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Overview
Marty Ransom, son of the Captain and heir to a hilltop estate near Waterford in independent Ireland, lives a comfortable, boring life with his tennis-playing, Anglican wife, Sugar, and a job in the Department of External Affairs. Among their closest friends are an Anglo-Irish couple, a banker who was Sugar's childhood flame and his alluring diplomat wife, Alison. But Marty is a man divided. While his father fought with the British Army and found respectability in marriage, Marty's closest childhood friend was his cousin Iggy, the rebel son of a working-class Irish patriot whose gift for tinkering with radio parts has grown into a bomb maker’s skill.
When Marty is lured into keeping tabs on the growing IRA activities in support of the Catholic North, he finds himself walking a tightrope of conflicting yearnings and loyalties, balancing between nations, lovers, and parts of his own past, never knowing whom he can trust. But after Bloody Sunday escalates the violence and the British mount a desperate operation to take out a notorious IRA bomber, he must choose, and risk putting everything he loves most—his wife and young son—as well as his own life, at risk.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781628729566 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Arcade |
| Publication date: | 09/11/2018 |
| Sold by: | SIMON & SCHUSTER |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 296 |
| Sales rank: | 27,499 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Peter Cunningham is an award-winning novelist, who won the Prix de l’Europe and the Prix Caillou for his historical novel The Sea and the Silence. He is a member of Aosdána, the Irish Academy for Arts and Letters and lives with his wife in County Kildare, Ireland.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
WATERLOO FARM — NOT FAR FROM WATERFORD SOUTH-EAST IRELAND
Summer 1964
The sound of tennis being played in the Irish countryside in July was infinitely reassuring. I lay in the hammock, a newspaper on my face, hearing the pock-pock-pock, and the voices that followed the conclusion of a point, and their light laughter. Then, if I pointed my senses, like a sniper, I could fasten upon bees in the fuchsias, a tractor turning hay a mile away, and the fussy murmur of the stream as it oozed downhill beyond the tennis court and into the lake.
'I do believe that was out, Sugar!'
'I saw chalk, Christopher.'
'I saw no chalk — but very well. Your point.'
Christopher had been trying to beat Sugar for years, and had carried her racquets when she had played as a junior at Wimbledon. His father, a medical man, had relocated from Ireland to a practice in Devon before the war; now Christopher worked for a bank in London, where, it seemed, promotion eluded him.
Tinkling cups meant that Alison was approaching. Large, jolly and pretty, Alison was as dynamic as Christopher was not. She had brought an inheritance to their marriage, a fact that Christopher, when drunk, sometimes guffawed about.
'Two sets to love down and still he won't give in,' she said.
I sat up. 'I've given up trying to beat her.'
'Christopher's been trying since he was six.'
'I know.'
'I'm not waiting for them,' she said and began to pour.
Christopher and Alison were staying with us, as they had previously, on their way to their holiday home in County Kerry. Sometimes, when my mind was elsewhere, I looked up and found Alison inspecting me, but her instant smile forgave everything, and those moments, whatever they were, always passed.
'How's the job?' She picked up her cup and saucer and sat on the hammock beside me.
'A lot of pen-pushing.'
'But you like it.'
'Who could possibly like a job that involves negotiating tariffs?'
'Mindless, I know.'
'I do it for the money.'
'As do we all.'
'All I think about is how I can manage to get back here permanently.'
'Who wouldn't adore this?' she said.
Her MP father had once chaired a Commons committee inquiring into ground rents, and Alison's first job had been as his researcher, she had told me when we'd first met, three years before. I could understand how, having arrived that summer in Ireland for the first time, Alison would have seen us no differently to other families she would have known, in Berkshire or Somerset, the lovely setting of house and lands little different to those in England, the economy casting shadows over conversations. Ireland seemed nothing like a foreign country to her; yet the fact that it was clearly intrigued her.
'We don't really know much about you lot, do we?' was a remark I remembered. It was a general comment, embracing the English on the one hand, and the Irish on the other, but it could also have meant something more specific.
'You should talk to Christopher.'
'Oh, God, he knows nothing.'
It was true, for Christopher was hopeless when it came to Ireland, having been brought up in a world of attitudes where one pretended to know little about Irish politics, and in Christopher's case the pretence was unnecessary. From then on, in summer, when the Chases and their two girls came to stay, our conversations were designed by Alison to provide her with insights into Ireland. That we each worked for a government made us one of a kind, even if the most I learned of her job was that she was employed in some capacity by the Home Office.
Thick wedges of insects hovered above the lake, each wedge a tumultuous universe. From the summerhouse, Nurse Fleming, our nanny, emerged, pushing our little son in his pram, with Alison's two girls skipping alongside.
'Christopher loves it here,' Alison said. 'I think he regrets his father ever left.'
'We all want to go back to our childhood, or so they say.'
'Sometimes when he's had too much to drink, he says that, if he'd stayed, he would have married Sugar.'
'Then what would you and I have done?' I heard myself ask.
As the hammock swung gently, its motion governed by my heels, and Alison stuck out her legs and kicked off her shoes, I felt my ears occluding the way they always did in the presence of danger.
'An interesting thought,' she said, leaning back, and allowing me to feel her warm thigh. From the partly hidden lake, by a miracle of acoustics, came the sound of wine being poured into a glass.
'They've gone out in the punt,' she said drowsily.
I didn't respond, but neither did I draw away, which was in itself my reply to the simple message she wished to convey, our little secret suddenly hatched. But much more than just physical attraction was at work, for I knew then, and with a transfixing jolt, that Alison understood me.
'Oh, by the way,' she said, as if she had just remembered, 'I met a chap the other day who says he knows you.'
I could barely hear her as my head spun. 'Really?'
'Vance — can't remember his first name. Reddish hair, amusing. Said you were at school together.'
'Vance,' I said and drank my tea.
'We were discussing summer holidays, and when I mentioned Ireland, he said, "I was at school with someone from Ireland who lives in mountains near the south-east coast." Had to be you.'
'What does ... Vance ... do with himself?'
'Foreign Office, I believe.'
From the water came the edge-clear voices of Christopher and Sugar, and the splash of oars as he rowed and she cast. I sat in the ebbing light, more miserable than I had ever been.
'Are you happy, Marty?'
I could not bring myself to look at her. 'You mean ...?'
'I'm not trying to seduce you. I mean, generally, is it all making sense for you? Are you fulfilled in your work? Are you in the place you really want to be?'
The tide of my heart lapped. 'I sometimes feel ...'
'Go on.'
I suddenly wanted to talk about my father, which I knew was pathetic; to explain the standards and values I had been brought up to believe in; to describe the great unsatisfied yearning in my heart and the emptiness in which I partly lived. I knew, I just knew, she would understand it if I told her that, despite having a good job and being married to a beautiful woman, there were aspects of my life in which I was abjectly lonely. But how could I tell a near stranger that I needed something I could hardly begin to explain?
'Oh, it's just nonsense,' I said. 'It's nothing.'
'I think I understand,' she said quietly, 'and I think I can help you.'
I laughed, a little too loudly.
'Help you do the right thing,' she said. 'The right thing for you. I can give your life the meaning I think it needs.'
My terror and exhilaration surged so strongly, side by side, that I felt dizzy.
'There's really nothing to worry about, you know,' Alison said. 'Trust me. No one will ever know.'
Nurse Fleming was bringing the child over to say goodnight.
'I ... think we should join the others,' I said.
As we got up, a coot scampered across a wad of lily pads and left them heaving in its wake.
CHAPTER 2FOOTHILLS ON THE WAY TO WATERFORD
Even as a child, I could savour the constituent parts of each furlong of the journey to Waterford. It began with the departure from Waterloo's inner yard, the undertone of bantam hens in the hayloft, the crunch of tyres on gravel, all too brief, for I was ever seized at that moment by the sweet sorrow of departure, by the dread of leaving all I knew and loved.
The drive that lay ahead — an itinerary laid down from my infancy — squeezed me gently from the house and its surroundings. A little bridge crossed the lake neck, and, without warning, as it were, for each time it seemed a surprise, we were climbing steeply, and as I looked back I could see the lake far below, pellucid in summer light, dazzling and unique.
As soon as sight of Waterloo was lost, we began to cross the long, sandy ridge, car windows down, broom scent around us, the antics of rabbits as sideshows. Often, it rained without warning, a completely local event; in fact, on those days we did not encounter a shower on the way to Waterford we took it as a bad omen, for showers in the foothills always foretold sunshine in the town below. At this point, I could never resist lighting a cigarette, a ritual within a ritual, something my father had always done, and the scent of tobacco in that setting brought the old man back for an instant, like a genie.
At the ridge end, now quietly rising, the twinkling river mouth brimmed into view. As a child, I had thought of this as a moving picture, which was intensely exciting, for with each new revolution the vista grew below us, and the bright green of the mountain drained into a darker, deeper colour, almost blue, as it swooped down to meet the cluster of the town and the river. We always pulled in then, since the high walls of the rock fissure in which we now paused — which we called the 'Door', because it seemed to divide one world from another — was thick with gorse, which in summer drenched our senses as we perched, reluctant to leave but at the same time excited by what lay ahead.
We began to roll down through the ever-changing shades and glinting light made by mountain rivulets flowing through heather. If my father was at the wheel, he always cut the car's engine at this point, to save petrol, and we freewheeled, making each time a test of skill to see how far the car could be urged forward without the engine, the railway station being generally accepted as the limit of possibility.
CHAPTER 3FOWLER STREET, WATERFORD SOUTH-EAST IRELAND
November 1951
From the gardens behind the houses in Fowler Street, an aspect could be enjoyed over steeples and huddled roofs to the uplifting expanse of the River Suir, and beyond it into County Kilkenny.
'Optimism is hard to find nowadays,' said Bobby Gillece.
Although he had removed his topcoat, Bobby preferred to stand, one boot in the hall, leaning on the door jamb to the sitting room. Everyone, me included, knew what was really on Bobby's mind, because he kept glancing to the street door, his flourishing ginger moustache twitching like a cat's whiskers.
'No money around for anything,' he said.
'Run for the Corporation and you'll skate in,' said the Gent with several nods of his shining head. 'Skate in.'
Dying light filtered through the net curtain turning Granny Kane into a watchful corpse.
'The whole ward will vote for you,' the Gent scowled, defying anyone to disagree.
The week before, my parents had taken the steamer from Waterford to Fishguard, en route to London, for what my father had described as an urgent business trip. Waterloo had been boarded and locked, the staff had been sent home and I had been taken out of school and sent to stay with Granny Kane.
'The war put us on our knees, and we weren't even in it,' said Bobby Gillece, shifting to make way for Auntie Angela as she carried through a laden tea tray. 'Although maybe now we should have been.'
When Bobby spoke, his decaying upper teeth were visible, despite his moustache.
'That's a good one coming from you,' the Gent said.
'You move with the times, you move with the times,' Bobby said.
'Ho-ho!'
Uncle Ted, freshly washed, in a clean white shirt, appeared from the kitchen.
'Bobby was just saying we'd have been better off if we'd been in the war,' said the Gent and rolled his eyes. He operated a small abattoir at the bottom of the hill, where the wails of dying pigs could be heard three days a week.
'All I said was, you move with the times,' Bobby said.
'A lot of money moving north of the border since the war,' Uncle Ted said and settled into the armchair just inside the door. 'A lot of money.'
'And you would know what's happening north of the border,' said the Gent with mild sarcasm.
'American money,' Uncle Ted said, 'American money. I'm listening to them talking about it up there every night.'
'Put the doily under the pot, Angela,' said Granny Kane.
Granny's terraced house was one room wide and two rooms deep, with a kitchen tacked on behind. The narrow hall, in which Bobby partly was standing, was floored with tiles; the staircase to the floors above was covered in a carpet that my aunts had laboured on for years, snagging little loops of red wool on to a cloth backing.
'Pa bought pigs up there in the old days,' said the Gent and became temporarily unfocused, his right knee bobbing with a life of its own. 'Before any border.'
'God give him peace,' Granny Kane said.
'Up there a lot of them still think there's no border,' said Uncle Ted with a quick smile and Bobby Gillece laughed.
Wide-shouldered and tall, Uncle Ted owned a coal round that supplied that part of Waterford. When I first saw him hoisting a heavy bag of coal on each shoulder, I just knew he was the strongest man I had ever seen.
Auntie Angela laid the cups, saucers, spoons, linen napkins, the teapot and a silver tea-strainer on the table, and went back out to the kitchen with her head down. Amplified radio static could suddenly be heard upstairs, like a series of small explosions.
'Turn it down, Iggy!' Uncle Ted shouted.
'Jesus! If that young fellow blows the fuses again, I'll brain him,' said the Gent.
'Boys will be boys,' Granny Kane said. 'Isn't that right, Marty?'
I began to blush. I was shy and hated it when people noticed me.
'Where are Marty's mammy and daddy?' asked Bobby Gillece, all innocence.
'In England. On business,' said the Gent, closely examining his fingernails.
'Where do they go to in England, son?' Bobby asked and I could see the slyness in his look.
'To London,' I replied.
'London,' said Bobby gravely. 'Hmmm. A big city.'
'Pa went to White City once,' Granny said. 'To back a dog.'
'My father has business interests in London,' I said.
'And what business interests might those be?' asked Bobby and winked in the Gent's direction.
'I'm sure he'll tell you himself the next time you meet him,' said Granny with a thrust of her little chin.
'Only enquiring, only enquiring,' said Bobby.
'Marty likes it here; he goes to school with Iggy,' said Uncle Ted. 'Two cousins sharing the same desk. Isn't that right, Marty?'
'Yes, Uncle Ted.'
'He's got some build on him for a young fellow,' said Bobby Gillece, and his gaze, curious and lingering, hung on me for an uncomfortable moment. 'How old is he at all?'
'I'll be eleven at Christmas,' I said, the way I knew my father would have.
'Eleven,' said Bobby in wonder, as if my age had now joined a list of matters that needed to be explained. 'Some size for eleven.'
Auntie Angela reappeared with the next instalment of the afternoon tea, just as Iggy ducked beneath her tray. Auntie Angela let out a tiny scream.
'You little fairy!' said Ted and playfully batted Iggy's ears.
My first cousin was small for his age, with straight fair hair, a noticeably square head and high cheekbones that stood out beneath restless blue eyes. He held out his hand to Granny.
'Ah, will you look, another one,' said Granny without enthusiasm and briefly inspected the tiny wooden cat that Iggy had made upstairs. 'Thank you, Ignatius.'
'He's a very good boy,' said his father, pulling Iggy to him. He caught his son's face in his big hands and kissed him. 'How are the babies at all?'
'She's feeding them,' Iggy said, then turned and looked intently at me.
'I don't like them in the house,' sniffed Granny, her little mouth crimped into a tight purse. 'I hate the smell of them.'
Iggy's penetrating stare switched between me and Granny Kane. His mother, one of Uncle Ted's customers, had fled to London after his birth, preferring the dangers of the Blitz to the scorn Waterford held for an unwed mother, I had heard it remarked.
'Give out the napkins first, Angela,' said Granny.
The front door could be heard opening in a squelch of draught-proofing, and Bobby Gillece's head snapped to the right.
'Ho-ho!' said Uncle Ted.
'Is that Stanley?' Granny asked.
'Hel-lo!' Auntie Kate was rubbing her hands. 'It's cold out there.'
'Come into the fire, Kate,' said Granny. 'Where's Stanley?'
'How would I know, Mother?'
'He said he'd be back in ten minutes an hour ago.'
'He'll be grand, Mam,' Uncle Ted said with his quick, disarming smile.
'He brought me in a bucket of coal an hour ago and I haven't seen him since,' Granny said.
'Hello, Bobby,' said Auntie Kate as if she'd just noticed him. 'You mustn't be very busy today.'
'I am busy,' Bobby Gillece said. 'Very busy. I just called in to say hello.'
'Start without me,' Auntie Kate said as she went to the kitchen and I was presented with a brief glimpse of her nice legs.
'We'll come out of this one day,' said the Gent, taking a cup of tea from Auntie Angela. 'In the meantime, go for the Corporation. You'll skate in.'
Bobby Gillece's longing gaze was fixed towards the kitchen.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Acts of Allegiance"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Peter Cunningham.
Excerpted by permission of Skyhorse Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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