Newry bound, he was driving at a steady speed.
One hand on the wheel and one scanning the radio stations for news.
Pale green electroluminescence leaked from the dashboard, lighting the car’s interior.
Night and a late summer rain were beginning to fall.
According to the reports he could pick up, the parish priest and the bishop of the diocese could not be contacted for comment regarding the standoff in the cathedral.
Much to his surprise, Eban seemed to be enjoying some sensation of associated celebrity.
The fella in the big picture.
That he himself was heading straight into the top news story of the hour.
To be part of it.
It seemed to afford him an opportunity for professional exasperation with the whole thing.
Eban spoke tetchily, aloud to himself. “Does anybody know who’s in charge down there?”
The closer he got to the cathedral however the more his thoughts turned uncomfortably to the worst-case scenario.
He had earlier spoken to McVey on the phone.
Conor had told him, “It’s mostly to take a stand really; the press have got interested. Nobody actually believes the guys outside will try to go in after them – ‘sanctuary’ and all that. It’s a church for Christ’s sake!”
McVey had managed to convey the fundamental human rights angle of the ordeal to him and he reflected on this seriously for the first time that night.
Eban allowed himself a little buzz of liberal feel-good.
Perhaps Amnesty International would become involved?
Maybe he’d be asked for a comment.
They were all on the side of the angels, were they not?
Newry Town Centre – 3 Miles said the sign, suddenly thrown up in the headlights.
UVF – Kill ‘em all… Let God decide was spray-painted across the bottom of it.
He had reached the Loyalist estates that skirted the town.
These dark hills and market towns were contested country.
The unwary traveller slid in and out of tribal boundaries denoted only by brightly coloured paving stones and ragged, flapping standards tied to lampposts.
He’d been strangely melancholic of late.
Still unsure that his recent return from London had been the right thing to do.
Listening to Van Morrison’s Into the Mystic on his Walkman on the deck of the ferry as it choppily ploughed up Belfast Lough in the mist and rain.
All the pseudo-Celtic bullshit he had fed himself about the holy ground.
About the loss of homeland equating with the loss of self.
About the spiritual thirst of the exile.
Had he really meant any of it?
Or was it simply another device to squirm out of expectations, obligations, responsibilities?
Back from self-imposed exile.
Back to… this.
How quickly, how easily one forgets.
The rain now necessitated the use of his wipers.
A light mizzle turned to a steady fall.
Good, he thought to himself. It might keep the lunatics off the streets.