Northern Spy

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapters 1-8

Part 1, Chapters 9-13

Part 2, Chapters 14-22

Part 2, Chapters 23-35

Part 3, Chapter 36-Epilogue

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Part 1, Chapters 9-13Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapter 9 Summary

Back at home, Tessa is having a hard time managing Finn, who has been crying for hours. She thinks about how giving birth to him had been particularly arduous and how Marian had always taken an interest in that part of her life. When her mother returns, she relates what Eoin told her, which is what Tessa had suspected: The IRA was now employing a new tactic where they forced ordinary civilians to do their robberies for them. Tessa then asks whether her mother knew about Marian’s burner phone. Her mother had not, but she believes it was planted by a corrupt police officer. As they clean up their tea mugs, her mother announces that she had gone to the Dunlops, her employers for whom she’d worked as a cleaner for the past 14 years, to tell them about Marian’s disappearance. Though she insisted Marian wasn’t part of the IRA, it was implied that she would lose her job regardless.

Part 1, Chapter 10 Summary

At two in the morning, Tessa goes to get water from her kitchen. When she looks out her kitchen window, she sees a number of people outside with flashlights in the fields behind her home. Afraid for herself but mostly for Finn, she reasons that they won’t come for him if she meets them outside. She gathers herself and walks through her backyard to a low wall that separates her home from the fields, then waits for what she thinks is an inevitable confrontation. Nothing, however, happens.

Part 1, Chapter 11 Summary

The next morning, Tessa straps Finn in his baby carrier and walks to where the people had gone the night before. There, she finds an empty weapons cache that either no one had known about or had refused to speak of since she’d moved into her home. Finn’s father, Tom, comes to take their son for the weekend, and it pains Tessa that she is no longer able to see the rest of Tom’s family. As she reminisces over their relationship, Tessa reveals how she met Tom at a party, how close they had been, and how, too, he had eventually cheated on her with a colleague when she was two months pregnant with Finn. Though they tried to work out their issues, Tessa eventually realized that she would be happier pursuing another relationship.

When Tom arrives at her home, she tells him about her nightly visitors. He then asks if she has heard anything from Marian and tells Tessa he assumes Marian is part of the IRA. After he leaves with Finn, Tessa worries over Marian and her continued absence. She ends up at Marian’s apartment to try to make sense of everything when Detective Sergeant Cairn finds her. Cairn plays back a conversation to Tessa that occurred between Marian and Cillian Burke, where Marian can be heard speaking of an incoming gun importation from Serbia. When Tessa protests that she knows Marian never went to Serbia, Cairn tells her they have evidence that Marian flew to Belgrade for four days with other members of the IRA. Tessa weakly protests that Marian must have been brainwashed, but she knows it is futile. She understands that Marian will never come home, so she goes to a bar known to have IRA sympathizers and demands to know where Marian is. The bouncers send her on her way, telling her Marian will call her when she wants.

Part 1, Chapter 12 Summary

The next morning, the city of Belfast is on high alert as a bomb attack is expected. As she waits out the threat in the safety of her home, Tessa listens to radio interviews, specifically a segment with the chief constable. Though Orla, a BBC journalist who works with Tessa, badgers him to know why evacuation orders haven’t been given, the chief constable remains unflappable in his calm responses. Instead of answering her questions, he asks citizens to reveal any knowledge they have of the large-scale attack the IRA is planning. Tessa considers her sister in this setting and berates herself for not having noticed Marian’s involvement. She walks to the local chemist’s shop, and while she shops, an explosion erupts. She and all the other shoppers hit the floor, moving away from the windows and looking for a back exit. Someone comes into the shop, however, to tell them it was simply an accident: Wooden pallets had fallen from a lorry. Tessa is bleeding from her forehead, the blood staining her dress, and though she takes it off to wash it when she gets home, she knows she’ll never wear it again—just as she never wore any of the clothes worn during a bombing attack.

Part 1, Chapter 13 Summary

Tessa walks by the lough near her home. The threat level remains high in Belfast, but a bomb has been found and disarmed. She goes for a swim in the cold water, and when she emerges, she finds Marian waiting for her, looking exhausted and demanding to know what she’d done.

Part 1, Chapters 9-13 Analysis

In the second part of Northern Spy’s Part 1, Berry focuses on the civilian sacrifices incurred by the ongoing conflict between the IRA and the British government. As the socio-historical context of this era indicates, the true losing party in this political turmoil are the citizens of Northern Ireland. Regardless of whether a person wishes for Irish reunification or desires for Northern Ireland to remain in the United Kingdom, they are nevertheless subject to the Collateral Cost of the Greater Good, or at least both institutions’ concept of it: the reunification of Ireland for the IRA and the elimination of the IRA for the British government. The sacrifices made by the people of Northern Ireland—and in this case, of Belfast specifically—can vary from minute adjustments to life-changing changes. For the former, the author shows how most people in Belfast juggle floating anxiety into their daily lives by adapting learned mannerisms and habits to conflict exposure. As Berry describes in Chapter 12, everyone in the chemist’s shop follows safety protocols when they believe a bomb has been set off; Tessa recounts:

I throw myself toward the floor, catching my forehead on the sharp corner of a shelf. […] Next to me, the other woman is also on the floor, shielding her son with her body. […] The boy is whining now, and his mother wraps her arms around him, trying to keep him still. We need to get away from the window. I move in a crouch down the aisle, and the woman follows me, crawling with her son clasped to her chest. We shelter behind the till with Martin and the old man (87).

There is, in fact, no bomb—the loud noise is simply an accident involving dropped pallets—but Tessa’s reaction, as well as that of the woman’s with her young son, Martin, and the old man, all attest to a forcibly learned behavior responding to the recurrent bombings and IRA operations. But while civilians have had to integrate new safety measures into their daily lives to try and circumvent these dangers, British government officials also recurrently ask them to put themselves at risk. When the city is placed on high alert for a possible IRA operation, for example, the constable makes a point of refusing to evacuate public areas. Instead, he leaves civilians to regulate their own safety and asks the people of Belfast to come forward and divulge any information they have on this operation: “To everyone listening, we need your help. We all know that the IRA relies on its community for protection. I believe there are people listening who have seen the preparations for a large-scale attack. They still have time to stop it” (85). In other words, the constable makes the people of Belfast accountable for all aspects of this ongoing conflict: They must maintain their own safety without any additional help from government officials, but they must also put them at risk of deadly reprisal from the IRA by divulging any information they might have on their plans.

Lastly, Berry exemplifies how civilians unwillingly make life-changing sacrifices because of the conflict through Tessa’s mother’s employment with the Dunlops, a rich English family. Despite having worked for them for 14 years and claiming that Marian has been kidnapped, the mere suggestion—no matter if it is true or false—that she is part of the IRA has the Dunlops recoiling and implies that Tessa’s mother will lose her job. In later chapters, she will be forced to take on employment with a hotel chain with much harsher work conditions. Marian eventually does reveal herself as an IRA member, but it does not necessarily validate the Dunlops’ actions toward her mother. Rather, the author intimates that while Marian’s choice to pursue Irish reunification through the IRA’s methods does come at a personal cost for her, it also has a ripple effect on the people closest to her who have not made the same choice. Likewise, the government’s desire to end the IRA for the greater good of the city’s safety often pushes the city’s people into impossible situations and hard-to-make choices, seemingly without any support.