Northern Spy

Marian Daly is Tessa’s sister and Finn’s aunt. She is also part of an IRA unit comprised of herself, Seamus, Damian, and Niall, but eventually becomes an informer for MI5. Eamonn Byrne is her handler. She shares similar traits to her sister, but unlike Tessa, “her natural expression, when she’s not speaking, is open and amused, like she’s waiting to hear the end of a joke” (11). Later, she will cut her hair short and dye it blond when she is on the run from the police for armed robbery. Marian is something of an anti-hero in the narrative, as well as being something of a contradiction: She leads a double life where she makes bombs for IRA missions but holds a career as a paramedic. When she was young and lost a friend to an overdose, Marian was groomed by Seamus to become an IRA member. He took advantage of her emotional vulnerability and fostered her burgeoning political discontent into violent activism. Despite having a job where she is meant to save lives, Marian actively takes part in assassination attempts, urban bombings, and city destruction as a way to pressure the British government and the people of Northern Ireland.

Of all the characters in Northern Spy, Marian is the one most caught in emotional and moral dilemmas. Though she loves her mother and sister, she does not reveal her life as an IRA member because it would be seen as a betrayal and they would not understand. Likewise, when she decides to become an informant, her decision—if known—would be seen as a betrayal by her IRA unit, and she thus keeps it quiet. Marian walks, in other words, a very fine line where her secrets are able to keep the status quo of her family—be they biological or chosen—relationships. Her dilemmas are compounded further by the fact that, fundamentally, she isn’t the type of person to seek another person’s pain—she knows she will be riddled with guilt for what she’s done with the IRA for the rest of her life. Still, she is able to rationalize causing people pain and terror with an ends-justify-the-means type of mentality, which she explains as “once you’ve done something terrible, you have to keep going, or else the terrible thing was for nothing” (139). After a time, however, it proved untrue. What ultimately made her a turncoat was her love of family and their safety, her sister’s miscarriage, and the notion that perhaps, even though having a united Ireland felt like a noble goal, she was causing more harm than good.

Eamonn Byrne is an MI5 agent who handles Marian, eventually Tessa, and most likely other sources in Northern Ireland during the political turmoil of the narrative. He is described as an attractive man, with his beauty considered to be a convenient tool for espionage, as Tessa explains: “I consider his profile, the sharp nose, the groove in his bottom lip. It must help, being this attractive, in his line of work” (150). Throughout his interactions with the two sisters, he comes across as a flat character without any true development. He does, however, count as a metaphorical stand-in for British security services and, more broadly, the British government at large, as he often makes false promises about the sisters’ safety and their value. Ultimately, however, he uses them as expandable chess pieces rather than viewing and valuing them as human beings. Eamonn is secretive by trade and reveals only enough about himself to build a rapport with his sources. Though his relationship with Marian seems to be purely professional, the one he has with Tessa blurs the line between professional conduct and sexual inferences. Tellingly, Eamonn is not reliable when the sisters are in danger and is not held accountable for it. By the end of the narrative, he never faces the consequences of placing Marian and an innocent civilian like Tessa in the line of fire. Instead, he disappears, and it is only through sheer happenstance that Tessa learns how her life was traded for maintaining Cillian Burke’s anonymity.

Seamus, Damian, and Niall are the other members of Marian’s IRA unit. In the context of the Northern Ireland conflict, they are seen as the antagonists since they actively participate and plan bombing missions, assassination attempts, kidnappings, and the like. Seamus deliberately crafts his appearance to appear harmless since he acts as a recruiter for the IRA as well as one of its interviewers when a member is suspected of defecting. When Tessa meets Seamus, he is described as having “a beige suit with wide lapels, his red hair brushed to the side. He looks, in that suit, with his faded red hair, vaguely silly, like a lost member of Monty Python” (158), but he is also a well-read man who will recommend anti-colonial texts and enjoy Agatha Christie mysteries. Berry makes no note that Damian and Niall make as much of an effort with their appearance, but the author does mention that Damian’s entire family is embedded in the IRA, while Niall was an orphan.

Though the three men remain consistent and adamant about the IRA cause throughout the narrative, none of them show any significant character growth. Berry, however, nuances these three characters by humanizing them for her audience. Damian, for instance, is not simply a sniper for the unit; he’s also a man capable of falling in love with Marian. And while Niall might be one to wear a black ski mask, he’s still someone who looks to Marian as a sister for whom he wants to buy a birthday present. Marian’s love for them and desire to protect them from their inevitable deaths in the ongoing conflict also implies that while their actions are reprehensible, all three have underlying good qualities that made Marian feel as though they were family. But whereas Marian is ready to become an informer to ensure their lives, Seamus (and perhaps Damian and Niall) is steadfast in his convictions and would have killed Marian and Tessa for being informers.