by Tim Vicary
‘You’ll know my face, boy, so you’ll know I didn’t like hitting you, believe me, but it had to be done, or you’d have betrayed me, and let us both down, likely. Do you see that now?’
‘Maybe.’ Sean had been cautious, reluctant to commit himself. His jaw and stomach had both been aching badly, he had been sick on the floor, and they had left his hands fastened behind his back. He had not cared greatly whether he betrayed this detective or not, at the time. The man was agitated, sweating profusely.
‘Well, you’d better see it. It’s a bloody dangerous job I do here, I can tell you. So you keep your damn mouth shut or I’ll tell them all I know about you, and then you’ll swing and no mistake.’
Davis had illustrated his point graphically by seizing Sean’s collar and pulling it tight around his neck, so that he found it hard to breathe. Sean’s contempt for the man increased.
‘But if you just keep mum there’s a chance we can get you out, boy. It’s been done before and it may be done again. I’ve already told Paddy Daly you’re here and they’ll be having a meeting to decide what can be done. So you’ve a chance yet.’
Perhaps, Sean had thought. The leap of hope had made him more than ever conscious of the squalor and pain, and an urgent longing had arisen in him to be free and out of here immediately, cycling through the cold crisp air by the Liffey.
‘Will you take off my cuffs, then?’ he had asked.
‘Don’t be daft, I can’t do that. That’d be the first way of getting a finger pointed at me. I’m not supposed to be in here at all, let alone cleaning you up and making you look nice. When we do the interrogations I’ll be the hardest cop of all if I can, just to avoid suspicion. You’ll have to put up with that. Just keep your mouth shut, now, boy - remember that!’
By the afternoon of the third day he had determined to abandon all hope, and resign himself to a long sentence, if he could. If he could not, he had only to admit the shooting of Radford, and the British would send him to heaven, to shake the hand of Padraig Pearse, Thomas Clarke, James Connolly, and all the other angels …
He was elaborating this thought in his mind when a key clanked in the lock. A warder stood with his back to the open door. ‘Out!’ he said.
Sean stood up. ‘Where to now?’ he asked.
No answer. The man clamped one handcuff bracelet round Sean’s wrist, the other round his own, and led him out into the long, echoing corridor. As they went down a staircase Sean thought wearily: Another interrogation, more questions – ‘Do you know him? Did you do this?’ ‘I am a soldier of the Irish Republic, I have nothing to say’ - again and again and again. Or had the detective, Davis, managed something at last?
There it was - the niggling, irritating weakness of hope, followed always by the disappointment which made him weaker than before. I must suppress it, he thought. I’m a martyr; I’ll never get out. Think that, and be strong.
Kee was in the interview room, as he had expected.
So was Catherine.
She was wearing a pale-pink dress with white lace at the throat and a single pearl on a gold chain round her neck. Her eyes were wide and shining as though she might have been crying. She smiled at him.
‘Hello, Sean.’
Sean had been so obsessed with his own fears that he had scarcely thought about her consciously for three days. She had surfaced only in his dreams, and in those last moments before he fell asleep. Even then he had tried to suppress the memories as being unnecessary, likely to weaken him when he needed all his strength. Now he was stunned by the femininity of her body, the tantalizing scent that came from her, the thought that he had kissed that face, that neck, the breasts under that dress …
He looked away from her, to Kee, and saw a broad, cunning grin on the man’s face. Damn him, Sean thought, he knows exactly what I’m thinking. The man’s enjoying this.
Kee said: ‘Miss O’Connell-Gort has come to visit you. You have ten minutes. The warder will stay with you but I will spare you my presence. I hope she persuades you to tell the truth.’
He went out and closed the door. The warder sat down on a chair by the wall. Sean sat at a table facing Catherine.
‘Sean. How are you? Have they hurt you?’
She reached out her hands across the table to touch his.
The warder coughed loudly. ‘No physical contact, miss. Regulations.’
‘How stupid and cruel.’ She laid her hands flat on the table, a few inches from his.
Sean said: ‘Why did you come?’
‘Why? To see you, of course. I’ve been asking permission for the last three days.’ She studied him, sensing his anger but misinterpreting it. ‘Believe me, Sean - I’d have come earlier if they’d let me.’
Sean remembered Kee’s last words. ‘What have you told them?’
‘Nothing. No more than they knew already.’ She smiled. ‘I told them I was proud, Sean.’
‘Proud of what, for Christ’s sake?’
‘Proud that you’d been my lover. Proud even of what you’d done.’
‘What did you tell them I’d done?’
She was shocked by his vehemence. The smile on her face faded to something harder. ‘I told you, Sean - nothing. If you think for one moment I’d betray you, you’re wrong.’
‘You may have said something without realizing it.’
She did not answer. Sean realized that the warder could hardly fail to hear every word. It would be madness to talk about details. He looked at her for a long moment, taking in every detail of the delicate, proud face, the slender neck, the rise of the small breasts under the dress, the slim, fine-boned hands that had scored lines in his buttocks and back as he thrust inside her. He said, very coldly and clearly: ‘It was good of you to come, a ghra, but you must never do it again. Promise me that, will you ?’
Tears rose to her eyes. ‘But why, Sean?’
‘Because, Cathy. That’s all. Just because.’
‘But I can help you. Bring you comfort, take messages. Tell the papers if you’re being ill-treated.’
‘No. You said it yourself. We were lovers once, but we’re not any more, and we never can be now. It weakens me, for God’s sake, to see you here, all soft and … It gives them a handle over me, helps them put pressure on. I want you to go right away and stay away. I’m a martyr now, I’m dead to the world.’
‘But you might get out, Sean! You might …’
‘Escape, you mean?’ He glanced meaningly at the warder. ‘Not a chance. Now go now, will you? Go! Forget I ever was.’
She sat there, stricken, not moving. With an impatient jerk he got to his feet, scraping the wooden chair back across the stone floor. She stood up too. He meant to walk away without a word, but somehow, without ever intending to, he took her hand for a second and pressed it.
It was a great mistake. The touch only lasted for an instant before the warder stopped it, but the soft human femininity of it destroyed his belief in everything he had said. He wanted to hold her, to kiss her, do all those things they had done together before, again and again forever …
The warder snatched his hand away, clipped the bracelet on his wrist, and marched him roughly to the door.
Back in his cell, he lay face down on his bed and wept. Then he prayed, desperately, that Davis would get him out before the walls closed in and drove him mad.
The one thing Catherine could not do was take second place to others. She had not been brought up to it. As a child she had fought her elder brothers all the way, to prove that she was better than them: she rode better, learned to read sooner, could paint and draw better, even row a boat as well as they could. The country folk around Killrath had a stock of tales of her leaping her pony over stone walls at breakneck speed, climbing cliffs to steal gulls’ eggs, capsizing a dinghy in the surf.
Then the boys were sent away for long periods to boarding school, her father took up with Sarah Maidment, and her mother began her long slide towards insanity. For all that time Catherine had been left al
one with a series of governesses, feeling her own pain, triumph and confusion as the centre of the world. She learned about the world, but was not part of it. She knew how to challenge, dare, defy, and command, but not how to cooperate.
As a student, she had continued her isolation without feeling it abnormal. Most of the others she had met had been sympathetic to the cause of Irish nationalism, but not actively involved. Sean had been her one real friend - her link with the world where these things were actually happening. Now he had rejected her, and she did not know what to do.
She had told Professor O’Connor about Sean’s arrest and he had been sympathetic, but he implied that the Volunteers already knew, and were doing all they could. He wondered if she would like to join the women’s movement, Cumman na mBann, but she saw no point. She was sure they would disapprove of her. She could not face the discipline of running messages, taking orders, waiting, cooking, cleaning, and supporting the men which she was sure it would involve. Such things demanded an acceptance of comradeship and subordination which were no part of her nature. So she refused, and went miserably home to her green and gold sitting room in Merrion Square, to sit and think.
She tried to study, but the words slithered meaninglessly around on the page, defying her to make sense of them. She had nothing else to do. She sat on the green window seat overlooking the gardens of the square, and tried to sketch a portrait of Sean which she had planned, but after a few strokes of the charcoal she smudged it, and flung it face down on the floor. She wept, and wondered if this was the way her mother had felt. At least her father had left her mother for another woman; was that better, or worse, than being rejected in favour of an ideal?
Evening came. The fire died down to a few smouldering ashes, and the only light in the room came from the misty yellow gas lamps in the square. A cold, sleety drizzle was falling outside. Catherine sat motionless in the window seat, her knees drawn up to her chin, gazing moodily out at the ghostly trees and scurrying pedestrians.
There was a knock at the door. When she did not answer, it opened, and her father came in.
He said: ‘I thought I might see you at dinner.’
‘I’m not hungry. I told Keneally that, hours ago.’
‘He told me you ate nothing for lunch, either.’
‘So?’
Sir Jonathan sighed. He considered lighting a lamp, but decided it would provoke an outburst he did not want. He sat down quietly on a sofa, thinking how pale, almost white, its normal lemon colour appeared in the semidarkness. The room was cold, he thought, but oddly restful.
He said: ‘That inspector from G Division phoned. He told me you visited Brennan in gaol today.’
‘Yes. He was there, smirking.’
‘Brennan’s to be charged with illegal possession of firearms and membership of Sinn Fein, that’s all. They’ve no evidence for anything else.’
‘Good.’
‘It’ll still put him away for four or five years. Damn good thing too.’
No answer. Sir Jonathan shivered. This room was really very cold. No wonder she was hunched up like that. He bent down and put a few small logs on the fire, carefully, in a pyramid over the embers, so that they would blaze up as soon as possible. He watched the flames begin to lick upwards, and held out his hands to them, wondering how best to put what he had to say. His anger had faded over the last two days, leaving a slight sense of pity, and a calm determination that he had been right all along, and that things were going to go his way. It was like that moment in breaking a young horse, when the trainer senses the fight will be won.
He said: ‘I want you to go to Killrath tomorrow.’
‘What?’ Catherine sounded confused, as though she had been thinking of something else entirely.
‘You heard. I’ve rung Ferguson already. He’s expecting you.’
‘What are you talking about? I can’t go to Killrath.’
‘Of course you can. You’re doing no good here. I doubt if you’re studying much, and you don’t even eat. A breath of sea air will do you good. Also …’
‘Father, I’m not going!’
The outburst was brief, as he had expected. Defiant, but without the strength of will which he had known in her. He continued, stolidly: ‘Also, I’ve come to an arrangement with that Inspector Kee. He could quite easily charge you with aiding and abetting, you realize that, don’t you? But if I agree to take responsibility for keeping you somewhere out of the city for a while, he’ll drop all charges and leave you alone. No more interrogations, either.’
‘I’m not afraid of him, Father. Anyway, I can’t go. I’ve got lectures to attend, books to read. It’s nonsense.’
‘Take your books with you, by all means.’ The fire was blazing nicely now, the flames sending out a little colour into the room.
Sir Jonathan stood up to warm his backside in front of it. In the firelight his legs made huge, dancing shadows on the opposite wall.
‘Anyway,’ he said. ‘There’s another thing, far more important than all of that. I’ve deliberately left it alone for the last two days because I could see you were in shock, and upset. But it’s time to settle it clearly. You listen to me, now!’
He had not meant to shout, but she had turned her head away to stare out of the window. It was like the way she had put her hands over her ears, as a little child - it had made him furious then. He controlled himself with an effort, and went on.
‘We made a deal about your inheritance, and by your relationship with this young Sinn Feiner, you clearly broke it. I don’t want to hear any more about what you did or didn’t do with him; I’m a man of the world, I suppose, and can imagine for myself. The point is, you should have done nothing. Now, the main part of our deal was that if you did not live up to expectations, you would be disinherited, and the estate would be settled on someone who better deserved it. I can still do that, you understand! I can order Keneally to throw you out of the house tomorrow, and you can find your own accommodation with your Sinn Fein friends. And by God I swear I will do it, Catherine, unless you change your ways immediately. Do you understand me?’
There was a silence. He wondered if he had sounded hysterical rather than firm. But if he had learnt one thing in life about how to deal with horses, soldiers, and children, it was that you should never make a threat unless you are prepared to carry it out. He had not been a good parent to Catherine, he knew, but he hoped she had seen enough of him to know he meant what he said.
‘Change my ways how, exactly?’
He breathed a small sigh of relief. If she had not answered, he might have lost her. But now she had taken one small step in his direction, he could lead her where he wanted her to go.
‘First, go to Killrath. Second, agree that you will not see this young Brennan again.’
There was another long silence. It was the second thing he thought she would find hardest. He was prepared to agree to allow her to write to him, if necessary. He could not prevent it anyway.
She swung her legs off the window seat to the floor, and sat staring at him bleakly, her arms holding the seat by her sides. ‘All right, father. What time is the train?’
If he had been a demonstrative man he might have hugged her, and that might have made a difference. But he was not, so he said: ‘The train leaves at 9.30. I’ll come with you to the station. Be sure you are ready.’ And left the room.
This is the end of it all, she thought.
26. Unwelcome Guest
KILLRATH, IT seemed to Catherine, had been invaded. All the way down from Dublin on the train, she had thought of the great house ahead of her as a refuge. She would be able to sleep again in the room she had had as a child, ride Grainne along the cliffs and sands, wander the great rooms and gardens at peace, with only the wind to disturb her. The pain of the past weeks in Dublin would fade, the Atlantic gales would clear her mind.
That was what she hoped. She had known Andrew Butler would be there but she had not thought about him at all, all the long day in th
e train. But when she came out of the station at Galway there he was, lounging against the bonnet of her father’s car.
It was a cold, blustery day. He wore a long belted Burberry coat with the collar turned up, leather gauntlets and a motoring helmet with the goggles pushed up on to his forehead. She saw that despite the weather, the canvas roof of the car was rolled back.
He smiled at her, teeth gleaming white under the scarred cheek and thin moustache, and made a mock salute.
‘Good afternoon, Miss Catherine.’ He took her suitcase, put it in the car boot, and held open the front passenger door. She stepped round to it, then hesitated.
‘Where’s David Ferguson?’
‘He’s at home. When your father telephoned I offered to drive down and fetch you instead. I thought you might prefer it.’
Home, she thought. How on earth could this man speak of Killrath as home? It was her home, no one else’s - even the Fergusons lived in a house in the grounds. A worm of fear crawled in her stomach. She glanced at the car irritably.
‘Why is the roof down? Can’t you put it up?’
‘I can if you like, but I prefer the fresh air. Don’t you?’
‘Not when I’m dressed like this.’ She was wearing a three-quarter-length pale blue woollen coat, button boots, and a matching wide-brimmed hat secured with a pin. It would quite obviously blow away in the wind. ‘Put it up, please.’
She watched as he dragged the hood forward and clipped it in place. If he thinks he can mock me, she thought, I won’t have that. There was something offensively relaxed and confident about his manner. It jarred with her mood. I’d forgotten about this, she thought. Did father realize it, when he sent me down?
She got in and sat quietly, staring straight ahead. He drove out of the town, whistling softly between his teeth and glancing at her from time to time. She felt his presence overbearing, an intrusion. All day she had been turned in on herself, thinking how foolish she had been with Sean, how cheap and tarnished she must look to the world. Andrew’s cheerfulness was intolerable.