Authors: M.L. Janes
Again they stopped by Alice's home for her to change. Her mother talked about her daughter's childhood and showed him picture albums. No sign of the father in the pictures. Alice again appeared dressed very specifically for the night and in youthful fashion. Again the music blared as they seemed to race to the pub.
Séamus ordered Guinness. His father had drunk little else, having grown up when it had dominated Irish pubs. Now its taste created a certain mood for Séamus, and he craved that mood whether or not it was a wise choice that night. How appropriate was this black beer, the favorite of Catholic Irishmen against whom its brewer had once discriminated?
"You're out-pacing me tonight," Alice remarked as he ordered another round. She drained the remainder of her glass. "But it's fun trying to catch up."
"You shouldn't. It's not good for either of us."
They were seated again next to the fire, and Alice looked comfortably warm in a top even lower cut that her dress when they had first gone there. Her skin looked great. Round and unblemished.
"Séamus Dear, would you please let me know what's going on in your mind? I haven't seen you like this before."
"I'm losing my girl in London and I thoroughly deserve it." He would certainly not mention the Tina problem.
Alice placed her two hands on his free left hand. "Hey." She paused, looking at him. "Believe me, she won't have given up on a guy like you, if the girl has any brains at all. I don't care how pretty she is."
"Thanks, Alice. I wish I could agree, but I can't. You've known me one week. I honestly don't think I'm what she really needs."
She did not yet let go of his hand. "Well, if for the moment I have to accept from you that it's true, then I can only conclude that she is also not what you need either."
"How does that follow?"
"Because it's going to kill you having a partner for whom you feel you are not adequate. And it's especially awful since I cannot for one moment believe that she even deserves you. How could she? One week away and you have doubts about her? Her love should be like a rock."
Séamus gave a forced smile. "We'll see. Maybe I'm imagining things."
"We'll if we're going to drown that imagination together, maybe we should head back to my place so I don't have to drive again."
"Can I get a taxi from your place?"
"Don't worry. You can sleep over and I can drive you back early. The girls will be safe one night." Then she added, "You can take my bed. I've often slept on the couch before."
His second pint was almost gone. And he'd also had the whiskey on an empty stomach. Alice was looking very pretty, he thought. But she was a new colleague, and he was worried about Sheryl.
"How's the frostbite in his fingers?" asked a familiar voice. Séamus looked up to see Dave Orwood, Alice's ex-boyfriend, now standing behind her. Worse than that, Ryan McMahon was standing beside him. He looked down at his fingers, still in Alice's grasp. Orwood continued, "You should save them if you don't squeeze too hard."
Alice looked infuriated but did not turn round. "Dave Orwood, would you take yourself back to the bar? This is private and interruptions are not welcome."
"I'll do a deal with you," Orwood said. "If I can have two minutes of Séamus's time up at the bar, I will respect your wishes."
"Go to Hell, Dave!"
"It's OK," Séamus said quickly. "I'll hear him out." The last thing he wanted was McMahon telling Alice about their arrangement, even though he could deny it. And if Orwood had a word for him, he wanted to hear it. He rose before Alice could stop him and walked to the bar. McMahon sat down with her and he could only hope that they had not already decided to undermine him. His boss's idea seemed particularly insane to him just then.
"Séamus, My Boy," Orwood said with a superficial pleasantness as they reached the bar. "I really have nothing against you as a man, you know, and unlike some people in this area I am not so worried about you coming to work here. But before you arrived I was starting to restore my old relationship with Alice. Not all the way, for sure, but she was starting to show some positive responses to my courting, you might say. Now, though supposedly you're just a colleague, she starts treating me rather rudely. Last time might have been put down to just a bad mood, but since then she's refused my calls, and now this behavior. So I'm going to have to ask you to back off, I'm afraid."
Séamus nodded. He wanted to play this one carefully, doing his best not to offend. Bu he had to fight the negative impression of their first meeting, and the alcohol in his blood stream. "I understand your feeling, Dave. But the problem is what you're telling me doesn't jive with what Alice herself told me. And I can assure you she and I have nothing more than a collegial relationship. So, much as I would like to help you out here, I am not sure how I should do that. She wanted a drink tonight. I should have refused on your behalf?"
"Holding hands isn't 'nothing more than collegial', Friend." The superficial tone continued.
"She was reassuring me that my London girlfriend won't leave me."
"Ah, convenient. You've been here a week and that sob-story's already working on her."
"Now, Come on, Dave. Life is never that serious!" It was McMahon who had walked up behind him. "I'm sure Séamus understands your point and is going to bear it in mind. Now why don't you be a bit more sociable to your old school friend while he and I talk hurling?"
Orwood stared silently at Séamus for a few moments longer, then walked over to where Alice was sitting. Séamus watched a conversation start. "You follow hurling?" he said to McMahon.
"No, I'm a Gaelic man myself," McMahon said, referring to the Irish version of football. "Can't understand crazy men waving clubs at each other. And you?"
"Oh, rugby. You know, the one where we can play other countries which don't have Irishmen." McMahon smiled at the remark. "And thank you for kicking that one into touch," Séamus added, indicating Orwood with his head.
"Dave's a gas. But he gets very worked up about that Alice girl. Anyone else can see she's not interested in him, but love is blind, as they say."
"I would doubt it's love," Séamus commented. "More like an overwhelming sense of entitlement. He imagines she's his for whenever he's failed with others."
"Aye, he wasn't as loyal as he should have been to her, and he deeply regrets it now. But then, we all often fail at the loyalty test, don't we?"
The remark left little room for doubt about whom it was directed to. "Meaning?" Séamus asked, though he could also guess what was coming.
McMahon sipped his beer then added, "Your father was Michael FitzGerald, was he not?"
"No prizes yet. What else?"
"What else?" McMahon's face turned dark. "You are employed by the same government that murdered him. How can you live with yourself?"
"It wasn't murder, it was an accident, caused by a deranged and drunken ex-serviceman who mistook him for someone else," Séamus replied calmly. "And anyway, that's all in the past now. Didn't you hear, the war's over?"
"An accident, my arse. And it's never over. Just a different phase, that's all. Michael FitzGerald gave the ultimate sacrifice and his son's forgotten about it."
Now Séamus's voice became more tense. "Who said I've forgotten? How do you know what I'm doing, and why I'm doing it? What are you, the Central Intelligence Agency for Sinn Fein?"
McMahon's gaze was steady and fixed. Séamus knew his words were being weighed carefully. It seemed McMahon knew nothing special. This was just another testing. Suddenly, his accuser's face relaxed. "Boyo, I hope you know what you're doing." He added conversationally, "I assume you're still planning on a little recreation?"
"Nothing's changed on my part." Séamus added, "You'd better not have said anything to Alice."
McMahon grinned. "About the service? Of course not. But I did tell her you had a famous father." He turned, and the pair of them walked back towards Alice and Orwood. "You two getting along better now?" McMahon quipped.
"One on one helps a bit," Orwood said.
Alice was inscrutable. "Glad you feel better." She looked up at Séamus. "Mind if we leave now?"
The two of them left the pub. In the car, Séamus said, "Maybe it's better if you drop me back at the Lab."
"Oh, after taking you out, you're not going to invite me in for a drink?"
"Sure. But how are you about driving later?"
"There's a spare room. I can sleep it off and drive home in the morning. Tomorrow's Sunday so I'm using my executive authority to decide to start work late."
Back in Séamus's room, he poured himself more Guinness from a draft can, and she chose a whiskey. They sat in the two armchairs facing each other. Alice's legs were very visible from his angle, and she didn't seem self-conscious about it.
"Ryan told me your dad was someone famous in the IRA," she began.
"Sinn Fein. It's political. And he was always against acts of terrorism."
"Then how did he believe Ireland would be united?"
"In its soul." Politics was the last thing he wanted to discuss just then. And he wanted to stop himself staring up her skirt. He took his beer to the window and gazed out. "Sorry, Alice. I can't discuss my father right now. McMahon upset me too much."
To get a better view of him, Alice walked over to the bed and sat on it. "Why? What did he say?"
"He said I was a traitor to Dad by working for the British government."
"Oh my God, what a bastard! You should have bopped him one!" Séamus laughed. "What's so funny?"
He went to refresh his glass. "Sorry. It's just funny to hear anyone talk like that. It's what we call girls' talk. Only people who never hit anyone talk like that."
"Don't think I haven't hit a man, I have!"
Séamus grinned. "How long was he down for?"
"Oh, what makes you the expert on hitting people?" She kicked off her shoes and drew her feet up onto the bed, cradling her drink as she looked at him with a frown. "Maybe your job? Maybe Sinn Fein?"
He pulled up a chair next to the bed. "I don't know McMahon well, of course, but if I took a swing at him it wouldn't be like the movies. You know, he falls down, rubs his jaw and says, 'FitzGerald, you're a fighter and I respect that. I was out of line when I insulted you.'"
Alice now looked less sure of her argument, at the same time as she was getting more comfortable on the bed. He whiskey into her glass, and drank a shot of his own. "So what would happen?" she asked.
The shot felt great. Just one more and he'd be almost calm. "Well, he would give me the opportunity to take it outside, right then. If I agreed, then I would probably get away with a good bruising. That I'd be on the losing end is a certainty because, even if McMahon wasn't capable of it, he'd have others to do it for him. I have little doubt two of the young men right there in the pub tonight would be his back-up."
"You look like a damned doctor sitting there on the chair. Come here." Alice patted the bed next to her. Was this the second or the third shot? He drank it and sat where she ordered. Her voice dropped low. "And if you refused to go outside?"
"Well, my only escape would be to have a group of men collect me. But some day he would arrange his vendetta. For sure something would get broken. If I'm lucky, an arm. Unlucky, a leg. Very unlucky, my back."
Alice looked shocked. "All that for punching him?"
"Dear, that's my point. From movies, you think of it as a good old bar fight. But if I'm not wrong about McMahon, he's what we call an operator. He depends upon his image as a man who will always revenge himself at a disproportionate level. That way, people do their best not to pick fights with him."
"He said you two had met at the Plough. So he's part of this local crime group we talked about last week?" She had slid down further so her body was partly circled around him as he sat there.
"That's my guess," he told her, despite knowing for a certainty. "But there's always a chance that he keeps himself on the legal side of the line and simply provides security for others who are not. I'm trying to find out more but, as you can imagine, I'm having to go carefully."
"Oh yes, please be careful, Dear." She put her arms round him in what might have been just a friendly hug but, the way they were positioned, her head ended up on his lap. She looked up at him, raised a hand and ran it through his hair. "You're looking very tired, Dear. Has the drink caught up with you yet? Come on, rest here on the pillow beside me." She used her hug to almost drag Séamus up the bed so he was propped up against the pillow. He was surprised how easily she had moved him, and he could not have resisted much had he tried. Bottle in his hand, he poured them another shot and made a toast.
"To the girls," he said. "Let's hope they succeed wildly then get home safely to enjoy their richly deserved reward."
Alice held up her glass but asked, "Am I included among the girls?"
Séamus remembered Jenny's remark on the first day. Alice was also one of the group it was his job to look after. For the first time he thought of Tina's worry as it might apply to her. Was Alice also in danger? How expendable was one brilliant PhD? How did he make sense of it all, when he could not even imagine what they were working for?