Lionel Shriver - Ordinary Decent Criminals

“… On the telly, now?”

“Forget I said that.”

“A fine way to get me to remember.”

“Seems to me, just,” Roisin went on nervously, “he might slip into one reading, who would point a finger.”

“Such a TV star, why not? The English Lecture Theatre’s hardly the King’s Hall … What show might he be on, now?”

The biggest show in town . Roisin smiled. The only show . “I’ve name enough by now, he’d only display decent public relations, attending a do for a major Six County poet.”

“A Republican poet.”

“I’m not a Republican poet.”

“Wise up! With your father and those brothers in the Maze, write a donkey’s years about birdies and butterflies, or for that matter, join the UVF, burn your own house as a bonfire on the Twelfth, and go up with it, sure you’ll still get your name engraved on the County Antrim Memorial, with a full IRA cortege strung out to Lenadoon.”

“For years in my work I’ve tried to—”

“Doesn’t matter a jot, Rose,” Constance interrupted with the impatience that was beginning to characterize this entire call. “You are what they say.”

“What has that got to do with Thursday?”

“He’s a Prod, sure that’s no secret.”

“I never said that.”

“Och, no! You’re bumping the daylights out of Bill Cosby.”

“Stop stirring me up! I said he was known, that’s all—”

“And enough times.”

To the injured silence on the other end, Constance continued. “I’m sorry, Roisin, but I can’t hold with this carry-on month after month about your famous man this, your famous man that—it’s a bit much, love. You’ve put the man terrible high up and there’s your problem. He can’t be as fancy as you figure, and if you could stare that down, maybe you wouldn’t let him wipe his shoes on your face. There’ve been times if I’d not seen the marks I’d swear you were making him up.”

“He’s not a cruel man, and it was only those two times. And I’ll not have you run him down or make out he’s some wee Prod—”

“If you’d stop exaggerating to me, you might stop exaggerating to yourself! So he’s some councilor or other—”

“Angus MacBride is no councilor.”

“You don’t say,” said Constance gravely.

“I haven’t said.” Roisin spoke with reserve, her dignity restored. “Now do you see why?”

“One of the bigger plums in the pie,” Constance conceded. “And you’re both better off he stays clear of the Thursday reading and every other.”

“I’d not mind if it were only politics,” said Roisin, already growing sullen, though with herself; her stomach felt glutinous, as if she’d eaten too much potato bread. “Truth is, he’s not mad for poetry, even mine. Claims he doesn’t understand it.”

“Fair enough,” said Constance. “You don’t understand politics.”

Roisin was too sickened now to rise to the charge. “I’ve to sort out my selection for tomorrow, so I’ll ring off. But, Connie—”

“Don’t worry, I’ll keep quiet. All the same—” Constance paused. “You shouldn’t have told me his name, love.” The receiver clicked in Roisin’s ear like a full stop at the end of any other simple, true declarative: The sky is blue.

It was, and it shouldn’t have been; it should be bucketing. Roisin fidgeted from the phone and, to keep from ruining her well-kept nails, frantically hoovered the carpet. Well, obviously the only way to prove once and for all to Constance Trower just how big a secret she was keeping was to give it away.

The hoover was full of cat hair, and filled the room with pet smell; Angus hated the cat and despised the smell. She kicked off the machine.

Loose Talk Costs Lives.

She’d pinned the poster at the entrance to the bedroom not long after she’d first started up with MacBride.

In taxis

On the phone

In clubs and bars

At football matches

At home with friends

Anywhere!

WHATEVER YOU SAY—

SAY NOTHING.

While Seamus Heaney’s advice was clearly lost on Roisin, every party in the Province followed the slogan to the letter.

I have a story you’ll like,” Farrell announced, with that long stride she had learned to keep up with. “Enniskillen. Now, the way bombs are handled in the Provisionals now, one cell makes the device, those that plant it are different lads altogether, no one ever meets anyone, correct?”

“That’s the conceit—but Fermanagh? Sure they’re all first cousins and play on the same hurley team.”

“Well, that’s what the Prods think—that every Taig knows who did it and won’t tell. But bear with me—”

Constance smiled. The Prods, not you Prods. After so many years she had earned herself out of her people. From Farrell, that was a compliment.

“—So the bomb was assembled weeks ahead of time. Now, it blew by the cenotaph smack in the middle of nurses and schoolteachers, and that’s why it was a mistake , right?”

“Giant PR black eye. A real shiner.”

“They forgot about daylight saving time.”

“I don’t follow.”

“One hour later, there would have been only soldiers by that cenotaph—everyone knows the ceremony, it’s the same dirge every year. But the boyo who made the bomb set it to go off at 11:45 a.m. on November 8, and forgot that in the meantime the clocks would change!”

“Who told you this?”

“A little bird with a balaclava.”

“I think it’s a story you like.”

“Well, yes. Perverse. Anarchic. Absurd. Their devices are so much more advanced than in my day—”

“It’s not your day?” She sounded disappointed.

“I don’t think I’d know where to begin with the contraptions they put together now. Microcircuitry, long-range radio control. But I could tell the bloody time.”

“How is Enniskillen likely to affect your referendum? You figure it’s really given the place a taste for reform and that? Enough is enough, let’s get off our bum?”

They were crossing the Lagan on the Queen Elizabeth Bridge, and stopped to lean over the river. It was only 3:30, but in Ireland’s stingy December already the sun was setting. Samson and Goliath, the two Harland and Wolff cranes, dipped the foreground, gold birds taking water. From here Belfast glowed, a vista never broadcast in news clips—a low city, its horizon stitched with spires. The light alchemized even Eastwood’s Scrap Metal with its Midas touch; hulks of burned-out City Buses mounded the shore, pirate’s treasure. Constance hoped the sunset was doing the same job on her face—projects of equal challenge, she supposed.

“I’ve been sniffing the wind, and it smells, as usual. The Prods are already getting resentful that the wet-nosed ecumenists have hijacked their tragedy. Pretty soon they’ll want their atrocity back. And Gordon Wilson’s getting to be a regular celeb—forgiveness as song and dance. There are churches in the States now that want to fly him, all expenses paid, to get up in front of their congregations and repeat for the umpteenth time, I forgive the men who murdered my daughter . So they can all feel warm and gooey. There’s money in grace. The man should get an agent.”

“You’re one godawful cynic, Farrell O’Phelan.”

“No, it’s sad, really—I did rather admire him. I’d never be able to pull the line off with a straight face myself. But as soon as he’s seen as successful he’s dead. All Gordon needs is the Nobel Prize and the North will have him deported.”

Constance sighed. “Poor Betty. She’s in Florida now.”

“I’ve tried to warn MacBride—if he does win that bauble, this mean-spirited backwater will have his head.”