At three on Monday, I leave the office and walk to meet Eamonn in Stoneybatter. I have on a tartan dress knotted at the side, and a black umbrella holding off the rain. On my walk across the northside, I pass lads walking bareheaded through the rain, and middle-aged men hoisting the back collars of their jackets over their heads.
Eamonn comes to the door in dark trousers and a white shirt with the sleeves folded back, and I wonder how he looks so clean despite the rain. “Did you get here safely?” he asks.
“Yes, I got here safely,” I say.
He gives a little nod. Eamonn has never once told a joke in my presence, but I can tell from his mannerisms, from little shifts in his expression and his voice, that he has a good sense of humor, which he is actively suppressing when he’s with me. He won’t tell jokes. Maybe that’s part of his training, or maybe he’s holding back out of respect for the situation, the risks we’re both taking. I know Marian would say I’m giving Eamonn too much credit, that I’m inventing his sense of humor without any evidence, but I’m certain of it.
We sit in the front room, behind a window that might be fitted with bulletproof glass. Light from a lamp runs across the floorboards from me to him, like a cup of water knocked over at my feet. “Marian visited Niall in Castlerea on Saturday.”
“Anything I should know?” he asks.
“He said the prisoners at Portlaoise are planning a hunger strike.”
“Jesus, okay. That’s really useful. Thank you, Tessa,” says Eamonn. “Did Niall say when?”
“No,” I say, alarmed over the unintended consequences of even discussing this, the chance of us kicking off a hunger strike.
“That’s all right, these things take time,” he says, and my heart drops at the thought of doing this for months, through the rest of the autumn, past Christmas, into the new year.
“How did Marian get Niall to talk?” asks Eamonn, and my face starts to flush. Part of his training must be working out when someone is lying.
“She could barely get him to stop talking,” I say, shrugging. “They’ve been planning it for months. He was bursting to tell someone.”
“But why tell her? I hadn’t expected him to forgive her yet.”
“It’s Marian,” I say. “She can talk her way out of anything. I forgave her, too.”
Eamonn looks at me for a moment, turning this over, then nods. “Have you been back to Belfast?” he asks, and I shake my head. “Does your mother ever visit Belfast?”
“Yes, to see her siblings.”
“She’s not nervous?”
“No. I mean, she’s nothing special, is she? There are plenty of other parents of informers walking around Belfast.”
“Has anyone ever given her any trouble? Or asked her about you or Marian?”
“No, they either think we’re dead, or they’re our family, and they know they need to pretend we are,” I say, trying to keep my voice level. “Why? Have you heard something about us?”
“No. Just tell her to mind herself on those visits,” he says, and I nod, wondering what he’s not telling me. “Do you still swim?” he asks.
“Sometimes,” I say, and we talk for a while about the swimming rocks around Dublin.
“Do you want something to drink?” asks Eamonn. “A beer?”
“Are you allowed to drink?” I ask, and he nods.
“My cover job is still working in restaurants,” he says, and I follow him toward the back of the house. We stand in the gleaming kitchen, under a row of strong track lights for cooking. Rain taps the windows, a light glows on the espresso machine. I sit on a stool at the kitchen island, running my hands over the veins in the fake marble. Eamonn levers off the caps on two bottles of Moretti, and hands one to me with a clean pint glass. I watch him tilt his own glass, pouring the beer. “There’s a fair amount of drinking in the industry.”
“Which one? Restaurants or the security service?”
“Both, actually,” he says, lifting the glass to his mouth and swallowing. “I meant restaurants, though.”
“So what’s real?” I ask. “Do you have to drink for your cover story? Or did you actually want a beer?”
“I did, yes.” He wipes his wet hands on his trousers, and I look away, lifting my drink. If we were in different circumstances, I’d enjoy glancing at Eamonn, watching how he moves and stands and talks, but I can’t do that because we’re the only people in this room, and he’s nearly always looking back at me. This whole time, I’ve felt a growing frustration that I can’t get a good look at him.
“Did you buy this beer? Or did someone else buy it for you?” I ask.
“I bought it.”
I fold back the foil on my bottle. “I’d have thought someone else did the shopping for a safe house.”
Eamonn looks amused. “No.”
“For security reasons?” I ask, and Eamonn frowns. “No, so they don’t buy the wrong brand of beer. I’d lose my head,” he says, and I laugh. That was it, then. The first time he has tried to make me laugh.
He might do the shopping nearby. There’s a Lidl on Stoneybatter Road, but I can’t ask him where outright. I’d like to know, though. Instead, it’s like Eamonn vanishes into thin air anytime he leaves this safe house. I’ve no idea where he goes, or what he does.
“What about the wheelie bins? Who takes those out?” I ask. “Is that also your job?”
“Sometimes,” he says. I’m nervous, the glass turning damp from the heat of my hand. I can’t even imagine how to ever ask him the question. Will you betray your country, Eamonn, will you give up your entire identity, will you work for the IRA? It’s all right, though, for now. The process has begun, at least.
“Tell me about working at the Irish Observer,” he says. “When did you start?”
“Two years ago.”
Eamonn listens as I describe my work, and I’d forgotten about the depth of his attention, about this huge sympathy coming from him in my direction. I used to feel it whenever we met on the beach at Ardglass, this tolerance.
It’s working, I think, crossing my legs on the kitchen stool. This is working. I barely even have to try. Both of us need the other to like us, to trust us, and the strange thing is that the trust already exists. I wonder if it has confused him, too, this affinity between us, if he’d expected to have to work harder.
We chat about Dublin, and the Temple Bar food market. “It’s no St. George’s, though,” I say. “I miss the dulse from St. George’s.”
“Nowhere else comes close,” says Eamonn.
“You visit it?”
“Of course,” he says, and it’s strange to think we might have run into each other. I’d never once imagined bumping into Eamonn when I was in the North. Or here, in Dublin.
“Is that not a security risk?” I ask, and for a second a look of discomfort passes over his face, vanishing before I can decipher it.
“No more than most places,” he says, and starts to tell me about visiting the night markets when he was working in Hong Kong.
Eamonn walked me to the door last time, and already I’m wondering if eventually I might hug him goodbye when I leave, in a casual way. That’s a thing people do after seeing each other, I think. I wouldn’t need to make a habit of it. Even if I only did it once, at least then I’d know what it’s like to embrace him. The idea of not knowing, for the rest of my life, seems sad and impossible.
“Have you been in Belfast this whole time?” I ask, and he nods. “Is it like an army deployment, though? Do you get breaks to go home?”
“Home?”
“I don’t know. London?”
“Belfast is my home.”
I never knew if he was telling the truth or not, about being from Strabane. He fit, on the beach in Northern Ireland, he seemed at home, but maybe it was a pretense, maybe he was actually born somewhere in England. “Is this your real voice?” I ask, and he laughs.
“Do you know how hard it is to fake a Northern Irish accent? Even actors can’t do it.”
“And you’re not an actor?” I ask slowly.
He takes a swallow of his beer, and I watch the bubbles sliding behind the glass. “No, Tessa. I’m not.”