s probably right about the jobs because his da puts up no argument. And she’s definitely right about the way the British army treats them.

  His mum thrusts the bowl at his da, “Have some more salad.”

  “No thanks.”

  “Liam?”

  “No thanks.”

  His mum takes the bowl back and finishes the little that is left. “If there were jobs in Belfast I’d have had one years ago. Mrs. McIntosh says…”

  “Ah, don’t be tellin’ me about Mrs. McIntosh, Fiona darlin’. That old harridan has a tongue on her would clip a hedge. She sees only trouble and strife that one. If she ever smiled she’d crack herself in two.”

  His da gets up from the table and Liam leaps up and throws his arms around his neck. “Da, let’s never go to England, okay? We will always stay here, right?”

  “Ah! No man ever wore a scarf as warm as the arms of a child,” his da says, laughing and hugging Liam and whirling him around and causing his mum to leap to her feet yelling for them to stop before something gets broken.

  Liam is ten:

  “There’s almost as many Protestants out of work as Catholics, Joe. We ought to be working together to solve our problems, not fighting each other.”

  Liam is standing in the street with his da and Joe Boyle, a neighbor.

  Joe Boyle laughs. “You’ll never see that, Daniel. Catholics and Protestants working together in the North of Ireland? You’re dreaming, man, so you are.”

  “Don’t you be so sure, Joe. That so-called Peace Line?” His da points to the twenty-foot-high brick-and-steel wall dividing the two areas, the Catholic Falls Road and the Protestant Shankill Road. “That wall should be knocked down for starters. Should have been demolished years ago. They did it in Berlin. The Berlin wall came down, right? Well, what is stopping us from doing the same thing here? We should be opening our windows wide and shouting loud, ‘I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!’”

  “Listen to yourself talking,” says Joe Boyle, shaking his head. “A dreamer you are.”

  “That wall divides us, Joe. How can we talk of peace if we keep a wall up between us? The Irish poet says, ‘Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, that wants it down.’ He’s right, so he is. That wall must be pulled down, Joe, before we all kill one another.”

  “Ah, never mind your Irish poet, Dan. You’re a great one for talking. The fact is, Protestants and Catholics are like oil and water: They will never mix in a million years. The Protestants are the majority; they want to drive us out. The wall protects us. That’s why we will always need the wall.”

  While his da and Joe are talking, Liam stares at the wall and the clouds above it and tries to imagine what he would see if it suddenly disappeared. No wall? It is hard to picture. The Peace Line wall was there long before he was born. There are streets on the other side, he knows that, streets like the one he is standing in now, streets he has never seen, with British army bases and surveillance cameras and gun towers and razor wire. Streets with police stations like forts, plump sandbags piled high around them. With houses blind with boarded-up windows to prevent Prod and Catholic terrorist firebombs. With burnt-out shops and pubs. With wire mesh, iron gratings, and metal barriers for protection. With empty lots littered with piles of rubbish and wrecked cars. With graffiti everywhere. With heavily armed police and soldiers in combat gear and visored helmets, walkie-talkies constantly crackling as they mingle with shoppers in the street, guns at the ready.

  West Belfast is a war zone.

  What would life be like with no wall separating the two factions? It is impossible for Liam to imagine.

  …girls, wild and audacious…

  He lay on his bed in the safe house, his mind teeming with thoughts and his heart crowded with feelings. Mainly he thought about his mum and his da. Sometimes he thought of Nicole.

  “She’s wonderful,” says Nicole Easterbrook.

  “Yeah, but she sure gets mad sometimes,” says Grace Newton.

  The four friends, Liam, Rory Cassidy, Nicole and Grace, are in the Youth Circus lounge, taking their morning break one Saturday, drinking orange juice provided by YC, and discussing Madame Dubois, the director.

  Madame Dubois is in charge of everything to do with the Belfast Community Circus.

  “She scares me,” admits Grace. “She gave me a lecture in her office one
time. Yoicks! I never want to go through that again.”

  Rory laughs. “You must have done something pretty bad.”

  “I skipped out an hour early to buy a U2 album. But I got back okay. for my mother to pick me up at the usual time, so what was the big deal? Anyway, Dubois was flaming mad. Threatened to throw me out of YC.” She turns to Rory. “What about you?”

  “What about me what?”

  “Madame Dubois. Has she ever yelled at you?”

  “Of course not. I don’t break rules. But if I did break a rule, she wouldn’t yell at me: I’m so lovable.” He grins.

  The others laugh. “Anyway,” Rory says to Grace, “Dubois is an old lady. You should show her some respect. She’s got to be way over thirty.”

  “Closer to forty,” says Grace. “But she looks younger. That’s because she’s still slim and muscular from her career as a trapeze artist.”

  Nicole nods. “Very fit. I’ve watched her work out after most of the kids have gone home. She’s amazing.”

  Grace says, “Have you noticed that big poster in her office, the one behind her desk? Not the circus poster on the far wall. The one with the trapeze artist. That’s Fay Alexander. Madame Dubois was coached by Fay Alexander. So she must have been really good.”

  “Who’s Fay Alexander?” asks Rory.

  Nicole exaggerates her amazement; her mouth drops open and her eyebrows disappear under her dark fringe. “I can’t believe you never heard of Fay Alexander!”

  “She was a famous trapeze artist, in America,” Nicole explains. “She was the stunt flyer in a circus movie called The Greatest Show on Earth. It won the Oscar for Best Picture of 1952.”

  “Wrong year,” says Grace. “Greatest Show was 1956.”

  “Who cares?” says Rory. “It’s ancient history.”