Against the Light

by Marjorie Eccles

  She looked at the papers on his desk. ‘I hope I’m not disturbing you, but what I have to say won’t take long. I’m going away and I just wanted to say goodbye.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. You’re finding the work too difficult?’

  ‘Not at all. Uncongenial, perhaps.’ She hesitated. ‘I want no more of it, in fact. I guess I’ve had enough.’

  ‘A little of Wee Joe goes a long way, I imagine,’ he ventured, with a wry smile.

  The blue eyes that had held a laugh in them were serious now. For a moment, they rested on his face, blue eyes meeting blue, then she looked away and shrugged. ‘Oh no, it’s not him, perhaps it’s just London that’s got too much,’ she said. ‘I’m going home.’

  ‘You’re going to be a teacher after all, then?’ She shook her head. ‘No, I suppose you’re going to be married.’ He realized that was a more obvious reason, an attractive young woman like her.

  ‘No, I’m going home to my mammy,’ she said, with a hint of self-mockery. ‘At least, I suppose the truth of it is that I’m homesick. I need some fresh air.’

  ‘That’s something you don’t get much of in London.’ He wondered what she was really saying. ‘I wish you well in the future. I’m sorry our acquaintance has been so brief.’ So brief, in fact, no more than one chance meeting, that he wondered why she had found it necessary to seek him out to make her farewells.

  As if she read his thoughts she hesitated, then added, ‘I came to say goodbye because I shall be gone soon and you were so nice to me when I burst in on your office.’

  ‘Not mine,’ he pointed out. ‘The Minister’s. Mr Latimer’s.’

  ‘Yes. Mr Latimer.’ There was a pause. ‘You want to tell him to be careful,’ she said quickly then drew in her breath, looking frightened, as if she ought not to have said it.

  ‘Careful? In what way?’ He thought it a strange thing to have said. The idea of Edmund Latimer being less than careful about anything at all almost made him laugh – and anyway, how could she, in her lowly position, know enough about his doings to necessitate a warning? Unless she was simply passing on something she had overheard. But the thought of the day they had met, when she had accidentally burst into Latimer’s office, flashed through his mind once more, along with several other possibilities, one of which was that Mona Reagan was attractive and Edmund Latimer not wholly … unsusceptible. More unusual liaisons had been known to go on behind the scenes at Westminster, but the thought had been too bizarre to entertain for more than a second. And besides …

  She shrugged. ‘He’ll know what I mean.’ And then, hastily, ‘Don’t worry, it’s not important. I’d have told him myself if I ever thought there was a chance I’d get to speak to him.’

  She was right. In the loftiness of Latimer’s position, and her lowly one, that was unlikely. He could think of no way of detaining her and finding out more, other than to ask, ‘Won’t you stay and have coffee with me? There’s some on its way.’

  But that was no persuasion either. They shook hands and on the way out she said, ‘I hope the baby will be found soon, God love her. His sister’s, isn’t it, Mr Latimer’s, I mean?’

  And then she was gone, leaving him to his mixed thoughts.

  Inskip decided to stop by his Auntie Orla’s the next morning on his way to pay a call on the Catholic priest. She had a parcel ready for him to pass on.

  ‘I would have sent the poor man some of my barmbrack if it weren’t for that Julia O’Keefe’s jealousy,’ she said. ‘She can’t even bake soda bread and no wonder, with a face on her that would sour the buttermilk before it reaches the mixing bowl.’ She handed him a floppy brown paper parcel tied with string. ‘Don’t let him open this while you’re there, it might embarrass you both.’ Orla couldn’t afford whiskey, but he guessed it was something she’d salvaged for Father Finucane that was warm to wear – nothing she couldn’t give a priest, a couple of pairs of socks maybe, or a flannel shirt he could wear under his cassock.

  He didn’t give his police credentials when he knocked on the presbytery door and asked to see Father Finucane, but the housekeeper, after a suspicious look at his face, didn’t ask him in. She probably knew him by sight and reputation. She didn’t actually shut the door, but she left him standing on the steps while she went to deliver his request, and looked disappointed when she came back at having to reply that the Father would see him. He could see what Orla had meant about the woman. She had a long nose and her hair drawn tightly back from her forehead and looked as if she didn’t know how to smile. Her back was straight as a ramrod as she led him to the priest’s study.

  ‘Joseph Inskip! How nice to see you, boy!’ Father Finucane waved him to a seat, smiled and thanked him for the parcel, which he thankfully didn’t attempt to open, then looked enquiringly at Inskip with a pair of bright, intelligent and kindly eyes – a short, dumpy man who looked nothing special but was regarded by his parishioners as someone only a little below the God he represented. ‘How’s the world been treating you? Not well by the look of that face,’ he said jocularly. ‘I don’t think you’ve been in this room since I was preparing you for your first communion, but I’m not going to pretend surprise. I don’t think you’re here for spiritual consolation.’

  ‘I am not, Father,’ Inskip admitted. The priest couldn’t have forgotten the events which had led up to Cathleen’s death and O’Rourke’s flight to escape punishment, but it was unlikely he would think Inskip had now come to confess his disillusion with a religion and a God who could allow these things to happen.

  At that moment Miss O’Keefe brought in some tea, which must have been already brewed, so prompt was she. She poured it in silence, gave a nod, and went out. Father Finucane looked hopefully at the tray but there was no accompanying plate of biscuits. The housekeeper made a good pot of tea, however; it was hot and very strong. You could have stood the teaspoon in it.

  Inskip thought about how to broach the subject but he was forestalled. ‘You are here about Daniel O’Rourke,’ the priest said directly. ‘I have heard what’s being rumoured … but of course stories like that lose nothing in the telling.’ He sighed and looked infinitely sad. ‘If you’re looking to me to tell you where he is you’ll be disappointed. He has not been here. Daniel never liked what I had to say to him, and he knows what I would say now if he has the sin of taking another man’s life on his conscience.’

  ‘We don’t know that he has, not yet, Father. But I am not here about O’Rourke.’ He hadn’t expected the priest to know where he was, and if he did, he wouldn’t say.

  ‘Then it’s about the murdered man himself, God rest his soul.’ He crossed himself, and waited. Inskip said it was. ‘Well, I can’t help you there, either. He came to mass but he wasn’t inclined to linger afterwards and I only ever spoke to him very briefly. He never came to Confession. Seemed a nice enough young fellow, that’s all I can say. I was surprised to say the least to hear he’d been associating with the likes of O’Rourke.’

  ‘Was he Irish, too?’

  ‘That I don’t know. Maybe he was, or had some leanings. We Irish stick together, in ways that are not always as commendable as they might be.’ He rose from his chair and went to stand, teacup in hand, with his back to the small, smouldering fire. ‘I’m sadly afraid there’s too much talk of violence going around these parts, as you must know better than I do – and not only talk. What goes on in Ireland is mirrored here in a small way, and I’ve lost count of the times it’s already resulted in bad trouble for the families of all concerned. I can’t blame them for their views. As I see it, this thing they’re after that they call Home Rule, it’s inevitable sooner or later. But we are not renowned for patience. You cannot right centuries of wrong in a moment and I know people are sick of talk and still raw from past injustices. The older ones, those that are still proud to call themselves Fenians, can’t bring themselves to believe the struggle can ever be settled by peaceful means. Nothing will be achieved with armed violence, but Nationalist, R
epublican, or whatever they like to call themselves, it still amounts to the same thing. They see themselves as martyrs for the cause.’

  ‘Who are they, these people you know, specifically?’ Father Finucane knew everyone, every detail about his parishioners, and would certainly be aware if anyone of them were up to no good. Inskip had put the question, fully expecting the answer no. And of course, the priest shrugged and shook his head.

  ‘What about Tooley, Paddy Tooley?’ Inskip asked carefully.

  He laughed. ‘I wouldn’t fancy Tooley as a martyr for anything.’ He came back to the tea-tray on the desk, picked up the teapot and poured another cup of the now evil-looking brew. Inskip waved away a refill. ‘I’ve said too much,’ he said suddenly. ‘Don’t concern yourself with those who want to stir things up is my advice.’

  ‘If that’s what O’Rourke has come back to do, it does concern me, it’s my job, and we’ll get him, Father, you may be sure of that.’ Nothing less could have brought him back here, surely, to stir things up or to get money. There were influential people, even priests – though not Father Finucane – who were not averse to helping, with money or anything else.

  ‘Yes, I am afraid he must be brought to justice, but such an extremity has brought many a man to reflection and repentance.’

  Did he really believe this? ‘Father, I must go. Thank you for the tea.’

  ‘It’s been good to talk to you, Joseph. You’ve not thought about going back across the sea, then, to join your brothers? They keep in touch, you know, send contributions. It’s a good life they have.’

  ‘I have a good life here, Father.’

  ‘Well, well, I’m glad to hear that.’ The priest said nothing more as he accompanied Inskip to the door, blessing him before he left. ‘Maybe you’ll find it in your way to letting us see more of you at Our Lady. And think on this, Joseph. Revenge is the Lord’s and it’s He who will repay.’

  He had remembered Cathleen, after all.

  At Manessa House, Violet and Ferdie were breakfasting. Ferdie had the newspaper, still almost entirely dominated by stories of the Titanic disaster, propped against the coffee pot, pretending to read. But the speculations as to how the worst shipping disaster in the history of the world could possibly have happened, the rising death toll, the unexpected stories of heroism among those rescued made little impact on him. The news had shocked the world and was drawing people together, as adversity was supposed to do, though that wasn’t something that applied to himself and his wife. For some reason their own personal calamity was making it difficult to communicate. Some barrier seemed to have risen between them that prevented them sharing their grief and he couldn’t read what was going on behind the façade Violet was putting up. But then she had always kept her emotions severely in check. It wasn’t done to wear one’s heart on one’s sleeve. He had always known she was tougher than he was, but he still marvelled at the stoicism she was able to adopt now, at what cost God only knew to herself. He couldn’t attempt to emulate it and her constantly repeated belief that everything was bound to come right irked him. He didn’t know how she got through the days, vaguely supposing she might be seeing her friends, shopping, doing all the things that normally occupied her days, but she didn’t say, and he didn’t ask.

  Everyone else in the house was carrying on with their life, or trying to, as they had been advised. Alice was going to her clinic, every day now, and Edmund, though looking haggard with worry, had declared there was no logical reason he could see not to carry on as usual. Ferdie himself had even been putting a few hours in at the bank. In view of his father’s intransigent attitude towards the paying of a ransom, should such a demand ever come, their necessary association there should have provoked loathing, could he have summoned up the energy. As it was, he was barely aware of his parent’s presence. In between the time he spent there he had found himself walking aimlessly around the Regent’s Park, peering into every pram he saw, until the hostile reaction of several mothers had stopped him. Since then, he had walked, or slowly driven his motor car around the streets in the same aimless and unprofitable way, sometimes even at night. The household had become used to him coming and going at ungodly hours.

  Today, before setting out for the bank, he sat hunched over his toast and marmalade, going over the whole wretched situation, almost willing himself to believe that it was all a nightmare, that the new nanny must bring in his little Lucy as she routinely did each morning before he left, handing her to him for a cuddle, newly bathed and smelling sweetly of baby powder. He would spend ten minutes or so, ruffling her soft curls, playing with her, teasing from her a gurgling laugh and storing up memory that would warm and cheer him throughout the day. But then he realized that wasn’t going to happen today. The meaningless day would go on, without him being able to think, despite the brave words he had first uttered, of any more steps that might lead him to Lucy.

  Hewson, the parlour maid, getting on in years and bad on her feet, stumped in with the morning’s post and handed it to him without a smile. No one in the house now seemed able to find occasions for smiling. It had become a sad little household. From being the happily unremarkable home of a privileged young couple with a solid background, just starting out to raise a family, with the first of them the joyful centre of everyone’s existence, including that of most of the staff, it had become the centre of tension and fear.

  Ferdie flipped through the letters. There was one addressed to Miss May Newcombe and the rest were for Violet – the usual batch of invitations, he could see, and two which he guessed were bills from her milliner which she put aside with a cluck, also a familiar-looking pink epistle from her dressmaker, an alarmingly high demand, he concluded from the way she bit her lip before thrusting it back into its envelope. There was nothing for Ferdie, but among the other, stamped and addressed envelopes was a note which appeared to have been hand-delivered, since it bore neither name nor address. It was in fact a single sheet of paper folded in half, then into three with one end tucked in to keep it closed. Ferdie opened it and sat staring blankly until Violet asked, ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It’s arrived,’ he said. ‘The ransom.’

  She gave a queer, choking gasp and since he appeared incapable of saying more, jumped up, ran around the table, snatched the paper from his hand and read the large, scrawled block capitals. FIVE THOUSAND POUND OR ELSE. Nothing more, simply the five words. But it was enough to make Violet forget her resolution not to show temper. ‘Five thousand pounds!’ she almost screamed. ‘What imbeciles! How do they expect anyone to have that amount?’ It was indeed a staggering sum, one that might stretch even the resources of Martens Bank.

  Ferdie found his voice. ‘Violet,’ he said in an oddly strangulated voice, ‘never mind the money. Don’t you realize this means Lucy is alive?’

  ‘What? Well, yes, I do, of course I do! But it still means we shall have to get the money from somewhere, somehow, to get her back. And five thousand pounds!’ Her fury had gone, but her voice still shook.

  Ferdie made for the telephone with a speed he hadn’t shown himself capable of since he’d first heard that his daughter had disappeared.

  ‘They’re attempting to unnerve you,’ Gaines said when he arrived and was shown the note. He had asked to be told immediately, should the ransom demand arrive. It would, he had hoped, state terms and the means whereby the exchange would take place, all of which would enable the police to work out a possible intervention policy. But there was nothing in this note to suggest how or where this would happen.

  ‘Unnerve us? If that’s what they want, then they’re succeeding,’ Ferdie said. ‘Because there’s simply no question of being able to pay anything remotely like that. I’ve already telephoned my father and he’s not prepared to cough up.’

  ‘Your father!’ Violet almost hissed. This monster hovering in the background who wasn’t prepared to part with money even to save his own grandchild. Money that however huge a sum it might have seemed to the kidnappers, m
ust be nothing compared with what he owned.

  ‘He’s convinced himself this is all a hoax, however ridiculous that is. He won’t hand over any money at all, much less five thousand pounds, until it’s proved otherwise. And how will that happen?’ he asked bitterly. ‘By Lucy being … killed?’

  Gaines was quick to try and put this worst possible outcome from Martens’ mind. ‘You’ll hear from them again. The note is simply an opening gambit, designed to frighten you. Will you let me take charge of it?’

  In one way the missive was reassuring. It meant that the child had indeed been taken for money, not by a person who wanted to keep her for themselves, with no intention of ever returning her. He pocketed it, while knowing there was little to be gained from it. Fingerprints maybe, for which they would, however, need comparisons. The paper had been torn from a cheap exercise book, the pencilled message scrawled – perhaps in an attempt at disguise, but he thought not. It seemed to him much more likely to have been written by one not accustomed to writing, and possibly someone illiterate, unless it had been done in too much of a hurry to notice or bother about a missing ‘s’. Five thousand pound, it said, not pounds. A figure drawn out of the air. Five thousand pounds, a sum beyond the grasp of the imagination of those unacquainted with anything much more than a shilling or two. If an ordinary working man laboured for a lifetime such a sum would be unattainable – and yet such a person might well regard it as a drop in the ocean to people like the Martens, thinking they would regard it as a fair price to pay for their child. It seemed very much to him as though the perpetrator was an amateur with unrealistic expectations, but at least it was the first move in a game intended to start negotiations; it had broken the silence and made way for their next move. Instructions must follow, though it was by no means plain sailing yet.