‘You wouldn’t have a cup of tea, would you?’ she said with a memory of her mother visiting a grumpy old lady. ‘My throat is dry. I’ve been pounding away at that typewriter all the afternoon.’
‘Yes, of course.’ That had been the right thing to say. As her mother always said: tea costs nothing much and it’s a great way of getting people to talk while it gets made and poured out. Susan led the way to the kitchen and somehow things became more normal as Eileen found a couple of mugs and the teapot which she put to warm on the range.
‘Your range looks as clean as a whistle; is it going to be sold with the house?’ she asked. The question had just popped into her head but it had been a good one. The stove and its pipe had been black-leaded and it shone with a dull lustre. Even the kettle had been scoured clean of soot.
‘The whole house has been scrubbed from top to bottom,’ said Susan in a more animated tone. ‘And every room in the place has been painted. The auctioneer was supposed to call yesterday to value it. We had everything ready. Never turned up! I suppose that Richard McCarthy took it upon himself to cancel that. He had been telling my … he had been saying that we shouldn’t sell, but should bring Sally and the boys back here – they’d easily fit, according to him, all thirteen of us! He had some plan to ship the older boys off to England,’ she said that in a steady voice and then stopped. She had the look of someone who is thinking hard and Eileen felt less embarrassed, less at a loss. Susan was putting her brain to think about the finances and that would help to screen the terrible event of Mrs Mulcahy’s death. Everyone has a different way of dealing with grief. Her mother had said that and she decided to ignore Dr Scher’s words. Keep Susan’s mind busy with the affairs of her father’s business and just be there as a friend if she needed to talk.
And so Eileen sat down at the well-scrubbed kitchen table and poured out the whole account of her meeting with the prestigious Mr Rupert Murphy and about the young solicitor that he said would look into the affair as a piece of experience for him at the beginning of his career. The more she talked and the more she explained, waving her hands and reliving the scene, the better that Susan began to look. There was even a tinge of colour in her cheeks and she made the tea in a very competent manner, going out to the scullery, fetching a jug of milk while still talking.
But then she stopped, looked at the jug in her hand, covered with a bead bordered circular piece of linen. Took off the linen and then without sniffing it or inspecting it under the light from the oil lamp above the table she crossed the room and suddenly poured it down the sink. Eileen’s eyes met hers and knew that the same thought had occurred to both.
Poison could be added to milk more easily than inserted into chocolates.
‘Give me a clean jug and I’ll fetch a pint from the shop across the road,’ she said. Susan would not like to have to meet people who would ask about her mother. She accepted the shilling from the table drawer, though, and decided that, without saying anything about it, she would get a fresh loaf of bread and a fresh half pound of butter for their breakfast.
‘All the doors and windows are locked, now,’ said Susan. She made the remark while vigorously stirring the tea in the chipped brown pot.
‘I’ll knock three times when I come back,’ said Eileen. She knew what Susan meant, though. Susan was clever. Dr Scher would have broken the news to her that her mother might have died of poison, a poison that had been meant for Susan as the chocolates had been directed to her. Eileen eyed the piles of accounts books on the kitchen table and the sheaves of neatly clipped bills and saw that Susan, too, was looking over at them.
‘You’re going to prove that there is plenty of money to keep the house in Montenotte and to keep the business going for any of your brothers who want to work on it, aren’t you, Susan?’ Now she did venture to give the girl a quick hug and she was not repulsed. There was a faint flush on the white cheeks and she nodded when Eileen said impulsively, ‘Let me help you. We’ll work on it together tonight. I’m not like you; I’m not great at arithmetic, but I’ve done accounts in the printing works. If you write it out tonight, then I can easily type it up tomorrow – a balance sheet, that’s what it will be – it’ll look very professional if it’s all typed up.’ Impulsively she gave Susan another hug and then dashed off, through the door, hearing the click of the chain once she was out on the pavement.
It was quite dark by now, but the shops were all still lit up with oil lamps dangling over counters. She pushed open the door of the shop directly across the road. First of all, it was just a young girl behind the counter, but she was rapidly pushed aside by her mother, dying to know all the details about the latest death in the ill-fated house across the road.
‘What a terrible, terrible thing. There’s been no luck in that house ever since that man, God have mercy on his soul, went and built his tanning yard on top of our cillín. That was a terrible sin and disgrace. I was saying that only the other day to Mr Sweetman, when he was tending the graves. Decent man that he is. Wouldn’t say a word against anyone, but he shook his head and I knew what he was thinking,’ said the woman as she scooped out a generous half pound of butter from a wooden cask.
It was a good ten minutes before Eileen managed to get away from the loquacious owner of the shop and when she returned to the house and gave her promised three loud knocks, there was no answer.
NINETEEN
W. B. Yeats
‘But they mistook the brightness of the moon,
For the prosaic light of the day.’
Eileen had knocked on the door so often without reply that now she put all of her energies into pounding metal upon metal, alarming quite a few passers-by and bringing a reproach down on her head by a woman carrying a baby beneath her shawl.
‘That’s a house of mourning, girleen,’ she said accusingly and Eileen forced herself to wait until the woman had turned the corner into Cattle Lane before beginning again.
And then, at last, just as she was beginning to get thoroughly frightened, the door opened a crack and then a little wider.
‘Thank goodness you are all right.’ Eileen slipped inside and pushed the door shut. ‘Didn’t you hear me? God, I thought something had happened to you, now, Susan. You gave me a fright.’ And then she stopped. There was not much light in the hallway, but in the shadows beyond the stairway, she saw another figure. And then, when her eyes began to get used to the dimness, she saw a thatch of red hair.
‘Fred,’ she said. She was none too pleased to see him and she knew that there was a flat note in her voice. ‘What happened? I thought that you were in gaol.’
He gave a harsh laugh. ‘Oh, so you knew that, did you? Knew that I was in gaol. You didn’t do much visiting, did you? Not too Christian, are you? What is it the Bible says? “I was in prison and you visited me.” That’s it, isn’t it? Not Eileen MacSweeney, though! Much too busy with other matters.’
‘Oh, shut up, Fred,’ said Eileen. And then, partly for Susan’s sake and partly because the boy’s face was very white, she said, ‘Come and have a cup of tea, and then you’ll feel better. Let’s make some fresh stuff, Susan. That stuff we made earlier must be stone cold by now. Where on earth were you? I was knocking on that door for hours.’
‘We were looking for something, something that Fred gave my mother. He searched the attics, but there is nothing there. They’ve all been cleared out, clean as a whistle and so we went out to have a look in the sheds.’ Susan stopped abruptly and Eileen was conscious that Fred had turned and looked hard at her sister. She shrugged. She didn’t care, really. Fred always had to have some sort of secret. Nothing to do with me, she thought, as she turned away from the brother and sister and picked up the teapot. Susan was ill-at-ease, uncomfortable, worried. Best to give her a chance to recover.
Eileen tipped the contents of the teapot down the sink and ran the tap to wash the tea grounds away. Nice house, she thought. Water on tap. No going to a standpipe for it. Mr Mulcahy must have had his own well dug, or
did it himself. Running water – that was one of her own mother’s dreams.
There was no further word from either of the Mulcahy pair. When she turned back to put the teapot on the range, they were both standing there, rather stiffly, not looking at each other. Both looking at her. She busied herself for a few moments at the range, ladled fresh tea into the teapot, moved the kettle over the hotplate and waited for the steam to puff from the spout, glancing over her shoulder at the brother and sister. Susan, she thought, was still looking very worried. Perhaps it would be best to have it out in the open whatever it was. No secrets from each other; that had been one of the rules that they had made, the eight of them when they were hiding out in the safe house in Ballinhassig. One of the things that had made everything so comfortable and easy-going, such fun, despite the danger.
‘What were you looking for, Fred?’ she asked, doing her best to make her voice sound casual and incurious as she poured water from the bubbling kettle on top of the leaves.
He didn’t answer and she turned around, slightly irritated. Trust Fred to make a mystery out of nothing.
And then she saw his face. Slightly smug. His hand went quickly to his pocket, touched it as though to reassure himself and then he took it away hastily. It had been enough, though. Eileen had lived for almost a year in a house full of young Republicans, all of whom were thrilled and excited to have a gun in their trouser pockets and who continually reassured themselves that it was still there. She had done it herself in the days when she carried a gun.
‘Jesus, Fred, that’s a gun you’ve got there,’ she said. She was sure of it now. She could see the shape of the bulge in his pocket. Fred was newly released from prison. Every item of clothing would have been thoroughly searched there. Where had he got that gun? Her mind made a leap.
‘Don’t tell me that you gave your mother a gun!’ she said, her eyes going from his face to Susan, who had flushed and looked panic-stricken. Neither spoke, but their faces told her that her guess had been correct. What a crazy thing to do. To give an elderly woman a gun! Trust Fred!
‘You did, didn’t you?’ It would have been easy enough. One by one, people had been deserting the Republican cause, in most cases leaving their guns behind. Eamonn had recently told her that Danny, another one of the crowd in the safe house at Ballinhassig, had now gone back to his parents and had re-joined his class at the university with some story of having had a dose of TB in order to explain his absence to the university authorities. Those small pistols were, she guessed, now easily available to the few who still served the Republic and lived in safe houses around the countryside. Fred, who talked forever about his hatred of his father, had given his mother a gun. His face was enough for her to know that her guess had found its mark. He had crimsoned with anger and Susan had gone very pale, even paler than before. Eileen thought quickly.
‘None of my business,’ she said. She supposed that Fred, who always had a lot to say about Mr Mulcahy’s brutality, and continually embarrassed everyone with outbursts of hate against his father, might have thought that his mother needed protection. ‘But, I’ll just say this one thing, Fred; that if you’ve been freed from gaol, it would be because they can’t find any real evidence against you, except your stupid confession, but that doesn’t mean that they won’t be keeping a good eye on you. It’s against the law, nowadays, to carry a gun, you know. I’d get rid of that, if I were you, and that’s all I’m going to say. Would you like a slice of bread, Susan?’ Deliberately she turned away from him. She was not his keeper and he could do as he pleased.
‘I can see that I’m not welcome here.’ He took a step forward so that he was between her and Susan. He had an aggressive look on his face. Never liked to be told what to do. That was Fred. ‘I’ll be off to Montenotte, then,’ he said after a moment when both girls looked at each other and then looked away. ‘Never liked this place, anyway. If I had my way, the house would be burned down. Did you hear me, Susan? I’m off. Sally will give me a bed for the night.’
He was expecting to be begged to stay; Eileen could tell that by the tone of his voice. She said nothing, though, but kept her head down. The bread had been meant for the morning, but now it filled a moment to be hacking a couple of slices off it and slathering some butter over them. The quick, angry strokes of the knife relieved her feelings. I suppose Susan will beg him to stay, she thought, as she chopped up some more butter, icy cold it was. Kept by an open window covered with an iron mesh screen. She had seen the woman take it from there. Butter was a luxury and nothing would be allowed to happen to it. Eileen thought about how good it was going to taste and curbed her impatience with that stupid Fred.
Susan, however, said nothing. There had been a silence after Fred’s outburst and that silence would leave the boy no room to go back on his words. For the want of something to do, she cut the slices into halves, keeping her eyes fixed on her task and then she heard, rather than saw, him go to the door and open it, but when she looked up then, she saw him take the revolver from his pocket, pretend to examine it, carelessly moving the barrel around the room, as though taking aim and then replacing it. She couldn’t help it. A smile curved her mouth and although she immediately sucked her lips between her teeth, she knew that he had seen it.
‘Bitch!’ he said and a second later the front door slammed behind him. The two girls looked at each other.
‘Sorry,’ said Eileen to Susan. A lie, she thought. She wasn’t really sorry. Fred was a nuisance. She was glad that he was gone.
Susan shrugged her shoulders. ‘Don’t worry. I’m not sorry that he’s taken himself off. He’d have been a pest this evening when we are going over the accounts. He’s very good at mathematics, much better than I would be, but he would, forever, be trying to find cleverer and shorter ways of doing things and muddling everything up. And he would want to be in charge.’ She drank her tea, ignored the bread and then stood up in a determined fashion. ‘I’ll go and light a fire in the front room, now,’ she said, ‘and then we’ll get down to work. We’ll have everything ready for tomorrow morning. I’m not going to let Richard McCarthy or that crooked solicitor, that Mr O’Sullivan, bamboozle me out of my rights. I know that the money should be there and I am going to prove it.’
It was almost eleven o’clock by the time that the two girls got to bed. Susan had been cheerful and determined, copying out rows of figures in neat, careful handwriting and Eileen had been bored stiff, driven to counting the drawers on the oak filing cabinet. Ninety-one, she made it. Thirteen rows of them. A great piece of carpentry. A little rough in places, but solid oak. She passed some time sliding them in and out and thinking how much she would like to have it.
But she had been most impressed by the sum that Susan came up with after hours of work. There had been more money in the turning of those hides and skins into leather than she could ever have realized. She was conscious of a slight feeling of envy. Susan could easily afford to go to university; now that both her father and her mother were dead, there would be no one to stop her.
‘Could Richard McCarthy stop me?’ It seemed almost as though Susan had read her thoughts.
‘I don’t see how. There’s pots of money there if your figures are right.’
‘Oh, my figures are right,’ said Susan. Her voice was confident, but her face was worried, every spot and blemish standing out against the pallor. She should do something about her skin, thought Eileen. Perhaps Ponds Vanishing Cream. She had seen that for sale in a Medical Hall in South Main Street and had studied the label for a while as she wondered whether her mother would like some for her birthday. She had ended up with a bottle of eau de cologne which had looked more exciting, but something like that might be what Susan needed. Still, that wasn’t the worst of Susan’s worries now. She would, she thought, keep that suggestion for later on when all was settled.
‘Can’t see how Richard McCarthy can stop you.’
‘Oh, can’t you,’ said Susan grimly. ‘I can. He could make a very good cas
e. Nine or ten good cases. He could say that the money should be reserved for educating the younger boys, or even Fred, who knows? He has his eye on me for a wife. Probably thinks that I would be a good bargain, hard-working and economical. He wouldn’t want a university student for wife.’
‘You’ll have to fight, fight for your rights. After all, it’s a good job, being a doctor. You will be able to earn good money. Think about Dr Scher; he has pots of money; spends thousands of pounds in buying old battered pieces of silver and putting them into a cupboard, not even using them. He must be rolling. You could always help out with the little boys once you qualified. If you want to be a doctor, then you go ahead. I’d fight, if I were you.’
‘I intend to,’ said Susan. ‘Nothing is going to stop me, now.’ She sat very still for a moment, staring ahead, her eyes fixed and intent, not looking at anything, but Eileen had a feeling that the needle-sharp brain was devising a plan. Susan, she thought, was not thinking of earning money, she was not thinking of buying a short skirt and silk stockings, of having her hair cut short in a 1920s style, as Eileen would have been planning. No, Susan had a fanatical look in her eye, a look of steely resolve.
‘Richard McCarthy won’t get in my way, if I can help it,’ was all that she said, but her eyes showed that her brain was still active.
Eileen smothered a yawn. These figures had been exhausting. Susan turned to her instantly. ‘Let’s find you somewhere to sleep. Not much choice, I’m afraid. It was just Bridie, and my mother and myself living here for the last couple of weeks. Sally has all the boys over in the new house. Well, the fire is out, anyway. I forgot to put more wood on it. Sorry, you must have been cold.’
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