High Dive - Hardcover

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JONATHAN LEE is a British writer whose recent fiction has appeared in Tin House, Granta, and A Public Space, among other magazines. High Dive is his first novel to be published in the United States. He lives in Brooklyn, where he is a contributing editor for Guernica and a regular contributor to The Paris Review Daily.

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***This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected proof***

Copyright © 2016 Jonathan Lee

1

Dan’s first op for the Provos was in darkness, an alley off the Falls Road, half a decade before Dawson McCartland would ask him to become Roy Walsh. He was crouched with his back against a rough brick wall and a man called Colum Allen was beside him. Colum was sometimes called Hallion or Hallinan or the Welsh Saint, the last of these nicknames persisting despite his energetic claims to have no Welsh in him at all. He was tall and thin with a great vein forking up the left side of his neck. Even in the dim you could see it flickering. It moved whenever he spoke, which was always. His leg jerked up and down. Punching his palm was a frequent hobby too. Nodding his head. Biting his fingernails. Humming. Singing. Some of the many daily ways Colum relieved the pressure of being Colum.

“Predetermined is what it is.” Colum’s voice was a quick whisper. “Last time was unlucky, isn’t it? Whole season unlucky. Fuckers this season are on the ropes. Inevitable. Fuckers home in an ambulance. Been lucky. Got a destiny that’s not what they think, to be sure.”

Chance and fate, Dan had started to see, were a great pre-occupation of guys engaged in reckless deeds. He didn’t trust Colum to do a good job. Didn’t trust him to keep his mouth shut after. It was exhausting to think of all the ways he didn’t trust him and why had they been paired together? Dawson kept telling Dan he’d be able to work soon with Patrick. Kept telling him Patrick was too well known to the authorities now—couldn’t be the face of operations, only the brains, needed help. Dawson kept saying Dan and Patrick would make a great team one day, but here he was, teamed with Colum Allen, talking football.

“Agree with sacking Steiny? How could a man. How could. But a man gets no silverwear for the Celtic, his history is history, isn’t it? Fuckers got short memories is what they’ve got. Anyway—” he coughed—“this your debut, is it?”

Dan stood for a moment to grant some relief to his legs, then went back to crouching and squinting. Occasional shapes animated the gloom at the end of the alley. Occasional voices too. There was advance word of RUC raids happening here tonight. The idea was for Dan and Colum to disrupt the raids as much as possible. They had gear on the ground in two zipped bags.

Nerves. When Dan was nervous he didn’t gibber or fiddle with his hands like Colum. Instead, basic questions surfaced. Such as: What am I doing here? Or: Will I end up with a bullet in my brain? Another cool wind was picking up grit. They waited.

“Paddy’s your man, is he?”

Dan was silent. Disconcerting to think a guy as simple as Colum could have a read on your thoughts.

“Internment, was he?”

“Yeah,” Dan said. “I think so.”

“Whole year?”

“No idea.”

“Two?”

“Dunno.”

“Fuckers keep their secrets.”

He knew exactly how long Patrick had been interned by the Brits without trial. But he’d also learned that it was unwise to give your facts away for free. Sharing less—sometimes less than was decent—made the other person uncomfortable. In an uncomfortable silence, people gave you more of themselves. The RUC had apparently come at dawn to pick Patrick up. The whine of the Saracens, bulky six-wheeled monsters, being slipped into a low gear. A dimmed stage, dark vehicles, blackened faces, not unlike the expected scene tonight; the occasional white blotch from a Catholic paint bomb. The whole of your life in Belfast was organised around light and dark, visibility and invisibility, silence and sound, information and secrecy, the private rubbing up against the public and making you feel tired. None of this Dan said to Colum.

“Heard about your initiation,” Colum said. “Aye. The dogs. That one’s getting nice and famous. Though I expect he was only preparing Your Majesty for obstacles others might raise.”

Don’t give in, Dan thought. But he gave in. “What did you hear?”

Colum grinned and scratched his neck, staring at the ground as if it were the future. “Other option, course, is he just wanted to give you nightmares. Dawson McCartland’s nice like that. Fuckers love a good nightmare.” He clicked his fingers. “My first time? They gave me a gun and an address and that was that.”

“I won’t be doing any of that stuff.”

“What?”

“House calls.”

“Ha,” Colum said, and allowed himself an unusual pause. “Demoralises the police, stiffing them at home. Shows all the other police there’s no place that’s their own to relax, they said. Hadn’t even occurred. I was even younger than you, probably. I was seventeen. So I’m realising quick I’m going to have to get a ride into an Orangies’ area. And I’m realising a certain amount of planning needs to be done for the runback, though I’ve got only a day to do it. So the day comes and I’m wearing a Rangers badge, right? Though it kills me, so it does. And I’m wearing a pair of Beatle boots I got hold of from a fat lad. And all the while they’re not telling me much about this guy I’m going to stiff or any real advice, tips if you will, but I’m used to that, aren’t I? Grandfather used to be an Ulster fiddler, a virtuoso in Donegal—really. Took an awful reddener when he forgot his music one day. None of those fiddler men would let you in on their performance practices, no way; that’s what I’m sayin’. It’s a similar thing. So anyway, I go and stiff the guy and his wife comes screaming into the hall, looking at the pool of blood. Cool as anything I was. Just did the thing and left.”

Dan nodded. “Sure.” People were always heroes in their own telling.

“Yeah,” Colum said. “It was only once I got back to my district and had my first pint that the whole thing went right up on me. Shaking all over I was. Been shaking mostly ever since.”

He had Dan’s attention now. Night clouds moved across the moon. In a brief breeze an empty can rolled towards them and Colum’s shoulders did a jump. They laughed.

A whining sound. A few thin flickers of light. Colum got up. “Here we go,” he said, newly hard in the face, oddly impressive-looking. He picked up the bags. They ran to the end of the alley.

“Wait.”

Dan did as he was told. The black Saracens were creeping along the Falls, slow and certain. The walls flanking this section of the road were painted black, a mass redaction of the murals of Bobby Sands and other heroes. The sound of heavy boots. Foot patrols moving behind and alongside the Saracens. Even if Colum had brought his gun with him, there was no way you could see the men well enough to snipe them. All of the officers were wearing black. Anything else would have spoiled the decor.

They watched as two RUC men broke down the first door to a Catholic home. The groan of the wood giving in. Dan’s heart going hard. In the first open bag a dozen plastic bottles. Each of them was three-quarters full with white paint and water. “Quick now,” Colum said. They scrambled to unscrew five or six lids. In another bag they had waterproof sheeting tied around chunks of dry ice. They started squeaking fragments of dry ice into the open bottles of paint, screwing the lids back on. Colum slapped Dan’s face. “Quick, I said.”...