'Trespasses' Recap: Episode 4

Trespasses is available to stream via the PBS app. Recap the previous episode.
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Cushla is stunned by the news of Michael’s death by shooting in his home, in front of his wife. She goes to a backroom of the bar, where Eamonn finds her sitting on the ground. I was about to go see him, she tells Eamonn, who at the revelation of this affair hauls her up and asks who else knows. He insists that she go back to work and put on a brave face so that no one suspects anything.

She manages it, but she’s shattered. She drives past Michael’s house slowly, and a policeman notes her license plate. She goes to the field where she and Michael once sat together and stumbles, cutting her hand on barbed wire. With blood on her face from the wound, she shows up on Gerry’s doorstep. He bandages her and guesses that Michael was her mysterious boyfriend. As he hugs her in comfort, she tries to kiss him, but he stops her. 

He’s gay. He has been trying to act the way he thinks he should, like in trying to kiss Cushla, but he has realized he can’t will himself to be different. He finally worked up the courage to meet someone; that’s why Cushla saw him meeting someone late at night by the docks. But he’s afraid of being beaten up, losing his job, and other consequences.

Cushla’s grief leads her to miss the last day of school – and also to cut short a visit to the McGeowns. As she leaves, Tommy asks her out to drink sometime. She mumbles, “maybe,” and then a police car pulls up and arrests Tommy for Michael’s murder. Cushla worries to Gerry that it’s somehow her fault, since she was close to both Michael and the McGeowns. He says the police are just rounding up anyone they can.

Before Michael’s funeral, Eamonn again demands to know who might know about Cushla’s affair. She mentions Michael’s friends, and possibly the old bar fixture Jimmy. Eamonn orders Cushla not to cry. Unlike Gina, she manages to hold it together. Eamonn prevents her from talking to Michael’s friends after the funeral, especially worried that one of them – Victor – is a journalist, but Jimmy comes up to her and tells her he’s sorry for her trouble, handing over the egg he always keeps in his pocket. She accidentally crushes it in her hand on the way to the car. She grabs Gina’s flask from her for a chug.

Immediately after the funeral at the bar, Martin Gallagher of the IRA – which has claimed responsibility for the killing – tells Cushla that the bar could use some cleaning up: British soldiers drink there, and Michael liked it. Please don’t hurt my family, Cushla pleads as he gets up and leaves.

Cushla reveals her affair and Gallagher’s warning to Gina, who says she’ll tell Eamonn tomorrow. Cushla goes upstairs to spend the day in bed, but is interrupted by a phone call from Davey: the McGeowns’ home has been firebombed. The naming of Tommy as a suspect in MIchael’s killing was just the spark. 

Cushla rushes over and hustles them into her car as an angry mob throws things and the police barely intervene. She settles the McGeowns into her house. Gina reaches for a drink but stops herself. 

Gerry comes to visit the next day and is leaving when the police pull up to bring Cushla in for questioning. The constable whose eye Cushla caught interviews her about Michael; he has photos of them together, including having sex. He also asks about her relationship to Tommy, whose diary shows he was infatuated with Cushla. She is the connection between the victim and his killer. 

Back at home, Cushla asks Davey when he can’t sleep if Tommy ever mentioned Michael or her.

Eamonn tells Cushla the McGeowns need to leave before they cause trouble for Cushla and her family, and Gina reluctantly agrees. She won’t tell Eamonn about Gallagher’s warning after all. Cushla drops the McGeowns off at the barricade outside their neighborhood and cries.

Six weeks later, she learns that Davey and his sister have gone into foster care; their parents couldn’t find housing. Cushla blames herself, since her principal reported the McGeowns to a social worker after Cushla tried to get them free meals. 

She also blames herself for Michael’s death. She asks Gina how she ever got out of bed after losing her husband; Gina says Eamonn ran her a bath. She does so for Cushla, giving her the strength to go speak to her neighbor, who’s a sergeant. He promised Cushla’s father to watch over her; he has been protective, not menacing. He knows about her affair, and agrees to help her: he arranges a meeting with Tommy, who has confessed to Michael’s murder.

Tommy insists on speaking in Irish in the prison. Only his father has visited him; his mother is always on Valium now. He didn’t know about Cushla and Michael until the police asked him about it after the murder; he didn’t kill him out of jealousy. He was doing roadwork when it started raining; Michael picked him up. At Michael’s house, Tommy saw photos of him in a wig and thought he was a judge and so killed him for being the instrument of British rule. He now knows that Michael fought for people like Tommy. It was just a coincidence that Cushla knew them both. 

Still, when Eamonn’s bar is bombed, Cushla assumes it’s the IRA retaliating for her relationship with Michael. But it wasn’t the IRA; it was just retaliation for taking in the McGeowns. One of the bar’s patrons warned Eamonn ahead of time, so it was empty and no one was hurt. 

Eamonn apologizes to Cushla for his behavior towards her. She was just being kind to the McGeowns, and was in love with Michael. He’s planning to move away with his family; Cushla and Gina can join them. 

Cushla’s answer is forestalled by the appearance of Victor in the ruins of the bar. Eamonn leaves them. Victor tells Cushla that Michael was being tracked by the police because they were trying to get him to abandon his police brutality case. He says that Cushla made Michael very happy in his last few months. She tells Victor she loved Michael, even though she never told him. 

After Victor leaves, Cushla sits alone in the ruins of the bar, flipping through newly developed photos from her camera. 

Fifty years later, she visits an art exhibit and lingers over a sculpture by Michael’s friend Penny depicting Michael. She recognizes another visitor: it’s Davey. He had a rough few years, but he has come out of it. He works to help children in foster care now. Life goes on.