Exit Unicorns (Exit Unicorns Series) (73 page)

“I guess not,” Casey stammered.

“My first husband worked with yer Grandda’ an’ near worshipped the ground he walked on but then so did anyone who called themselves Republican back in those days. Would take a big man to fill Brendan Riordan’s shoes,” she looked rather pointedly at Casey who returned her gaze quite mildly. “Mmphm,” she said, “well we’ll have to see then won’t we lad.” It was more statement than question and Casey did not answer. It was a question that would take years to answer, years and monumental sacrifice from a man who was still young and relatively untried. Destiny, Jamie reflected, could be a damned inconvenient thing.

Nora and Jacob took their evening tea with them, Nora putting out a plate filled with rich, dark fruitcake, saved no doubt for special occasions, Jamie thought guiltily, knowing it was likely these people had provided their best for them and would eat scantily for the rest of the week to make up for it. He would have to send the man a case of his best whiskey when he got home, any other gift was likely to insult the generosity of these people; their pride was hard-won and all the more valuable to them because of it.

“Why don’t ye read the lad’s tea leaves?” Jacob suggested to Nora, “Ye read his grandda’s, ‘twould be fittin’ to do his as well.”

Jamie saw a look of anger or dismay cross her face but it was gone in a flash.

“What did ye see in my grandda’s cup?” Casey asked his voice soft but with an undernote of tension.

“Och, ‘twill be a long time ago lad an’ my memory is not so good as it once was, ‘tis no more than a game really, here give me your cup,” she grabbed Jamie’s before Casey could hold out his. He felt ludicrously nervous. She stared for a long time at what had seemed to Jamie no more than black muck at the bottom of his cup, then she closed her eyes and breathed deeply. “There is much pain in this cup, pain that has passed, pain still to come but in the end there is happiness hard-won an’ well-deserved.” Jamie shivered and had to squelch the desire to rip the cup out of her hand. Her voice was strange not the rough, tart tone of before, but something that sounded as ominous as the tolling of medieval bells. She handed the cup back slowly, and Jamie was shocked to see how old she suddenly appeared, “There are still children waiting,” she said as she released the handle.

“Do mine then,” Casey held his out to her and she took it with what seemed great reluctance. Jamie knew with one of those long, primal quivers of the spine that he did not want to hear what she saw in Casey’s cup. Nor apparently did Nora for she blinked and rubbed her eyes, then sighing said, “I’m sorry lad but I’m tired an’ my eyes tend to blur on me after a long day, I can’t make head nor tail of the leaves.”

“Tis alright,” Casey said quietly, accepting back the cup and refraining from pointing out that she’d read Jamie’s cup only a minute before. But there was a look of quenched hope on his face that chilled Jamie to the core. He, quite suddenly, wanted to run from this place and this man and not have to see the future, to feel it unfold in long arcs in front of them here in this dark barn and know that there was no hiding, no ground upon which to seek purchase from the fears he’d sought some small comfort from.

Nora bid them both farewell and a safe end to their journeys but it was Jamie she came to and touching his face with a rough hand said, “Have patience man, it will come, if ye’ll only have patience.” Jamie had remained silent knowing she expected no words, only that he should carry her own with him and remember them when necessary.

They slipped off through the fields, chasing in the wake of shadows, hiding from the revelation of light. Casey leading, Jamie following wondering when he’d put his faith in this rather hostile stranger.

They traveled a good part of the night, stopping only for short breaks to catch their breath and wet their tongues. Casey’s conversation consisted of tersely whispered commands about which way to turn and when to stop and still in the darkness.

They took shelter for the day in a narrow, thickly wooded ravine, shadowed and whispering with the talk of leaves that fretted to and fro to the wind’s tune above their heads in the light. Sleep, made so by bone-deep weariness, was just possible. By noon, Jamie was awake, silently cursing all the bugs who’d had a piece of him while he slept and generally speaking, feeling quite out of sorts with the entire world. He stared peevishly at the blissfully slumbering Casey until the object of his annoyance opened one eye and said, “Could ye look at somethin’ else, yer disturbin’ my rest.” So he contemplated the undersides of the trees for a few minutes, then decided to explore a bit beyond the fringes of their tiny hole. He crawled some ten feet on his belly, upsetting several small grubby creatures, ripping a sizable hole in his pants and stifling a yelp when some unknown (and best left that way) object plummeted out of the trees above and landed with a sickening
kechunk
on his head. Finally, he was rewarded with the find of a small patch of wild strawberries, from which he plucked the main course of their sparse lunch.

When he wiggled his way back, with what he thought was great stealth, to their hiding spot, Casey pulled him one-handed out of the bushes.

“It’s me,” Jamie said tersely closing his eyes to avoid a flailing branch.

“I know,” Casey said, “I didn’t think anyone tryin’ to sneak up on me would make as much noise as ten drunken miners.”

“I did not,” Jamie said indignantly, fishing a rather crushed handkerchief full of berries out of his pocket. He thumped them down with wounded dignity in front of Casey, who grinned as they rolled in delicate disarray before him.

A repast of strawberries, bread and cheese, followed by a dessert of whiskey did a great deal to restore their humor.

Casey passing the bottle over to Jamie, burped extravagantly and then leaning back in apparent loose-limbed relaxation, gave voice to the question that had hung over them since the entire fiasco had begun.

“So why is it ye’ve become of such interest, that we’ve men chasin’ us about with the apparent wish to see us dead?”

“I’ve no idea,” Jamie said, loftily intent on retrieving a strawberry seed firmly wedged between two molars.

“I’ve an idea or two that ye may find rather interesting,” Casey said tone still indolently jovial.

“Mmghmmph,” Jamie replied, still trying to remove the pesky seed.

Casey spoke two words then, a name that charged the air with accusation halved with sincere admiration.

Jamie denied rapidly, calmly and with, as Casey had recently pointed out, far too many words. Casey merely smiled in a most annoying manner and Jamie thought if he’d been Carroll’s Alice, he might have choked the Cheshire Cat to death.

There was a long silence inhabited by the twitterings of birds, the buzzing of flies and the quiet of two men who have, most unexpectedly, come to feel comfortable in one another’s presence.

“I’m sorry about yer Da’,” Casey said quietly, “it’ll never be an easy thing to lose a father.”

“Thank you.”

 “My da’ died makin’ explosives,” Casey said, studying with deliberate nonchalance the cuff of his sweater.

“My father killed himself,” Jamie rejoined quietly, surprised at how easy it was to say it after such a long and hideous silence.

Casey met his eyes without provocation, but merely and for perhaps the first time, with honesty. “It’ll be the same difference, then.”

Jamie nodded, understanding now the twin burdens they carried as sons. “Aye, it’ll be the same.” He was silent for a moment, taking a swallow of whiskey, feeling with gratitude its golden burn. “Your daddy, it will have been no accident, then?”

“No,” Casey shook his head, “no, the man knew his way around explosives, had since he was a boy. He wanted it that way I suppose, so that we could think it an accident an’ live easier with the grief.”

“I’m sorry,” Jamie said and meant it.

“’Tis alright,” Casey said rolling the whiskey bottle back and forth between his hands. “My Daddy was never quite right with the world, if ye know what I mean?”

“Nor was mine,” Jamie said.

“He was a bit too sensitive, I suppose for the sort of work bein’ a Riordan meant. I don’t think my Grandda’ ever wanted him to be part of the family legacy, but when all the other boys died an’ so did his Da’ there wasn’t much of anything else for daddy to do but to pick up the reins an’ continue.”

“Do you ever wish he hadn’t?”

“Aye, I’ll admit that there are times that I do. I’m more built for it though, Da’ was like Pat, things bit him too deeply an’ he could never stop the bleedin’ from it.”

“You believe you can keep Pat from it?” Jamie asked, looking out from under eyebrows that were becoming increasingly numb.

The answer was a blunt and unequivocal “aye”.

“Yer Daddy, why did he do it?”

“The black dog,” Jamie said with great gravity, peering with one eye through the wavy glass lines of a rapidly emptying bottle.

“I take it we are not talkin’ about four legs, fur an’ a waggin’ tail here,” Casey said trying, with little success, to balance a stalk of clover on his nose.

“It’s what Winston Churchill called it,” Jamie sighed, and drained the remainder of the whiskey. “Depression that is, my father always had it but sometimes it will get worse as a person gets older and it had got to the place with him where there were many more bad days and not so many good.”

“Ye have it yerself?” Casey queried, seeming to Jamie’s increasingly bleary vision to be having some trouble focusing himself.

“More good days, not so many bad,” Jamie replied, feeling, at the moment, that there was very little wrong with the world that a pint or two of Black Bush could not cure. “What happened to your mother?”

“Ran off, if ye can believe it,” Casey said with great and martyred seriousness, “with an Indian an’ runs a curry takeaway somewhere in Londontown.”

“You don’t see her anymore,” Jamie asked, finding his lips slipping fuzzily about any word of more than one syllable.

“The Belfast Queen?” Casey snorted, “It’s not likely I would then is it? Gone for near to eighteen years an’ not so much as a phone call on Pat’s birthday, nor a card for him at Christmas. It didn’t matter to me if she remembered myself but I can’t forgive her for forgettin’ Pat, because it did matter to him. His wee face on holidays was always full of hope thinkin’ Santa Claus could bring her, an’ the disappointment in his eyes when she never came would break yer heart.”

“Should we be this drunk?” Jamie asked, realizing in some dim way that it was far past time for such a serious question.

“No,” was Casey’s blunt answer.

Lack of judgment, prompted by the excessive alcoholic goodwill coursing through his veins, could be the only thing that led him to ask the next question.

“Why did you marry her?”

The same boozy love of mankind was likely the only thing that stopped Casey from beating him senseless. “Why didn’t ye?” Though preferable to being punched was rather too close to the point for even drunken comfort.

Jamie looking across the rustling and shadow-laden space thought with a twinge of panic that Casey didn’t look near as sodden as he had a moment ago.

“It’s a fair question,” Casey said the lush harmonies of a few sentences ago altogether stripped from his speech.

A breeze, rippling and sweet, stole speech for a moment and allowed Jamie to gather what senses were left and construct from them some answer.

“Aside from the obvious, my age, her age, my drinking and the fact that I’m already married, I’m not entirely certain why I wouldn’t marry her,” he said and found the words much less invested with sarcasm than he’d intended.

“Yer married,” Casey sat up a little straighter, finding this morsel of information of great interest.

“Aye,” Jamie replied grimly, wondering if the man understood the concept of small talk. “More from a lack of effort at getting a divorce—until recently that is—than any other entanglements you might be imagining.”

“Where is she?” Casey asked looking really quite happy.

“In a convent.”

Casey laughed and then ceased abruptly looking at Jamie’s humorless face. “Christ yer serious, aren’t ye?”

“Yes,” Jamie said and seeing the next question forming on Casey’s lips, added “she’s a nun.”

Casey plunked back against the tree, the better to ponder this surprising revelation, Jamie supposed and then said quite genuinely, “I’m sorry man.”

“Don’t be, she’s very happy or at least a good approximation of that particular emotion,” Jamie replied dryly, ardently missing the drunken jollity of minutes past. “We lost three sons to a nasty little disease with a name ten miles long, that kills before life begins. My wife,” he said and closed his eyes so he couldn’t feel the words quite so sharply, “my wife found a way to deal with the pain. God granted her some sort of reprieve and so she’s devoted her life to him.”

“An’ did he grant ye one, a reprieve?” Casey said dark eyes mild in the clear afternoon light.

“No,” Jamie said, feeling there wasn’t a great deal of room for polite lies in this narrow ravine.

“I married her,” Casey said looping the conversation back on the intake of a deep breath, “because I had to. Not for the usual reasons that make people marry, ye know, the fear of loneliness an’ gettin’ old with no one to care if ye breathe from one day to the next. Or to have children, or reasons of economy or even sheer desperation. I married her because I love her, it’s simple, so simple that I can’t ever explain it properly, not even to myself.”

“It’s not a terribly sensible reason but it’s a good one,” Jamie said smiling.

“Aye well there’s not so much sensible about love is there?” Casey said rising from the ground in one restless motion and studying the light, counting the hours Jamie knew until they could make their escape into darkness.

“If you’re talking about real sense, about the sort of sense that actually makes or breaks a life, then I think love is about as sensible as it gets.”

Casey turned in the soft green-gold air of the day and nodded, “Aye I suppose yer right. Ye’d best catch some sleep if ye can find it,” he said, filching a cigarette out of his battered pack and tossing one to Jamie. “We go at full dark, we should get back to Belfast in the small hours.”