Pray for Us Sinners by Patrick Taylor Read Free Book Online

of skills.
    That was Fiona Kavanagh. A strong woman who thought for herself and, when her mind was made up, was as hard to shift as the Mourne Mountains. He’d first found that out about six weeks after they had met, when, stumbling over the words, he asked her to marry him. She laughed, a throaty sound, melodious as the mouth music of the Hebrides. She said they were as good as married, and now that he’d asked, she’d move in with him, but—but they wouldn’t need the dreary mumblings of some priest. She said something about “bourgeois conventions.” He hadn’t been quite sure what she meant, but he never raised the subject of marriage again.
    She’d come to Conway Street, bringing her possessions and her ginger kitten, McCusker. He was a big tomcat now, curled up asleep under the table.
    When had it all started to go wrong? Davy McCutcheon knew the answer: when he joined the Provos. She’d not said much at first, grudgingly accepting his explanation that the PIRA’s job was to defend the Catholic ghettoes.
    When Ó Brádaigh and MacStiofáin and the rest of Army Council had decided that the Provos could go on the offensive, she began to wonder aloud how Davy could work with “a bunch of unprincipled killers.”
    It had come to a head the night of the Abercorn bombing, March 4, 1972. Nearly two years ago. The Provos had left a bomb under a table in the popular restaurant in the Cornmarket in central Belfast. Two patrons were killed and more than 100 wounded.
    She’d been sitting with him in the little front parlour when she put down the Telegraph, looked straight at him, and said, “Davy, I wish you’d get out.”
    He shook his head. “I can’t. Not now.”
    â€œWhy not, Davy?”
    â€œBecause I’ve gone too far to turn back. I owe it to my da. I owe it to myself. Anyway, we’re going to win. We have to win.”
    â€œBy killing innocent people? Look at this, for God’s sake.” She tried to hand him the newspaper.
    â€œNo.” He turned to her, held her shoulders in his big hands. “By beating the British army.” Her eyes were black in the dim light, black and soft as ripe damsons, and yet he’d seen a hardness there. A hardness he had never seen before.
    She’d hesitated, then said, “I don’t think I can go on living with you, Davy. Not unless you leave the Provos.”
    â€œWhat?” She might as well have slapped his face.
    â€œI mean it.”
    â€œJesus, Fiona.”
    They talked for hours, and she went back on her threat, told him she loved him too much. And he held her, kissed her, and caressed her until her breathing had quickened and she’d thrust herself against him. On the sofa. The pair of them like kids in the backseat of a car.
    She didn’t mention leaving again and made no open criticism of his PIRA work, and Davy had buried the once-spoken threat, almost forgotten it.
    Until last night.
    Davy leaned back in his chair. He stared at the photograph of Fiona laughing on a beach. She was thirty-four when the snap had been taken. Before the Troubles. Before the first streaks of silver had appeared in her shiny black hair. Och, Fiona.
    Everything from last night was in his head, jumbled like the tinsel in a kaleidoscope, but making clear patterns—patterns he did not wish to stare at.
    She’d been very quiet after supper. Hadn’t wanted to talk about what her kids had done in class, the daily activities she called her “infants’ efforts.”
    Finally, he asked her, “What’s up, love?”
    She paused for a long time, then said, “Did you read about the bomb in the station, on Tuesday?”
    â€œNo.” He shrugged. She should know that he hardly ever read the papers. He didn’t want to know.
    â€œThe ticket man was killed.”
    â€œI’m sorry.” He didn’t know what else to say.
    â€œWas it one of