6 January 1985
The night was cold and damp, and Harry felt the time had come for him to seek his bed. For most of the afternoon he'd been holed up in a little warehouse just outside the city, speaking earnestly to a team of local agents, trying to impress on them the importance of treading lightly. The PM herself had tasked Harry with finding Patrick Magee; she'd been frustrated by the lack of results in the months since the hotel bombing, and she had once again trotted Harry out, her own tame spy dancing merrily on the end of his lead. As much as he loathed playing the part of the errand boy, Harry was forced to admit to himself that he felt a bizarre sort of pride, that the PM knew his name and trusted him with this, with finding the man who had very nearly succeeded in assassinating her in Brighton. The intel said Magee had come to Ireland, and there was reason to believe that he was, at this very moment, hiding out somewhere in Galway. Mrs. Thatcher had told Harry to find him, and he was determined to succeed.
Sooner rather than later, he hoped; telling Jane that he was going away, and that he couldn't say where or for how long, had incited a blazing row between them. It was the longest conversation they'd had with one another in months, though Jane had spent most of it shouting – screeching, really – and Harry had been given very little opportunity to defend himself. What's the point of being married to you if you're never bloody here? Jane had demanded. It was just as well that she hadn't paused for his response; Harry had none to give her. What was the point of being married, he asked himself, when he didn't trust his wife, and she harbored very little affection for him? What was the point of any it?
There was some reassurance to be found in marriage, to be sure. Harry could glance down at the ring he wore on his left hand – when he wasn't on operation – and be reminded that there was someone waiting for him, someone who cared for him. He could convince himself that he was not alone, and that the horrors he had endured had not utterly ostracized him from his fellow man. Those reassurances had been less effective of late; his dreams were haunted by the sight of Bill Crombie's ruined face, by the over-bright, nearly malicious glint of Juliet's grin, by the sound of Davie King's voice, cursing Harry for putting into motion the events that had killed his father. Harry's sins weighed heavy on his mind, and he could not recall the last time that he had found comfort within the shelter of his wife's arms. Even the sight of their children was not enough to banish the demons that haunted his steps; he looked at their little faces, and he could not help but wonder if they would be better off somewhere far, far away from him and the darkness he inhabited.
This operation was a chance to immerse himself in a legend, to put aside Harry Pearce and his pain and become someone else entirely, and much as Harry hated the thought of spending a prolonged period of time languishing in Ireland, he was very much looking forward to becoming James Harrison. The techies had outdone themselves this time, he thought as he shuffled through Harrison's paperwork in the carpark behind the pub where he would be staying. James Harrison, 32, unmarried, trust-fund-playboy turned aspiring author. He had been given an unlimited line of credit and a rusty, old-fashioned typewriter to lend credence to his story, and there was a small moleskin notebook tucked away in his bag that he fully intended to fill with notes on a novel that would never be written, a story about the heart of this city, this city he could not have cared less about. The writer angle was a good approach, he thought; men were more likely to talk, when they thought they might get something out of it, and what could be better than the promise of fame, of having their words immortalized in some glossy hard-backed tome? He would ask questions about history, about family names, about old grudges and betrayals, and through those tall tales he hoped to ferret out the identities of those men most likely to offer succor to a mad Northern bomber.
Having reviewed his documents for perhaps the tenth time that day, Harry finally dragged himself out from behind the wheel of his hired car, and shouldered his heavy rucksack. Though he understood the need for the typewriter he had not particularly enjoyed lugging the thing around for the last three days, and he was quite looking forward to putting it down.
Immediately inside the heavy oaken door there was a small foyer, and Harry stood there for a moment, stamping his feet to ward off the chill that seemed to have sunk into his very bones while he'd been loitering outside. Music and laughter and the smell of smoke and roast wafted enticingly through the double doors just opposite him, beckoning him into the pub proper, and he promised himself right then that as soon as he got settled in his room he would make his way right back down again, and have a whiskey or six at the bar. Might as well get started tonight, he told himself, though he had no intention of speaking to anyone this evening. He intended to drink more than was wise, and he desperately hoped that he'd fall into his bed too insensible to dream. It would be worth the headache, come the morning, if he did not have to dream.
There was a small wooden desk tucked away in the corner of the foyer, and Harry turned in that direction as he got his bearings. Behind the desk there sat a girl, perched precariously on a rickety-looking stool, her nose buried in a book. She looked to be about twenty, her long, dark hair falling inelegantly over her face, shielding her features from view. There was nothing particularly memorable about her appearance; her clothes were rather plain, and she was chewing on one of her fingernails, utterly engrossed and paying no attention to the world beyond the pages of her book.
Harry crossed the room and stopped on the other side of the desk, but still the girl did not look up. Harry smiled; he couldn't help it. There was something charming about it, about her having become some immersed in the task at hand that she had missed the arrival of this stranger. He was on the verge of clearing his throat to announce his presence when she shifted slightly, and the title of the book in her hands caught Harry's eye.
Ulysses.
Now that was interesting.
"National University?" he asked her, keeping his voice low so as not to startle her too badly.
He was mistaken; the moment he spoke the girl jumped, promptly dropping her book and knocking over the glass of tea by her elbow.
"Shit!" she swore, quickly gathering up her book and depositing it safely on her stool before sweeping off the white half-apron she wore and furiously scrubbing at the encroaching sea of tea, trying to stop it ruining the heavy ledger book spread out on the desktop before her.
"Sorry," Harry said, trying not to laugh. "I didn't mean to startle you."
She looked up at him sharply, and he caught his breath, quite suddenly mesmerized; this girl, this little wisp of a thing in a cotton dress, had the loveliest eyes he'd ever seen. In the dim light of the pub's foyer he could not discern whether they were blue or green or some color that had not yet been given a name, but there was a brilliance in them, a depth and a power that utterly captivated him. He was reminded sharply of a lighthouse he'd visited as a boy with his father; the building had been old, its foundation stones crumbling away into the sea, but he had been quite enraptured by the idea of that single beam of light, that soft, steady radiance warning weary travellers off the rocky shores, standing sentinel all alone through rain and gale and nights beyond counting.
"What did you say?" she asked him breathlessly. Her voice was warm and low, and the lilting Irish accent for once did not set his teeth on edge, when it dripped like honey from her full lips.
"Sorry?" he repeated, not intending it as a question though it came out that way. For a moment he'd quite forgotten what he was doing there.
"No, before that," she corrected him gently, her cheeks coloring slightly as she dropped her gaze to the sopping apron she was currently wringing between her hands.
"Oh. Er…I said National University. I was wondering if you were a student there. I thought you must be, since I've never met anyone who read Ulysses voluntarily."
She caught her bottom lip between her teeth in a gesture that he found dangerously enchanting. Steady on, he told himself firmly. She's just a kid, and you've got a job to do.
"No, I'm not a student. I decided to read through all of Joyce's works. So far I've finished Portrait and Dubliners; I'm reading Finnegans Wake next." There was a certain bashfulness about her, about the blush in her cheeks and the way she refused to look at him as she spoke, as if she were unused to people paying her attention.
"What the hell for?" Harry asked before he could stop himself.
That got her attention; she stopped fiddling with her apron, and fixed him with a pointed stare. "Do I have to have a reason? Is it so unthinkable that I might enjoy it?"
"No," Harry answered slowly. Shy, but defensive then; Harry was already compiling all the little details of their interaction, painting a portrait of the girl's character in his mind. That was part of the business of spying, weighing up every person he met, assessing their potential usefulness, searching for weaknesses. "It's just…well…it's Joyce, isn't it? All that stream of consciousness, hardly knowing what's real and what's imagined, and everything happens in Dublin. I had friends who studied literature at university –" my wife, for one, he added in his mind – "and they all complained rather bitterly about it."
"He once said if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal," the girl told him, as if that explained everything. The longer he stood there, gaping at her, the more he found to like about her, about her slender shoulders, the curve of her hips, her high, sharp cheekbones. She really was lovely, he realized; though at first she had faded into the backdrop of the pub behind her, now that he was close to her, now that he had witnessed the spark of life that burned within her, she became something else, something altogether more beautiful, and altogether more dangerous for that beauty.
"God is in the details," Harry mused, the words leaping from his mouth unbidden. He had studied philosophy, after all. As to whether he was commenting on Joyce or the details that composed the vision before him, well, he chose not to ponder that for too long.
"You're not a complete philistine, then," she said, smiling just a little. When Harry smiled back at her, she once more dropped her gaze, this time to the ledger book. Ostensibly she was searching for any signs of tea damage on the yellowed pages, but Harry rather got the sense that she found eye contact too confronting to maintain for any length of time.
"I'm a writer, actually," he told her, leaning across the desk and dropping his voice to a confidential whisper in a deliberate attempt to draw her out again, and maybe, just maybe, see quite how red her porcelain cheeks could get. He'd been in this pub for less than five minutes, and already he was playing with fire. It was a bad idea, and he knew it, but somehow he couldn't quite bring himself to stop.
She laughed, but it was a sad sound, somehow, a sound that spoke of a soul deeper and more unknowable than the sea itself, and though he did not know it yet, that was the moment he lost himself to her completely. "Aren't we all?" she said a bit wistfully.
And what the bloody hell was he supposed to say to that?
She spoke again, and saved him from himself. "Do you need something, Mister-?"
"Harrison," he said, giving his head a little shake and extending his hand to her. "James Harrison."
"Mr. Harrison," she said, dipping her head slightly in greeting as they shook. Her hand was small, her bones delicate and finely made, and something wrenched deep inside him when she pulled back from his grasp. She was cold to the touch, but Harry had warmth enough to spare, on this bleak midwinter's night.
Don't get too close, he warned himself.
With that in mind he took a physical step back from the desk, readjusting the rucksack on his shoulder.
"I've booked a room," he said.
The girl gave him another little nod and turned to the ledger book, running one finger down the page, her eyes roving endlessly until she found what she was searching for.
"Here we are," she said at last. "Room 214."
There was a series of pegs on the wall behind her, and she turned to them then, retrieving one old brass key.
"I'll take you up," she said, slipping out from behind the desk.
Harry followed along in her wake, forcing himself to keep his eyes on the ground, rather than lingering on the curve of her bottom, swaying deliciously in front of him. Keep it together, Pearce. You have a job to do.
