by Nina Dreyer
Marion blinked. It was the one word spiritualists always avoided. Passing, crossing over, ascending. Never death. Nobody ever died. ‘If I do, it’s only because there has been so much violent death of late.’
Eilis smacked the table with an open hand. ‘We cannot interfere in this, if men choose to lay down their lives for the freedom of their country, then that conviction will carry them through in the great hereafter, and they don’t need your-’
‘But you heard him too, at our seance.’ Marion instinctively brushed her hand against the left side of her head. ‘He was in great pain. Very great pain. He was lost, alone-’
‘No, he’s not, he’ll be joined now on the other side by his fallen comrades, ready to welcome him, and he’ll be looked after.’
Marion looked at Eilis, trying to decipher the undercurrents of her mind in her flushed face. Eilis crossed her arms and stared back, unblinking.
‘Marion’s right, though,’ said John. ‘Convictions, indeed. These gunmen are all so desperately young. Half of them probably don’t even know their own minds one way or another. Just young lads wanting to make their names for Ireland and all that.’
‘And how,’ Eilis narrowed her eyes, ‘would you know that?’
‘I’d be blind and deaf not to know. I’m from this fine town too.’
‘Ah no, you,’ Eilis wagged a finger at him, ‘you’re not. You may have been born here, that’s for your mother to decide, but you’re not from here.’
‘Where am I from, then?’ He leaned back in his chair, stretching his neck.
‘How do I know?’ Eilis tapped her nails on the table. ‘Oxfordshire, I’d say. Walthamstow, maybe?’
John suddenly stopped smiling.
Marion looked from one to the other with the unnerving feeling of having wandered into a cinema for only the last five minutes of the picture. ‘Why would he not be from here,’ she began.
‘Oh, you great West Saxon,’ Eilis patted John’s arm and laughed, ‘look at you scowling, would you not just take some port like a decent ordinary fellow? Here, Marion, give the man some port now. It’s a digestive. I’d say he needs it.’
Marion filled his glass and handed it to him. ‘Let’s not argue,’ she said uncertainly, ‘let’s just discuss the matter at hand.’
Eilis pursed her lips.
John winked and tipped his glass to her. ‘Amica mortuorum. You’re a friend of the dead. And you’re an example to the rest of us. Dead right. We shouldn’t be hiding indoors with our Ouija boards and our pendulums at a time like this.’ He rose, sauntered over to the piano and began tapping out a little tune. The Soldier’s Song. The Republican anthem. Marion had heard it often, sung from hoarse throats as she hurried past pubs in the dark alleys in heart of the city.
‘Kindly stop that,’ said Eilis.
John shut the lid of the piano. ‘So, you saw his killer, you said?’
‘No,’ Eilis pointed a trembling finger at him, ‘you will not do this.’
Marion fingered a ring on her right hand. ‘I saw his face.’ And his gun. Moonlight gleaming in the muzzle.
‘Here’s what we’re going to do,’ said Eilis, rubbing her hands together, ‘we’ll never tell anyone about this. Ever. We will have Marion try again with another trance seance, and maybe another spirit will come through, someone who passed over from natural causes, and then I myself will approach Sid and lay out the case that the rules about trance seances-’
‘But times are changing, Eilis.’ John sat down at the head of the table. ‘None of your old orthodoxies will survive once Sid’s gone to pasture. It’s been a jolly arrangement so far though, wouldn’t you say? A weekly salary, the fine rooms, the library, all the brandy and cocaine anyone could ever want. Exorcists and opium if things get out of hand. All grand. But don’t you ever get tired of it? Tired of being held back by these stuffy old rules, tired of having all your painstaking research published under Sid’s name, as if he’d written it himself?’
‘I’m not in this for personal advancement,’ said Eilis though clenched teeth, ‘unlike some.’
‘Be that as it may, I’d say the next Salon director will change the way things are done. As per Marion’s suggestion. We should be helping. I mean, what are we doing here?’
‘And I’d say the next Salon director will have an eye for tradition and decency. And not go courting sensationalism,’ said Eilis.
Marion gazed despondently at the fire. She would miss that weekly wage. And Sid had never published any of her work. The only thing he’d made her write was her signature on a contract stating she would never sell her ghost stories to the press.
‘We might think of a new name, when the time comes,’ John smiled brightly. ‘Salon is such an antiquated word. The Dublin Institute for Psychical Research? No?’
‘The Spiritualist Circle of the Insensitive and Reckless, maybe,’ said Eilis sourly.
‘The Curfew Circle.’ Marion looked up, meeting John’s eye. ‘The murders happen during the curfew.’
John cocked his head. ‘What an incisive suggestion. But joking aside, Marion. I’ll support you. If you’ll trust me to.’ He held her gaze. ‘I’ll join your curfew circle, if you’ll let me.’
Marion nodded slowly, suppressing a thrilled smile. ‘Yes. I will.’
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Eilis glaring at her.
Chapter Six
Eight minutes past the curfew. Rain fell in heavy sheets, gurgling down leaky drain pipes and splattering in puddles. Marion hurried down the street, shielding her eyes from the rain and jumping over sloshing gutters clogged with wet leaves. She’d lingered too long in the golden warmth of Eilis’ parlour. She shouldn’t have done that. Not on a night like tonight. The city was restless. She could feel it, like the metallic smell of a coming snowstorm.
Gunfire sounded in the distance, engines grumbling, men shouting.
Small crowds of men emerged from boarded-up pubs, some running, some swaying unsteadily down the streets. An old man in a flat cap began barking a song, like an angry challenge, as his friends hushed him and dragged him along.
Rounding a corner, Marion sprang aside and pressed herself up against a wall as an armoured police car trundled past, raising curses and jeers from the rain-sodden men.
She ran for Crow Street and stopped, panting, at the front door of Mrs. Skeehan’s boarding house. Cursing under her breath, she rummaged through her purse for her key. Two or three young men tore past her. One bumped into her, knocking the key from her hand and sending it clattering down the wet cobbles. As she fumbled in the dark for it, the headlights of a truck swept over her, blinding white light sliding over the old brick walls.
There.
She snatched the key, pressed it into the lock, tore open the door and ducked inside just as an open truck bristling with soldiers roared past her down the narrow lane.
The hall was quiet and dark. A smell of boiled pork wafted up from the kitchen. Marion pressed a hand to her chest to still her pounding heart and crept up the creaking stairs to her rooms.
She closed her own door behind her and breathed deeply. The rising fog of November had crept in through the old, uneven windows, and the air smelled of damp linen and ashes.
She kicked off her wet boots and left them by the door, then stood by the cold fireplace and gingerly peeled off her wet stockings. Her skin was red and raw from the cold and the lashing rain.
Creaking across the floor, she lit a candle stub and pulled on dry stockings. Not her night gown. She could not put on her night gown now, not like this. Pulling on a night gown was an act of trust that the night would be quiet. She sat down on the edge of her bed, pulled up her legs and hugged her knees, clinging to the memory of the heat in Eilis’ dining room, the port wine. Shivering, she tried to rub warmth into her hands and thought of John, smiling at her, head slightly inclined, gazing at her so intently it made her throat tighten. An illicit little pleasure to warm herself with. Maybe ordinary rules didn’t have to ap
ply on nights like these.
Heavy footfall sounded in the lane below her window. Marion turned and hurriedly tugged the curtains shut.
Shouting. Then a short yelp.
Gunfire exploded. Once. twice.
The sound boomed and echoed in the lane, swelling off the walls.
The sound of running. A truck accelerating in the distance. A dog barking.
Marion crouched forward and held her breath, listening for screams.
Kicking and thumping at the front door.
She jolted to her feet, her breath cramped in her throat. Voices, strangled voices, hissing voices sounded from the landing. She went and opened her door, just a crack.
She had not shut the front door properly.
At the foot of the stairs stood three men.
Two of them carried the third between them, drooping, his feet dragging on the cold flagstones. The men looked up at her, up at the thin sliver of light from her door. They were wearing woollen coats, not uniforms. They weren’t soldiers. They were running from the soldiers. And one of them had been shot.
Beckoning to them, Marion backed into the room. They pounded up the stairs, dragging their comrade with them, and one shoved the door to her room fully open with his boot.
‘You fucking don’t move,’ said one of the men, his voice breaking, ‘stay right over there.’ He waved a pistol at her. Marion backed into a corner. She felt lightheaded, unreal, watching as the men laid their comrade on the floor. One of them clutched his hand, mumbling to him. Marion could not make out the words. Soft words, cajoling words. The other pointed the gun at her, more firmly now.
‘You stay right there,’ he said, ‘you hear, you don’t make a fucking sound, and you mind him,’ he nodded at his fallen comrade, ‘while we go get help, you hear?’ He wiped his nose on his sleeve. His hands were shaking. Any sudden noise and he might tighten his trigger finger from fright. Marion nodded, stunned.
The two men left, thundering down the stairs.
Marion followed them and watched as they slipped out the front door.
Mrs. Skeehan emerged from the kitchen, wringing her hands in her apron. ‘Ah sure it’s all up with us now,’ she sobbed, ‘they’re in my house, God help us, it’s all up with us now.’ She crossed herself, glanced up at Marion standing on the landing and ducked away, back into the kitchen.
Marion turned back to her room and let the door creak shut behind her.
The man lay on her floor, his head on her bedside rug. His left foot twitched. He was wearing a crumbled grey overcoat, ripped at the shoulder. Marion took the candle and brought it closer. The flame flickered, shining over his face. He was young, painfully young. A rash of acne mottled his cheek. His wet, red-black hair was plastered to his bone-white forehead.
She knelt and clasped his hand. It felt waxen and heavy. He made no sound, not a moan, not a whimper of pain. Blood pooled slowly under his right shoulder. Pulling his coat back, she reached in, searching for the wound with shaking fingers. Her hand came away slick with warm blood. She ripped his shirt. A gunshot wound gaped in his shoulder, just beneath his collarbone. She tried to press it with her hands, as hard as she could, to stop the flow. Black blood oozed between her fingers. The young man moaned.
‘Vater unser im Himmel,’ Marion gasped, ‘geheiligt werde dein Name, dein Reich komme…’ She stopped herself. He couldn’t understand her.
‘What is your name,’ she leaned closer, whispering, ‘and what was the last image in your mind?’ She gritted her teeth. Another blind instinct. The boy was not dead. Not yet. Amica mortuorum, John had called her. A friend of the dead. But she’d never done this before. How do you speak to someone who is just about to die? She put her hands under his neck, to pull him up, to cradle him. His head lolled, as if half-torn off. Rain trickled down his cheekbone. She couldn’t lift him. Clasping both his hands, she rubbed them, trying to breathe heat into them. The blood under him pooled and spread over the floor. He was bleeding out. His face was turning the colour of candle wax.
‘Ma,’ the said in a cracked voice. His lips moved, as if he was trying to speak, or trying to gulp more air.
‘You’re safe now,’ Marion whispered close to his ear, ‘you’ll be fine. I’ll look after you until your friends come. Do you hear that? Do you? Here they come, it is your friends coming for you now.’ His face contorted slightly, into an expression of hurt and loss. Of course he didn’t want to die, she thought, of course he didn’t. His fingers curled around hers, then slackened. There was no sound of any friends coming. No sound of anything, except the rain pattering on the windows.
Marion sat with him. She didn’t know what else to do. She sat with him and held his waxen hands.
Boots stomping up the stairs.
The door creaked open behind her. Three men crowded into her room, smelling of autumn wind and cordite. ‘See now,’ Marion whispered to the wounded boy, ‘here they are. Your friends.’
One of the men lifted her by the arm and shoved her aside. They gathered around their fallen comrade, muttering softly to him. Two of them lifted him, one by the shoulders, one by the legs. His arm dangled limply. One of the men stepped in the dark pool of blood on the floor. It seemed to Marion a strangely disrespectful thing to do.
The third man turned to Marion and lifted a pistol. ‘If you tell a single soul about this,’ he whispered hoarsely, ‘I’ll come back and here and fucking shoot you. Do you hear?’ His breath smelled of tobacco.
Marion stared at him, widening her eyes in disbelief. Wedding photos flickered in her mind, silver frames on Eilis’ mantelpiece. Eilis’ lost husband. He looked thinner, more haggard. ‘Liam,’ she croaked, ‘is that… is that you? Liam,’ she raised her cold fingers to his wrist, ‘don’t hurt me, Liam, you know me, I am your wife’s… best friend.’
The other men spun around to stare at her. ‘What the fuck,’ one whispered.
‘Come on,’ spat the other, ‘we do not have time for this, he’s losing it!’
Liam narrowed his eyes. ‘You never saw us. You never saw me. Do you hear that?’ He grazed Marion’s cheek with the muzzle of the pistol, ice cold metal sliding over her cheekbone, under her chin, into her throat. ‘We will come back for you if you whisper a single word of this. Even in your dreams. We’ll know.’
Marion nodded stiffly and stood frozen, listening to the men pounding down the stairs with their dying comrade, his dangling feet knocking against each step.
Later that night, John stopped in front of Kehoe’s pub in South Anne Street. A wet wind blew down the dark street, scattering dead leaves over the cobbles and mingling with the smell of horse dung and petrol. Two soldiers passed by, walking elbow to elbow down the middle of the street, their rifles pressed to their chests, eyes raw and wary.
John nodded to them, dropped a cigarette end and ground it under his heel.
He wondered if Marion had made it safely home. He’d wanted to walk her to her door, and had felt a sudden urge to put his coat around her shoulders there on Eilis’ doorstep. But she’d slipped away into the darkness before he could reach for her arm. One quicksilver smile, one brief sidelong glance of her dark eyes, and she’d vanished. He wondered what her rooms looked like. He wondered if she lived alone.
Shaking the rain out of his hair, he opened the pub door and pushed through a group of young men milling around, scruffy flat caps pushed back on their heads, fag ends dangling from their slack lips. The curfew was not for another half hour, and the pub was crowded. Warm light from the hissing gas fixtures glinted in greasy pint glasses and drowsy eyes. Clerks, dock workers, a few stray apprentices and shop boys stood gathered in tight groups, leaning on the bar or crammed into snugs by the perspiring windows. A rank smell of damp wool coats, stale beer and tobacco smoke hung in the air. An old man bared his gums in a whiskey-fuming grin and flailed his hands in the air to encourage his onlookers to laugh at his joke.
Several of the regulars glanced warily at John and parted, heads down, to let him
through.
In the furthest corner sat Sid, sucking on his pipe and gazing philosophically at the low, smoke-greased ceiling. On the wall above him hung a framed picture of a country horse race, from the time of frock coats and duelling.
‘I thought I’d find you here.’ John loosened his tie and seated himself opposite Sid. A young barman, glowing with the heat and exertion, hurried over and placed two double measures of whiskey in front of them.
‘No rest for the wicked.’ Sid nodded at the barman.
‘I’ve an interesting sitting to tell you about,’ said John, pulling out his cigarette case from his chest pocket.
‘Mm? With whom?’
‘The Belgian. Marion.’ He thought of her sitting at Eilis’ table, stiff ivory-coloured lace at her throat, with a look of iron determination in her wide brown eyes. He remembered the sleight weight of her in his arms as he’d carried her from the seance room to the light of the fireplace the night before. The way she’d leaned her cheek against his shoulder and slung a limp arm around his neck. The violet scent of her hair.
Sid snorted and withdrew a little, as if caught by a cold draft. ‘Best steer clear of that one, my boy.’
‘Why on earth would I do that?’
‘She’s not a good fit for my Salon.’ Sid took out a thin metal hook and began to clean the black tobacco sludge out of the pipe bowl, smearing it gently on the edge of an ashtray. ‘Not a good fit. I was going to fire her, as it happens. Get rid of her entirely. Been mulling it over.’
‘Marion Hahn? The Belgian woman. You’re going to fire her.’
‘Possibly. Conceivably.’
‘Are you also going to drag your best horse out back and shoot him?’
Sid darted a sharp look at him.
‘You’re telling me that you’ll fire her? For what?’ John shook his head in disbelief. ‘What’s she done to you?’
‘As I said. She’s not a good fit for my Salon.’ Sid’s eyes were as cold and clear as melting snow.