‘I was brought up down there. My Dad had a bit of land. Not much but enough for a living. It’s a hard living down there. It’s yourself and that’s all, to do the work. We cut peat down there and had some cows and sheep. Stupid bloody creatures. We were always losing the little buggers. There was no mains, no gas, no electricity, no water when I was born. He’s dead, now, the old man, and my Mam came to Belfast.’
‘Were you involved at all, with the politics? Was the old man?’
‘Not at all. Not a flicker. Most of the farmers round were Prods but that didn’t make much difference. The market was “non-sectarian”, as they’d say these days. Different schools, different dances. I couldn’t walk out with Prod boys when I lived at home. But that’s years back now. There was no politics down there, just hard work.’
He drove slowly out of town, on to the M2 motorway which runs within minutes into the open countryside, leaving the city with its smoke and its gibbet-like cranes and its grey slate roofs away behind the Black Mountain that dominates the south of the city. It was the first time Harry had seen the fields and hedgerows, farms and cottages since he came in on the airport bus. The starkness of the contrast staggered him. It was near-impossible to believe that this was a country ravaged by what some called civil war. For a moment the impressions were tarnished by the rock-filled petrol drums outside a pub, but that was a flash of the eye, near-subliminal, and then was gone in favour of the hills and the green of well-grassed winter fields.
Josephine slept in her seat, head back against the column dividing the front and rear doors, her seat belt like some pompous decoration strapped across her breasts. Harry let his eyes stray from the endless, empty road to her.
‘Just follow the Derry road, and wake me up when we get to the top of the Glenshane,’ she’d said.
The road slipped economically through the countryside till Harry reached Toome, where the Bann came through, high and flooded from the winter rain, forcing its strength against the medieval eel-trapping cages that were the lifeblood of the town. He slowed almost to a halt as he gingerly took the car over the ramps set across the road in front of the small, whitewashed police station. Yards of bright corrugated-iron sheeting and mounds of sandbags surrounded the building. It looked deserted. No bulbs showing at the top. After Toome he began to pick up speed. The road was straight again, and there was no other traffic. In front was the long climb up to Glenshane in the heart of the Sperrins. The rain gathered on the windscreen, horizontal when it came but light and occasional.
As he came to the hills that divided the Protestant farmlands of the Ulster hinterland from Catholic Dungiven and Derry, Harry spotted a damp, out-of-season picnic site on his right, and pulled into the car park. There was a sign marking the Pass and its altitude, a thousand feet above sea level. He stopped and shook Josephine’s shoulder.
‘Not so much of the blue skies and the promised land here. Looks more like it’s going to tip down,’ he said.
‘Doesn’t matter. Come on, Mr McEvoy, we’re going to do some walking and talking. Walking first. Up there.’ She pointed far out to the right of the road where the hill’s squat summit merged towards the dark clouds.
‘It’s a hell of a way,’ he said, pulling on a heavy anorak.
‘Won’t do you any harm. Come on.’
She led the way across the road and then up the bank and through the gap in the cheap wire fence where a succession of walkers had made a way.
Farther on there was a path of sorts to the top of the hill, made by the peat cutters at first and then carried on by the rabbits and the sheep. The wind picked up from the open ground and surged against them. Josephine had pushed her arm through the crook of his elbow and walked in step half a pace behind him, using him part as shelter and part as battering ram as they forced their way forward into the near gale. High above, a buzzard with an awesome dignity allowed itself to be carried on the thrusts and flows of the currents. Its huge wings moved with only a minimum of effort, holding position a hundred and fifty feet or so above the tiny runs fashioned by the creatures the bird lived off. The wind stung across Harry’s face, pulling his hair back over his ears and slashing at his nose and eyes.
‘I haven’t been anywhere in a wind like this in years,’ he shouted across the few inches that separated them.
No reply. Just the wind hitting and buffeting against him.
‘I said I haven’t been in a wind like this in years. It’s marvellous.’
She rose on her toes, so that her mouth was in under his ear.
‘Wasn’t it like this at sea, sometimes. Weren’t there any gales and things all those years you were at sea?’
The cutting edge of it chopped into him. Retreat. Back out.
‘That was different. It’s always different, sea wind, not like this.’
Poor. Stupid. Not good and not convincing. He felt the tightening deep in his balls as he went on against the wind. Up a cul-de-sac and got cornered. Slackness. The elementary error. He flashed a look down and behind to where her head nestled into his coat. He contorted his head to look into her eyes, and saw what he expected. Quizzical, half-confused, half-amused: she had spotted it. The inconsistency that he’d known the moment he’d uttered it. Phrase by phrase he went over it in his mind, seeking to undo the mistake, and evaluate its damage. The second time he’d said it, that was when she would have been sure. The first time, not certain. The second time, certain. He’d semaphored it then.
There were no more words as they went on to the summit. The low jigsaw of clouds scudded above them as they clung together against the power of the gale. In spite of the heaviness of the cloud there was a clarity to the light of the day. The horizon was huge. Mountains to the north and south of them, the road leading back into the civilization of the hill farms to east and west.
A few yards beyond the cairn of stones that marked the hilltop the rain running down over the years had sliced out a gully. They slid down into it, pushing against the sandy earth till they were at last sheltered. For a long time she stayed buried in his coat, pressed against his chest with only her black tossed hair for him to see. He felt the warmth from her seeping through the layers of clothes. For Harry it was a moment of beauty and isolation and complete tenderness with the girl. She broke it suddenly, crudely and fast.
‘You slipped up a bit there, Harry boy. Didn’t you? Not what I’d have expected from you.’
Her face was still away from his. He couldn’t see into her eyes. It hit home. He said nothing.
‘A bit mixed up then, weren’t you, Harry? Your story was, anyway. Merchant seaman who was never in a storm like they have in the Sperrins? A bit of a cock-up, Harry.’
She’d relaxed in her voice now. Easy. In her stride. Matter-of-fact.
‘Harry,’ and she twisted under him to turn into his face and look at him. Big eyes, mocking and piercing at the same time, and staring at him. ‘I’m saying you made something of a slip-up there. Not the first that you’ve had. But a good old balls-up, a right big one. Harry, it’s a great bloody lie you’re living. Right?’
He willed her now to let it go. Don’t take it to the brink where explanation or action is necessary. Leave the loophole for the shrug and the open door.
In the town his inclination would have been to kill her, close his fingers on that white, long throat, remove the threat that jeopardized his operation. But on the mountain it was different. On the moorland of the upper hills, still crouched in the gouged-out hollow, and the wind singing its high note above and around them, it seemed to Harry ridiculous and time-wasting to deny what she had said. It wasn’t in his orders to go strangling girls. That was logical as the solution, but not here. Out of context.