He reached his hands to Francis who, very carefully, took Dicky into his own.
Mr Doughty, watching the children, seemed thoughtful. “How is your mammy?” he said as he got to his feet.
Brigid turned to Francis. He was looking down at Dicky, stroking his feathers, and did not raise his eyes. “She . . . she’s still in bed,” she said. “I think she’s very tired, Mr Doughty. She sleeps a lot.”
Mr Doughty looked the children up and down. “Judging by your rig, you sleep a lot, too,” and he laughed without sound, which made both children, looking down at their pyjamas, laugh a little themselves. “You know,” he said, and he had stopped laughing, “you shouldn’t be in here.”
They hung their heads.
“I think you should be escorted home by a member of the Royal Ulster Constabulary,” he said, and now he was more serious. “I want to tell you something, and I want you to listen. We have a fair idea there was another man here for a time, and you shouldn’t be out in this place by yourselves. Look at poor young Silver, the narrow escape he had.”
Brigid and Francis looked at each other in alarm.
“Please, Mr Doughty, don’t tell Mama we came out here,” said Brigid.
“I think,” said Mr Doughty, unexpectedly, “that I could do with a cup of tea, which I am quite prepared to make, if you would be so kind as to bring me through the back door.”
Then he took Brigid’s hand and, motioning Francis before him, walked back with them through the plot. Without ceremony, he lifted them both over the fence, stepped back, pulled some young carrots, and early rhubarb, handed them to Brigid over the fence in his old way, then swung his own long legs easily over the fence and walked down the garden with the children.
It was strange to be in the garden with a policeman, strange to see him bend his head through the back door, stranger still to see him roll up his sleeves, wash his hands at the sink, and fill the kettle. It was strange, and it was comforting. He moved quietly about the kitchen, found bread and toasted it, discovered milk and put it in a jug, got a tray and arranged a cup, saucer, plate and jug, poured tea into the teapot, placed it on the tray and held out the whole thing to Francis. “Are you a big enough man to take that up to your mammy?”
Francis looked down at Dicky, quiet in his hands.
“Give the birdie to your sister,” said Mr Doughty.
Brigid found herself cupping the faintly trembling form of their little bird, as Francis walked carefully into the hall, the tray balanced, his knees slightly bent.
“Tell your mammy I was passing, and came in for a cup of tea,” said Mr Doughty. “Don’t let on I made it.”
Francis smiled, though his eyes did not. He said, “Yes, Mr Doughty,” and carried on through the hall.
Mr Doughty placed more cups and saucers on the table, put toast before Brigid, and fixed her a cup of hot, sweet and sugary tea, like Rose’s tea at Tullybroughan, like Laetitia’s after Brigid fell in the water. Mr Doughty sat down beside her, smelling of the garden and the plot and, for almost the first time since the funeral, Brigid felt safe. She looked at the toast, uneaten, before her, but she felt no hunger.
Mr Doughty took it and cut it up into fingers. “Soldiers,” he said. “Eat some for me, there’s a good girlie,” and at the familiar endearment, Brigid felt a prickling start up behind her eyes, and tears she did not want fell hot on her face and on the table.
Before she knew it, she was lifted up and was sitting on Mr Doughty’s knee, comfortable as her grandfather’s. Slowly, she relaxed against the beating of his heart. “Mr Doughty,” she said, so quietly that she did not know if she spoke at all, “what happened to Ned Silver?”
“Ah, poor little Silver,” said Mr Doughty. “He got a bad shock, out there in the plot. That character.”
Brigid wondered for a moment which character he meant. “Isobel’s brother?” she said, carefully, and felt Mr Doughty nod.
“He’ll trouble no one for a long time,” he said, “because he’s in prison, and there he’ll stay, I hope.”
“I’m glad,” said Brigid. And she was, simply and without complication. He had frightened her and now, like a bad dream, he was gone.
“Aye, well you might be,” said Mr Doughty. “He was one bad article. And it may be a while before you see your Isobel.”
I don’t want to see her, thought Brigid. “Where has she gone, Mr Doughty?”
“We don’t know where she’s got to. There’s no sign of her.”
“But did she do something bad?”
“Well, maybe not . . . you could say she tried to help her brother and, while that may not have been wise, or even right, it’s not hard to understand, is it?”
Brigid thought. “No,” she said.
Francis came back in.
“All well, son?” said Mr Doughty.
“Yes, thank you,” said Francis, and sat down at Mr Doughty’s other side.
“Well,” Mr Doughty continued, “Isobel. She brought him food in the plot. I saw her do that, and I saw you looking from your garden. I suppose many a sister might have brought her brother food. But there was more. We believe she was hiding him in a house all winter. She put about a story that her brother was home from England, and needed looking after, which was at best a half-truth.”
“I . . .” Brigid did not know Isobel had hidden her brother in a house all winter, but she imagined Francis, hunted, camping out of doors without shelter or food, like George Bailey, and Ned Silver. She said: “I would bring Francis food.”
Glancing at him for approval, she was surprised to see Francis flush, and hang his head.
“Aye,” said Mr Doughty, and Brigid noticed he looked rather long at Francis as he spoke, “I’m sure you would. I don’t find that bit hard to understand but, the thing is, her brother was an escaped criminal, and she knew that. All the same, I don’t like it, women in court and in jails and . . . ah, that poor Ellis woman across the water . . .” He frowned, and looked down, drumming his hands on the table, then he stopped, and cleared his throat. “In any case,” he said, “as things stand, I doubt if it will go very far at all.”
Brigid remembered George Bailey’s view of Isobel, but she could not break her promise to George and tell Mr Doughty. “Isobel is unreliable,” she said.
“That’s a big word for a small girl,” said Mr Doughty, raising his cup.
“It’s Mama’s word, Mr Doughty. But, Ned Silver, where is he? What happened to him?”
“Mr Doughty?” said Francis suddenly, and both Brigid, put out, and the policeman, not at all so, turned to him expectantly.
“What is it, son?”
“I . . .”
“Take your time,” said Mr Doughty, and his voice was very calm. “What’s on your mind?”
“Nothing, Mr Doughty,” said Francis. “I’m sorry if I interrupted. You were going to tell us about Ned?”
Mr Doughty shifted in his seat, and Brigid took this as a sign to go back to hers. She climbed down, and sat at the table beside him, turning towards him, her hands beneath her chin. He thought a long time before he spoke.
“That wee boy, you know, lost his mother a few years ago.”
Brigid nodded. “We know. The Princess Victoria.”
“Yes. That’s right. Anyway, the wee fellow was either sent away to school or left alone with a housekeeper and . . . well, it wasn’t fair on him. I used to see him in the garden, looking up at your windows, always by himself. We brought him to the barracks the odd time, John Steele and myself, and we made him tea. So, he wasn’t afraid when we talked to him after that business in the plot. He’s not a bad child.”
Brigid felt a sort of pity for Ned, waiting for them in the garden. Then she thought: did he tell about George? Did he keep his promise? Mr Doughty ran his hand over his head.
“He couldn’t tell us much, though. Didn’t seem to remember who he saw, or what happened.”
Brigid thought: good for Ned.
“He was very shocked. And
anyhow, we had caught the fellow with the gun and . . . for other reasons . . . we didn’t press him. You know Mrs Silver knew your father’s family from before she was married?”
Brigid said: “Yes. She was Myra Moore. She knew our granda – and our almost-uncle Laurence.”
“She would have done. I gather she was always looking for friends.”
Brigid said: “But . . . Mr Doughty . . . if she had Mr Silver, and Ned . . . why was she lonely? Why did she need Uncle Conor to be her friend, if she had them?”
He shook his head. “That’s the bit nobody can understand, least of all the child. It’s all he wanted to talk about in the station. You could say Mrs Silver didn’t have her husband near her. Still, you’d think maybe she could have gone with him to wherever he was. Or, she could have spent her time with her own child. Most women would, it seems to me.” He shook his head again, and poured more tea for Brigid and Francis, then for himself. He heaped sugar into his cup, and stirred it, and then he pushed the bowl towards Brigid. “There was a lot of talk at the time. I don’t know. I doubt if anybody knows. It was a nine-day wonder. Then she was dead, and poor young Silver was packed off to school. And that didn’t work out very well, as we know. If he didn’t escape, he was expelled, and he was an expert at both.”
“What happened after he left Granda’s?” said Brigid.
“He seems to have found his way up here. He wouldn’t tell us. My guess is he climbed on to the back of a lorry, judging by the state of him. Dangerous for any child.”
Brigid thought: not that one, but she did not say so.
“Anyway, he got back here, but he didn’t go home. He hid in the plot and, God forgive me, with all that was going on, I didn’t find him. Nor did John Steele. Not to mention that housekeeper. There’s another one shouldn’t be in charge of a child.” He put his cup down and shook his head. “He had little more than a blanket he got from somewhere, and clothes too big for him, and shoes stiff with damp.”
“Our aunt, in Lecale,” said Brigid. “She gave him the clothes and the blanket.”
“Was that it? It’s a miracle he didn’t get pneumonia, or worse, outside in the night air. Characters running about the plot. And we only got one of them.” Mr Doughty got up. “We’ll need to toast more bread. Anyway, young Silver is with his father at the moment, and I gather he’s going to be all right. He’s a hardy soul, for all he looks so frail.” He lifted a slice of bread from its wrapper, then paused again. “The strange thing is: Mr Silver should have been on the Princess Victoria himself that day.”
“Why was he not?” Brigid asked. “Mrs Silver mightn’t have been so lonely if he had gone. She might have talked to him instead of Laurence. She said she had lost somebody: was it him she had lost?”
Mr Doughty shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe. The Silvers were both booked on that boat. Mrs Silver was singing at something in Scotland – was it to do with Burns Night? I think it was. Anyway, he was to go up there for this concert or whatever it was and come over home with her, I suppose to patch the whole thing up. Who knows? Then, for whatever reason – his work, maybe? – he cancelled his booking a day or two before, and she was on her own.”
That’s when she asked Uncle Conor to go and see her, Brigid thought, and then she asked him for something he could only give to Rose, and he wouldn’t give it. She thought this, but she did not say it.
“And she asked Laurence to meet her on the boat,” said Francis, suddenly, “and then they both died.”
“Yes,” said Mr Doughty, and his voice changed. “More’s the pity. It was a long way to ask someone to come just so that she could talk about the troubles she had brought on herself.”
“Where’s Mr Silver, now, Mr Doughty?” Francis asked.
“Still in Egypt, I believe. It’s hot out there at the moment, and I don’t mean the weather.”
“My granda said it was shaping up to be hot round the border towns,” said Brigid.
Mr Doughty sat back in his chair, and looked long at Brigid. “Did he, now?” he said. “Well, you can tell him from me, next time you see him, he’s not wrong. It’ll be another hot Twelfth, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Is Ned with his father?” Francis said.
“I believe so,” said Mr Doughty. “He should be anyway. He should be with his father.”
“Mr Silver told Ned that Catholics are riddled,” Brigid said.
“Riddled?”
“Riddled with something . . . super-something.”
“Superstition?” Mr Doughty laughed, a great, hearty laugh. “Well, I’m not. And I’m a Catholic, like you. So’s John Steele, as a matter of fact.”
There was a sound in the hall, and the door was pushed open. The children’s mother came in, carrying a tray. She wore her blue dressing-gown: Brigid had a fleeting memory of Christmas morning.
“Mr Doughty, what must you think of us?” she said. “I’m so sorry. We’re at sixes and sevens here.”
“Mrs Arthur,” he said, scraping the chair as he got to his feet, “forgive me. I was talking to the children outside, and I invited myself in for a cup of tea. I hope you don’t mind.”
Good Mr Doughty had not given away their secret. He pulled out a chair for the children’s mother and sat down beside her.
“Mr Doughty,” she said, “we have been a little out of events the last while. Francis has told me your news of Isobel and her brother. What of my sis– . . . my late husband’s friend, Cornelius Todd?”
Mr Doughty sat up straight in the chair. “Ah. Cornelius Todd. Well, Mrs Arthur, I don’t want to trouble you about this at the moment. I remember he was, as you say, a friend of your late husband. It makes me sorry to tell you that Cornelius Todd has . . . connections, to the IRA.”
She put down her cup, almost missing the saucer. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” she said, and let her head drop.
“Mrs Arthur,” said the policeman. “I’m off duty at the moment. I’m here as a neighbour. Let’s not distress ourselves about it. Maybe, another time, we’ll talk of it.”
“His father was involved, the time of the Civil War. He was very much against Partition. That’s all I ever knew,” said the children’s mother, almost to herself. “I know Rose worried in case . . . and my brother had doubts . . . but Maurice and my father-in-law always said Cornelius had more sense . . . and I’m sure he promised Rose he’d keep away from . . . I don’t know. Truly, I don’t know. Maurice could tell you more about him, but Maurice . . .”
“There’s nothing to tell, Mrs Arthur,” he said. “We knew all we needed to know, long before. We were watching him, ever since those bad boys tried to bomb the barracks in England last autumn. Todd had been involved, and so, as we now know, was the man we caught in the plot.”
“Yes,” she said. “Isobel’s brother. How I was deceived in that girl.”
“Indeed. But for a long time, it seems, Cornelius Todd has had no involvement, beyond visiting prisoners, which is not a crime, and attending gatherings in public places, which is not yet a crime. He seems not to have been a part of this latest business. I’m sorry for your sister. She’s a lovely young lady.”
Mrs Arthur lifted her head. To Brigid, she looked like Mama again. “Thank you, Mr Doughty. As it happens, my sister had already broken her engagement to Cornelius Todd some little time ago. He is nothing to her now, or to us.”
Mr Doughty bowed his head. “For your sister’s sake, and for yours, I’m glad. But I meant that I was sorry that she had to learn of his involvement.” He stood up. “How’s the little birdie coming on?” he said, and stroked Brigid’s hand.
“I think he’s –” Brigid began.
“Brigid,” said her mother, “go and put that bird back in its cage. I don’t know why you –”
“She was showing him to me, Mrs Arthur. It was my fault,” said Mr Doughty and Brigid, in that moment, gave him a corner of her heart.
They walked him to the front door, Brigid keeping her hand over Dicky.
Mr Doug
hty stopped in the hall. He was going home, he said, to his daughter for his dinner, and in the afternoon he would come and do some work in the plot. “I was wondering,” he added, “if this young man would like to help me? I could do with a hand in the plot.” He looked down at Francis, and placed one hand on his head.
Brigid, left out, was not pleased.
Francis turned his head to look at his mother. “Mama?” he said.
“Would you like that, Francis?” she said.
“I would,” he said. “But what about Brigid?”
Mr Doughty said: “Would you like to, as well, Miss?”
“Could I watch?” asked Brigid and, to her surprise, everyone laughed.
Her mother said: “Brigid can watch, or she can help me make rock cakes for later. Rose is coming back to stay for a while, and I think Granda Arthur is coming up to town today on the bus. We can all have tea.”
Brigid nodded. “Mr Doughty too?” she asked.
“Of course. But first,” said her mother, “some of us, myself included, need to get dressed.” She opened the door, and the summer light streamed in. “I must put up the curtain,” she said, and then, as Mr Doughty stepped through the doorway, she placed her hand on his arm. “Mr Doughty,” she said, and her voice dropped, “I don’t want my sister to run the risk of meeting . . . anyone she doesn’t want to. You know who I . . .”
Mr Doughty looked down at his feet. “As far as I know, Mrs Arthur,” he said, “she’ll meet no one. Cornelius Todd hasn’t been seen since the day of the funeral. He seems to have left Northern Ireland. And, I’m afraid, it’s going to be left at that.”
“But, Mr Doughty,” said Mrs Arthur, “Isobel . . . she was in our employment. Won’t we all be involved in questions about the whole thing, now that the funeral is . . .”
“Mrs Arthur,” said Mr Doughty, “Isobel is gone. Her brother is behind bars. Nothing will happen to involve you or your family.”
“Are you sure?” she said.
“Yes,” said Mr Doughty. “I am. It’s because of young Silver . . . or, more to the point, because of his father, and the work he is doing out in Egypt.”
The Friday Tree Page 31