by Nina Dreyer
The room was still. The whole house was still now. Raindrops trickled down the crumbling wall beneath the rotting window boards. Marion slumped down on the floor, leaned back against the cold metal bed, and exhaled deeply. Sniffling, she drew up her legs and hugged herself, resting her cheek on her knees. She’d seen this happen before. The dead woman’s anger had kept her solid. Anger was better than despair, better than fear and hurt and unseen tears. But now, the house was still.
Marion closed her eyes. A tear trickled down the side of her nose, into the grove at the corner of her mouth. Salt on her lips, salt like blood. She wiped her face with the back of her hand and-
Bright light burst over the walls.
Marion opened her eyes and staggered to her feet.
An engine roared and spat and coughed to a halt outside. Voices, barking, growling, hard voices, men’s voices. Boots, heavy boots, steel-tipped boots, kicking at the front door. Kicking and banging in the hall below.
A dog barked.
A smell. Leather, sweat and petroleum.
Soldiers.
Marion lurched to the door, her legs heavy and stiff, and flung herself onto the landing. Backstairs. There must be backstairs. She ran down the corridor, floundering, slipping. Below, soldiers shouted.
‘Here, there’s a broken lamp lying here, it’s still warm.’
‘Bloody Fenian bastards think they can hide from us in this bloody hole.’
They came pounding up the stairs now. Light from their torches swept across the rotting ceiling. Marion darted across the landing and burst through a door. A large room, a dark room. Her foot caught on a carpet. Behind her, the dog was snarling and barking. She ran, banging her shin bone on a tilted table.
‘There’s fucking someone here,’ a man’s voice rang out.
‘Get the little bugger!’
Pounding of boots behind her.
Marion reached a door and tore it open. A staircase, narrow and dark. She half-ran, half-tumbled down its rotten steps. At the foot of the stairs, a small pantry. Marion leaped over the flagstones, banging against a kitchen counter and clanging rusty pots and pans to the floor. The back door. She rushed towards it and ripped at the handle.
Locked.
She drew back and slammed herself at the door. And again. Blinding pain shot into her shoulder and chest. Again. Again. Behind her, the pounding boots came nearer. They were on the back stairs now. ‘I said halt! Don’t fucking move! Get that little fucker!’
Marion lifted her leg and kicked at the rusty lock until it crumbled. She shoved the door open and tumbled outside, into the lashing rain.
She tried to run faster, her lungs burning as she gasped for air. Tearing down a narrow back alley, she knocked over a dust bin and burst through a rotten plank gate at the end. Cold sea wind swept over her as she emerged, reeling, on the open street.
She ran for her life, tripping and stumbling, scraping her hands on the wet asphalt, and then got up and ran on.
When the voices grew fainter behind her and died away, Marion collapsed in the shelter of a tall hedge, retching from fear. She looked down at herself. Her skirts were torn, and her left wrist was bleeding.
Chapter Two
The following afternoon, Marion made her way down along the Liffey quays, clasping her collar tightly to her throat. A heavy fog breathed in from the stone-grey sea, smudging the bleary facades of the old Georgian riverfront. A group of ragged children ran past her, all fraying sweaters, sharp little elbows and red-raw knees, skipping and sliding over the leaf-slick cobbles. They were carrying stones in their hands. Stones for the soldiers. A pinched-looking gentleman a brown homburg hat curled his lip and shook his umbrella at them as they hurtled past.
Marion thought of Eilis’ parlour, waiting for her. Ruby port glowing in crystal glasses, and a rumbling fire in the grate, the air warm with scents of cinnamon and oak. Eilis’ parlour was her only haven in this rain-swept city, a warm, hushed sanctuary full of Eilis’ poetry and dreams and…
Marion slowed her pace, squinting into the fog.
Further up on the quays, an angry crowd was gathering, snarling shop boys, hard-shouldered men from the docks, scowling women in long woollen shawls.
Marion lowered her head and dug her hands deep into her pockets. She knew only too well how to behave in an angry, restless crowd. You keep your eyes down. You let the crowd move you along. You walk neither faster nor slower than anybody else, and you keep your elbows close to your sides.
The crowd watched, shoulders hunched, as anxious officers on skittish horses filed down the road, trailing long ranks of armed men fresh off the warship gangplanks. Strangely dressed, thought Marion, in dust-brown and black, not ordinary uniforms. She frowned as they marched down the misty quay. Burnt and blackened souls with the howl and thunder of the Western Front still wailing in their ears.
She tightened her fists in her pockets. They were the enemy. The old enemy.
Marion wished she had stones in her hands, too. If she had, she would have flung them at their faces.
Turning, she tried to slip through the press of tense onlookers when a squat woman in a broad black hat stepped forward and spat on the road, narrowly missing the marching men.
Two of the soldiers turned to her. One reached for his rifle with a scrape-knuckled hand. Marion leaned back and tried to shoulder her way back into the crowd.
‘Here, go on home,’ a man’s voice sounded behind her, ‘have youse got no fuckin’ homes of yer own?’ Brittle voices rose in assent.
‘Shut your fucking face,’ one of the soldiers yelled in the metallic accent of Manchester or Liverpool. Someone shoved Marion in the back. Snarls of abuse rose from the crowd. Marion’s heart was pounding. She turned and forced her way past red-faced men and women, finally emerged on the other side and half-ran down the streets.
She paused and caught her breath at the corner of Grafton Street, the heart of this blasted, blackened city. The smoke of burning peat hung in the air, and the steam of horse piss mingled with petroleum fumes from the armoured cars rumbling past. From the fine shops came the scents of dates and currants, spiced burgundy and fine black tea, but most of the windows had been boarded up. No billboards for plays or concerts stood on the sidewalks anymore. You could love this city, Marion thought. So melancholy, like a luminous paper lamp over the storm-swept bay. In better days, you could have loved it.
A gaggle of newspaper boys had assembled on the corner, chirping of tragedy, murder and outrage. Marion made her way past them and through the press of dour-faced men in black woollen coats, women in feather-shivering hats, students dragging rusty bicycles.
A whippet of a boy in a too-short tweed coat stepped out in front of Marion, brandishing a newspaper from his bundle. Death sprawled on the front page. ‘Here lady, you’ve got such pretty eyes, would youse not buy a paper?’
Marion mumbled an excuse and hurried on.
Grey rain began to fall. Marion gathered her coat close around her and stepped over the puddles. A tram grumbled past, splashing her feet. From ahead came angry voices and the neighing of a horse.
Marion looked up.
A group of young boys stood on the curb, watching, cigarette butts dangling from their lips. In the middle of the street, an old man was desperately pulling at the reins of a kicking horse. The old man’s cart had been knocked over, its spokes broken, boxes and jugs scattered over the wet cobblestones. A group of soldiers stalked around him, shouting at him. Their truck stood close by, engine still running.
The cart was blocking their way.
‘Get your fucking nag in order or I’ll shoot it,’ roared one soldier, pulling out a revolver and aiming it.
‘No sir, no, no,’ the old man was crying now. His horse reared and kicked, and the old man flailed and pulled and finally shielded his face.
‘I said get you fucking donkey off the fucking road,’ the soldier screamed. The horse reared in fright, and the old man lost his grip on the reins, stumbled and fell.
&
nbsp; Marion darted forwards.
The old man was on his knees, wheezing, trying to gather his broken boxes. Marion tugged on his elbows to help him up. ‘Here,’ she said, catching her breath, ‘your hat.’ The old man blinked at her uncomprehendingly and took his battered cap from her. Marion tried to steer him out of reach of the soldiers.
A soldier stepped in front of her. ‘Friend of yours, is he? Are you his sweetheart?’ He turned to his grinning comrades. ‘It’s alright love, what d’you want him for when you could have me instead, eh? What do you say?’ He spread out his arms. Marion let go of the old man’s arm. Her hands were shaking.
‘She don’t fancy you, Fred,’ grinned one of his fellows.
They all laughed and gathered closer.
‘Where you from then, love,’ asked another. He lightly tapped her stomach with the butt of his rifle. ‘Why so quiet? Cat got your tongue, eh?’
Marion raised a hand to her throat. Her heart was beating too hard. She stared at his coarse black collar, the cracking leather gun strap over his chest, and thought for an instant that she could taste blood in the back of her throat. Blood and mud. Choking her.
‘Why don’t you want to talk to us?’ He prodded her again.
Marion opened her mouth to speak, but said nothing. She saw nothing in their eyes for her to appeal to. Nothing but whiskey vapours and the lust to feel bone and cartilage crunch between their teeth.
‘I’m talking to you,’ the soldier said, stepping closer, not grinning now, ‘you deaf or something?’
Someone took her arm. It was the old man. ‘You come away now, pet,’ he wheezed, wiping his forehead with a dirty sleeve.
‘Here, what you think you’re doing?’ The soldier raised his rifle and hit the old man in the head, metal and wood cracking on bone. The man collapsed like an empty sack, a sliver of blood on his wispy scalp. The soldiers swarmed on him, shouting abuse.
Marion sprang forward and grabbed the shoulders of the one nearest to her, digging in her nails into the stiff leather of his coat and tearing at him. ‘Stop it,’ she screamed, ‘animals!’
The soldier rounded on her, shoved her off and raised his revolver.
The muzzle gleamed, inches from her face.
Marion froze for an instant, then staggered back, her heel twisting on the wet curbstone.
She turned and ran, bumping into people, her boots slipping on wet cobbles, pin-prick rain lashing her face and hands, the old man’s cries ringing in her ears.
Half an hour later, Marion banged on Eilis’ gleaming front door, panting to catch her breath. Her heart was still pounding. She stepped back on the rain-swept mosaic garden path, glancing at the windows. Mellow light shone from the front parlour. The house was elegant old redbrick, nestled back from one of the winding old streets near the beach. Three slender birch trees shielded the front windows, their yellow leaves rustling in the drizzle of rain.
The maid opened, and Marion ducked inside the dim hallway, wiping rain from her forehead. Her legs felt weak. The maid took her damp coat and hat and ushered her to the front parlour.
By a crackling fire sat Eilis, reclining amid a sea of velvet cushions. She lay leafing through one of the occult quarterlies, idly fingering the cream lace collar at her throat.
Marion approached, picking her way past the luscious displays of drooping orchids and rubbery aspidistras.
‘My pet!’ Eilis tossed her magazine aside and reached for Marion. ‘Look what the maid dragged in. Come sit you down.’ She patted a red velvet divan by the fireplace. A fire screen shielded the grate, brightly painted with Egyptian lotuses and ibises. The spluttering flames glowed warmly through it.
Marion slumped onto the divan and pressed the palms of her hands to her eyes.
‘Jesus, but what’s the matter with you,’ said Eilis.
‘I hate them. I hate them so much.’
‘You hate who now, pet?’
‘The soldiers. The English soldiers.’ Marion scrunched up a handful of her skirt in her fist and thought of the old man in the street, on his knees, fumbling for his broken jars and boxes, and the soldiers leering, strutting around in their hideous uniforms, blood in the gutters under their heels.
Eilis rose, went to an enamelled cabinet and returned with a crystal decanter and two glasses. ‘I don’t care what anyone says, it’s past four o’clock. Perfectly respectable. There, get that into you. Now. Explain.’
Marion took the glass from her. ‘I ran away. Like a coward. Twice.’
‘What are you on about?’ Eilis licked the rim of her glass.
‘Just now, I saw soldiers beating up an old man, right there, in front of everyone. Near St. Stephen’s Green. His cart had fallen over and he was-’
‘That’s disgusting,’ Eilis crinkled her nose, ‘bloody disgusting altogether. And everyone was just standing there, looking on?’
‘I tried to help him. I failed. I ran away. I’m always running away.’
Eilis squeezed her arm with a warm hand. ‘Sure that’s more than most would’ve done, pet. You’re a nice person. But you know you can’t help. God love you, but you’re only a skinny little thing. Best leave it to the menfolk, eh?’
Marion leaned her head back and blinked her swelling eyes.
Eilis stroked her arm. ‘Ah, here. Sure you can’t be going into single combat with those savages every time there’s a flap in the streets. We’d have to put up a plaque to you in the end,’ she said, flourishing her hand theatrically, ‘at this spot, armed only with an umbrella, Marion Hahn fell in solitary battle against the full might of the Brutish Empire. Did you know they call them that now? I forget who came up with it. The Brutish Empire. Fairly clever, isn’t it?’
Marion smiled weakly, wiping her cheek on her sleeve.
‘So, tell me how your visitation went last night? You had to bring that little broomstick of a girl with you, what’s her name…’ Eilis tapped her temple with a finger.
‘Christabel. I had to send her away. Poltergeist activity.’
Eilis drew back, crossing herself with a quick flicker of the hand, like a little tic.
‘I had the situation under control,’ said Marion, ‘I really did, I’d made contact, good contact, but then the house was raided by soldiers.’ She winced at the memory of hurtling through the dark house, springing out the garden door to escape, dogs growling, torch light blinking behind her.
Eilis paled. ‘Are you serious?’
Marion nodded.
‘Christ Almighty.’ Eilis poured more port wine. ‘That’s it. You have to stop going on those visitations, Marion. It’s too bloody dangerous.’
‘But Mr. Sidney said I can’t do seances for paying customers. I can only do hauntings.’
Eilis snorted and wiped a drop of port from her lip with her thumb. ‘Well far be it from me to question the wisdom of our illustrious employer, but this is going too far. And it’s a waste of your psychic talents, the greatest squandering of talent in living memory, in fact. There, I’ve said it.’
‘I’ll go and speak to Mr. Sidney about it,’ said Marion, frowning at the prospect.
Eilis pursed her lips and nodded doubtfully. ‘Right, so.’ She leaned back onto a thick embroidered cushion and sighed. ‘If only you’d waited a year or two before coming here. What an awful opinion you must have of poor old Dublin town. Sure it must be all abandoned houses and damp little rented rooms to you, mustn’t it?’
And military roadblocks, thought Marion. Roadblocks and endless rain. She lowered her head and frowned at her cracked fingernails. She’d arrived in Dublin in the early spring of the previous year. Armed policemen, curfews and military roadblocks had not seemed in any way remarkable to her then. She was used to those, and worse. She’d arrived off the boat with one battered old suitcase and no letters of introduction, and no notion at all of how lethal the streets of Dublin would become.
‘Dublin is such a beautiful old town,’ said Eilis, wistfully gazing at the raindrops trickling down the wind
owpane. ‘So rich in art and literature. They used called it the Second City of the Empire, but it will soon be the capital of our nation. You’ll see.’ She fixed Marion with a stare like a slant of hard light through storm clouds.
‘Of course. As you say.’ Marion swallowed and glanced at a little hanging basket of limp ferns turning slowly in the heat of the fire. Truth be told, she hadn’t even stopped to consider that Dublin was in the British Empire. She’d sent her desperate applications to every single spiritualist circle from Naples to Gothenburg. Only the Dublin Salon for Psychical Research had accepted her. Only Mr. Sidney had given her a chance. A slim one, at that.
‘The ancient hills and rivers of Éire still glow with the magic of old, you know,’ said Eilis. ‘We really must go out West sometime, pet. And to Meath, to visit Baile Átha Triom, the ford of the elderflowers, and the Hill of Tara, the seat of the old High Kings of Ireland. When the war’s won and my country is free.’
‘I would like that. Very much.’ Marion tried to imagine the hay-scented summer wind on high hillsides, and the sun glinting through luminous leaves. She couldn’t manage it. All she could see in her mind’s eye was rain sweeping over grey crowds huddled by roadblocks, grey crowds fleeing from roaring armoured cars. Soldiers’ boots reflected in dirty puddles, and the screaming red blood on that old man’s wispy white scalp.
‘We’ve suffered under their yoke for over seven hundred years,’ said Eilis, ‘trying to strangle our language and customs with their murderous laws and brutal gombeen men, and the Great Famine, when the high and mighty absentee landlords in London shrugged and nibbled their bloody cucumber sandwiches while hundreds of thousands of us starved to death in ditches.’
Marion knotted her fingers in her lap. She thought of her own home, her own city, flooded with the wounded, the destitute, the grieving, the starving. That morning not so many years ago, in the mist on the broad boulevards, she’d seen women crawling over a stiff-legged horse carcass, carving out chunks of flesh to be bundled away in ragged aprons. Famine. The memory made her gut crawl. ‘English barbarians,’ she said through gritted teeth, ‘I hate them.’