Women of Courage

by Tim Vicary

  He reached out across the table, lifted her hand to his lips, and kissed each finger separately.

  She smiled. ‘Are you really so fond of me?’

  ‘I am that.’ He remembered when his little sister had been left in his charge, and had nearly been killed by a bull because of his own carelessness. He had felt a little like this then.

  But Catherine was no little sister. The touch of her hands in his, the pressure of their knees jammed together under the little table, sent an electric charge through him in the way no child could ever do. Sean had the impression that the grubby seaside pie shop was a palace, alight with vibrant colours.

  ‘Tell me. Did you really beard the Viceroy in his train?’

  ‘I did.’ She told him the story again and this time it seemed irresistibly funny to both of them. Her laughter was a thing of beauty in itself.

  The shopkeeper interrupted sourly, picking up their plates and wiping the table with a cloth. ‘If you two lovebirds would mind finishing? It’s well gone six o’clock.’ They looked round and saw they were alone. Catherine smiled and stood up. ‘Yes, of course. Thank you so much. They were lovely pies.’

  Outside, on the windy, dark promenade, they clung to each other for warmth. They were a similar height; it was easy to match their strides as they walked. Sean could feel her thigh pressing against his and held her closer.

  She asked: ‘Where shall we go?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ The answer took a long time, because they turned to face each other, and then it seemed natural to kiss again. They formed an island of warmth together in the cold wind. Growing daring, he slipped his hands in under her unbuttoned coat, and rubbed her back through the thin woollen dress. She moaned, and pressed herself closer to him. Then a gust of wind snatched her hat and whirled it along the street.

  ‘I’ll get it.’

  ‘No.’ She laughed and held him back. ‘It doesn’t matter, Sean. I don’t need it.’

  ‘But - it’s an expensive hat!’ Never in his life had he imagined letting clothing blow away without caring.

  ‘We’ll get it later. Hold me like that again.’

  And for a long time the hat was forgotten. On a winter night like this, the windswept promenade was one of the most private places they could have found. But at last a group of sailors came along, singing and whistling. Sean and Catherine broke apart, regretfully. She shivered, and buttoned her coat.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We’ll go to a pub for a drink.’

  ‘All right.’ She put her arm round his waist, and snuggled close against him. She knew her servants would expect her home, and would have cooked a meal, but she did not care. Her father had left on the afternoon boat for London, so she would have been alone anyway. She toyed with the idea of inviting Sean home. After all, why not? She was an adult now, she was her own mistress - if she wanted to invite a friend home, the butler Keneally and the other servants couldn’t stop her! She imagined Sean in her drawing room, kissing her on the lemon-yellow ottoman, or on the green window seat, perhaps, looking down over Merrion Square …

  And her bedroom was just next door. Don’t think that, Catherine, she thought, that’s one thing you can’t possibly do.

  But the idea had an awful fascination. She wondered how it would be. She would take him up to her room, and they would sit and talk for a while, by the warm fire her maid would have lit - God, it was cold out here! - and they would kiss and then … She was hazy about how people got into bed. Her parents had had separate rooms with adjoining doors. But it was impossible to think of her parents making love. She would make an excuse and undress behind her screen and come to him in her long cream nightdress and - he would have no nightclothes at all! The beauty of the thought thrilled her so much that she sighed, and he turned and kissed her again as they walked along in the cold sea wind.

  Sean would have no clothes at all! She had seen men half-naked in the fields, and been brought up to appreciate the beauty of the classical sculptures and paintings which filled her parents’ houses. There was one in particular, a black shining one of a man and woman embracing, that had always fascinated her. But somehow, this was the first time she had thought of these things in relation to herself, and a real, living man! She would come out from behind her screen in her long cream nightdress and he would be there, quite smooth and naked in the lamplight, ready to crush her to him. His lips would press against hers as they had done just now and his hands roam her back and he would lift her and take her to the bed and it was quite quite impossible.

  They went into a crowded pub and Sean left her sitting at a small table while he went to order drinks. She sat down weakly. Despite the sudden warmth and noise she was oblivious to her surroundings. Why was it impossible? She imagined herself going in through the front door with Sean and immediately she had to confront Keneally, the butler, who was older than her father. And then probably the cook-housekeeper as well and certainly Lucy, her maid. All of them would disapprove terribly of a lower-class person like Sean coming into the house at all, except through the tradesmen’s entrance. But if she summoned enough courage she could face them all down because she was their employer and Sean was a student on her course. For heaven’s sake, it was the twentieth century now and if a young independent woman wanted to invite a male friend into her house, she would! If anyone thought it was wrong, that was their problem. Honi soit qui mal y pense.

  She sighed. That would all be fine, if she was just inviting Sean in to talk. It would be a fight worth fighting. She would enjoy the scandalized disapproval on the faces of Keneally and Lucy her maid as they brought in a tray of tea and toast, to find the mistress and the uncouth young man absorbed in the study of medical textbooks. Especially ones with pictures of bodies in. She could even imagine facing her father down, over the right to do that.

  But I could only win a fight like that, Catherine realized, if I were really innocent and it was the other people who had the wicked thoughts. As it is, I want to take him to bed with me. And there’s no way, no way at all, that I could face the servants if I did that in the house. They’d probably resign en masse, anyway.

  For a while she toyed with the idea of sending all the servants to bed and then sneaking Sean up the back stairs; but the same objections remained. The servants had eyes and ears, they were not stupid. She would have to get Sean out, as well as in; and even if the servants didn’t hear anything, she would never know that they hadn’t. Every morning she would look in their eyes, and wonder if their respect for her had vanished.

  Sean made his way carefully back to their table, bearing two foaming glasses of stout. He was pleased, she knew, that she chose to drink beer rather than something more ladylike such as sherry or wine. He had told her once that it was daring. Oh well, she thought, at least I can indulge my lesser desires.

  Sean sat down facing her. They sipped the stout and smiled at each other, their eyes sparkling. The noise in the pub had lessened enough for them to talk.

  ‘I never understood why you became like this,’ he said.

  ‘Like what?’ Was he a mind-reader? Was her face so transparent that he could see what designs she had on him? If so, what did he think?

  But Sean was on a different track. He waved his arm around the pub. ‘I mean, why are you in a place like this, with a fellow like me, supping beer like a normal girl, almost? When you could be leading the life of O’Rahilly with Lord this and Viscount that, if you wanted.’

  ‘Almost?’ She teased him. ‘What do you mean, like a normal girl, almost, Sean Brennan? Am I normal or am I not?’

  He considered the question. ‘In some ways yes, in others no.’

  ‘Oh, wise philosopher.’

  And is it normal to think of you in my bedroom, naked like a Greek statue? My mother would have said not, and father would too. I could slide my hands across his chest and - I wonder if his buttocks are smooth and hard like the man in that statue? I wonder what it would feel like when he came inside me?

 
She said: ‘I think I’m a very normal girl. In all ways except wanting to earn my own living, and to see Ireland free.’

  He pushed a stray lock of hair back from his forehead, and smiled. ‘That’s what I mean. It’s not normal for girls of your class to want those things. Why do you?’

  She stretched her hands out to the warm fire. He was right, it was an unusual path that had brought her here. Perhaps if she talked about it, she would stop thinking of where she wanted that path to lead, right now.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell you about a day in my childhood.’

  7. Love in the Firelight

  IT HAD been a rainswept, windy afternoon. She was thirteen then, and the war in France had just begun. Catherine had been riding alone along the clifftops near her home in Galway, watching the spray from the vast Atlantic rollers break over the headlands. There had been a storm far out at sea, and the spray burst in great fountains halfway up the cliff. Dark rainclouds were sweeping in from the southwest, and the occasional flash of pale sunlight lit the spray with an almost luminous glow. It fascinated her. Each wave hit the rocks with a shock like thunder, and Catherine and her pony trembled as the pulse went through them. She felt awed and humble, as though the great god of the sea, Manaanan mac Lir, might appear at any moment before her.

  Then the storm had reached the clifftop, and she had ridden away inland, hunched beneath the drenching sheets of rain. Instead of heading for home, she had let the storm blow her further east than her usual haunts, to an area of bog and pasture behind a mountain. Here, when the rain eased, she had come across a gathering outside a small cottage.

  She had seen the place before - a small, thatched, untidy hovel, always with a skirl of dirty, barefoot children running around outside it, and a harassed woman in a headshawl. There was a small potato garden, a couple of poorly tended fields, a sick-looking cow. She had never liked the family much. Once she had tried to talk to them, but the man, a mean, scrawny individual, had cuffed the children and sent them inside, and then glared at her sullenly without speaking.

  Since then, she had heard, the man had gone away to the war, one of the thousands who had answered John Redmond’s call to fight for the Empire against the Hun.

  But that day the woman and her children were all out on the road, in the rain. Around them was a heap of possessions - something that might have been a mattress, a table, three broken chairs, a spade, a rusty bucket. Half a dozen men were striding back and forth in the garden, carrying things, trampling heedlessly over the vegetables. As Catherine rode up, one of them dropped a pile of crockery on the road in front of the woman, with a crash. A plate had broken, and a chipped cup fallen in the mud.

  ‘Whatever is happening?’ she had asked. Ferguson, her father’s agent, was directing the men. He had caught hold of her bridle. After all these years she still remembered the harshness of his rainswept face, the rough jerk of his hand on the reins.

  ‘No business of yours, Miss Catherine. Be off with you now!’

  ‘But what are you doing?’

  ‘Never you mind! Clear off out of it, will you!’ He had hit the pony a sharp clout on the rump with his stick, and to her shame she had gone away, letting the pony carry her down the muddy lane out of reach of the gang of rough, cruel men. She should have shouted back, she knew - no man on her father’s estate had the right to speak to her like that. But she was only thirteen, and Ferguson ran the estate in her father’s absence. Only when she was half a mile away had she stopped the pony to look back.

  The men had been still there. They had erected a great tripod outside the house, made of three treetrunks about fifteen feet tall, chained together at the top. From a chain in the middle hung another treetrunk, shorter, thicker, parallel with the ground. This they were swinging against the walls of the little stone house, again and again. As she watched, a section of the stone wall fell in. The men heaved the battering ram a few yards to the left, where the wall was still standing, and began again.

  Catherine had watched until the house was just a heap of stones. All the time two men kept guard over the woman and her children as they sat on their mattress, weeping and hopeless in the muddy lane. The drizzle fell gloomily on everyone. And Catherine trembled at each thud of the battering ram as she had trembled at the power of the sea. But while the power of the sea had filled her with awe, the power of her father’s men filled her with shame and hatred.

  She had complained to her mother, who was, by that time, beginning the illness that would lead to her death. Together they had asked Ferguson the reason. The man had been arrogant, condescending. Sir Jonathan O’Connell-Gort had left the business of the estate in his, Ferguson’s, hands, he said, and he must do what he thought was best. The rent on the cottage had not been paid for months, and the husband had deserted his family. Besides, they had always been shiftless, and the land was needed for pasture.

  ‘But he has gone to fight in the war!’ Catherine’s mother had said. ‘For God’s sake, he has gone to fight for the English, poor man - does he not get paid for that?’

  Ferguson had shaken his head. ‘He may have said that, my lady, but it was a lie. I’ve enquired, and no Irish regiment has any record of him. He’s done a bunk, that’s what it is - fled to some new fancy woman in the city, no doubt.’

  ‘And does that mean you must throw his wife and children on the road?’ Catherine had asked. ‘Is it their fault that they have a shiftless father? Is that Christian mercy?’

  ‘It’s the law of the land, young lady. Rent must be paid, and this estate must be run at a profit. That’s what your father appointed me to do, and it’s in your interests not to interfere.’

  Catherine remembered how he had glanced from her to the fine oil paintings on the library wall. Paintings of her grandparents and great-grandparents; the people who had owned this house since Cromwell’s days. She remembered the sneering look on his face. And where would you be, miss, without the likes of me? the look said. No fancy clothes, no fine house, no pony. Is that what you want?

  But then the bubble of his arrogance had been burst. Lady O’Connell-Gort, Catherine’s mother, had spoken, in a tone no one had heard from her for years. ‘Where are the mother and children now?’

  ‘How should I know, my lady? On the road to Galway, perhaps.’

  ‘I want them found and brought back here.’

  ‘But ...’

  ‘And you will rebuild their house, and restore them to their home. Do you understand?’ Catherine’s heart had sung. This was how she remembered her mother before her illness, and what she wanted her to be like again. A proud strong lady, ruling the estate in her own right, like a queen.

  ‘I am sorry, my lady, but I answer to Sir Jonathan, not you.’

  ‘That is my land. It is part of my inheritance. If you do not do what I say I shall have you dismissed.’

  The row had gone on for some time, and had led to a bitter exchange of letters with Catherine’s father. It was true that Sir Jonathan had said his wife was incapacitated by nervous illness; but he had not obtained a medical certificate to remove her legal partnership in the estate, and so, to Catherine’s surprise and delight, her mother had won. Only, by that time, the poor family had disappeared, and Ferguson claimed they could not be found.

  Sean was uncertain how he felt about the story. Part of him felt great anger at the plight of the poor Irish family. It might so easily have happened to him; it had happened to many of his ancestors, he knew. People who had starved in the great famine, or been crammed into the holds of the emigrant ships, which had left Ireland’s ports every year until the start of the war.

  Another part of him was intrigued at the thought of Catherine as a young girl, growing up privileged and wilful on the west coast of Galway. He had not consciously thought about her childhood before; somehow it increased his tenderness for her. She had not been the ordinary spoiled rich girl, surely.

  ‘So what happened then?’ he asked.

  ‘I found them
myself.’ Her face in the firelight of the pub was flushed with the memory.

  ‘And you a thirteen-year-old girl? How did you do that?’

  ‘I got on my pony and rode to Galway. A priest helped, too.’ There it was. She had been difficult, determined, contrary even then. And I nearly killed her, he remembered.

  ‘Where were they?’

  ‘In the most filthy place I had ever seen. A line of rotten shacks in the back streets, with mud on the floor and an open sewer running between them. I picked a baby out of it; he was eating fishbones and potato peelings that his mother had thrown there.’ She sipped her beer reflectively. ‘The woman wasn’t very pleased to see me, either. She spat at me and told me to go away. I started crying. But then I got the priest to make her see sense.’

  ‘Did you take her back?’

  Catherine nodded. ‘Mother made Ferguson rebuild their house, and I tried to help take care of her. I felt I had a duty to, you see. Ferguson was right, in a way. Our family was only rich because of all that land we had taken from the people, long ago. So I began to want to put things right. I felt my eyes were opened, that day. That’s when I began to be interested in Irish history, and medicine. I thought the one would help me understand, and the other, to do something. And I wanted to cure my mother, too, so that she could be a fine strong lady, as she used to be.’

  She stopped. ‘I’m sorry. Too much talk about me. It’s because I’m lonely, and no one’s interested. Except Father, who hates it all.’

  The story had taken her mind into her past, away from her obsession with Sean. Now she looked at him and those feelings returned. He has such a nice face, she thought; clean, eager, idealistic. And that hair which he brushes so carefully yet is always flopping out of place. She felt a sudden urge to run her hands through it, hold his head to her breast while he - would a man kiss a woman’s nipples, like a baby? She didn’t know, but the idea fascinated her.