Her trench coat was in the sacristy. He helped her on with it. It was raining heavily when they went outside, but she didn’t seem concerned.
“Where would you like to go?” he asked her.
“Oh, this will do fine. I like churchyards. I find them very restful.”
She took his arm and they followed the path between the old Victorian monuments and gravestones. The searching wind chased leaves amongst the stones so that they seemed like living things crawling along the path in front of them.
They paused beside an old marble mausoleum for Fallon to light a cigarette and it was that precise moment that Billy Meehan and Varley appeared at the side gate. They saw Fallon and the girl at once and ducked back out of sight.
“See, he’s still here, “Varley said. “Thank God for that”
“You go back to Paul’s Square and wait for Jack,” Billy said. “Tell him where I am. I’ll keep watch here.”
Varley moved away and Billy slipped in through the gate and worked his way towards Fallon and Anna., using the monuments for cover.
Anna said, “I’d like to thank you for what you did last night.”
“It was nothing.”
“One of the men involved was an old friend of yours. O’Hara, wasn’t that his name?”
Fallon said quickly, “No, you’ve got it wrong.”
“I don’t think so,” she insisted. “Uncle Michael spoke to him after you’d left, in the pub across the road. He told him a great deal about you. Belfast, Londonderry – the ISA.”
“The bastard,” Fallon said bitterly. “He always had a big mouth, that one. Somebody will be closing his eyes with pennies one of these fine days if he isn’t careful.”
“I don’t think he meant any harm. Uncle Michael’s impres-sion was that he thought a great deal about you.” She hesitated and said carefully, “Things happen in war sometimes that nobody intends.”
Fallon cut in on her sharply. “I never go back to anything in thought or deed. It doesn’t pay.” They turned into another path and he looked up at the rain. “God, is it never going to stop? What a world. Even the bloody sky won’t stop weep-ing.”
“You have a bitter view of life, Mr.. Fallon.”
“I speak as I find and as far as I am concerned, -life is one hell of a name for the world as it is.”
“And is there nothing, then?” she demanded. “Not one single solitary thing worth having in this world of yours?”
“Only you,” he said.
They were close to the presbytery now and Billy Meehan observed them closely with the aid of a pair of binoculars from behind a mausoleum.
Anna stopped walking and turned to face Fallon. “What did you say?”
“You’ve no business here.” He made a sweeping gesture with one arm encompassing the whole cemetery. “This place belongs to the dead and you’re still alive.”
“And you?”
There was a long pause and then he said calmly, “No, it’s different for me. I’m a dead man walking. Have been for a long time now.”
She was to remember that remark always as one of the most terrible things she had ever heard in her life.
She stared up at him, those calm, blind eyes fixed on some point in space, and then she reached up and pulled down his head and kissed him hard, her mouth opening in a deliberately provocative gesture.
She pulled way. “Did you feel that?” she demanded fiercely. ùDid I break through?”
“I think you could say that,” he said in some amazement.
“Good,” she said. I’m going in now. I want to change and then I have lunch to get ready. You’d better play the organ or something until my uncle gets back.”
“All right,” Fallon said and turned away.
He had only taken a few steps when she called, “Oh, and Fallon?” When he turned she was standing in the porch, the door half-open. “Think of me. Remember me. Concentrate on that. I exist. I’m real.”
She went in and dosed the door and Fallon turned and walked away quickly.
It was only when he was out of sight that Billy moved from the shelter of the mausoleum holding his binoculars in one hand. Fallon and the priest’s niece. Now that was interesting.