Women of Courage

by Tim Vicary

  She rattled the door handle and then smashed both her fists against the door and screamed. There were no words to the scream and not much sound either because she had no breath and halfway through it ended in a fit of coughing and her lungs ached and her head was bursting so she gasped and drew in more smoke.

  Her fists hammered at the door all by themselves for a few seconds more. Then she slumped down at the foot of the door where there was a little, a very little draught of air that came in between the foot of the door and the floor.

  Each house seemed to have a different-sized wall behind it, with its own individual gate. Some were old, battered wooden ones, falling off their hinges, one or two were brightly painted, one or two were wrought iron.

  The back yard of number 16 was fairly primitive. There was an unpainted wooden door bolted on the inside, and a six-foot-high brick wall. As Sean tried the door, a man opened the door of a yard a little further on. Sean moved away from the door. The man went back into his yard, and came out wheeling a bicycle. He got on it and cycled away to the far end of the alley.

  Sean took a quick run at the wall, got his forearms on to the top, swung himself over, and dropped down the far side.

  No one there. Two dustbins, a shed for an outside privy and another for coal, a rusty old bicycle, a window and a door. No one was looking out of the window. He tried the door. It was locked.

  He glanced quickly up at the backs of the houses on either side. Some windows overlooked the yard but if he stood close up against the door like this people would have to lean out quite a way to see him. He couldn’t see anyone watching at the moment.

  I’ve got a right, he thought. I’ve got a right to know what sort of a man he is. He stood back from the door and kicked it, hard, with his hobnailed boot, just beside the door handle. The door shuddered, but did not open. He kicked it again, afraid of the attention the noise might attract. This time something gave. The lock rattled, but still held.

  The third kick burst it.

  He stepped into the kitchen. He shut the door and stood quite still, listening. His hand fingered the revolver in his pocket. A man he could cope with; a woman, a cook or maid, coming in flustered with a dustpan and brush in her hand, would be harder to manage.

  There was no sound at all.

  He stepped through the scullery into the hall. There were doors on each side. It was very quiet, dusty, with an empty feel to it. The hat and coat stand was bare. There were no umbrellas, no shoes, no letters or newspapers. He caught sight of himself in a mirror. A young man in a cloth cap, wide-eyed, scowling, nervous, with his right hand in a bulging coat pocket. A burglar, certainly. If I meet anyone, that’s what they’re bound to think.

  There was a smell of smoke, as though someone might be lighting a fire somewhere and the chimney wasn’t drawing. If there was a fire, someone must be here.

  If someone was here, sooner or later they would make a sound. He waited, listening. Then he heard it.

  It was not the sort of sound he expected. It sounded like a scream almost, as if someone were in pain or ill. And there was a muffled banging.

  It came from behind a door to his left. When he tried the door it was locked, but there was a key on the wall beside it. When he opened the door, there was a stairway leading down, and smoke floated out. The banging came again briefly, then stopped.

  Sean waved his arms in front of his face to clear the smoke, and went down the steps. He unbolted the door at the bottom.

  To be certain of success, Kee thought, I’ll need the army.

  He sat at his desk, sipping a cup of coffee, and thought of the detectives he could call up from G Division.

  Except for Foster, Kee did not think he trusted any of them. Those whom he had seen had taken the news of Davis’s arrest with shock, apparent concern and, most worrying of all, silence. Perhaps if he called a meeting now and told them they were going to raid Clancy’s, the whole bunch of them would walk out in a block and phone Collins. And it would only take one.

  Kee decided to use the army instead. He picked up the phone and rang Dublin Castle.

  He was put through to Colonel Sir Jonathan O’Connell-Gort. Even his daughter is a blasted Sinn Feiner, Kee thought. The whole town is riddled with them, like maggots in a mouldy cheese.

  Nonetheless, Sir Jonathan, it appeared, was duty coordinating officer for the day, and Kee had no actual doubts about the man’s loyalty. He explained what he wanted. Sir Jonathan responded briskly enough; in fact he sounded unusually cheerful.

  ‘Right-ho, old chap. I’ll get on to it right away. Usual thing - lorries front and back, you say, street cordoned off, and a section to go in with you?’

  ‘Yes, sir. And I don’t want any new recruits, either. The place could be empty but if my information’s right we might find half a dozen of them and they’ll be shooting to avoid arrest.’

  ‘I’ll see to it.’ Sir Jonathan seemed to hesitate as though a thought might have crossed his mind. But all he said was: ‘Sounds like an interesting show. I’ll try to get down there myself if you like, Inspector, make extra sure there are no cock-ups, what?’

  Cock-ups by whom? Kee wondered. But the man sounded too cheerful to be intentionally malicious, and Kee had no more objection to him than to any other army officer. They agreed a time and an assembly point, and then Kee put the phone down, yawned, and rasped his hand across his bristly chin.

  Perhaps I should smarten myself up, he thought. Can’t be showing Davis’s murderous friends any disrespect now, can we?

  He lurched to his feet and strode down the corridor to the washroom, in search of hot water and a razor.

  Sean was panicking. He wished desperately that he had studied the medical books more closely and that he could remember what to do, because he thought she was dying. And he blamed himself because he had nearly left her down there for good.

  When he had opened the door a vast cloud of black, choking smoke had poured out, and he had staggered backwards up the stairs, coughing wildly. He had already reached the door at the top and was just about to close it to keep the horrible smoke down there, when he had remembered the scream and the banging.

  Even then he had retreated into the hall to suck in clean air before he thought of returning. Then he had taken off his jacket, wrapped it round his head, and plunged back down the steps.

  He had trodden on the body, not seen it.

  He had felt something soft, moving feebly under his boot. He had picked it up and lugged it up the stairs, letting the legs bang all the way on the steps, and only when he had got it out and into the now smoke-filled hall had he looked and seen who it was.

  She had been lying slumped, face down on the floor. She was filthy, some of her hair seemed to be burnt, and her face was blackened by the smoke, but there was no doubt.

  He opened one of the doors off the hall, dragged her in there, and flung the windows open. Then he turned her over and wondered if she would live, and what he would do if she did not.

  She was breathing in a very strange way - great snoring gulps one minute, and then nothing at all, feebly, the next. He felt for the arterial pulse in her throat. Not steady, but something there, anyway. He tilted her head back, opened her mouth and felt inside with his finger to make sure her throat wasn’t blocked.

  She gagged, opened her eyes, and saw him.

  He took his fingers out. She closed her eyes, took another great shuddering breath, opened them again, and sat up.

  ‘Sean!’ she said. ‘Sean?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s me.’

  ‘Oh, my God, we’ve got to get out of this place! It’s on fire, Sean - quick, it’s on fire!’

  He looked round. There was not a lot of smoke in this room, and he could see no sign of flames coming into the hall. What worried him more was the thought that the smoke, blowing out of the windows, would attract attention. But far more important was the fact that he was here, with her, and she was alive.

  He said: ‘No rush, it’s al
l right for a minute or two. Was there anyone else down there with you?’

  ‘No. No, I was alone.’ She gathered her wits. Maybe the sofa had not set light to anything else yet. ‘Sean. Why are you here?’

  ‘I came to look for you.’

  ‘But … you’re in prison! You’re going to hang!’

  ‘Not if I can help it.’

  That wide, boyish grin, the smooth face, the stick-out ears - he was here, he was really here! She put her hand on his cheek to prove it. ‘But how? How did you get out?’

  ‘It’s the long story you want, is it? I think we may have to save that, Caitlin. We’ll be getting ourselves an audience.’

  He heard some shouts, and glanced outside. A group of boys were staring at the smoke floating out of the window, and a woman was coming down the steps of the house opposite.

  ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I came to find you, not the whole street. Where can we go?’

  ‘I don’t care where, but I want to get out of this house,’ she said. ‘He might come back, any time!’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Andrew, of course. Sean, you don’t know?’ She stared at him.

  Sean said, carefully: ‘I saw you come in here with a man. Yesterday. I didn’t know who it was.’

  ‘It was Andrew Butler. He locked me down there, the pig.’ She was struggling to make sense of Sean’s presence. ‘Sean. Why are you here if you didn’t know that?’

  ‘Just … I had to see you. Mick Collins would thrash me if he knew.’

  The mention of Collins triggered something else in her mind, but someone was hammering at the door. There were too many impressions crowding in on her. She said: ‘I don’t want to see these people. They may be friends of his. Is there a back way?’

  ‘It’s how I came in.’ He took her hand, led her out through the smoking hall, through the kitchen, and across the back yard to the door, which he unbolted. They were halfway down the alleyway before he noticed she had no boots on. One silk stocking was in shreds, and the ankle was grazed. ‘Where are your boots?’

  ‘I threw them at a rat.’ She grinned at him, her face all smudged with smoke, part of her hair crinkly where it had been burnt. My God, he thought. Mick Collins tells me to stay out of sight and here I am walking through the city with a barefoot girl in black make-up. He didn’t care. She wanted to come with him. He didn’t know why yet but it was more than he had ever expected.

  He said: ‘I could lend you my boots.’

  They looked down together at the big, hobnailed boots and laughed. He put his arms round her and kissed her, very gently, nervously on the lips, and she didn’t move away. Shakily, she stood on tiptoe and touched his nose with hers, and it was like that first moment in the tenement, the time when she had been quite naked and he had held her against his shaggy, rough outdoor clothes. He said: ‘I came to say I was sorry, Cathy.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For all of it. I shouldn’t have sent you away.’

  Over her shoulder he saw a group of boys in long trousers and noisy boots clattering by. One looked at him curiously and said: ‘There’s a fire in a house in Nelson Street, mister. Our Seamus has gone for the peelers. Will you help us put it out?’

  ‘I’ll be right there,’ Sean said. Then when they had gone he asked: ‘How are you going to get around town without boots ?’

  She shrugged. ‘The beggars do it.’

  They hurried away, through the maze of small, one-storey houses and down an alley into Blessington Street, and then down Mountjoy Street to a square with a church in it and a school on one corner. Sean had an idea. He turned left. ‘If we cross Dorset Street we can go to Parnell Square,’ he said. ‘At least you can get a wash there, and maybe find something for your feet.’

  ‘That would be nice,’ she said.

  Then she saw the soldiers.

  Andrew raised his hands and stood quietly. A small part of his mind wondered what a genuine customer might think if he walked into Clancy’s Joiners and Decorators now and saw O’Reardan lounging against the wall with his Mauser in his hand, Daly ransacking Andrew’s pockets, and the secretary, unconcerned, feeding another sheet of paper into her typewriter behind the counter. Sorry sir, be with you in a moment.

  Daly found the automatic in his coat pocket and took it out. ‘You won’t be needing that for negotiation, will you, Mr Hessel?’

  ‘I need it for protection,’ Andrew snapped. ‘If you remember, last time the police came. I do not wish to be arrested again!’

  ‘I’ll keep it for you.’ Daly slipped it into his own pocket and stood back. ‘All right. You can put your hands down now.’

  Andrew did so, still looking aggrieved, hiding the sigh of satisfaction that might give him away. Just a search of the pockets and a quick pat under the arms - Daly had not thought to feel along the insides of his arms, under the sleeve of his jacket. Without the gun things would be a little harder, but not impossible. If he struck first he would always be invincible. Andrew felt his anger rise, the adrenalin begin to flow as it always did before combat. Time had begun to slow down for him. He noticed everything in great detail: the way Daly turned to the door beside the counter, the brief smile the secretary gave him, the shrug with which O’Reardan uncocked his pistol and pushed on the safety catch before putting it back into his pocket.

  ‘Through here, Mr Hessel. Mr Collins has an office upstairs.’

  The soldiers were on Dorset Street, directly in between Catherine and Sean and Parnell Square. Two of them were searching some young men who had their hands raised high against a wall while other soldiers covered them with rifles. Passers-by glanced at the scene and hurried on, glad not to be troubled themselves.

  Catherine took Sean’s arm and turned him gently round.

  ‘Not that way,’ she said. ‘The soldiers are bound to notice me like this, and then they’ll look at you.’

  They hurried out of sight behind the school, where the children were just coming out to play, the boys in their knee-length trousers and little jackets, the girls in long dresses and petticoats. Catherine gripped Sean’s arm tightly. ‘Oh God, Sean, they won’t catch you again, will they?’

  He patted his pocket. ‘Not this time, Caitlin, not alive.’

  She remembered the gun Andrew had fired in the cellar. And the bombs at Ashtown and the policeman Sean had killed, half his face blown away by a bullet from a gun in that same pocket. ‘For God’s sake, it’s all violence and killing everywhere. Why can’t it stop?’

  She saw him watching her quietly and thought: Such a lovely, boyish face. Why does it freeze like stone sometimes? Is this how he looked when he shot the policeman?

  Sean said: ‘I thought you supported the movement, at least.’

  ‘I do. I did anyway, you know that. But I don’t want you caught by men like him. I’m sick of it - I want it to end now.’

  ‘Men like who?’

  ‘Butler. The man who chained me in the cellar.’

  ‘Chained you? Cathy, what do you mean?’

  Catherine was dazed. She realized that things had happened so fast she had explained nothing to Sean yet. ‘He chained me in the cellar so I couldn’t get out. Oh, heavens, Sean, I should have told you. He’s gone out to kill Collins today.’

  ‘Cathy, I don’t understand a word.’ He gripped her shoulders, held her against the playground wall. ‘What is all this about? Tell me.’

  She glanced quickly around the square, checking that they were out of sight of the soldiers. They were.

  She told him.

  To Sean it was as though the man he had seen in his dreams had become real and was stalking the city. The hangman, the man with the unseen face. He had nearly killed Catherine, he was out to murder Michael Collins. And he was posing as a German, von Hessel. He remembered the face, now, briefly. Outside the Lambert Hotel - the man he had lost. What had Kelly said this morning about the German? Collins was meeting him today, somewhere.

  Where? Kelly had said a place, surely. />
  Clancy’s.

  ‘Come on.’ He took Catherine’s hand and began to run, away towards Dominick Street. ‘We’ve got to find a phone, quickly.’

  Or, failing that, he realized, Clancy’s itself was only ten minutes’ walk. Less if they ran.

  As he went through the door, Andrew noticed that O’Reardan stayed behind. O’Reardan would be a problem, then, if Andrew came down this way. But the man looked stolid, slow-thinking. When I come down I’ll be moving too fast for him, Andrew thought. Behind the door were two steps down into a short passageway, then a staircase and a corridor, leading out the back, no doubt, with two bicycles parked in it. He glanced along it swiftly before following Daly up the stairs.

  Time was moving very slowly and everything was very clear in his mind. Collins would be in a room at the top of the stairs. If Daly stayed outside the room and Collins was alone he could kill him immediately, with a swift thrust of the knife to the throat. If Daly came in or Collins was not alone then it would take a minute or so longer. He would have to think about movements and distances and the positions of all the people in the room, and he would begin the negotiation about the machine guns. He had a specification of the Maxim gun in his pocket - details of its range, its weight, its cooling system, the tripod, the estimated penetration of bullets at various distances - all in diagrams, with the text in German. He would show it to Collins, and Collins would say he did not understand the German. Andrew would move to his side to translate, whip the knife from his sleeve, and plunge it into Collins’s throat. Swift. Easy. A jab in, a tearing slash on the way out, and the artery would be cut, death inevitable. He should be able to deal with Daly and anyone else in the room before they had moved from their chairs.

  So Michael Collins had only a few more minutes to live.

  At the top of the stairs there was a landing with banisters over the stairwell, and two doors. Daly knocked at one.

  ‘Come in!’

  Daly opened the door for Andrew to walk past him into the room. He said: ‘Count von Hessel, Mick,’ and followed him in.