Acts of Allegiance Read online

  Praise for Acts of Allegiance

  “A wonderful brew of a book about politics, family, violence, love, betrayal—life, in other words. Peter Cunningham has written a winner.”

  —John Banville, Man Booker Prize–winning author of The Book of Evidence and The Sea

  “Peter Cunningham is a writer of great gifts.”

  —Barry Unsworth, Man Booker Prize–winning author of Sacred Hunger and The Quality of Mercy

  “Masterful … This is an intricately structured novel. It is also a timely novel … a sharp reminder of what evil can be done in the name of good.”

  —Irish Times

  “Robustly entertaining … There is something of a blood brothers yarn in the opening chapters. … It kicks into life and is still twisting and turning with major narrative developments in the last pages. A satisfying read.”

  —Irish Examiner

  “An exciting tale of espionage, infidelity, family secrets and betrayal … It’s a satisfying read that fans of the spy genre will enjoy.”

  —Independent

  “Acts of Allegiance is that rare find that manages to combine literary lyricism with a satisfyingly propulsive, airtight plot. It is a crackling tale of espionage, state secrets, and betrayal, taking us on a devastating tour past the landmark events of the Troubles; through Bloody Sunday and sinister figures. … Yet at its heart, this is a reflective novel centered around one man’s conflicted self and search for his father. … An intriguing excavation of how the personal and the political can tragically collide.”

  —Totally Dublin

  Also by Peter Cunningham

  The Trout

  Copyright © 2017 by Peter Cunningham

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Arcade Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

  First North American Edition 2018

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.

  First published by Sandstone Press Ltd. in the United Kingdom

  “Alone Again (Naturally)” written by Gilbert O’Sullivan. Published by SonyATV Music Publishing / Grand Upright Music Ltd. Lyrics reproduced with the kind permission of Gilbert O’Sullivan.

  Arcade Publishing books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Arcade Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018 or [email protected].

  Arcade Publishing® is a registered trademark of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.®, a Delaware corporation.

  Visit our website at www.arcadepub.com.

  Visit the author’s website at www.petercunninghambooks.com.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Cunningham, Peter, 1947– author.

  Title: Acts of allegiance: a novel / Peter Cunningham.

  Description: First North American edition. | New York: Arcade Publishing, 2018.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018017367 (print) | LCCN 2018017499 (ebook) | ISBN 9781628729566 (ebook) | ISBN 9781628729535 (hardcover: alk. paper)

  Subjects: LCSH: Political violence—Northern Ireland—History—20th century—Fiction. | Northern Ireland—Politics and government—1968–1998—Fiction. | Irish Republican Army—Fiction. | GSAFD: Political fiction | Historical fiction

  Classification: LCC PR6062.A778 (ebook) | LCC PR6062.A778 A75 2018 (print) | DDC 823/.914—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018017367

  Cover design by Erin Seaward-Hiatt

  Cover photograph: Keystone Pictures USA / Alamy Stock Photo

  Printed in the United States of America

  In memory

  PFC

  and

  RCAC and MFC

  Looking back over the years

  And whatever else that appears

  I remember I cried when my father died

  Never wishing to hide the tears

  And at sixty-five years old

  My mother, God rest her soul

  Couldn’t understand why the only man

  She had ever loved had been taken

  Leaving her to start with

  A heart so badly broken

  Despite encouragement from me

  No words were ever spoken

  And when she passed away

  I cried and cried all day

  Alone again, naturally

  Gilbert O’Sullivan

  PROLOGUE

  GUELPH LINE, CAMPBELLVILLE, ONTARIO

  The Recent Past

  He calls it the explosion. Not the bomb, or the outrage. The explosion. He always describes it in the same way: an ear-sucking frenzy that bursts from shops and houses and lacerates the air. A towering force in which bicycles and books are bizarrely suspended. He recounts how he is rammed face down to the road, how the earth tilts sharply, like the deck of a listing ship, so that he feels he is slipping off, and grabs at the egg-smeared cobbles to save himself. He describes how his ears whine at high pitch, and how, when he regains his feet, choking, he can hear distant geese in fright, and only gradually realises they are house alarms. His account of how he stumbles through the slabs of dust—blood in his mouth, never wanting to arrive, reciting old prayers, begging for mercy—is always the same.

  She listens respectfully, as if hearing it all for the first time; then, gently, they resume.

  They follow a routine. After breakfast, they sit, she at her writing table, he in his armchair overlooking the garden. He speaks and she transcribes in her commendably neat hand; following which, they eat the lunch she has prepared, and then he naps. Afterwards, in the afternoon, she reads to him what she transcribed earlier. Later, they go out on to the deck at the back, beside the unused swimming pool, and sit together with a drink.

  Some mornings, they are interrupted in their tasks, for example, when the intercom sounds—a loud peremptory buzzing, the signal from the security people up on the road that a food delivery has arrived; or that the pool-cleaning contractor is on his way down; or that the taxi bearing Maria Fernanda, who cleans on Saturday mornings, will shortly appear. Three sets of locks secure the door, and they have to be opened one by one. But only after the intercom has sounded. That is the procedure.

  Part I

  1

  WATERLOO FARM—NOT FAR FROM WATERFORD SOUTH-EAST IRELAND

  Summer 1964

  The sound of tennis being played in the Irish countryside in July was infinitely reassuring. I lay in the hammock, a newspaper on my face, hearing the pock-pock-pock, and the voices that followed the conclusion of a point, and their light laughter. Then, if I pointed my senses, like a sniper, I could fasten upon bees in the fuchsias, a tractor turning hay a mile away, and the fussy murmur of the stream as it oozed downhill beyond the tennis court and into the lake.

  ‘I do believe that was out, Sugar!’

  ‘I saw chalk, Christopher.’

  ‘I saw no chalk—but very well. Your point.’

  Christopher had been trying to beat Sugar for years, and had carried her racquets when she had played as a junior at Wimbledon. His father, a medical man, had relocated from Ireland to a practice in Devon before the war; now Christopher worked for a bank in London, where, it seemed, promotion eluded him.

  Tinkling cups meant that Alison was approaching. Large, jolly and pretty, Alison was as dynamic as Christopher wa
s not. She had brought an inheritance to their marriage, a fact that Christopher, when drunk, sometimes guffawed about.

  ‘Two sets to love down and still he won’t give in,’ she said.

  I sat up. ‘I’ve given up trying to beat her.’

  ‘Christopher’s been trying since he was six.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I’m not waiting for them,’ she said and began to pour.

  Christopher and Alison were staying with us, as they had previously, on their way to their holiday home in County Kerry. Sometimes, when my mind was elsewhere, I looked up and found Alison inspecting me, but her instant smile forgave everything, and those moments, whatever they were, always passed.

  ‘How’s the job?’ She picked up her cup and saucer and sat on the hammock beside me.

  ‘A lot of pen-pushing.’

  ‘But you like it.’

  ‘Who could possibly like a job that involves negotiating tariffs?’

  ‘Mindless, I know.’

  ‘I do it for the money.’

  ‘As do we all.’

  ‘All I think about is how I can manage to get back here permanently.’

  ‘Who wouldn’t adore this?’ she said.

  Her MP father had once chaired a Commons committee inquiring into ground rents, and Alison’s first job had been as his researcher, she had told me when we’d first met, three years before. I could understand how, having arrived that summer in Ireland for the first time, Alison would have seen us no differently to other families she would have known, in Berkshire or Somerset, the lovely setting of house and lands little different to those in England, the economy casting shadows over conversations. Ireland seemed nothing like a foreign country to her; yet the fact that it was clearly intrigued her.

  ‘We don’t really know much about you lot, do we?’ was a remark I remembered. It was a general comment, embracing the English on the one hand, and the Irish on the other, but it could also have meant something more specific.

  ‘You should talk to Christopher.’

  ‘Oh, God, he knows nothing.’

  It was true, for Christopher was hopeless when it came to Ireland, having been brought up in a world of attitudes where one pretended to know little about Irish politics, and in Christopher’s case the pretence was unnecessary. From then on, in summer, when the Chases and their two girls came to stay, our conversations were designed by Alison to provide her with insights into Ireland. That we each worked for a government made us one of a kind, even if the most I learned of her job was that she was employed in some capacity by the Home Office.

  Thick wedges of insects hovered above the lake, each wedge a tumultuous universe. From the summerhouse, Nurse Fleming, our nanny, emerged, pushing our little son in his pram, with Alison’s two girls skipping alongside.

  ‘Christopher loves it here,’ Alison said. ‘I think he regrets his father ever left.’

  ‘We all want to go back to our childhood, or so they say.’

  ‘Sometimes when he’s had too much to drink, he says that, if he’d stayed, he would have married Sugar.’

  ‘Then what would you and I have done?’ I heard myself ask.

  As the hammock swung gently, its motion governed by my heels, and Alison stuck out her legs and kicked off her shoes, I felt my ears occluding the way they always did in the presence of danger.

  ‘An interesting thought,’ she said, leaning back, and allowing me to feel her warm thigh. From the partly hidden lake, by a miracle of acoustics, came the sound of wine being poured into a glass.

  ‘They’ve gone out in the punt,’ she said drowsily.

  I didn’t respond, but neither did I draw away, which was in itself my reply to the simple message she wished to convey, our little secret suddenly hatched. But much more than just physical attraction was at work, for I knew then, and with a transfixing jolt, that Alison understood me.

  ‘Oh, by the way,’ she said, as if she had just remembered, ‘I met a chap the other day who says he knows you.’

  I could barely hear her as my head spun. ‘Really?’

  ‘Vance—can’t remember his first name. Reddish hair, amusing. Said you were at school together.’

  ‘Vance,’ I said and drank my tea.

  ‘We were discussing summer holidays, and when I mentioned Ireland, he said, “I was at school with someone from Ireland who lives in mountains near the south-east coast.” Had to be you.’

  ‘What does … Vance … do with himself?’

  ‘Foreign Office, I believe.’

  From the water came the edge-clear voices of Christopher and Sugar, and the splash of oars as he rowed and she cast. I sat in the ebbing light, more miserable than I had ever been.

  ‘Are you happy, Marty?’

  I could not bring myself to look at her. ‘You mean …?’

  ‘I’m not trying to seduce you. I mean, generally, is it all making sense for you? Are you fulfilled in your work? Are you in the place you really want to be?’

  The tide of my heart lapped. ‘I sometimes feel … ’

  ‘Go on.’

  I suddenly wanted to talk about my father, which I knew was pathetic; to explain the standards and values I had been brought up to believe in; to describe the great unsatisfied yearning in my heart and the emptiness in which I partly lived. I knew, I just knew, she would understand it if I told her that, despite having a good job and being married to a beautiful woman, there were aspects of my life in which I was abjectly lonely. But how could I tell a near stranger that I needed something I could hardly begin to explain?

  ‘Oh, it’s just nonsense,’ I said. ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘I think I understand,’ she said quietly, ‘and I think I can help you.’

  I laughed, a little too loudly.

  ‘Help you do the right thing,’ she said. ‘The right thing for you. I can give your life the meaning I think it needs.’

  My terror and exhilaration surged so strongly, side by side, that I felt dizzy.

  ‘There’s really nothing to worry about, you know,’ Alison said. ‘Trust me. No one will ever know.’

  Nurse Fleming was bringing the child over to say goodnight.

  ‘I … think we should join the others,’ I said.

  As we got up, a coot scampered across a wad of lily pads and left them heaving in its wake.

  2

  FOOTHILLS ON THE WAY TO WATERFORD

  Even as a child, I could savour the constituent parts of each furlong of the journey to Waterford. It began with the departure from Waterloo’s inner yard, the undertone of bantam hens in the hayloft, the crunch of tyres on gravel, all too brief, for I was ever seized at that moment by the sweet sorrow of departure, by the dread of leaving all I knew and loved.

  The drive that lay ahead—an itinerary laid down from my infancy—squeezed me gently from the house and its surroundings. A little bridge crossed the lake neck, and, without warning, as it were, for each time it seemed a surprise, we were climbing steeply, and as I looked back I could see the lake far below, pellucid in summer light, dazzling and unique.

  As soon as sight of Waterloo was lost, we began to cross the long, sandy ridge, car windows down, broom scent around us, the antics of rabbits as sideshows. Often, it rained without warning, a completely local event; in fact, on those days we did not encounter a shower on the way to Waterford we took it as a bad omen, for showers in the foothills always foretold sunshine in the town below. At this point, I could never resist lighting a cigarette, a ritual within a ritual, something my father had always done, and the scent of tobacco in that setting brought the old man back for an instant, like a genie.

  At the ridge end, now quietly rising, the twinkling river mouth brimmed into view. As a child, I had thought of this as a moving picture, which was intensely exciting, for with each new revolution the vista grew below us, and the bright green of the mountain drained into a darker, deeper colour, almost blue, as it swooped down to meet the cluster of the town and the river. We always pulle
d in then, since the high walls of the rock fissure in which we now paused—which we called the ‘Door’, because it seemed to divide one world from another—was thick with gorse, which in summer drenched our senses as we perched, reluctant to leave but at the same time excited by what lay ahead.

  We began to roll down through the ever-changing shades and glinting light made by mountain rivulets flowing through heather. If my father was at the wheel, he always cut the car’s engine at this point, to save petrol, and we freewheeled, making each time a test of skill to see how far the car could be urged forward without the engine, the railway station being generally accepted as the limit of possibility.

  3

  FOWLER STREET, WATERFORD SOUTH-EAST IRELAND

  November 1951

  From the gardens behind the houses in Fowler Street, an aspect could be enjoyed over steeples and huddled roofs to the uplifting expanse of the River Suir, and beyond it into County Kilkenny.

  ‘Optimism is hard to find nowadays,’ said Bobby Gillece.

  Although he had removed his topcoat, Bobby preferred to stand, one boot in the hall, leaning on the door jamb to the sitting room. Everyone, me included, knew what was really on Bobby’s mind, because he kept glancing to the street door, his flourishing ginger moustache twitching like a cat’s whiskers.

  ‘No money around for anything,’ he said.

  ‘Run for the Corporation and you’ll skate in,’ said the Gent with several nods of his shining head. ‘Skate in.’

  Dying light filtered through the net curtain turning Granny Kane into a watchful corpse.

  ‘The whole ward will vote for you,’ the Gent scowled, defying anyone to disagree.

  The week before, my parents had taken the steamer from Waterford to Fishguard, en route to London, for what my father had described as an urgent business trip. Waterloo had been boarded and locked, the staff had been sent home and I had been taken out of school and sent to stay with Granny Kane.

  ‘The war put us on our knees, and we weren’t even in it,’ said Bobby Gillece, shifting to make way for Auntie Angela as she carried through a laden tea tray. ‘Although maybe now we should have been.’