‘You have disappointed me, child,’ he murmured, ‘but I have never stopped loving you.’
Tears pricked the edges of her eyes. ‘I know, Papa,’ she whispered.
They remained there for some time, neither one moving, while the candles on the Christmas tree flickered in the firelight.
On New Year’s Eve, 1916, Victoria took a deep breath and pushed through the door of Biddy Gillespie’s tea room, Rosie close behind her. It was late evening, but the rickety, wooden tables and chairs which lined the stained floor were empty. The place would not fill up until the pubs closed and the men of the village came in for tea and bread and plates of greasy chips before shuffling off home.
Victoria looked around uneasily. On a wall shelf, in a nod to the season, sprigs of holly adorned two white ceramic cats with orange faces and bright eyes glinting in the lamplight. The cats were flanked by dusty bric-a-brac and faded photographs. A real cat, its white fur tinged grey with dirt, sidled up to her ankle and she jumped back with a shudder.
‘Welcome, ladies.’
A dark, heavy-set woman with rouged cheeks and watchful, owl-like eyes, approached and gave them an appraising look. Victoria had seen women like her in Dublin – proprietresses who measured strangers at a glance, judging them as to the potential value of their custom. A cold shiver ran down her back. The woman led them to a table which she dusted off with the hem of her apron.
‘What can I be getting ye?’
‘Two teas, please. And I would like to speak to Miss Fox. Is she here?’
Biddy Gillespie’s eyes narrowed. ‘She’s here all right, but she’s busy in the kitchen. Can I give her a message?’
Victoria shook her head. ‘No, I must speak to her in person.’
Biddy leaned in close to her. ‘Five minutes only. I don’t pay her for doing nothing.’
Victoria did not answer, concentrating instead on quelling the bile rising in her throat from the smells of sour milk and grease mixed with Biddy Gillespie’s cheap perfume. The sounds of a whistling tea kettle and the rough sawing of a knife through bread came from the kitchen. Victoria hoped they would drown out the loud drum of her heartbeat. She smiled weakly at Rosie, then bowed her head and waited.
She had been planning the outing for days. Since Christmas, when she had sought out her father and made peace with him, she was haunted by the fact that her half-sister was out somewhere on the cold streets with no family to protect her. She tried to put the thought out of her head but her heart refused to let her. Eventually, she found out from Anthony where Immelda was working, then approached her father who agreed to sign a letter of reference. He handed the letter back to her along with some banknotes.
‘Look out for her, Victoria,’ he said, ‘make sure she gets settled.’
Victoria started as two tea mugs were slammed roughly down on the table. She looked up. Immelda Fox glowered down at her.
‘What is it you’re wanting? Have ye not finished with me yet?’ Immelda’s tone was surly and her eyes filled with suspicion.
Victoria had expected a hostile reaction but still the words hurt her. She took a deep breath. ‘Please sit down, Immelda. I want to talk to you.’
Immelda glanced over her shoulder where Biddy Gillespie stood watching. ‘I’ll stand. I don’t have all night.’
Victoria gathered herself and began to speak. ‘Papa has admitted your story is true, Immelda, and he asks your forgiveness. He is not a well man and—’
Immelda shrugged. ‘What’s that to me?’
Victoria reached tentatively for her hand, but she pulled it away. ‘I want you to know that I accept you as my sister . . .’ She broke off. The words were not coming out right at all.
‘Accept me, is it?’ Immelda gave an ugly laugh. ‘So you’re going to take me back to Ennismore and treat me like one of the family? You’re going to have the servants wait on me and you’ll introduce me to your friends as Lady Immelda Bell?’ She looked off in the distance as if addressing a stranger. ‘Sure I can see it now – ah, this is me sister Immelda, she’s me da’s bastard, but we’re taking her in just the same.’ She looked back at Victoria. ‘You expect me to believe that shite?’
Then she turned to Rosie. ‘You know I’m right, don’t you? Look how they treated you. We’re not that different.’
Rosie blushed but said nothing. Victoria jumped in quickly, desperate to make Immelda understand. ‘You know what you suggest is not possible. But I do want to help you.’ She reached into her reticule and produced an envelope which she held out to Immelda, her hand trembling. ‘This is a letter of reference signed by Papa. You should be able to get work at a respectable house. And . . . and there’s some money in there too. It’s not charity,’ she added quickly, ‘it’s your last three months’ wages plus the Christmas bonus you’d have earned if Papa had not sent you away.’
Immelda stared down at the envelope but made no move.
‘Take it, Immelda,’ said Rosie. ‘Don’t let your pride stand in the way.’
Immelda looked from one to the other then snatched the envelope from Victoria’s hand and thrust it into her pocket. No one spoke. The three women studied one another in silence. The spell was interrupted only when Biddy Gillespie appeared at their table and cleared her throat loudly.
‘Everything all right, ladies? I need Immelda back in the kitchen if you have finished with her. There’ll be a rush of customers soon,’ she went on, looking at the clock, ‘’tis near closing time at the pubs.’
She returned to the kitchen and Victoria and Rosie stood up, but Immelda did not move. She appeared to be turning something over in her mind. When she finally spoke, all anger had left her voice.
‘You’d better be getting back to Ennismore. There’s some local boyos planning to burn it down tonight.’
Immelda’s tone was so soft that Victoria did not think she had heard her properly. She was about to ask her to repeat herself when Rosie spoke.
‘How do you know?’
‘T’was meself sent them.’
Rosie eyed her with suspicion. ‘And why would they listen to you?’
Immelda rolled her eyes. ‘Sure they weren’t that hard to convince. They’d heard of some boyos in Cork burning down landlords’ houses, and they wanted to do the same around these parts. So I told them they may as well go to Ennismore. All it took was a few stories about how I’d been turned out on the street over a lie, and how they’d sacked Brendan after the daughter of the family seduced him.’ She paused and looked accusingly at Victoria. ‘And besides, there’s plenty around here resents the Bell family for all their wealth when themselves have hardly a shilling between them.’
Rosie grabbed Immelda by the shoulders and shook her. ‘Can’t you stop them?’ she cried. ‘For God’s sake, Immelda!’
Immelda smiled, her eyes bright as a zealot’s. ‘If you’d come after me sooner I would have stopped them, but you came too late. ’Tis in God’s hands now,’ she said, crossing herself.
Victoria found her voice. ‘We have to warn them, Rosie,’ she cried. ‘Oh, God, we have to go. Maybe we can still get there in time.’
She rushed to the door, pushing past a group of men in cloth caps who had just arrived, ignoring their drunken calls of ‘Hold your horses, darlin’.’ Rosie ran out after her.
Immelda watched them go, not moving from where she stood until Biddy Gillespie came up beside her and stood, hands on hips.
‘Bejaysus,’ she cried, ‘they’ve left without paying. Feckin’ gentry.’ She turned to Immelda. ‘This is coming out of your wages, my girl. Now get back to work.’
Outside, Rosie caught up with Victoria. ‘We have to wait for Anthony to bring the pony and cart back,’ she said. ‘You can’t go all that way on foot in your condition.’
But Victoria wrenched free and ran on down the dark road. She ran until she choked on her breath, gasping for air. She clutched her belly as her knees began to buckle beneath her. Rosie caught her as she fell and eased her down o
nto a large stone at the side of the road.
‘Stay here,’ she said, taking off her coat and putting it around her friend’s shoulders. ‘I’ll go ahead and send Anthony back for you.’
When Victoria began to protest, Rosie’s tone was sharp. ‘You’re to stay here, I said, unless you want to risk losing your child.’
Victoria bowed her head and nodded.
As Rosie raced towards Ennismore, the urgency of Immelda’s words began to sink in. At first she tried to dismiss the threat as fantasy, the rantings of a crazy woman, but something told her they were more than that. Immelda might be mad, she thought, but she was also vengeful. Now she saw that in an unexpected way the Dublin fight had come home. She had been reluctant to take sides in Dublin, but now she had no hesitation – she must save Ennismore. Rosie had finally realized that, for good or ill, the years spent there had shaped her life. Ennismore was as much her home as was the Killeen cottage. She would not see it destroyed.
When she arrived at the estate gates all looked normal except that the gates were swinging wide open. She paused and bent over to catch her breath which came in short, painful stabs. Straightening up, she walked on through, thanking God that a bright moon lit her way. There was no sign of smoke or fire as she came in sight of the house. Lights flickered from the upstairs windows and the library, otherwise everything was still. As she moved to the side of the house she heard strains of music coming from the servants’ quarters where their New Year’s Eve party was in progress. Normally, she would have smiled, picturing the gaiety within, but her gut told her something was not right.
As she neared the archway that led around the side of the house to the kitchen and stables she heard another sound. She stopped and listened. It sounded like a car engine idling. She crept forward. She was right – a car, its headlamps out, sat facing her. Holding her breath, she moved closer. A young man sat behind the wheel, a rifle on the seat beside him. He appeared to be asleep. Silently and swiftly she leaned in, snatched the rifle and trained it on him.
‘Where are they?’ she demanded.
He awoke, blinking and confused. She recognized him as one of her youngest brother’s friends, a boy named Paddy. It was obvious he had been drinking. He put up his hands. ‘They’re up beyond at the back of the house, Rosie . . . Miss Killeen. Please, I’ve done nothing wrong . . .’
‘Except steal this feckin’ car!’
‘No – no, ’tis belonging to Tommy Boylan’s da’s boss. T’was Tommy himself took it. I-I’m just keeping it running for them.’
‘Well stop idling and drive away now if you know what’s good for you.’
‘But, what about me pals?’
‘I’ll take care of them. Go now while you still have the chance, or so help me . . .’
She cocked the rifle, confident of the feel of it in her hands. The boy’s eyes widened and he gunned the engine and sped off, swerving erratically towards the estate gates. As the car left, the music from the servants’ party swelled. She crept around to the back of the house, crouching close to the wall. She could see them clearly in the moonlight. Four young men were raking their fingers through the soil in an urn which stood beside the back door. Then one of them held a key aloft.
‘I have it now,’ he laughed. ‘For a minute I thought Immelda was having us on.’
As Rosie watched from the shadows a flame of anger erupted inside her. Images of Cathal and Brendan flashed before her, along with the young Volunteers on the Moore Street rooftop who died fighting the British Army. These young men at the back door, whom she recognized from the village, were nothing but hooligans and chancers, good-for-nothings out for sport, jumped up Wren boys egged on by Immelda. She could hardly contain her contempt.
By now the first man had opened the back door and begun splashing paraffin into the hallway. A second man took out a box of matches. Rosie straightened up and stepped out into the moonlight, her rifle cocked and trained on him. In that moment all pretext of ladylike behaviour was gone. She was Roisin Dubh, Irish warrior, defending herself and her land.
‘Light that match, John Joe O’Hanlon,’ she roared, ‘and I’ll blow your fecking head off.’
The man turned around, stunned, while the first man dropped the paraffin can and made to run.
‘You’re going nowhere!’ she said. ‘Your boy Paddy is away without you.’
‘For fuck’s sake,’ he muttered.
‘I know all your names,’ said Rosie. ‘Mother of God, was being Wren boys too tame for you? You think youse are heroes burning down other people’s property and maybe them with it? You’re a disgrace to every man and woman who fought in the uprising.’
‘But Immelda said we’d be greeted as heroes . . .’
‘Immelda! You let a fecking mad woman talk you into doing this? Youse are bigger fools than I thought.’
Meanwhile, Anthony Walshe, who had emerged to go and fetch Rosie and Victoria back from the tea room, heard the disturbance and came to investigate. A sudden noise behind her made Rosie swing around. Anthony was running towards them, brandishing a shovel over his head. ‘Get away from here now, ye amadans, before I smash your heads in!’
By the time Rosie turned back, John Joe O’Hanlon had lit the match and threw it into the paraffin-spattered hallway and taken off running with the others around the far side of the house. Rosie swore under her breath. She fired in the air after them, but they had already disappeared.
‘Never mind them, Rosie,’ cried Anthony. ‘We know rightly who they are. Go and wake the house. I’ll go for the others. We’ll bring water.’
Anthony slammed the back door shut to prevent the air from feeding the fire and ran towards the kitchen. Rosie dropped the rifle to her side and raced around to the front door. It opened as she was about to pound on it and Valentine and Lord Ennis appeared.
‘We heard rifle fire, what is—’ Valentine began.
But Rosie interrupted him. ‘There’s a fire!’ she shouted. ‘Get everybody out! Anthony’s gone for help.’
Valentine turned and bounded past his dazed father and up the front staircase two at a time. As he did so, smoke began billowing from the back hallway. One by one the bewildered family emerged and made their way, coughing and spluttering, outside onto the front lawn, Lord Ennis behind them. By now smoke was curling through the entrance foyer and up the front staircase, and creeping under the doors of the library, dining and drawing rooms. Rosie stood mesmerized as she watched bursts of flame beginning to lick the old wall hangings, carpet and wood panelling in the back hallway. Suddenly she came to her senses and rushed into the smoke-filled library where she ripped down a pair of heavy curtains. She ran to the back hallway and threw them down, stamping on them in an attempt to smother the flames. Suddenly Valentine was alongside her, pulling down tapestries, grabbing what he could to help staunch the fire.
Rosie swore under her breath as the flames kept reigniting. Without thinking she began to beat at them with her bare hands, oblivious to the pain. Suddenly she let out a cry as she watched the remaining flames gather and, as if in slow motion, merge together into a funnel of fire which rolled towards them down the narrow hallway. She stood rooted, unable to make her legs move, until Valentine seized her by the arm and pulled her with him into the foyer and out the front door.
At that moment Anthony appeared with the servants and grooms, all carrying water buckets. Rosie and Valentine joined in as they attacked the fire from both the back and the front hallways, feverishly passing buckets of water along a line. They doused the flames over and over with water. As the fire died, thick smoke filled the first floor rooms, depositing a black film over everything in its path.
At last the fire was out and Rosie finally stumbled out through the front door and into the moonlight. When she saw Victoria standing in front of her, looking dazed, her hand flew to her mouth. In all the commotion she had forgotten to send someone to fetch her from the side of the road. She must have made her way back on her own. She ran to where he
r friend stood and put her arms around her. ‘It’s all right, everybody’s safe.’
As she let go of Victoria, she turned to see Valentine gazing at her, smiling through tears. He came towards her, his arms outstretched. Rosie noticed that his hands were blackened from the fire. When she looked down at her own she realized they were burned as well.
‘My dear brave girl,’ he whispered, ‘my brave Roisin Dove. Thank you for saving us.’
‘On my oath she did that all right,’ put in Anthony, who had come up beside them. ‘If it wasn’t for this girleen threatening them boyos they’d have emptied the whole canister of paraffin into the hall and there’d have been no putting the fire out at all. She’s as brave a warrior as any in Ireland!’
Rosie blushed and sank into Valentine’s outstretched arms. There was no need for more words. She realized then that her love for Valentine had never left her. As she held him she saw Sofia approaching, but she did not let him go. Sofia stopped short of them and Rosie and she exchanged a long look before she turned away and disappeared into the shadows.
Lord Ennis’s funeral took place on a freezing morning in mid-January, 1917. Fresh snow coated the ancient stones in the small, family graveyard, blurring their hard edges and rendering the scene at once beautiful and macabre. Victoria wept as the Reverend Watson threw the last shovel of dirt upon her father’s coffin. The stress of the fire had brought on a heart attack from which he was unable to recover. She was thankful she’d had the chance to make peace with him and tell him she loved him. She was glad, too, that Valentine had been able to spend the final days at his father’s bedside.
Her mother and Aunt Louisa clung to each other as they threaded their way out of the cemetery gate and down towards the house. Victoria pitied them as she watched them go. She wished they could have shown the understanding that her father had shown in his last days, but she knew such a thing was beyond them. She understood their desperate need to hold on tight to what vestiges of their old lives and values remained to them.
The Girls of Ennismore Page 35