by Nina Dreyer
Marion glanced around.
Nobody stirred. Nobody left.
‘Excellent.’ John smiled. ‘We all understand each other, then.’
Charlie crept up to him and handed him a glass of whiskey with a worshipful expression on his face, as if John was a cardinal. John took the glass and turned it slowly in his hand, the light glinting orange and amber. ‘Now, as you know, each year it’s traditional for the leader of the Salon to confer special thanks to a medium who has performed above and beyond the call of duty.’
Charlie sucked on his lower lip. Marion stared at him, crinkling her nose.
An expectant murmur rose from the gathering, a rustle of stiff skirts and a clinking of glasses.
‘For the last few years in a row, that honour has gone to Eilis Hurlihy, who,’ John glanced around, ‘sadly seems to have departed. Oh well. Were she still among us, I’m sure she’d approve of my choice for this year’s award.’
He sauntered over to the fireplace as he spoke. Marion caught his reflection in the bruised mirror and narrowed her eyes. His reflection seemed to blur sideways in strange angles. She cleared her throat, trying to shake that taste of rust in the back of her mouth.
‘A medium,’ continued John, standing now directly in front of Sidney, ‘who has put the rest of us to shame with her hard work, and who has risked life, limb and sanity in the process. Friends, please put your hands together for Miss Marion Hahn.’
Stunned silence. The air seemed to be sucked out of the room.
Marion stumbled back as everyone turned to stare at her, some with slack shock in their eyes, others with glittering disdain.
Mr. Sidney’s face turned the colour of curdled milk, and he swept a crumpled handkerchief over his face.
‘Come here, Marion,’ John held out his hand to her and smiled.
She walked towards him slowly, with her head down. The applause was hesitant, stuttering. They all drew back to let her pass, shied away as if she trailed toxic fumes.
She crossed the room and let John take her hand.
‘Brave and tireless,’ he said, looking down at her with a crooked smile, ‘that’s how I like my mediums.’
Marion felt all eyes boring into her.
‘Oh, I see you didn’t sign your name,’ said John, raising his voice very slightly, ‘somebody must have accidentally forgotten to hand you the pen. Here.’ He pressed the pen into her hand. It was cold and heavy.
She leaned over and signed her name on the page, underneath all the others. Her fingers trembled, and she blotched the ink a little, like a tear through mascara.
‘Excellent,’ said John. He took her hand and raised it high. ‘Give it up for Miss Hahn.’ The applause began again, now with slightly more vigour.
‘In fact,’ said John, cocking his head, ‘I’m hereby naming Miss Hahn my deputy.’
Someone choked on their drink. Marion glanced around and saw Charlie furiously wiping whiskey from his chin and breast, coughing, eyes watering.
‘John, no,’ Mr. Sidney wheezed and began heaving himself out of the heavy chair, ‘you-’
‘So there we are,’ said John cheerfully, as if Mr. Sidney hadn’t said anything, ‘and now, you’ve all listened for long enough. Time to share a drink and enjoy the evening.’
Marion looked up at him in stunned disbelief.
He grinned at her. ‘Here. Take my arm. And don’t worry about them. They don’t have a third of your talent.’ He took the chalice from the table, the chalice that had been passed around between all the mediums. ‘Here,’ he pressed it into her hand, ‘drink.’
Marion felt cold suddenly, a draft from the windows slithering down her back, as cold as the winter sea. She looked down at the chalice. It had lip prints on the rim.
‘Don’t worry,’ John whispered with a dark glint in his eye, ‘you’ll get used to them all staring at you soon enough. Smile at them. We both have to smile at them. For now.’
Marion turned with him, her arm resting in his tight grasp, and she smiled up at him, feeling a slow rise of wine-warm giddiness, is if the whole world had suddenly turned itself inside out in a burst of hot lights like some sparkling kaleidoscope.
She smiled, and the sound of conversation rose again, bottles clinked, heels clacked against the hard-polished floors. The gramophone played, tinny-sweet, wobbling against the rain-blasting night, and before very long, they all smiled back at her.
Distant church bells struck two, muffled by the heavy velvet drapes in the front room of the Salon. John lit a cigarette and put his glass on the piano in the corner of the room. He closed his eyes and inhaled the silence. Two o’clock in the morning. The true dead of night. All the others had left. John had just locked the doors behind Charlie and George. They’d been the last to go, reeling through the hushed rooms, trailing cigarette smoke and whiskey fumes, singing and slurring something about murdered cows.
John trailed his fingers over the yellowed ivory keys and struck a few chords. The piano had not been tuned in years and years, and the sound was mournfully discordant. He wondered if Sid was still awake, sitting alone in his rooms, worrying and wringing his hands. Sid had sat in his sagging chair all night, wheezing into his soggy handkerchief and gazing dolefully at the others. How old he’d suddenly looked.
John shut the piano lid and went back into the great parlour.
Marion sat on the thick rug by the spluttering fireplace, eyes closed, leaning back against a sofa and cradling an empty wine glass in her hands. Beside her stood the gramophone player, its bronze funnel gleaming in the light of the fire, creaking out a woman’s voice, it’s all very clear, the time’s drawing near when they’ll be marching down to the pier, singing goodbye France, goodbye France, we’d love to linger longer…
Marion was swaying her head very slightly along with the tune, but a slight crease furrowed her brow, as if she was listening for something, sensing something on the night drafts. Sparkling combs pinned up her hair in loose waves. Diamonds. He’d noticed them as he’d walked arm in arm with her among the chatter and laughter of the other mediums. Diamonds, set in combs of finely-carved ivory and burnished gold. Soot-stained, but diamonds nonetheless. He wondered idly how a woman who owned diamonds and ivory had ended up in those dingy old boarding rooms in Crow Street. He glanced at her delicate swell of her collarbone over the twinkling black sequins of her gown. There was something slightly antique about that gown. Not French, with a cut like that. He couldn’t quite place it. Like something out of a fairytale book of eerie pine forests and ancient castles.
Glancing down, he noticed she was wearing a pair of decrepit velvet dancing slippers, embroidered with black crystals, but torn at the heel and stained with rainwater. They looked like something a fine lady might have worn to a ballroom before the war. And she was still wearing them. She’d been wandering around in threadbare velvet slippers. Outdoors. In November.
He sauntered over to her, taking a half-empty bottle of brandy and two glasses with him. He sat down opposite her on the rug. ‘Just us now,’ he said.
She opened her eyes and gazed at him languidly. ‘Why did you do that, John? Why did you name me deputy?’
John uncorked the bottle with his teeth and poured a brandy for her. ‘Perfectly obvious,’ he pushed the glass towards her over the rug, ‘none of the others count for a candle compared to you.’
‘Or maybe you just wished to cause a scandal. To mark your entrance onto the wider stage.’
John grinned. ‘Well it worked, didn’t it? Nothing like a brisk little scandal to make sure everyone’s paying attention. Did you see the face on old Mrs. Doran?’ He undid his tie, slipping the noose-knot over his head and tossing it aside.
Marion cast him a sidelong glance, suppressing a smile. Firelight crackled in her dark eyes. ‘Quite a speech you made, as well.’
‘More importantly,’ said John, ‘I like your philosophy. Nobody else around here wants to get their hands dirty. To actually do something to help.’
&n
bsp; She curled her legs by her side. Layers of bruise-coloured old silk slid over her thighs. She brushed her lips with her fingertips and frowned. ‘Eilis will be upset.’
John sighed. ‘I know. But look, we should all be working together, things being what they are. But I doubt she will. I’m sorry she doesn’t like me. She never has.’ He rubbed the back of his neck and looked up at the old plaster mouldings on the ceiling, crumbling white thistles. ‘About that. Marion, there’s something I have to tell you.’
She tightened her grip on the glass.
‘It’s Eilis,’ he said, ‘I know you two are close, but Marion… you have to let her go. She’s going off the rails now.’
Marion fixed her gaze at some point just behind his left shoulder, clenching her teeth.
‘Listen to me. Eilis’ husband has been arrested. Early hours of this morning.’ John lit a cigarette and watched her intently. ‘I think you know him,’ he said quietly.
Marion froze, like a wax figure in some Victorian basement display. Nothing about her moved, nothing at all, except a few loosened strands of hair swaying in the draft.
‘There was a shooting in Crow Street a few nights ago. Wasn’t there?’ John tried to catch her eye, but she looked away. He saw a shiver run up her bare arms. ‘Two soldier were killed, one other wounded. Liam Hurlihy is going to face a military court martial over it, if he hasn’t already.’
‘Does,’ Marion picked at her fingernails, ‘does Eilis know?’
‘I doubt it. They only inform wives after the fact.’ He stopped himself just short of saying widows.
Marion seemed to be drawing into herself, steeling herself against something to come. ‘How,’ she asked, ‘do you know about this?’
‘That doesn’t matter.’ John recalled Brock’s voice on the telephone that morning, gravelly, tense with accusation and brittle with anger under the hiss and crackle of the line. He rubbed his eyes. ‘Enquiries have been made into that shooting, Marion. The authorities know what happened. Two of the other gunmen confessed everything. There were four of them that night. One was fatally wounded. He was brought to your rooms to hide while the others ran for help. Wasn’t he?’ John leaned back and tapped his knuckles with his silver lighter. ‘That blood on the floor of your room. That was his blood. Wasn’t it?’
Marion bit into her lip, hard.
John tried to catch her quicksilver gaze. ‘Dr. Grey said you’d had a bad fright. Something had happened to upset you. That something was the shooting. And Liam Hurlihy bursting in on you. Armed. Did he threaten you, Marion? Did he touch you?’
She paled.
John clenched his jaws. If those dirty cowards had threatened her… a fantasy crackled in the back of his mind, a fantasy of splintering each and every one of Liam Hurlihy’s teeth, breaking every bone in his hands. Of course, he mustn’t make things personal. If you made it personal, you lost. But the image in his mind of those filthy rebels even as much as looking at Marion… He cleared his throat. ‘So that gunman died in your room. That’s why I found you like that, wasn’t it? You were having some sort of,’ John swallowed, ‘vigil.’
‘I just,’ Marion widened her eyes, ‘I felt sorry for him. You would have done the same, yes?’
John drew hard on his cigarette. ‘Look. I know you felt sympathy for that young lad. But we’re not the fire brigade, Marion. We’re not undertakers, and we’re certainly not the clergy. We can’t be rushing about in response to every individual tragedy. We’d be overwhelmed. It’s better for us to keep the grander goal in sight, the grander view of things. You will be helping people, very soon. I promise you that. And I’ll be right here with you.’
Marion twisted and turned a ring on her right hand.
‘I have to tell you this,’ said John, crinkling his forehead. ‘The British authorities are aware of your involvement in the incident. They take a dim view of it. They say you aided and abetted the gunmen. There’s talk of arresting you, too.’
Marion began shivering. She parted her lips and began breathing too quickly, in shallow, ragged gulps.
‘No, no,’ John raised his hands, ‘you didn’t mean to help the gunmen. I know that. They probably just saw lights from your room and went for it. Broke down the door. Threatened you.’
She winced.
‘The fact remains, Marion. Look at me.’
She fixed him with her dark eyes and he saw himself reflected in her widening pupils. He swallowed hard and continued. ‘Word spreads quickly in this town. You cannot be seen with Eilis anymore. Please. You must not go near her. You must not associate with her.’
Marion turned a shade paler. ‘But Eilis is my friend. She’s my friend. And she would never hurt anyone, she doesn’t know, she doesn’t know what her husband-’
John scraped his hands through his hair. ‘Of course she knows. Keeping secrets like that from you, that’s not what friends do.’ He took a deep breath and calmed himself. ‘Marion, you could have been killed.’
Marion squirmed, as if her dress was cold and wet and plastered to her skin. ‘Verdammt nochmal,’ she lashed out suddenly and punched the side of the sofa.
John blanched. ‘What?’ He must have misheard her.
She buried her face in the crook of her elbow and curled her sharp little fingernails into the rug. ‘Nothing I do ever helps,’ she groaned, ‘and everything is falling apart now, I don’t understand this town, everybody is at everybody else’s throats,’ she pounded the rug with her fist, ‘and I’m so sick of it, the soldiers, the shootings everywhere, the bloody curfew!’
John reached tentatively for her shoulder. She snapped her head up and fixed him with a hard stare, her eyes smouldering tawny-orange against her smudged black mascara. She snatched the sweating glass and downed it in two short gulps. ‘Give me some more of that.’ She suppressed a cough and pointed at the bottle, her eyes watering.
‘Look,’ John filled her glass, ‘you don’t need to be afraid. I’ve made sure the authorities won’t be taking action against you.’
She narrowed one eye. ‘How?’
‘Oh, don’t worry yourself about it.’
‘What if I want to worry myself about it?’ She took another deep gulp of brandy, eyeing him sideways.
John suppressed a smile. He found himself rather enjoying that bristling, brandy-burning challenge in her eye. He hadn’t seen that before. ‘Then I’d have to tell you the truth, wouldn’t I?’
‘Mmm?’ She quirked her head.
‘That if the Brits arrest you, they’d rue the day. Because I’d burn down the goal to rescue you.’
‘Eilis is the one who needs rescuing.’
‘Marion, I’ve known Eilis since I was sixteen years old. She’ll be fine whatever happens, believe me. She’s made of stronger stuff than you realise.’ Arsenic and concrete, he thought, with a healthy lashing of madness. ‘In fact, I’d say she’d relish the challenge. You know, she only joined the Salon to mortify her mother. And did she ever tell you about her courtship with Liam?’
Marion shook her head and sniffled.
‘Liam’s the oldest of three brothers from one of these rabid nationalist families. You know the sort. Ireland for the Gael sort of thing. Consider themselves something of a dynasty of rebel princelings.’
Marion seemed to consider this for a moment, tugging at her lip.
‘He’d tour around in a donkey cart and give these great rousing speeches at country fairs, making a show of himself with these Ireland is a nation, not a province sort of things. This was well before the Easter rebellion. So Eilis saw his speeches printed in the Freeman’s Journal and announced one day to all of us that she was going to marry him. Just like that. Even though she’d never met him. Well, her blessed mother wanted her to marry a lawyer from Dundalk, so what did Eilis do except run away to follow Liam around. She must have been what, sixteen at the time. So then it turns out that Liam had already gotten himself entangled with this other girl. Some banker’s daughter from Phibsborough. I’ll bet yo
u ten pounds you won’t guess what Eilis did next.’ He ventured a smile.
Marion drew up her shoulders, her expression struggling between a frown and a smile.
‘She sent this girl a very nice hand-written letter informing her that she, Eilis, was going to be a famous rebel’s wife, and that if this girl didn’t make herself scarce, then Eilis would challenge her to a duel. Phoenix Park, pistols at dawn.’
Marion choked on her brandy and spluttered. ‘What? No. No, no, no,’ she waved her hand, laughing and coughing.
‘Oh, yes. I guess she was after reading a few too many novels. Although I don’t know where she thought she’d get the pistols from. It would have had to be hand to hand combat with cake knives, I guess. See, you’re not even that surprised, are you,’ John chuckled. ‘Well, so this other girl took herself off in a right huff, and Liam didn’t seem to care one way or the other. But then, see, the parish priest wouldn’t marry the two after all this carry-on. So what does our Eilis go and do…?’
‘No,’ Marion laughed, wiping brandy from her chin, ‘don’t tell me-’
‘She marched right up to the Archbishop’s Palace in Drumcondra and demanded to get an audience, which of course she didn’t get, but she did put the fear of the Almighty God into some poor old diocesan administrator, so in the end, she got to drag Liam to the altar and got herself married by some nervous little curate straight out of seminary.’
Marion laughed through her fingers and shook her head so hard that a glittering old comb tumbled from it.