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Chapter One

Saturday, March the fourth, 1972.

Colleen McKibben opened her eyes. It was seven A.M. She rolled over and tried to get comfortable in the bed she shared with her husband, Davy. It was impossible. The eight and a half month foetus she was carrying had kept her awake for most of the night, as it had done almost every night for the past six weeks. The indigestion was murder but the five a side football matches were worse.

\"God, I wish this thing was out of me,\" she groaned. \"I'm only nineteen and I'm the size of a bloody house.\"

\"It's not a thing, it's a baby,\" Davy mumbled sleepily.

\"You should try carrying it around all day.\"

\"I will, when it's born.\"

\"I'll hold you to that.\" Colleen struggled out of bed and waddled into the bathroom.

\"Come back to bed,\" Davy called.

\"I can't,\" she sighed. \"I'm too uncomfortable. I'm going to lie in the bath for half an hour. I'll give you a shout when I need hauled out. You can phone the shipyard...\"

\"...and tell them to put a crane on standby,\" muttered Davy.

Her size was a standing joke between them. He turned over and snuggled into the warm space she had just left. He was about to become a father at twenty years old. It was a frightening prospect but an exciting one. It was funny how things turned out.

He and Colleen had been married for barely five months but they had been going out together for a year before that. They were alike in so many ways and so different in others. It had been commented upon often enough that they made a strikingly attractive couple She was dark with olive skin and deep brown eyes. Davy was fair with light brown, almost blond hair, and his eyes were deepest blue. At five feet ten he was four inches taller than Colleen and his school football playing background had given him a good build. But he came from a working class family while hers was very much middle. And he hadn't had the benefit of a grammar school education which Colleen claimed was useless anyway.

She could conjugate a Latin verb and trigonometry was second nature but she couldn't type or do shorthand, and since the better paid office jobs required secretarial skills, Colleen had ended up serving customers in Boots the Chemist with nine 'O' levels to her credit.

By contrast, Davy had attended a rough all boys secondary school where the discipline was harsh and the teachers' main aim was just to get through the day. Sport was encouraged, but education was far down the list of priority except for those in the 'A' stream. But nobody wanted to be in the 'A' stream. The boys in the 'A' stream were bullied and laughed at. Because of this, Davy had played down his natural intelligence and left school with a C.S.E. in metalwork and a certificate in basic car mechanics. It was enough to get him started as an apprentice motor mechanic which was what he had always wanted to do anyway. One more year and he would be fully qualified. He would be able to get a job anywhere. He could even start up his own garage.

McKibben and Sons had a nice ring to it. Or what about McKibben and Daughters. After all, this was the seventies. Maybe even McKibben and Family. Colleen said she wanted at least four kids. Davy smiled to himself and promptly fell asleep.


* * *

Deborah Paige had just finished cleaning her already spotless kitchen and was beginning to make breakfast when her husband, Jack emerged from their bedroom with a copy of last night's Belfast Telegraph tucked under his arm.

It was his usual Saturday morning routine to rise late, or as late as the roar of Deborah's vacuuming would allow, and stay closeted in the bathroom until the bathwater had run cold, his fingertips had crinkled, and he had read the paper from cover to cover. Reading a broadsheet in the bath was a talent which only a dedicated reader like Jack would be bothered to master. When he had finished he went into the bedroom and got dressed, folding his paper on the bed before tucking it under his arm and coming downstairs.

He read the news stories first to keep up with current affairs. He read the financial section next to keep up with the state of the economy. Jack was a middle management accountant with a long established textile firm in Belfast. He was good at his job. Good enough to have accounted that the firm was on it's way out of business. Which was why he pondered over the job section without much enthusiasm.

He didn't particularly like his job. At times he hated it. But at the age of forty five he considered himself too old to make a change. One accountancy job was pretty much like another and he was settled in the one he had. He had been in it for nearly twenty four years.

When he was a child he had dreams of becoming a racing driver. Motor cars fascinated him. His grandfather had owned what was then practically the only car in the district. It was a big black rattly thing with hard leather seats. It was more of an expensive novelty than a serious means of transport.

Sometimes his grandfather would let Jack sit on his knee and guide the steering wheel as he drove along the cobbled back streets. Jack loved it. The old man died when he was about eight or nine years old. He never knew what became of the car.

As an adolescent his interest switched to aeroplanes and he dreamed of becoming a pilot. Jack was the youngest boy among four girls. His father was a skilled tradesman who was often out of work. His mother was a talented seamstress, but she considered working for a living to be beneath her dignity. Subsequently they lived in genteel poverty supported by family charity in a large attic house on a main road in the north of the city. The prestigious address enabled his mother to maintain her notions of gentility and they were well clothed even if now and again food was scarce. They never actually went hungry, but fresh eggs for breakfast were a rarity and for Christmas they got an apple and an orange each.

When Jack was about twelve he suggested to his mother that he could start work in the local aviation factory as an apprentice when he was fourteen. He was told in no uncertain terms that Paige men did not work in factories. Jack thought she was stupid but didn't dare say so. How was he going to earn a living? They couldn't afford to keep him on at school. This was the late thirties. Work was scarce. There was even talk of war, and if war did break out the country would need all the aeroplanes they could make. Jack, for all his dreaming was a pragmatist and wise beyond his years.

Shortly afterwards his future was abruptly taken out of his hands. An elderly childless aunt on his father's side offered to pay for his education and since his school work was well above average, the offer was gracefully accepted.

His mother was largely self educated and had an almost sacred regard for learning, and his father was just pleased to let someone else take on the responsibility. Jack didn't have a say in the matter. He stayed at school until the age of fifteen and from there went on to Belfast Technical College and Queen's University. The war passed him by. Peace was declared three months before his eighteenth birthday. He was secretly relieved. He had no wish to be conscripted into a situation where he would be expected to kill people. He wasn't a pacifist. He supported the war against Germany as much as anybody. He just didn't want to become involved in it.

He gained his accountancy entrance exams and began work in an office which he hated from the first day. But as it turned out there were compensations. He met a beautiful redhead called Deborah and had ended up marrying her. He was never quite sure how it happened.

She became pregnant within a year. Jack was a bit shell shocked at first, especially when she decided to give up work. Two wages kept them in style. One just about got them by. But by the time Colleen was born he had passed his qualifying exams and had been given a promotion. Things were looking up. They intended having a large family. Jack loved kids. He wanted a boy. Deborah's family had a history of twins. They used to joke that the next time it would be one of each. There never were any more. It was a constant source of regret for both of them.

But Jack wasn't an unhappy man. He loved his wife and he knew that she loved him in her own way. He adored his daughter, he had learned to tolerate his job and he had no money worries. He had a nice home and a new car every three years. And he had his escape. Some men played golf and some went to the pub. Others spent hours in potting sheds doing God alone knew what. Jack read. He read books, usually two or three a week. And he read the classifieds.

When he had finished the financial section he read the personal ads., the legal notices, and when he had mulled for long enough over the prices of second hand cars and dreamed of owning an old banger he could tinker with, he turned to the death notices to check if anyone he knew had failed to notify him of their sudden demise.

More and more often lately he was reading of people who had lost their lives as a result of this latest resurgence of violence. It saddened and dismayed him. Jack couldn't understand the need for violence in a civilised society. He didn't suffer from any notions of tribal identity either. As far as Jack was concerned, people were people the world over and it was a tragedy when anyone lost their lives before their time.

He understood the religious differences which had plagued Ireland for centuries, but having arrived at an understanding with his own personal God a long time ago, he found it difficult to fathom why everyone else couldn't do the same. Politics was one thing but to kill people in the name of religion was surely a contradiction in terms. In Jack's opinion there was no cause, religious or political that was worth killing for much less dying for. Wars between nations were sometimes a necessary evil even in the twentieth century, but this was not a war. It was urban terrorism. There was a huge difference.

It frightened him. Not personally. No bomber, rioter or gunman could threaten his stoic tranquillity and he would question the wisdom of any band of terrorists who had the bad judgement to try and stop Deborah going about her business. It was for Colleen that he feared. For her future and for the future of his grandchild.

It was a bad time. A strange time, because when daylight fell on each new morning everything appeared normal until the news broadcast of the previous night's riots brought a reminder that everything was far from normal and the memory of the crack, crack, crack of gunfire that had serenaded him to sleep became fresh in his mind.

The drive to work often by passed boarded up shop fronts and burned out vehicles, but at five thirty on the way home, the streets had been miraculously cleared and the shop windows re-glazed. Business as usual. The illusion of normality returned. People clung to the mirage and retreated into the banal routine of their lives, hoping that whatever terror others had faced the previous evening would not touch them.

Pretend it doesn't exist and maybe it will go away. Even the Government seemed to be taking that attitude, thought Jack as he made his way down the staircase of the three bedroom semi that Deborah had chosen to be their home fifteen years ago when he could barely afford the mortgage payments.

He walked into the kitchen. \"Morning, Dear.\" He kissed his wife on the cheek as he did every morning. It was a brief embrace, the kind that couples who have been together for twenty years or more, use to reaffirm their affection for each other when the physical side of their relationship has long since lost it's sparkle.

He sat down at the table. A fried breakfast was the traditional Sunday morning fare in Northern Ireland. One needed substantial sustenance to stomach the kind of firebrand preaching favoured in the churches these days. Deborah, not being of a religious persuasion, gave Jack his fried breakfast on Saturday morning. She reckoned he needed it to stomach her Saturday afternoon shopping trips and the resulting dent in his bank balance. She set the plate down in front of him.

\"Where's the mushrooms?\" asked Jack.

Deborah glanced at him curiously. \"But you don't like mushrooms,\" she replied automatically.

\"Just checking.\" Their eyes met. Jack's twinkled. Deborah looked away and smiled to herself. It was an old routine from their courting days. Every time she made him a meal and he sat down to eat it he would say, \"Where's the parsnips?\" or \"where's the mustard?\" and she would say that he didn't like parsnips or mustard or whatever it was. He would always reply, \"Just checking.\"

She gazed at her husband from the relative safety of the kitchen sink. There was a tear in her eye and she didn't know why. Furtively she wiped it away. She wasn't normally an emotional woman, but as she watched her husband tucking into his breakfast, she was suddenly so glad she had married him.

She could have had anyone. She had been casually stepping out with Tom, a tall good-looking office manager for several months when she first noticed Jack. He was sitting at a desk pouring over a massive ledger book and looked so quiet and serious that she almost felt sorry for him. He looked as though he wouldn't know how to have fun, and having fun was Deborah's main preoccupation in those days. She dismissed him immediately.

But over the next few weeks they seemed to keep bumping into each other, and as Deborah got to know Jack more and more, she discovered that his serious demeanour hid a wicked sense of humour and a quiet self confidence that far outstripped her own extrovert personality. One day she suddenly realised that she was dangerously infatuated with a smallish dark haired accountant who wore badly fitting off-the-peg suits and had the twinkliest brown eyes she had ever seen.

It took her three weeks to get him to ask her out, a further two months before they were officially courting, six more weeks to get him into bed, -nice girls didn't- and in two days she had a ring on her finger. They were married six months later.

On her way down the aisle Deborah cried tears of confusion and wondered if she was making the biggest mistake of her life. Infatuation and love were too different things and she had already fallen out of infatuation with Jack. At that point she liked and respected him. She just wasn't sure that she loved him.

As they emerged from the church that day to showers of rice and smiling faces, she realised that she didn't have a choice. She had made her metaphorical bed and would quite literally have to lie in it. She was so glad that she had. She had grown to love him deeply. The fact that they couldn't have any more children after Colleen, instead of driving a wedge between them as so often happened, had just drawn them closer together.

Jack hadn't changed at all over the years. He was still the most sensitive man she had ever known. If he had changed it was only in looks. Age had been kind to him. He still had a full head of hair with just a little grey at the temples. He had grown a moustache and good food and contentment had filled out his wiry frame so that these days his tailored suits fitted him perfectly.

Three months ago she had bumped into Tom the office manager in a department store. She didn't recognise him at first. She got the shock of her life when she did. He was fat, bald and just downright old. She had heard on the grapevine that he was currently on his second wife and his third mistress. She thanked her lucky stars that she had made the best choice after all. It was funny how things turned out.

\"I'm going into town with Colleen this morning,\" she said conversationally. \"Is there anything you need?\"

\"Hmmn,\" Jack ruminated thoughtfully. \"There's a new Alistair Maclean novel out.\"

Deborah tut-tutted. \"Honestly, Jack! Why can't you go to the library like anyone else. I can't hoover your side of the bed properly for books all over the place. And I got you that Arthur Hailey one last week.\"

\"I finished it last night.\" Deborah couldn't understand his passion for books. He didn't just like to read them. He liked to own them, put them up on shelves and admire them. The ones he really liked he read over and over again. He always forgot the ending. It was probably an inherited trait from his mother. She had been and still was, failing eyesight permitting, a voracious reader. She taught him to read when he was three years old and from then on there was no stopping him. She used to laugh and say, \"Our Jack would read toilet paper if there was print on it.\" Which there very often was. Nothing was wasted in those days. Not even the Belfast Telegraph.

Deborah had never in her life read anything more taxing than \"Woman's Own.\" Jack thought she was missing out on one of life's greatest pleasures. She thought he wasted a lot of valuable wallpapering time. But she would buy him the book and probably one or two others. She always did.

\"Why are you dragging that poor girl around the shops anyway? She's about to give birth. You don't want your grandchild born in the middle of Anderson and Macauley's, do you?\" Then again, thought Jack. Given the amount of time, not to mention money that Deborah spent in Anderson and Macauley's department store, it would probably be entirely appropriate. He decided it was best to keep the thought to himself.

\"She needs things,\" Deborah replied.

\"How can she need things?\" spluttered Jack. He forced down a mouthful of bacon and soda bread. \"You've bought her everything already. That kid is going to be the best dressed, best equipped, best upholstered and best perambulated kid in town!\"

Deborah looked conciliatory. \"She needs things for herself. Women's things.\"

As she intended, the term \"women's things\" stopped Jack in his tracks. Jack, who was theoretically better versed in the workings of the female body than perhaps even his wife, dared not question the mystical significance of \"women's things\". He made a conscious decision to eat the rest of his breakfast in relative silence. Twenty years of marriage had taught him that it was ultimately pointless disagreeing with Deborah.

\"It's right and proper that we should provide for our grandchild,\" Deborah continued.

\"Yes, Dear.\"

\"You wouldn't want Colleen to want for anything.\"

\"No, Dear.\"

\"Our daughter is used to certain standards.\"

\"Yes, Dear.\"

\"And that layabout she married isn't going to provide them, that's for sure.\"

\"There's not a damned thing wrong with Davy and well you know it!\" Jack's silence was forcibly broken. He liked Davy immensely and instinctively and he hated the way Deborah went on and on about the boy.

\"He'll never amount to anything,\" she snorted. \"I've never known what she sees in him. Why couldn't she have been interested in that nice young boy from across the road who's studying to be a lawyer?\"

Jack sighed. The unspoken truth was that Davy bore more than a passing resemblance to Tom the office manager at the same age, although they were as different in personality as night and day. Deborah probably couldn't help make a comparison. Jack thought it was some kind of irrational mother/daughter jealousy thing. He was well aware that for some time after they were married Deborah had held something of a candle for Tom. It never bothered him. Why should it?

\"There's nothing wrong with Davy,\" he said. \"He works hard and he'll look after her.\"

\"Jack, he's a motor mechanic...\" She said it in the same horrified tone she might have used had she been describing him as bank robber or a child molester.

\"Oh don't be such a snob, Deborah.\" Jack poured himself a cup of tea and she flashed him her \"last word on the subject\" look. It was a warning not to bring up her own background which was what he usually did at this point. Deborah had no business criticising Davy. Her father had been a labourer in the shipyard and her mother had cleaned other peoples' houses for a living. It was something she liked to forget. In that respect she was just like his own mother. Why did women need to give themselves such airs and graces, wondered Jack. At least Colleen wasn't like that. If she had been she would have been interested in \"that nice young boy from across the road\" whom Jack strongly suspected was a raving queer. He would have told Deborah of his suspicions but he didn't like to disillusion her.

He swallowed the rest of his tea and set down his cup. They had had this conversation too many times before. Deborah was never going to like the fact that Davy was a mechanic although she did grudgingly admit to a growing fondness for him. She was undoubtedly a snob at heart. Maybe she had her reasons.

Jack slunk up behind her and slid his arms around her waist. Sometimes it surprised him how much he still fancied her after twenty years. It shouldn't. His wife was an attractive woman. She was about a stone heavier than she had been on their wedding day, her red hair had been tamed by regular rinses of \"light ash blonde\" and her face was lined with laughter and the effects of thirty cigarettes a day. She was still beautiful in Jack's eyes. He nuzzled the side of her neck.

\"The kids love each other. Don't you remember what it's like?\"

\"I remember what it was like having no money,\" she sniffed. \"I remember being nine years old and going hungry. Love doesn't put food on the table.\"

\"But it makes the world go around.\"

She dried her hands on a tea towel and turned around. She smiled. \"You always were an old romantic, Jack Paige. Haven't I taught you anything?\"

\"No.\" He kissed her softly. \"Let's go back to bed.\"

\"It's ten o'clock on a Saturday morning!\"

\"So?\"

\"But it's ten o'clock in the morning!\"

\"So?\"

\"Colleen will be here at half eleven.\"

His eyes twinkled. \"An hour and a half...\"

She smiled girlishly. \"Jack Paige, you haven't made such an indecent suggestion since...\"

\"Since too long,\" he finished.

* * *

The Dublin train was on time. Saturday shoppers and day trippers spilled out through the double doors onto the pavement. Janet searched through the faces of the milling mass of people for her passenger. This was her first proper job since she had been accepted into the organisation seven months ago and she was excited beyond belief. She had spent the past week pumping everyone she could for the smallest detail of information about her illustrious passenger. She had spent hours in the university library going over old newspaper reports of his alleged exploits. No one in her close circle had ever met him, but they all had a story to tell. To a select few he was infamous. The general public weren't even aware of his existence.

Janet didn't understand that the organisation was using her. She didn't understand that in using her own car with her own driving documents, she was putting herself at risk. Vehicle checkpoints were situated on practically every road leading into and out of the city. She didn't understand that her car could be traced and that her movements would be documented if she was stopped. She didn't understand that she would take the fall if anything went wrong. She understood very little. She was an archaeology student.

She scanned the crowd. He wasn't hard to spot. It was obvious he was ex-British army although it was sixteen years since he last served. It still showed in his bearing. All that square bashing made them walk with an exaggerated puff cheasted swagger which the street hoods tried to copy. You could tell a British soldier a mile off even in civilian clothes. Janet experienced an instinctive feeling of loathing. It passed in an instant. This one was different. He wasn't one of the raw, smooth faced recruits who had been drafted in to patrol the streets of her city. He wasn't wearing British army khakis three sizes too big for him and he wasn't carrying a rifle and a back pack. He didn't look scared and out of his depth like most of the Brit boys she so despised did. He was a man. A man who fought for her cause. She drove up to the door of the station and parked beside the row of taxis. Her heart was doing double time in her chest.

He was dressed in flared jeans and a black leather jacket. He carried a black leather Gladstone bag. He didn't look like the photographs she had seen. He had a moustache and his hair was longer. He was much better looking in real life. Of course she knew she would find him attractive. Perhaps she was even a little bit in love with him. She certainly felt as though she knew him personally. The one thing she didn't know about him was his real name. He was known by the nickname, Desert Fox.

He was thirty nine years old and had joined the organisation in nineteen seventy. He had quickly become a hero among the rank and file because of his talent with explosives. The irony of the fact that he had gained his expertise at the expense of the British tax payer was lost on none of them.

Nobody was quite sure whether he worked for the Republican cause or for the generous allowance paid anonymously into a secret bank account in England. It didn't matter. This latest incarnation of the Irish Republican Army was still in it's infancy and good bombers were hard to find.

Janet had spent hours trying to analyse his motivation. Like most, she didn't believe he was a fanatic. He was too methodical. He had caused some of the worst economic bombing disasters to date, with no deaths and few, if any injuries. It was never his intention to kill. He didn't believe it was necessary, a view not shared by his superiors. But he played their game by his rules. Money was no object. Weapons and explosives could be got by the container load. Foot soldiers and fanatics were ten a penny. Expertise was thin on the ground.

His involvement had apparently finished his marriage. He was estranged from his wife and had been living in England for the past two years.

He walked straight over to the car without a glance to either side. He opened the passenger door. \"Janet?\"

\"Yes.\"

\"Just drive and don't bore me with chatter,\" he said. His face was grim. He got into the car and squeezed the bag down on the floor between his legs.

Janet drove off, biting her tongue. Her hero worship was somewhat dented. At least he could be civil to her. After all, they had to spend most of the day together.

She was a country girl. She had arrived in Belfast two years before to study at Queen's University. Quiet and shy to begin with, she first got involved in politics as a way of expanding her social life. Soon she was attending rallies and marches. Her studies suffered and her tutors despaired at her sudden drop in attendance at lectures, but she didn't care. Life was a crazy mix of parties, demonstrations and deep philosophical conversations till the sun came up. Instigating a riot was cool and getting arrested was cause for celebration. An injury from a rubber bullet was a badge of honour. It was an ex-boyfriend who had introduced her to the organisation.

Now the Cause was everything. Bernadette was her role model. In a culture where Mary Quant and Biba ruled, how a woman so unattractive and aggressively unglamorous as Bernadette, could achieve such status as a member of the British Parliament was singularly inspiring. Especially to a girl as plain as Janet undoubtedly was. Neither Mary Quant nor Biba could have done anything for her. Her hair was lank and nondescript brown. She had small eyes and a large mouth with crooked teeth. She had long since given up trying to look like Twiggy.

She stole a quick glance at her passenger. He hadn't said a word. They had travelled north west of the city for about three miles. They were heading up into the mountains to an old derelict farmhouse, a \"safe house\" which was to be their base. They arrived ten minutes later.Janet parked the car in the dilapidated courtyard. Her passenger got out and looked around.
\"It's not too bad inside,\" she enthused. He shot her a look of disdain. \"No, really. Wait till we get inside.\" She took a bunch of keys from her bag and began unlocking a series of rusty padlocks on the door. The door opened on creaking hinges.

The white stone walled interior of the cottage was clean and quite quaint. In the centre of the room was a functional table and two sturdy chairs. A fire was set in an open grate. Although the front windows were boarded up, enough light shone through a window in the back wall, which showed a view of an overgrown garden. On the left were two doors. One led to a kitchen which wouldn't have looked out of place in a folk museum, the other to a bedroom containing an old brass bedstead with a rough horsehair mattress.

\"Where's the bathroom?\" he asked.

\"Go through the kitchen.\"

He came back a few moments later. \"It's a bucket!\"

\"What did you expect? Five star luxury?\"

He shook his head and shrugged. \"A flush toilet would be nice.\"

She flung herself down on an old sofa.\"What do I call you?\"

He shrugged again. \"John?\"

\"Like Janet and John in the old school reading books,\" she giggled.

\"Quite.\"

He had a nice voice when he spoke. She watched him as he placed his bag on the table and took off his jacket. He had a nice body too. Her hero worship was restored. She indulged in a silent fantasy where he suddenly grabbed her passionately and threw her roughly across the horsehair mattress...Instead he opened his bag and began to take things out.

Janet watched in awed fascination. She moved over and sat across from him. \"Wow,\" she said fingering in stick of gelignite. \"It's soft, like plasticine.\" He took it from her. \"It isn't for playing with.\"

She shrugged, nonplussed. What's the alarm clock for?\"

\"It's a timing device.\"

\"But it's just an ordinary wind up alarm clock.\"

He fixed her with a look of exasperation. \"Where did they get you?\" he sneered. \"I suppose you're one of those \"soldier blankets\" they've recruited to lure the poor bastards to their deaths? Poor sex starved Brits will jump anything I suppose.\"

\"Excuse me!\" she snapped. \"I have never slept with a British soldier for any reason. Not even to set him up. I'm not a whore!\" She pronounced it \"hooer\".

His eyes danced with cynical laughter though his expression was serious. He had no reason to be nasty to the girl. He was just in a nasty mood and she just happened to be there. If she wasn't so unattractive he might have been tempted to give her a quick one across the table. He still might. He didn't care either way. \"What else do you do for the cause?\" he asked. You profess to be a Republican. You hate the British yet you wouldn't use your body to entice one of their soldiers to his death? Why not? You wouldn't even have to pull the trigger...\"

Her face froze in a frown. She was too stupid to realise he was teasing her. \"It isn't like that,\" she replied, shaking her head. \"You make it sound so sordid. We don't kill people out of hatred. It's a war. We're a downtrodden people fighting for our civil rights. For justice and freedom from centuries of British oppression.\"

He laughed outright. \"And what are you going to do with all this justice and freedom when you get it?\" Janet looked blank. \"You want to live under the flag of the Irish Republic, right?\" he continued. She stared, transfixed. The sound of his voice was doing magical dances up and down her spine.

\"Will I tell you what life would be like in your mythical United Ireland?\" She nodded. He spoke without passion in a calm controlled voice, all the while working at the spread out paraphernalia on the table.

\"I'll tell you what it's like at the minute,' he said. \"I lived in Dublin for two years. There are no jobs. There's no industry and there's no money. Social security is grossly inadequate. The Catholic church has a stranglehold and the government is weak. Censorship is extreme. You can't get books or see films. There's no contraception, no divorce and the sexual repression is unbelievable. The priests molest choirboys and the men fuck their daughters until they reach puberty because their wives are too shagged out from having sixteen kids in as many years to bother any more. Does that sound like paradise?\"

\"B...but it wouldn't be like that...\" Janet stammered, torn between wanting to believe every beautifully modulated word and balking at the possibility of the awful truth behind them.

\"No,\" he said a moment later. \"I'm too harsh. I love the South. The people are wonderful and it's the most beautiful country in the world.\" He drilled a tiny hole in the face of the alarm clock just beside the figure two. \"It's the Catholic church I hate, particularly their priests,\"

\"Why?\"

He looked up and smiled, a smile so disarming that Janet nearly swooned. \"Because they frighten little children.\"

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