by Joe Joyce
Duggan got up and dropped the paper on the chair. He had to be doing something. Sitting around thinking bleak thoughts about the future wasn’t doing him any good. ‘I’m going out for a walk,’ he said.
‘A walk?’ Gifford kept his eyes closed.
‘Just going up to Mount Street. To see someone.’
‘Ah,’ Gifford sighed with satisfaction. ‘To see how the other side’s doing?’
‘What?’
Gifford opened one eye. ‘What the British are up to.’ He saw Duggan’s confusion. ‘Their representative’s office’s up there. You didn’t know that?’
Duggan shook his head, embarrassed.
‘I won’t tell anyone.’ Gifford closed his eyes again. ‘And to think that some people believe you fellows know what you’re doing. Our first line of defence. Jaysus.’
‘I’ll be back in a little while,’ Duggan muttered as he gathered his jacket and left. Going down the stairs, he got the piece of paper Timmy had given him out of his pocket and looked at the number on it. Twenty-eight.
He crossed the street into Upper Mount Street, which looked like a continuation of Merrion Square, four-storeyed, redbrick Georgian houses, a couple of steps up to the front doors, half-moon fanlights above them. He checked the numbers on the nearest houses: 28 had to be down the other end, near the Pepper Canister church which stood in the middle of the street, forcing the road to embrace it with two arms. He passed by the British pensions office. Two red-faced men were coming out, looking like they were off to a pub to spend their ex-servicemen’s money. Farther on, a uniformed guard stood outside the office of the British representative. He resisted an urge to look up at the windows on the opposite side of the road. The Special Branch had to be up there somewhere, keeping an eye on visitors, the comings and goings.
Number 28 had a line of bell pushes beside the door, the few names on tabs unreadable. He tried the door but it was locked and he pressed a bell at random. Nothing happened and he tried another one, lower down. After a few moments he heard footsteps clicking down the hall and the door opened. A woman in her thirties eyed him with some suspicion.
‘Sorry for troubling you,’ Duggan said. ‘I’m looking for Nuala Monaghan.’
‘Second bell from the top,’ she said and shut the door and he heard its lock click into place.
He pressed the second bell from the top. Nothing happened. He should’ve asked Timmy if they had a key, he thought. But his aunt Mona must have had a look inside already.
He walked on, round the side of the church, and asked a man passing by where Gillespie’s Metropolitan College was. ‘The other Mount Street,’ he said. ‘Turn left over there at the canal. Just up from the next bridge.’ Duggan followed his directions. People were stretched out on the grass along the banks of the canal, soaking up the sun. Shouts and splashes came from a lock down towards the sea where a group of boys were jumping off the gates, trying to outdo each others’ splashes.
The college was near the bridge, on Lower Mount Street, another Georgian house turned into a commercial building. A no-nonsense looking woman sat in an office inside the door and looked up at him over her glasses as he came in.
‘I’m looking for Nuala Monaghan,’ he said. She stared at him and he added quickly. ‘I’m her cousin. Up from the country for the day. I was hoping I could meet her for a cup of tea.’
She said nothing and opened a ledger book and ran her name down several lists until she stopped. ‘Mr Devlin’s class. On the next floor. First door.’ She looked at her watch. ‘They’re just finished now so you can go up.’
Duggan thanked her and climbed the stairs, keeping to the wall as a stream of young women came down. The classroom was almost empty, one young woman waiting for a friend to put her books away. Mr Devlin, a small, balding old man, was at a table in front of the unused fireplace, putting his papers into a leather briefcase. A blackboard stood on an easel on the window side of the desk, covered in shorthand symbols.
‘Miss Monaghan,’ he said after Duggan gave him his story, ‘has not been here for some time.’ He took a hard-backed notebook from his briefcase and consulted it. ‘Not for two weeks. Since last Friday fortnight.’ He looked up at Duggan as though it was his fault.
‘Oh,’ Duggan said. ‘I’ll call around to her home.’
‘You should inform her that she ought to come back immediately,’ Mr Devlin said. ‘Or she’ll have fallen so far behind that she won’t be able to catch up. She may have to repeat the term in the autumn.’
Why would she stop going to the classes? Duggan wondered as he went downstairs. If she’d wanted to do them, as Timmy said. Though Timmy wasn’t necessarily a reliable judge of what Nuala wanted. Still, it pointed to a sudden disappearance. Maybe, he thought, something had really happened to her. He’d been inclined to accept Timmy’s view that she was simply lying low, paying him back. But what if something had really happened to make her disappear suddenly? He should report her missing.
Across the street was the nurses’ home for Sir Patrick Dun’s hospital. Her friend, Stella Maloney, was a nurse there. On the off-chance that she might be there he crossed the road and went into the building. A doorman barred his way.
‘I’m looking for my cousin, Stella Maloney,’ Duggan told him. ‘I’m just up from the country for the day and I was hoping she might be off duty and have time for a cup of tea. Before I get my train back to the barracks.’
‘Wait there,’ the doorman said and disappeared through a door.
The wait stretched into minutes and Duggan lit a Sweet Afton and stared out the window beside the door. Nurses came and went, most of them in uniform. He sensed suddenly that someone was staring at him and he turned around. A young woman with dark eyes and black hair in tight curls was giving him a quizzical look, her arms folded over her uniform.
‘Stella?’ The doorman re-emerged behind her and was watching him. ‘I’m just up for the day,’ he stuttered. ‘Nuala told me you might be free. For a cup of tea.’
Understanding dawned in her eyes. ‘We’ll go down to Morelli’s,’ she said, leading the way out the door.
‘Thanks,’ Duggan said to the doorman as he passed him.
‘I’m Paul Duggan,’ he said outside. ‘Nuala’s cousin.’
‘Right,’ she said. Something in her inflection made him wonder for a fleeting moment if she had thought he was somebody else. ‘I’ve heard of you,’ she went. ‘You’re in the army. Your uncle’s very proud of you.’
That makes my heart leap with joy, Duggan thought. ‘I’ve been trying to find Nuala,’ he said.
‘Why’re you trying to find her?’ They went by a line of small shops, a grocer’s, butcher’s and a newsagent’s. A newspaper board outside said in big black letters, ‘French Govt Flees Paris’. She guided him across the road to Morelli’s fish and ice cream shop and they took a table inside the door.
‘I’m getting worried about her. She seems to have disappeared.’
Stella looked at the handwritten menu. ‘I’ll have ice cream and tea,’ she said. ‘Ice cream for breakfast.’
‘You’re just getting up?’
She nodded. ‘Night duty this month. Turns everything upside down. So I can have ice cream for breakfast.’
Duggan ordered the same when a waitress came to them.
‘Is it you that’s worried,’ Stella stared at him. ‘Or her father?’
‘He told me they haven’t seen her for a few weeks. And she hasn’t been to her secretarial classes.’
‘So you’re here on his behalf.’
Duggan shook his head. ‘Well, yes and no. He asked me to try and find her. But I’m worried too. If you can tell me she’s fine, that’s it. I’ll be happy.’
‘And you’ll go back and tell him?’
‘Not if you don’t want me to.’ She gave him a sceptical look. ‘But you might let her mother and sisters know. It’s not fair on them if she’s just trying to give her father a hard time.’
The waitress bro
ught them a tin pot of weak tea and two tin bowls of vanilla ice cream with strawberry cordial dribbling down the sides. ‘Would you like your tea now?’ Stella asked him. He nodded and she poured it for both of them.
‘I don’t know where she is,’ she said.
Duggan gave a worried sigh. ‘So she really is missing?’
‘I haven’t seen her for a couple of weeks. Like I told you, I’ve been on nights. It turns your life upside down. You don’t see anybody. Miss all this lovely weather.’
She’s avoiding the question, Duggan thought. She obviously knows something. But she’s not going to tell me. He waited until he caught her eye and asked, ‘Is she in trouble?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, breaking eye contact to take a spoonful of the smooth ice cream.
‘I promise I won’t tell Timmy,’ he tried again. ‘I just want to know for my own sake if she’s all right. If you can tell me she is, that’s the end of it as far as I’m concerned. I’ll tell Timmy I couldn’t find out anything.’
She continued to eat her ice cream slowly, savouring each mouthful. He had finished his and drank his tea. It tasted flat after the ice cream. Neither said anything until they had both finished.
‘Is there anyone else who might know?’ he asked. ‘Any other friends? Does she have a boyfriend?’
Stella smiled as if at a private joke. ‘Nuala’s never short of boyfriends. You know her.’
I don’t actually, Duggan thought. He wouldn’t have thought that the impatient girl he remembered would have been very attractive to men. But, then, he hadn’t the faintest idea what attracted women to men. ‘Is there a particular one at the moment?’
She shrugged her shoulders and said, ‘Sorry. I don’t know.’
‘Okay,’ he nodded, letting her know that he was giving up. She could keep her secrets. She wasn’t going to share them with him.
‘Where are you based?’ She sounded more friendly, aware that the questioning was over.
‘Collins Barracks,’ he said. ‘I’ve only been up in Dublin a couple of weeks.’
‘You’re an officer, aren’t you?’
‘Only a lieutenant. The bottom of the pole.’
‘How do you like it?’
‘Dublin or the army?’
‘Both?’
He shrugged. ‘They’re interesting. It’s an interesting time.’
He called the waitress and got the bill. Stella took it from his hand after he had looked at it, and said they would split it. She took a purse from her pocket and left a shilling and a threepenny bit on the table. He put down two sixpenny pieces and three copper pennies.
‘Do you have a key to Nuala’s flat?’ he asked her, out of the blue.
She looked at him for a moment and then said, ‘Wait here.’
Three
She opened the door and he followed her up the stairs. A strip of yellow linoleum ran up the centre of the steps, the black paint on either side greyed by ingrained dust. Small flakes of once white paint were beginning to droop from the ceiling here and there and the faded green walls were scuffed in places. She led him up to the top landing where two electricity meters with coin slots stood between two doors. She turned the key in the lock of the door on the right and they went in.
The room was stuffy, heavy with the stagnant air of the last few days’ heat. There was a single bed against one wall, made up neatly with a maroon coloured eiderdown on top. A wardrobe with a door ajar stood against the wall at the end of the bed, a small cardboard suitcase on top of it. On the opposite wall there was a sink with a gas geyser above it and two gas rings alongside. Beside the sink there was a press of the same height; a cup sat on a plate on top of it. There was a small square table in front of the window with a single chair facing the glass. Everything was old and mismatched, castoffs.
Stella went to one side of the table and leant sideways to unlatch the window. She tried to pull down the top but it wouldn’t move. Duggan went to the other side of the table and pulled at the other side of the window. It gave way with a lurch and came down a couple of inches.
Duggan stood back and looked around. Now that he was here he had no idea what it was he hoped to find. ‘How does it seem to you?’ he asked Stella, going over to look at the cup and plate beside the sink. The bottom of the cup was a congealed green and there were some toasted crumbs on the plate. ‘Have you been here before?’
‘The same as usual,’ she shrugged. ‘Nuala’s very neat.’
‘It looks like she left in a hurry,’ he pointed to the cup and plate.
She went over and looked at them but said nothing.
‘Went out after breakfast,’ he suggested. ‘But not to the college.’ On the table there was a copy of Pitman’s Shorthand Instructor, a worn copy of Pitman’s Shorthand Dictionary, and some copybooks. He flicked through them. They were filled with what looked like shorthand exercises, the same symbols repeated over and over again. Near the end of one there appeared to be a passage of text in shorthand. ‘Can you read shorthand?’ he asked her. She shook her head.
He pulled open the table’s shallow drawer. There were a couple of pencils, a sharpener, a rubber; a memorial card for his and Nuala’s grandmother with the date of her death, 24 September 1923; an envelope with small square, box camera photographs, and some newspaper cuttings. He took out the photographs and glanced through them. There were some of his aunt Mona and his own mother as young women, Mona with a young Nuala, Nuala and her younger sisters, some people he didn’t recognise, and one of a young man. It wasn’t as faded as the others. He was wearing a short-sleeved pullover over an open-necked shirt, his head tilted in a slightly forced smile.
He handed it to Stella. ‘That’s Jim,’ she said, ‘Jim Bradley.’
‘Her boyfriend?’
Stella made a noncommittal gesture. ‘I wouldn’t say that. One of her admirers.’
He fished out the newspaper cuttings. The main one was a page from the Irish Times, folded in four. He opened it out on the table. It was dated 30 November 1920 and the first two lines of the four-deck headline in the centre of the page said ‘Auxiliary Police Ambushed in County Cork/ Fifteen Killed, One Wounded, and One Missing.’ He read down a little and realized that it was an account of the famous Kilmichael ambush when Tom Barry’s Flying Column had wiped out a patrol of Auxiliaries in the War of Independence. Why would Nuala keep that?
The other main report on the page was of an official inquiry into the shooting of three Republicans in Dublin Castle while said to be trying to escape. Duggan knew their names well, everybody did, but he couldn’t imagine why Nuala would be particularly interested in them or the attempted cover-up of their murders. The rest of the page was short pieces about various attacks, arrests, deaths from wounds, all minor compared to Kilmichael. Nothing caught his attention and he turned the page over: Irish questions in the British parliament, a review of a show in the Gaiety Theatre, the American stock market report, an ad for White’s Wafer Oatmeal.
Another cutting from the Irish Independent made more sense. It was a photograph of two couples taken at a dinner dance in the Metropole the previous winter and identified Nuala and the others.
‘Richie Cummins,’ Stella said. ‘And friends of his.’
‘Not a boyfriend?’
‘You know Nuala,’ she said. ‘Very independent minded. Won’t let herself be tied down by being too attached to any one man. Not yet anyway.’
He put everything back into the drawer.
‘Listen,’ she said, ‘I’ve got to be getting back.’
He opened the wardrobe and stepped back, inviting her to look at the row of dresses and blouses on hangers and two pairs of shoes on the floor. ‘Would you know if there’s anything missing?’ He felt uneasy looking into her clothes, as if it was a step too far.
She shrugged an apology. ‘Impossible to know. She still kept some of her clothes at home.’
He closed the door. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Thanks for bringing me in.’
‘Did you find what you wanted?’ she asked as she locked the door behind them.
‘I don’t know what I wanted,’ he said. ‘She seems to have left intending to come back.’
‘That’s the bathroom,’ Stella said as they passed the return. He opened the frosted glass door and looked in. A bath with a green stain under a tap had a gas geyser above it, the toilet had a cistern up near the ceiling, a long chain hanging down.
‘Why did she leave Clery’s?’ Duggan asked as he followed her down the stairs.
‘Boss was a bitch,’ Stella said over her shoulder. ‘Gave Nuala a terrible time because she was forced to take her into her section by someone on high. Her father had pulled strings.’
Duggan nodded. He could understand Nuala’s decision. Timmy couldn’t resist trying to run everyone’s life. Even my own, he thought.
On the street, Stella held out her hand formally. ‘Nice to meet you,’ she said as he shook it.
‘Will you let me know if you hear anything?’ he asked. ‘Just for my own information. I won’t tell anyone if that’s the way Nuala wants it.’
‘How do I contact you?’
‘If you leave a message at Collins Barracks I should get it,’ he said.
Sinéad was just leaving the building when he got back to Merrion Square.
‘Is he still up there?’ he asked her.
‘Does he have a home to go to at all?’ she said. ‘I think he sleeps on the floor up there. Poor lamb.’
Duggan laughed, assuming she was joking, and went on up.
‘So, how was the Swedish massage?’ Gifford greeted him.
‘What?’
‘I’ve always wondered about that place in Mount Street. The Swedish institute of gymnastics and massage. You couldn’t go wrong with that combination.’
‘I didn’t notice it.’
Gifford shook his head, like he was a hopeless case.
‘Sinéad’s worried you’re sleeping here.’