Acts of Allegiance
Peter Cunningham
[Sandstone Press]
Acts of Allegiance is a rare find that manages to combine literary lyricism with a satisfyingly propulsive, airtight plot. It is a cracking tale of espionage, state secrets and betrayal, taking us on a devastating tour past the landmark events of the Troubles; through Bloody Sunday and sinister figures like former Taoiseach Charles J. Haughey. Peter Cunningham is a member of Aosdána, the Irish academy of arts and letters. His former novel, The Taoiseach, concentrated more heavily on Charles J. Haughey and was a popular and controversial bestseller in 2004. This novel couldn’t be better-timed, as Brexit causes border talks to resurface and the ties between Britain and Ireland are brought into question all over again.
Yet at heart, this is a reflective novel centred around one man’s conflicted self and search for his father. It’s made all the more interesting by the fact that Peter Cunningham’s own father was a spy passing information to the British on possible IRA activity in Omagh in the 1940s, a fact Peter never knew until adulthood. Some of the scenes are inspired by real life events, like meeting Sean Lemass, then-Taoiseach and former IRA republican, with his father, a British Army intelligence officer, at the races.
The story weaves between our protagonist Marty Ransom’s memories of his childhood in Waterford, and his adult life as both a civil servant in the Irish Embassy and a spy for the British. He is a man utterly divided between nations, women, and family loyalties. “I wondered then was there anyone in my life I had not at some point betrayed.”
In his split self he mirrors the state of Ireland as a nation. Even his childhood is split between memories of Waterloo, the land owned by his Anglo-Irish father, and Fowler Street, with his father’s Catholic family. Here he grew up in awe of his cousin Iggy Kane, a rebel who never bowed to authority, and who would later make use of his magic tinkering hands in the IRA on the other side of Cunningham’s world. The narrative moves back and forth in time and geographic location as Marty struggles to piece together his identity and that of his father; to answer his supervisor’s question, “What man are you at the end of the day, Mr. Ransom?” Marty cannot decide what sort of man he is without knowing what sort of man his father was, and the truth of his father, including his death, evades him, shrouded in mystery and shadow. The revelations unfold like dark petals, with each sequential revealing the clues that lie hidden in Marty’s memories.
This book is an intriguing excavation of how the personal and political can tragically collide. “Ireland is a very young democracy, as democracies go, and as we work through our differences, sometimes paths diverge, even in families. . . even the closest childhood friends and blood relations can find themselves on opposite sides, and new alignments take shape, and we come to love differently than we did as children.”
Words – Maryam Madani
