by Lia Mills
‘Sometimes I lie awake all night, wondering,’ Isabel went on. ‘Could I have stopped him, if I’d tried harder? It goes on forever. If this Hubie Wilson hadn’t put in a word for him with the colonel –’
‘He’d have got his commission anyway. He’d have gone anyway. Isabel, please. If you challenge Captain Wilson, he won’t tell us anything.’ I wished I’d stayed with my first instinct and arranged to meet him alone.
She looked away from me, towards the hills. We walked on without speaking, around the corner on to Upper Mount Street and on towards the Pepper Canister Church.
‘What will he do now, missing a hand?’
‘I don’t know.’ It hadn’t occurred to me to ask. My mind stopped at the door of his safety. The relief his family would feel to have him home was like a lit room glimpsed from a cold dark street, a table spread with food and candles to taunt a beggar.
‘War is an evil.’ She stopped on the little curved bridge over the canal. We looked down into the still black water. I hoped she’d be tactful and not antagonize Captain Wilson, who knew more of war than we ever would, or May, whose father had been a hero in the Crimea, and in the raising of the Siege of Cawnpore.
A single swan emerged below us, made a stately curve before the lock and came back. Its reflection made a second bird, snowy-white and upside down. Its eyes were as dark and deep as the water. I remembered the bag in my pocket. ‘I have crumbs.’
More swans appeared as the bread struck the water, two perfect white and one black, half a dozen cygnets. Only the black bird cast no reflection. We threw crumbs and watched the water ripple, breaking the illusion as the swans’ webbed black feet churned the water. They dipped their necks in sudden thrusts that shattered their reflections into blurs of white and grey.
An ancient old man bent double over a cane stopped to watch. ‘Mashed potato,’ he said. ‘That’s what you need. Good for swans, a bit of mash.’
Dote let us in, then dragged the heavy bolt across the door. In eighteen months of coming to this house, I’d never seen that bolt in use.
She shook Isabel’s hand. ‘We’ve heard all about you, my dear. You’re very welcome.’ She caught my look at the bolt. ‘Hubie said to keep the door locked. He’s not here, I’m afraid. We heard such wild stories that he went to investigate. I was worried, but here you are, safe and sound.’ She led us into the kitchen.
‘There are gunmen in the Green,’ I said.
‘So it’s true.’ The silver bangles May wore on each narrow wrist, relics of her childhood, made an eerie sound as she came to shake Isabel’s hand. ‘Delighted, my dear. How are you, Katie, pet? Are the streets quiet? We didn’t know what to believe.’
We sat at the kitchen table. May scalded a teapot. A tray of tea-things stood ready on the dresser. Dote moved the tray to the table in front of us while I told them what we had seen. May sat with us, to listen.
Isabel described the scene in the Shelbourne. People up from the country for the Spring Show. A wedding party. A couple of soldiers on leave. And then the sound of windows breaking outside, people rushing in from the street to say there was trouble, and everyone going to the windows to look out at the unbelievable sight of carts and furniture making a wall in the street, men passing more items out through gaping windows to add to it. A boy who walked past was fired on, from no one knew where. He vaulted the railings and took shelter in the area before someone had the sense to open a basement window and let him in. A woman was handing her hat around to anyone who’d look. A round hole in it came, she said, from a bullet.
May stood up. ‘There! I forgot to make the tea. I’ll do it now. Will we go upstairs?’
Dote took the tray and asked us to follow her. We were still in the downstairs passage when we heard a brisk knock on the door. Dote worked the bolt and opened it, and a tall man came in, along with shafts of sunlight, a glimpse of open space behind him.
I had to lift my face to meet his eyes. His damaged right hand was encased in leather. Isabel was flustered by the hand, even though I’d warned her. She thrust hers out to shake it, pulled it back, ended up grasping his sleeve instead.
When it was my turn, I took his other hand, his left, in both of mine. His handshake was limp, a disappointment.
‘Thank you for writing to us,’ I said, ‘when Liam was killed.’
For an instant his hand came alive, solidified, in mine. Tiny points of golden light flared in his irises. The skin of his face and neck was pale at the tightly cropped hairline. He must have been to a barber recently. Liam’s hair had been just like that when he came home that last time, before going to the Front. It made him look tender, defenceless as a small boy. I wanted to touch it.
‘Well?’ Dote asked. ‘Did you discover anything?’
‘There’s trouble, all right.’ He took his hand back and shut the door, pushing the bolt home. The passage returned to its natural gloom. ‘But it’s hard to know the extent of it. It’s quiet enough for the time being.’
‘We’ll have tea so, while you tell us all about it,’ Dote said. ‘We’re all parched.’ She went up ahead of us.
My eyes had grown used to the dim light in the passage. Hubie Wilson looked haughty and exasperated, not at all what I’d expected from their affectionate accounts of him. May gave me the teapot, snug in its bright red knitted cosy. She took his arm and smiled up at him. ‘We’ll see more from upstairs,’ she coaxed. So up we went.
He went into the parlour, saying he wanted to look out through the front window. I stopped at the door of the dining room. The table had been cleared and dressed with linen, china and silver, and the books were stacked away in boxes against the wall. Under the window, I could see the typewriter sitting in its case beside the rubber plant with its strong oval leaves, a red tongue of new leaf unfurling from its throat. ‘Did you do this for the Captain?’ I asked Dote.
She shook her head. ‘For your friend,’ she said in a low voice.
May had brought Isabel to the window. It looked out on a long green swathe of garden with ordered beds and fruit trees coming into flower. New blossoms were burgeoning, white and pink stars on a canopy of palest green. May was naming them, and Isabel exclaiming at their colours.
‘Your garden is beautiful, Miss Colclough,’ she said, when Dote joined them.
‘That’s all May’s handiwork. I’ve a black thumb, I’m afraid.’
May took off her spectacles to clean them, put them back on again, while Dote told us where to sit. I was on my usual side, facing the maps, with May beside me, and Dote sat on hers, with Isabel. They’d left the head of the table, where May liked to sit when she came in to chat to us, for the Captain. I hoped he’d appreciate the view.
‘Now,’ May said when he came back in, ‘tell us everything.’
He glanced at Isabel and me as he sat into his place and unfolded his napkin. Dote leaned across Isabel to say, ‘These are sturdy young women. They’ve already resisted confinement in the Shelbourne.’ She winked at us.
‘It’s hard to know exactly what’s happening.’ His voice had an unusual low pitch, not at all unpleasant, despite the alarming things he was saying: public buildings had been overrun by men with guns; a policeman killed, and the rest of them vanished into thin air. The trams appeared to have stopped running. The most worrying thing was that the neighbours at the back said their neighbours had been turned out of their own home.
‘Why on earth?’
‘Gunmen have installed themselves at the windows. They said they’d do their best to see nothing gets damaged, and shooed the owners away. The owners went to a house with a telephone and tried to ring the police, but the line is down.’
‘But that’s – that’s –’ Isabel grasped for a word and failed to find one. None of us could help her.
‘I went to speak to the gunmen,’ he said.
‘Who are they?’ Dote asked.
‘Some sort of Brotherhood, they say. They’ve barricaded themselves in. They won’t be persuaded out, they mean business. Th
eir colleagues have occupied the GPO.’
We listened out for any untoward sounds, but we heard nothing other than May’s breathing. I didn’t have to look at her to be aware of the rise and fall of her breast, or that her hand pressed on it, as though trying to contain it. ‘Will they come here?’ she asked. ‘Is it likely that they’d want this house?’
‘I don’t see why they would,’ Dote said. ‘Tea, May.’
‘There! I nearly forgot again.’ She gathered herself together with visible effort. When the tea was poured, and Dote had handed out the scones, and the butter and jam had been passed around to everyone’s satisfaction, Hubie Wilson said it might be no harm to pack any valuables away. ‘Just in case.’
Dote was firm. ‘Let’s not talk about it any more, since we can do nothing.’
I, for one, was relieved. I was at that point where hunger threatens to turn on itself, so that it’s nearly impossible to eat. I dealt with my own scone quickly and accepted a second. Spooning jam on to my plate, I caught sight of the slow movement of Hubie Wilson’s left hand, spreading butter on a slice of soda bread. I was taken by its steady rhythm. My own left hand was so useless, you’d nearly wonder what it was for, other than symmetry. I tried not to stare.
Isabel said, ‘How long have you been a soldier, Captain Wilson?’
He finished what he was doing and set his knife down before answering. ‘I’m not a soldier now. It’s Mr Wilson.’
‘Ah, Hubie, no need for that.’ May patted his injured hand. ‘We’re all friends here.’
He stiffened. There was a pause it should have been up to him to fill. I’d been predisposed to favour him, not only because he had befriended Liam, but because his name was part of the currency of conversation in this house. I’d felt as if I knew him a little, but I was unprepared for his stiff manner or how prickly he was.
‘Liam spoke well of you,’ Isabel conceded at last.
He looked at her, expressionless.
‘Tell them about the army,’ Dote said, with an air of moving things along.
‘I got my commission four years ago.’ He pushed his plate away. ‘It’s in the family, soldiering. I thought it would suit me for a while. I’d see a bit of the world. Save my pay,’ he laughed, ‘for later. An uncle was in the Dublins. I’ve two cousins in the Irish Rifles, and Great Uncle Richard …’ His eyes went to the display of May’s father’s medals in their frame on the wall behind me. ‘Why not? But then the war started … It was a shock. Wouldn’t you think a soldier would know better? I was young. I’d imagined the odd skirmish, life in a fort in a range of snowy mountains – or a desert. I thought it’d be glamorous. And interesting. Policing people with different notions of the world.’
‘Like us,’ I said.
‘I’m as Irish as you are!’
‘I never said you weren’t.’ I looked at Dote.
She didn’t let me down. ‘Katie helped me with my book, Hubie. She’s a walking encyclopedia by now. Ask her anything about the monuments.’
He raised an eyebrow that was pulled askew by a scar. The kink gave him the look of a satyr. ‘Which is your favourite?’
He was most likely mocking, but I decided to take the question seriously.
‘I think the one to Constable Sheahan. Do you know it?’
‘It’s near the river, at the end of Hawkins Street.’ Dote shuddered. ‘Celtic cross, granite, all spirals and shamrocks – you can’t mean it, Katie.’
‘I’m not mad about the look of it,’ I said.
‘Who was he?’
‘Quite the legend,’ Dote said. ‘A giant, even for a DMP man.’
‘He carried a whole family out of a falling building once,’ I said. ‘Another time, he wrestled a rampaging bull to the ground.’
‘And that’s why they built a memorial?’
‘No – there was a workman who went down a drain and choked to death on the fumes. The constable went to save him, and he died too. He’d a massive funeral – did you see it, Isabel? Remember the horses, all the black plumes?’
‘We love a good funeral in Dublin.’ She smoothed the tablecloth with the flat of her hand, her eyes down. ‘We’ve seen more than our share these last few years.’
Hubie Wilson was watching me. ‘If you’re not mad about the look of that monument,’ he asked, ‘why is it your favourite?’
‘It’s the only one I know of, to an ordinary person.’
His smile took years off him. ‘Good reason. There’s never been a monument to an ordinary soldier.’
Dote stood up. ‘That’s enough of all that, now. A bit of fresh air’ll do us a power of good; we’ve been cooped up indoors for far too long.’ She ushered us outside.
Wooden garden chairs and a bench made of iron were under the apple tree. Before we were settled, Mrs Delaney, the next-door neighbour, came to the low wall between the two gardens and waved. Dote went to see what she wanted. After a minute or two she came back for Hubie. They spoke to the woman while I tugged one of my chair’s legs free of the grass it had sunk into, and pushed it to the path. Isabel and May discussed the flowers, and types of soil, the curse of aphids. Colour returned to May’s face while they talked and I was glad of Isabel. May would have known my heart wasn’t in such a conversation, even if I’d been able to carry it off.
Dote and the Captain came back to tell us that a meeting of men from the terrace had been arranged, down in Mr Hyland’s house, at the corner. Dote looked amused. ‘Hubie says May or I should go! I’ve half a mind to do it too.’
Hubie mumbled an excuse and left. He was a sudden sort of a man. I wondered had he always been like that.
‘But – we’d so much to ask him,’ Isabel said.
Uneasy, I caught her eye. We’d outstayed our welcome. May looked tired, and Dote wanted to get out to that meeting. Mother expected us, and time was moving on. We’d heard no more firing since we arrived, but I was a little anxious about getting home. ‘We should leave.’
‘Are you sure?’ Dote looked doubtful. ‘You could stay here.’
‘Not at all. We’re expected. It’s been quiet since we arrived.’
‘Well, if you come across anything untoward, come straight back.’
We promised we would and moved inside.
‘Come back tomorrow,’ May said. ‘Hubie’s here ’til the day after; there’s plenty of time.’ She shook herself and her bangles made their eerie, shivery sound. ‘Today has been a jittery day. Fresh start tomorrow.’
Isabel went with May to retrieve our coats.
Part of me wanted to stay and try to coax more out of Hubie Wilson when he came back, but a stronger part urged me home, to make sure everyone was all right. To hear from Dad and Matt, who’d have stories of their own to tell.
Outside, the street glowed in the afternoon light, like a painting. There was no traffic in the road, but people walked along the pavement as usual. A family of mallard swam along the canal across the road, each spreading its own tiny wake, glassy ribbons of clear green water.
‘That man is odd,’ Isabel said. ‘He’s infuriating. A waste of an afternoon.’
We followed the towpath beside the gleaming water, under new-leafed trees, all the way to the basin, in the shadow of the ugly mill.
‘Isabel, listen. You know the memory-book Mother made for Liam? She wants to show it to you tonight.’
‘She asked me for a letter to add to it. I couldn’t.’
‘Of course not. No one expected you to part with them.’
‘Then why did she ask?’
‘She has her moments.’
I had to walk faster to keep up with her. When I drew level again, I saw her cheeks were wet.
‘I loved Liam.’ She turned on me, the very image of misery.
‘I know.’
‘I mean, really loved him. You don’t know – you act as if you owned him, all of you.’ She was furious, suddenly. ‘I’m sorry, but I felt – I feel – you took him back when he died.’
After Lia
m was killed, Isabel had stayed in Cork nearly five months. In all that time we saw her just once, when she came up by train for the memorial Mass. Mother might have resented her less if she’d been here to share our grief that summer. But it was true that Mother had done nothing to encourage her tentative overtures when she came back, in September. I could hardly tell her that Mother thought she was unfeeling, that she had wounded Liam somehow, weakened him. Dad said Mother had got over all that, but I wasn’t so sure.
I drew her down on to a wayside bench where we were shielded by trees – not that there was anyone to see us. The path was quiet. The dark mass of the mill brooded over the water, and I could see people walking along Great Brunswick Street, maybe twenty yards ahead, but there was no one to disturb us here. She was crying now, and I gave her a handkerchief.
She pulled off her gloves, turning the ring on her finger so that it caught and returned a flash of sunlight. ‘We were all but married as it was. Can I tell you something, in absolute confidence?’ She wasn’t crying now, but her voice still shook.
‘Of course.’
‘That last time he was home, we lay together.’
Something happened to my ears, something thunderous, getting in the way of hearing. It made no difference whether I listened or not, she was talking to herself. ‘In Glendalough. I’d a blanket, from the car. To sit on.’ She twisted the ring on her finger, over and back, as though trying to work her finger loose from the bone. ‘To lie on. He wore his own clothes that day. I’d asked him to.’ She darted a quick look at me, but kept talking. ‘I hated that khaki. I hated the smell off the belt.’
I knew exactly what she meant.
‘He was all mine that day. He was a husband to me.’ She put the gloves away into her bag. ‘Well. Shall we go on?’ She stood up, smoothed her skirt.
Liam rose in my mind, watching her. I felt a kind of vertigo, as though I stood in a high place, looking down at this path, myself on this bench, the ground giving way beneath me, pitching me back to the last time he was home.
It was a crisp night, All Saints’. Liam was tense. He was leaving the next day, and soon he’d be going to the Front. He’d been different, the three days of his leave; there had been something unreachable in him. He even sounded different, using a new vocabulary of rank and equipment, sappers, the chaps. He’d a way of biting off the ends of his sentences, as if to control what might escape them. He smoked one cigarette after another, laughed too often and a little too loud.