by Nina Dreyer
She fought her way back towards the light, slapping her own face, wake up, wake up, come back. Gulping air, she faltered back, stumbling to the floor.
The room swam around her. The light stung her eyes like needles.
She rose to her feet too quickly, knocking back a chair and staggering, swaying, tearing at her throat and staring, unseeing, at the scene before her.
A pool of blood was darkening over the table, trickling down to the carpet in thick drops. She didn’t know whose blood it was. It gleamed dully in the light of the lamp. The two corpses lay there by the table. Sean fallen on his side, his legs twisted under him, his wrists still cuffed. Brock’s corpse beside him, slumped forward, torso bent awkwardly over his thick leather belt, hands curled by the mahogany table legs.
Marion blinked. She began dry-retching, coughing blood. She smeared her mouth with her cold fingers. She blinked again.
She looked down at John.
He lay under the bay window, curled up in a hard knot, clawing at his ears, shaking. Not trembling, not shivering, but wracked by waves of hard convulsions. Like in the terrible news reels from just after the war, glittering silver light through rising tobacco smoke in the dark cinema, showing the men staggering, struggling to walk on quavering legs, heads lolling sharply from side to side, eyes wild and blind, shoulders and elbows jutting and jerking.
Broken.
Shell-shocked.
Marion staggered closer. Her legs felt boneless.
‘John?’
Cold moonlight glinted in his dishevelled black hair.
A snip of panic tightened her chest. ‘John. Wake up.’
Her legs gave way and she collapsed, scrambling closer to him over the balding carpets. ‘John. It’s me. Wake up.’ Her ears were ringing, her throat burning.
His cigarette pack had tumbled from his pocket, and his black lighter. She fumbled for them with shaking fingers. ‘Here,’ she said, ‘don’t you want a cigarette? Come on.’ A hot pressure built behind her eyes. ‘Come on, you love your smoking. Come on, look, these are your favourites, look, here you go.’ She took one out and tried to press it to his blood-drained lips. It fell to the floor.
A sound escaped him, thin, desperate, like an animal being cut. Marion clasped his shoulders. Blood splattered the bandages around his broken arm. ‘John.’ Her throat thickened. ‘Come back.’
She reached out with a trembling hand and gently stroked his cheek, his head. Her fingers came away wet. A thin stream of blood was seeping from his ears.
She pressed her hands over her mouth.
She’d only wanted to stop him. Stop him from doing any more harm.
For a long moment, she sat paralysed, staring at his whole body contorting, convulsing like a jolt of seizures. Then, slowly, she tried to pull him to her, to cradle him, but he cowered at her touch. ‘John,’ she whispered, ‘it’s alright.’ Her eyes blurred, and she stroked his jerking head, his wild black hair. ‘Hush now. Hush.’
Marion sat by John in the darkness for hours uncounted, leaning against the cold wall, stroking his shaking back. She tried to breathe the stillness into him, to soothe him, listening to the ticking of the dead clock on the mantelpiece over the grate of him grinding his teeth so hard that it sounded like granite on concrete. She’d ceased whispering it’ll pass, it’ll pass, be still. A dull numbness weighed her down, and she’d stopped longing for dawn.
A smell rose. Sour, warm and real.
She snapped her eyes open. Her limbs were cold and stiff and clammy. She wiped her face with her hands.
From under the door came a thin sheet of smoke, winding and curling towards the ceiling.
The sight stung her fully awake. She sat bolt-upright, blinking.
Shouting sounded from the gardens, screams, glass breaking.
A gunshot. Then another.
Marion stumbled to her feet and tugged at John’s collar. ‘Wake up,’ she cried, ‘wake up now! John, please, please wake up!’ She tried to drag him, groaning with the strain, tugging under his arms and hauling, digging in her heels, but it was no use. He curled in on himself in a rock-hard contortion, his eyes tightly shut, his fingers gnarled into his hair.
A sharp crack of gunfire rang out in the bowels of the house, echoing like explosions. Marion looked around wildly, smoke stinging her eyes. She grabbed John’s revolver from the edge of the carpet and sprang to the door, flinging it open. From the far end of the corridor, streaks of smoke rose towards the ceiling, carrying the stench of old wood burning, old tapestries in musty rooms consumed by fire and smoke.
‘Help,’ she screamed, ‘somebody help!’
A man emerged, a Tan, ducking through under the billowing smoke and running towards her. She grasped his sleeve and pulled him into the parlour.
He froze, gaping at the scene, the corpses, the blood, the chairs overturned, the papers scattered everywhere.
The room was now hazy with smoke.
‘No,’ Marion yelled, smoke scratching her throat, ‘help me get him out!’ The man followed her, coughing, and took John’s legs, as Marion grasped his shoulders, and they hauled him out into the corridor.
Marion tried to bury her mouth and nostrils in her shoulder and stumbled forward, her arms aching from the weight of John. They passed a window, and she glimpsed figures advancing towards the house, coats flapping, rifles raised. She ducked and thundered on down the stairs, struggling not to slip and fall, straining to keep her grip on John tight, and with the Tan, she ran through the marble hall to the open front door, ducking to shield herself from the billowing sheath of flames licking the north wall.
She stumbled through the front door, slipping on the stone steps, losing her grip on John and landing on her knee. A butler pulled her to her feet and turned to marvel at the house, soot staining his eyes like a cinema actor.
Marion coughed and looked around desperately. The Tan was dragging John away. She ran after them, twisting her ankle on a tuft of grass, pushing through the terrified gaggle of smoke-smudged servants, shoving past the stalking Tans and darting to the line of cars and trucks that stood on the edge of the driveway, engines grumbling.
‘John!’ She caught up with the Tan and tugged at his black leather sleeve. ‘Put him in that car!’
He flung open the car door and heaved John onto the back seat, coughing and spitting and cursing.
Marion turned and glanced at the house one last time, covering her mouth with the edge of her sleeve. Tans, running with their rifles raised, outlined darkly against the blazing house. Parts of the black skeleton of the building were now bared in the fire. Walls of flame at every window, howling through every corridor, licking the roof and illuminating the heavy sky with a sickly orange glow.
The Tan caught her by the arm and shouted something at her, and she hurled herself into the back seat of the car, slammed the door and screamed at the driver to go.
‘I’m not taking no fucking orders from you,’ the driver shouted, ‘where’s the-’
Marion raised John’s revolver. It was heavier than she’d thought. With a shaking hand, she aimed it at the driver and said through gritted teeth, ‘you will drive where I tell you to. Now. Go!’
The car jerked into motion and sped down the driveway, its tyres bumping and crunching over gravel. Marion looked out the back window, her breath fogging the glass. Just an orange blur against a leaden sky. She hauled herself closer to John, wrapping her arms around his shaking shoulders, pulling him to her and whispering into his hair, ‘it’s going to be alright now.’
Chapter Thirty Two
For hours and hours they drove, through dawn and into the following evening, over lonely moors and through huddled villages under brown hills, over desolate stretches of road and through blasted and abandoned towns, and finally through the roadblocks and scattering crowds of Dublin. Marion had screamed at the driver not to stop, not to stop for anything, not roadblocks, not crowds, not flooded roads, nothing, and she’d shouted her instruction to him agai
n and again over the roar of the engine and the lashings of rain pounding the windshield until the driver had finally stopped complaining.
All the while, Marion had struggled to stay awake, cradling John in her arms, watching over him, whispering to him, grasping his crumpled pack of cigarettes and pleading with him every half hour to wake up, to have a smoke, to look at her, to come back. Once, she had drifted into a brief moment of sleep, but had been jolted awake when the car sped over a bump in the road, and the edges of the tin of syringes and morphine in her pocket had dug sharply into her hip.
Only once had John opened his eyes, a glassy, blank stare in the gliding streetlights of the outer Dublin suburbs, and Marion had glimpsed red rings in the whites of his eyes, burst blood vessels.
The car ground to a screeching halt.
‘That’s it,’ said the driver, flinging his black cap on the front seat, ‘you can both get out here, and I swear to God, if I get court-martialled for commandeering this vehicle…’
Marion pushed the car door open and got out, hurriedly shoving John’s revolver deep into a pocket.
She looked up, shielding her eyes from the sweeping rain.
Richmond District Lunatic Asylum loomed before her.
All blood drained from her limbs, that prickling weakness, like just before vomiting.
She’d imagined it as a mellow old country house, with shady elder bushes and apple trees and rolling lawns, where men could rest in the spring sunlight in cushioned wheelchairs on quiet patios.
But this was not it.
A vast, towering complex of stark buildings, turned in on themselves like a prison, grim brown stone facades rising under a storm-swept sky. Small windows. Barred. Lightless. Rainwater gurgled from rusting drainpipes high above. Marion looked around wildly, at the bleak driveway, the bare gravel grounds surrounding the buildings. Solitary tufts of dead grass rustled in the rainy wind under high granite walls topped with broken glass.
She swept a hand over her mouth. There was nothing else for it. John would be safe here, and only here.
Springing up the granite steps, she pounded on the tall front door with both fists. ‘Open up! Now!’
A grate in the door slid open. ‘Visiting hours are-’
‘Get Dr. Grey,’ Marion shouted, ‘get him to come out, now, immediately!’
‘Have you got an appointment, otherwise-’
‘No, get him now!’
The grate slid shut again and Marion turned, knotting her cold fingers. Things would be fine. This would be fine. There’d be fireplaces insides, warm beds, warm parlours with arm chairs and cushions. John would be safe here. Sheltered. Surely.
She ran back to the car and ducked into the backseat. John had curled up, shaking and groaning and clawing at the back of his head. His bandages were unfastening at the shoulder.
The engine was still running, grumbling and growling, and the driver slammed the horn with his gloved fist. ‘Here, the curfew starts in ten fucking minutes, I’m not waiting around here for-’
‘Please, another minute,’ Marion reached for John’s shoulder, fumbling with the bandages and cutting her fingers on the safety pins, ‘just one more minute.’
She ducked out into the blasts of rain and wind again, glancing desperately at the front door.
At last, Dr. Grey emerged with a broad-shouldered nurse at his side. He idled down the steps and walked towards the car, struggling with an umbrella in the gusts of rain, his white coat flapping.
Marion ran up to him, splattering through puddles, grasped his sleeve and dragged him to the car. ‘It’s John, it’s John Kilcoyne, he’s had a-’
The doctor gave her a stern look. ‘Compose yourself, please.’ He motioned for her to step aside, tugged at his white coat and crouched half-way into the car.
Marion held her breath.
A moment later, Grey lurched back out of the car. The look on his face sent a blistering rush of dread through Marion. ‘He’s going to be fine, isn’t he, please, he’s-’
‘Get the porters,’ Dr. Grey shouted, snapping his fingers at the nurse, ‘and a stretcher. Now. Run.’
The nurse hurried back, covering her hair with her white coat in the rain.
Dr. Grey turned away, shaking his head in disbelief and pushing up his glasses with a long, thin finger.
Marion caught his arm. ‘I will explain what happened, his past, all that happened, so you can treat him-’
Two burly white-clad porters came running, followed by the nurse.
Marion tried to help them ease John out, but a porter shoved her aside. The doctor barked orders in a high, reedy voice. They laid John out on the stretcher and began strapping his unbroken arm and his neck with cruel leather straps. Like an electric chair. They carried John to the broad granite steps of the asylum, and Marion brushed the rainwater from her eyes and half-ran to keep up. She tried to reach over their shoulders, under their arms, to touch John’s hand. ‘It’s going to be fine, my love, hush, you’re going to be fine…’
The porters carried him in through the gaping front door. Marion glimpsed a long, vaulted stone hallway, illuminated dimly by sparse gas fixtures.
‘I must come in with him, to look after him, I must explain what happened to-’
Dr. Grey turned in the door, barring her way with his arm. She tried to look over his shoulder. John’s cries echoed under the vaulted ceiling, and her gut lurched.
‘I’m sure the medical establishment would find your feminine insights quite interesting,’ said Dr. Grey, ‘but as you may be aware, this is a serious medical emergency, and Mr. Kilcoyne’s condition will not be improved by the presence of a hysterical-’
‘Listen to me,’ Marion grabbed Dr. Grey’s arm, her pulse pounding in her throat, ‘nobody is to visit him. Nobody. Do you understand that? Nobody except me. Nobody is to know he is here, especially not the-’
Grey disentangled his sleeve from her fingers with a pinched smile. His round glasses were dappled with rainwater, obscuring his eyes. ‘You may come and visit him at some point in the future, during proper visiting hours, but only,’ he wagged a thin finger at her, ‘if you promise to compose yourself and not become overwrought.’
Marion swallowed dryly. What if John woke in the middle of the night, strapped down in a strange bed, dazed and hurt and alone, without her to watch over him? He’d think she had abandoned him. Her rain-soaked dress clung to her back, and deep shivers ran through her. ‘But I have to make sure-’
‘I’ve already told you to compose yourself twice. Goodnight, madam.’ Grey turned and let the heavy door swing shut in her face.
Marion stood on the rain-slick granite steps, resting a hand on the door. Finally she turned and walked away, with a feeling like cold lumps of coal sinking in her chest.
The following morning, Marion walked through the chapel in Glasnevin Cemetery, her black velvet hat drawn down low over her eyes, her heels echoing under marble vaults. Her hair still smelled of smoke and gasoline. A cold winter sun glowed through stained glass windows, casting gleaming pools of emerald and blue light over white columns and dark marble.
Marion knelt in front of a luminous shrine in the transept, by rows of flickering candles under a statue of the Madonna robed in gleaming green and gold. Breathing deeply, she scratched a match with a sulphurous crackle and lit her candles, one by one. One for Eilis and one for Liam. One for the wounded boy who’d bled to death on her floor so many weeks ago. One for Thomas Fornwood and the young man he’d murdered. One for Rothman. One for Brock. One for Sean McKee.
And one for John.
Marion passed her ring-finger through the last flame. It came away streaked with black soot.
‘I don’t have all day.’ Fr. McSorley’s voice sounded behind her.
Marion rose and turned to him. He stood crossing his arms in the shadow of the heavy oak door. In the still hour before dawn, Marion had come to his church in Sandymount, tired to the bone, speechless with exhaustion, hair singed and clothes s
meared with ashes. He had looked at her silently for a long time, a strange look on his face, struggling between relief and grim surprise. Take me to see Eilis. That was all she’d said. And he had brought her here.
She followed him outside.
A strange hush hung in the old graveyard, as if the whole city held its breath. Icy fog hung amid bare, dripping branches. Graves lay in exact lines as far as the eye could see, with white marble saints and ornate black railings. Scattered mourners tended quietly to their plots. Some headstones were ancient, jutting out of old moss, lichen blotting their inscriptions. But many were new.
Marion followed Fr. McSorley, who strode down the narrow path with a tense look on his face, his gaze sweeping over familiar graves.
He stopped and knotted his fingers behind his back. ‘Here she is. Be quick about it.’ He glanced over his shoulder. ‘I can’t be seen with you.’
Eilis’ grave lay under a small yew tree. Wilting flowers covered the newly-turned soil, wreaths of white lilies and roses dripping with icy rain. Tricolour ribbons inscribed with letters of gold lay draped under the headstone.
Marion stepped closer.
The inscription on the headstone was in Irish. She couldn’t read it.
Kneeling, she smoothed her fingers over the cold marble and tried to think of something to say. Eilis would have giggled to see her in such a posture, she thought. Laughed to have seen a medium struggling to find the right words to speak to a mere headstone.
‘It’s good that you didn’t come to the funeral,’ murmured McSorley, again glancing over his shoulder, ‘you wouldn’t have… been welcome.’
Marion closed her eyes and pressed her hand to the marble. She thought of Eilis, reclining in a sea of velvet cushions, her face lit by the warm glow of her fireplace as she clasped her clothbound book of verses. Yeats. A bit of Irish culture for you. You’ll like it.
Marion lowered her head and whispered soundlessly. ‘Were you but cold and dead, and lights were paling out of the West, you could come hither… and I would lay my head on your breast, and you would murmur tender words, forgiving me, because you were dead…’ The words failed her.