1921
Page 50
The rifle was now aimed at the journalist’s heart.
Ned Halloran’s green eyes met Henry’s across the barrel.
Beyond them Eamon de Valera was marching away to prison. Neither man noticed.
“I’ll shoot you,” Ned promised between clenched teeth, “just like the boys shot Mick Collins.”
“Mick was never the enemy. Neither am I, Ned. We both wanted the same thing you did: the Republic.”
“You wanted more than that, you bastard! You wanted my wife and you took her behind my back!” Ned’s finger began to tighten on the trigger.
Henry had always wondered how he would meet his fatal hour when it came. Now he knew. There was no fear, only a great sorrow. “I loved your wife,” he said simply. “I wouldn’t admit it even to myself, but I loved Síle very much. I never touched her, though. And I never told her how I felt.”
The tightening finger paused. “Why not?”
“Because you were my friend.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“Because you are my friend.”
Henry waited while the green eyes read his soul. Weighed it, measured it.
After an eternity, the barrel of the rifle dropped.
Henry quickly put his pistol back in his pocket. When he thought how close he had come to pulling the trigger, his hands shook. I could have done it. Sweet Christ, I could have done it.
He forced his voice to be steady. “Your daughter’s with Josephine Maguire, Ned. Why don’t you go and collect her now? Take her home to the farm.”
“Home to the farm,” Ned echoed as if the words had no meaning for him.
“They’ll be very glad to see you,” Henry urged. “The war’s over; you can build a new life.”
Ned muttered something.
“Sorry?”
“A baby. You said something about a baby.”
Henry grinned in spite of himself. “Ella and I are expecting our first child in October.”
Without responding, Ned turned to walk away. Stopped. Stood with his head slumped between his shoulders like a man deep in thought. The moment stretched unbearably. He lifted the rifle again.
Then he tossed it into the ditch beside the road.
“Don’t visit the farm anymore,” he said without looking around.
“If that’s what you want. I’ll try to see Dev, then go straight back to Dublin.”
Ned turned around then.
Such a little distance separated them: a single long stride or two outstretched arms could have bridged it. Each felt the impulse like an electrical charge running through him.
How simple.
How impossible.
The two men stood looking at one another. Such a little distance separated them.
“Someday I may be able to forgive you,” Ned said in a choked voice. “Someday. But not now.”
Chapter Forty-eight
September 2, 1923
GOVERNMENT WINS 63 OUT OF 100 SEATS IN FREE
STATE’S FIRST GENERAL ELECTION
September 5, 1923
GERMAN ECONOMIC CRISIS DEEPENS
ADOLF HITLER, LEADER OF NATIONAL SOCIALIST
PARTY, ATTRACTS GREAT CROWDS AT NUREMBERG
September 10, 1923
IRISH FREE STATE ADMITTED TO LEAGUE OF NATIONS
BEFORE dawn Ella awakened him with a touch on his arm. “Henry? Dearest?”
Lost in a confused dream of muddy ditches and barking gunfire, he struggled toward her voice. “Wha? Whazzat?”
“The baby, Henry. The baby’s coming.”
He was instantly awake. “It can’t be! The doctor said you had another month.”
“He may think so, but the baby doesn’t. I’ve been having cramps for hours. For a while I thought it was just a stomachache, but…here it comes again!” She gasped with sudden pain.
It was Tilly’s night off. They were alone in the house. Henry flung himself from the bed and ran out into the passage without stopping for robe and slippers.
When it was installed, the new telephone in the front hall had seemed a wild extravagance, really just a way of showing off for Edwin. Now it was a blessing. Henry stumbled down the stairs in the dark, clutching the banister. At the bottom he turned up the gas jet and snatched the receiver from its cradle. He had to jiggle the phone several times before an operator came on the line. She sounded sleepy.
Henry shouted into the mouthpiece, “We need a motorcab right away, something with good springs! On second thought, get me our doctor first…I can’t remember his name, damn it! My mind’s gone blank…Well, yours would too if your wife was having a baby…No, of course you don’t have a wife. I mean…Wait, I have his telephone number right here, it’s on the notepad…Hold on, I’ve dropped the damned thing…”
He retrieved the pad and read the doctor’s number to the operator. While he was waiting for the connection he heard Ella cry out. Dropping the telephone receiver, he ran back up the stairs to her.
A disembodied voice squawked after him.
He found Ella making fretful, ineffectual efforts with the bedclothes. “My water broke.” She sounded embarrassed. “I’m sorry, sweetheart, it’s such a frightful mess.”
“Don’t worry about that now. I was just going to telephone the doctor.”
Ella reached for his hand. “I should have awakened you sooner, but I didn’t want to bother you if it was a false alarm.” Her fingers were like ice. “Now I don’t think there’s time for him to get here.”
“You mean you’re having it right now?” Although in his anxiety Henry could not recall the doctor’s name, with dreadful clarity he remembered the man saying to him, “Your wife is narrow in the hips, Mr. Mooney…if you take my meaning. It may not be an easy birth. Besides, you’ve left it a little late, have you not? A woman her age having a first child. We should bring her into hospital for the last couple of weeks.”
Ella groaned, caught her breath, groaned again. “Help me,” she panted. “Help me.”
“What do you want me to do first? Telephone the doctor or change those sheets?”
“There’s no time,” she said through gritted teeth. “It’s happening so fast now. Is it supposed to be so fast? I thought the first labor usually took hours and hours. That’s what the doctor said. But it feels like…don’t leave me, Henry! Promise you won’t leave me!”
“I won’t leave you.” We need more light in here. Turn up the gas. Fetch some lamps.
“Did you say something?”
“Talking to myself. It’s all right, Cap’n. Everything’s going to be all right. I’ve done this before.”
“You’ve delivered a baby?” she asked incredulously.
Another set of memories flashed across Henry’s mental landscape. A shed that smelled of musty straw. A dying mare.
No!
“I have delivered a healthy, living—infant,” he assured her, keeping his voice steady. “And I can do it again. You’ll both be just fine.”
As when he had faced Ned across a rifle barrel, Henry felt a strange calm descend. Like being in the eye of a storm.
ELLA was locked into a pain-filled prison composed of her own body, a cell that allowed her to peer out through the windows of her eyes for brief moments, then closed her in again. In that prison nothing else mattered, nothing but the struggle.
Henry propped pillows behind her and stripped the soiled bedclothes away from her body as best he could. Then he folded a clean blanket and eased it under her hips. “Raise your knees higher,” he instructed, “and keep them as far apart as you can.”
“I couldn’t bring them together if I wanted to. I’m being torn in half, Henry.”
“It always feels like that.”
“How would you know?” she asked indignantly. “Have you ever had a—” The pain seized her again, swept her away. Her swollen belly heaved. Her sweating face was blotched crimson. Her hair hung in damp strings.
My elegant, fastidious Ella.
Kneeling beside the bed, Henry sketc
hed the sign of the cross over his head and heart. Then he rolled up the sleeves of his flannel nightshirt and set to work delivering his child.
The atmosphere in the bedroom was very heavy. It smelled of flesh and sleep and more fundamental odors. Ella cried out wordlessly in a dreadful rhythm. Her voice was shrill. Almost inhuman.
The pains knotted her and savaged her.
They infuriated Henry.
If she was in hospital they could give her something. Dear Christ, this is barbaric! Suffering life this. Millions of women. Over millions of years. Oh, Cap’n, I’m sorry!
He set his jaw and gave all the help he could. Laboring with her. Reaching into the dark from which all life comes, into which all life goes. The two of them alone in that place.
Alone with pain and fear and hope. No sense of time. No way out but through.
EVENTUALLY someone began pounding on the door below. Henry ignored it. Everything that mattered was already in this room. His hands helping, urging, guiding. The strength in Ella. Her determination to live. To give life.
“Mr. Mooney!” the doctor shouted from the front steps. “The telephone operator alerted me! I’ve ordered an ambulance if you need one. Can you hear me?”
The pounding on the door went on and on, stopped, resumed. There was a babble of voices on the front steps. Someone began forcing the door.
The sound meant nothing to the man and woman working together in that stuffy bedroom, where the angel of death hovered briefly. Was fiercely rejected. Folded his wings and vanished.
Left the two of them alone.
AND then they were three.
As the child emerged, one of its tiny hands reached out. Grasped Henry’s finger. Held on tight.
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