Lies of silence

Lies of Silence by Brian Moore   The Story   Michael Dillon is the Manager of a Hotel in Belfast. He isn’t really content with his life, he doesn’t really like his job and there are also some problems with his wife Moira. Therefore he has an affair with a younger woman called Andrea who works for the BBC. They often meet secretly. One day she tells him that she has plans to go to London because of a new job, and Michael decides to go with her. When he drives home from their meeting she thinks about his wife and that he has to tell her.

When he arrives at home, Moira is sitting in the living room, watching TV with Peg Wilton, a friend of hers. Michael drives her home and so she tells him that she will open up a little shop and that Moira should also work there. In the evening, when Michael and his wife are lying in their bed the have a little quarrel. Moira thinks that her husband doesn’t like her, she says that he only likes her because of her looks. She thinks that maybe Michael would like to leave her and her last sentence before falling asleep is “Please don’t leave me!”. Therefore Michael isn’t able to sleep.

When he looks out of the window, he notices a white Ford standing in front of their house. Two people are sitting in the car, but Michael doesn’t care about it. Suddenly he sees some men walking into the garden. He runs downstairs and tries to reach the telephone, but it’s too late, and the men enter the house. They are from the IRA. Michael has to wake up his wife and they order them to go downstairs.

They have to be quiet and Michael has to give his car keys to the masked and armed IRA- activists. While sitting in the living room and waiting, Michael and Moira watch the men. They seem to be very young. There are three of them, one who possibly is the boss, and two other guards, a fat young boy and one who they call Kev. Moira wants to go to the toilet, and as they allow her to do so, she tries to flee out of the bathroom window. But she isn’t successful, and one of the men can catch her.

Moira is more courageous than her husband and begins a quarrel with the IRA- guys. But they don’t care about her. ”This isn’t over. This operation is just beginning,” says one of the men. Dillon thinks about what could happen. He heard that often the IRA uses stolen cars to put bombs in, and leave them somewhere.

Maybe they would order him to drive the car with a bomb into his hotel car park. Bombing hotels and frightening the tourists are tactics, very often used by the IRA. In the morning they tell him what to do: Michael Dillon is ordered to park his car with a bomb inside in the carpark of his hotel. But he is faced with a moral choice, which leaves him absolutely nowhere to turn. He knows that the bomb would kill and maim dozens of people, but he also knows that if he doesn’t, his wife will be killed. Several times he asks if there will be a warning by the IRA, such as they often did when they bombed buildings.

But the IRA- soldiers, who are now 5 men, answer ”That’s not your business”. On the way to the hotel, he passes some buildings and memorials and for the first time he realises the meaning of some of them. His grandfather’s house, his primary school, the University… always followed by the white Ford. The next thing he has to do is to park his car at the usually place. But that’s just under the window of the room in which Alun Pottinger, a popular Protestant, is giving a speech. After leaving the hotel he has to cross the street and to buy something a Murry’s Shop, while a green Taxi would arrive.

He knows that they are watching him, but in the Shop he asks for a phone and calls the police. In the next ten minutes lots of police cars, army cars and soldiers arrive and they evacuate the whole building. Suddenly the bomb explodes. Michael drives home with a borrowed car. There are two police cars in front of his house. Coming home he notices that his wife is alright.

A policeman explains that his phone call came at a time when the IRA had already left the house. He is told to be absolutely quiet, ”It’s for your own protection” they say. Next day they decide to run the hotel as well as possible. Business as usual is the motto. Before Dr. Pottinger’s press conference Dillon meets a representative of the Protestants, who thanks him for the courageous phone call that saved the Dr’s life and asks him some things.

Michael tells him that he doesn’t have a high opinion of the IRA and nor of Dr. Pottinger either. Michael asks his boss for a transfer to London. Of course he agrees, although he knows that Michael did a good job in Belfast and that it will be hard to find a substitute. Moira doesn’t want to leave Northern Ireland. She is of the opinion that if they escape, the IRA has won.

She thinks that Michael always wanted to leave this place and that he doesn’t have the feelings for her that she has for him. In the evening, they visit Moira’s parents in Lurgan. On the road to them he thinks that a car follows him, but that’s nonsense. They have a discussion about Ireland, the IRA and similar things. Moira repeats that she wants to stay in Belfast. Things won’t change if everybody thinks like her husband, she claims.

Dillon is at Moira's parents' house, waiting for Moira to return with the dog. At nine when she has not returned, Michael goes to the hotel where he wants to spend the night with Andrea. Michael is a little bit paranoid, he thinks that the IRA is after him, and suddenly he sees a young boy of whom he thinks that he follows him for the IRA. Later he lies in his bed next to Andrea, wondering about his former relationship with Moira and his new one with Andrea. He feels guilty because he has drawn Andrea into this mess. While the are talking in a restaurant next morning, suddenly Moira arrives, and probably she sees them holding hands.

Moira wants to talk to Dillon, so they go to the lobby. Moira tells Dillon what she thinks about their relationship and claims that she is going to stay in Belfast and she does not care if he leaves. Soon they are interrupted by a call from Keogh who says that he has got a job for Dillon as an assistant manager in London. Dillon drives to Peg Wilton’s antique- shop. Peg tells him that Moira has just been on Ulster Television telling their story. Michael gets nervous about that and tries to reach his wife.

At the hotel, two reporters want to interview him about the hostage situation. But Dillon does not want to discuss anything until he has spoken to Moira. He is told that she is at the BBC, waiting to go on air. Therefore he hurries over there and when he arrives, a commissionaire takes him to Moira. When he talks to Moira she asks about Andrea, but he does not say anything about her. Only that he is being transferred to London.

Back at the hotel, a reporter meets Dillon. He asks him if it is true that Dillon has seen one of the IRA men's faces as Moira has told him. Dillon denies it and when he comes back to his office, the phone rings. It is an IRA man, who threatens him because he has talked too much. Consequently Dillon calls Moira and wants to meet with her. On his way over to her, he feels that a boy is following him.

Moira explains to Dillon why she has to stand up for herself and now she finally feels that she can make a difference. She thinks he has only been with her because of her looks and she does not feel appreciated. Moira asks if Andrea is going with him to London and if he wants a divorce. He tells her the truth and she says that she hopes he gets shot, but regrets and says that she hopes they will shoot her. Moira is on TV and all the Irish and British newspapers. Dillon fears that some papers would write that he saw the face of that IRA- guy, but they omit it.

Moira now wants to start a political career; she wants to found a group to stand up against the IRA. Michael tries to convince her that she isn’t a political person and that it isn’t easy to do such things. It’s Michael’s last day in Belfast and his hotel crew has arranged a farewell-party for him. At the party no one asks him about the bombing, which surprises him. He begins to see why he loves this place, and how much he is actually going to miss it - it is his home. His disruption makes him cry when he says farewell because he is so emotional.

A Catholic priest calls Dillon. He says that once he was Michael’s classmate and that he wants to talk to him about something serious. So they meet, but Michael doesn’t know him anymore. The priest tells him that the police came to a parishioner of his, a divorced woman, to arrest her nineteen- year- old son. They think that he has to do something with the IRA- attack. It turns out that the boy is Kev, the one who was seen by Dillon.

The priest wants him not to identify him. He doesn’t agree with the IRA but he says that the kids see the injustice, and the boy is quite young. But Michael doesn’t have compassion. Michael and Andrea drive to the airport. There he phones his mother and is very surprised that she doesn’t worry that Michael will go to London with another woman. His mother means that he was never happy with Moira.

Next day in London they experience a great day. Michael knows that his new life has just begun. The following day Dillon starts his new job. When he meets Andrea for lunch at the hotel, a porter comes up to Dillon passing him a note saying that he has to call detective inspector Randall of the anti-terror squad. It turns out that the police want Dillon to testify against Kev, the 19-year-old terrorist who took Moira and Dillon hostage and whose face Dillon accidentally saw. So he agrees to testify.

He tells Andrea about it when he returns to their table, but she becomes nervous and tries to persuade him not to do it, fearing the IRA and what they might do to them. Dillon spends the night wondering what to do and what to say to Randall about having changed his mind. Early the next morning he gets another phone call, this time from Moira. She tells him that she had a meeting with the priest, father Conolly, and that he is Kev’s uncle. Moira thinks that he has something to do with the IRA. In the afternoon, father Conolly visits him at the hotel.

Once again he tries to influence him and wants him not to identify the boy. But Michael changes his opinion, he doesn’t want to be a coward. He tries to phone Randall to get the case finished as soon as possible, but Randall is in Armagh handling a big case there, and cannot be reached for quite some time, and this makes both him and Andrea very nervous. At five o’clock Dillon goes home to wait for the phone call from Belfast. Suddenly a man enters the flat. He asks him for his name and when he tells him two young men come in.

They raise their revolvers. They don’t wear masks. ”This time, there would be no witnesses” is the last sentence of the book.     About the story   Once again, Lies of Silence, the third book of my “Northern Ireland”- topic is not a book about the IRA or the fights and problems in this country directly, but shows how much all inhabitants of Nortern Ireland are concerned. Michael Dillon has a good job and lives in one of the richer areas of Belfast. He doesn’t really care about the problems and he doesn’t get into contact with them.

He is one of the rich men who don’t understand the troubles of the poor. Like many inhabitants of Belfast he is used to the IRA and UDA- terror. The more you hear of a bomb attack, the less you are shocked. No one had been hurt: there had been no atrocious deaths of people or animals. Just another bomb. Just an ordinary day after all.

That’s one of the important sentences of the story. Unlike his wife who wants to stand up against the terror, Michael is indecisive until the end of the book. On the one hand he doesn’t want to endanger his and Andrea’s life but on the other hand he wants revenge. I think that this disruption is omnipresent in Northern Ireland. Although there are lots of people who sympathize with the IRA, there are also many people who want to get rid of them. But the IRA is very mighty.

They can control everything. They are everywhere. It was a world of men in masks whose true identity could not be guessed. Moira doesn’t fear them. I’m of the opinion that she isn’t so weak- minded as Michael. When the IRA- men are in their house, she begins to argue against them.

“You’re not fighting for anybody’s freedom. Not mine, not the people of Northern Ireland’s, not anybody’s. The only thing you’re doing is make people hate each other worse than ever. Maybe that’s what you want, isn’t it? Because if the Catholics here stopped hating the Prods, where would the IRA be?”, she says. That’s the problem of all those organisations. But the fact is that there is still injustice.

Catholic people are still discriminated against. But can’t they go other ways to reach their aims? Is the IRA a terror- organisation or a libertation movement? The British would say “no” and even the Irish aren’t very content with the IRA. But I think if everybody sticks to his point of view and people don’t get together and discuss the problems there won’t be peace in this area.                                          

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