Now and in the Hour of Our Death Read Free Page A

and for her reflected everything about the tranquility of her new country. Vancouver was a far cry from tiny, self-absorbed, war-torn Northern Ireland, where the Troubles, the civil war, had ground on remorselessly since 1969.
    She shook her head.
    She’d sworn to put Belfast and the senseless slaughter behind her when she’d left that city in 1975 to come to Canada. The shootings, bombings, riots, and maimings were things to be forgotten.
    She made it a point to turn off the sound of the newsreader’s voice when the images of armoured cars on the streets, yelling youths hurling Molotov cocktails, and police and troops in body armour appeared on the television screen. Canadians always seemed to ask as soon as they found out where she had come from, “What is really going on in Northern Ireland? Is it ever going to end?” She would deflect the question by saying, “It’s just the next chapter in a row that’s been going on for eight hundred years. I’m from there and I don’t understand it.” That was a damn sight easier than trying to explain the convolutions of Irish politics, and allowed her to move the conversation away from a subject she preferred not to discuss.
    A line of darkness crept up the North Shore Mountains. The west wind strengthened. Fiona bent, slipped on her shoes, and headed for her apartment in the big old house on Whyte Avenue.
    Canada had been a new start for her—a new country and a new life. And, she thought, she’d succeeded fairly well in trying to become a Canadian, but, even after eight years, she couldn’t completely escape from her heritage.
    And why should she?
    Ireland, Northern Ireland, was where she’d been born, raised, educated, where she had family and friends. Northern Ireland had formed her, made her what she was today.
    Before the Troubles it had been a grand wee spot. A place to be remembered with affection, even if, after eight years, the memories were fading.
    Most of the memories. Not all.
    She’d fallen in love there in Belfast, not once but several times, and she half-remembered with affection those men. All save one. He still lived somewhere deep in her—but he was there and she was here.
    Since coming to Canada, she’d had a number of short romances—but the right man? Perhaps Tim Andersen. She’d been seeing him for eight months, and he was meant to phone tonight. There might be a message waiting for her on the machine. She walked faster.
    She nearly bumped into one of the great driftwood logs at the edge of the beach. “Watch where you’re going, stupid.” She’d better stop talking to herself. Back home, folks used to say that to do so was the first sign of madness.
    Home? Dammit all, Vancouver was her home now. She had a good job, vice principal of Lord Carnarvon Elementary School, friends, new and interesting things to do. There was Gastown to visit, Stanley Park. The Gulf Islands were a short ferry ride away. Theatre, and her particular joy, the opera. And she could go where she pleased without being body searched, having always at the back of her mind the nagging worry that at any moment the day could be ripped apart by an explosion.
    She crossed Arbutus Street onto Whyte Avenue, fumbling in her pocket for the front-door key. At home, McCusker would be waiting for supper.
    She smiled as she thought of the overweight tortoiseshell cat. In her Belfast life, she’d had a ginger McCusker. He’d been kicked to death by a British soldier. Poor McCusker. Why, she wondered, had she given the same name to the stray kitten that’d appeared on her doorstep four years ago? Sentimentality? Had she needed something from her past to hold on to as a frightened child clutches a teddy bear? She opened the front door of the building.
    She heard McCusker yowling, hurried down the hall, opened her door, and a spherical tortoiseshell hurled himself at Fiona’s shins, the cat’s