Erin’s Child

by Erin's Child (retail) (epub)

  It was here, as he waited at the quayside for the steam packet to Liverpool, that he came face to face with Timothy Rabb.

  * * *

  Tim apologised for obstructing the elderly gentleman and was preparing to step aside when a hand clamped his arm, dislodging his haversack and bringing puzzled eyes to the old fellow’s face. Patrick saw the flash of fear – rejoiced in it – then there was a tilt of the head in recognition. ‘Mr Feeney.’

  ‘Mr Rabb.’ The reply was grimly ironic. Tim’s appearance had matured since their last meeting – oh, but Patrick knew him. ‘I did hear you were in America.’

  Tim didn’t answer. He had indeed been in America until recently, when Mr Dorgan had said it was safe for them to come home. Nothing was said for fifteen seconds or so while the two sized each other up, then Timothy asked, ‘And how is Miss Rosanna keeping?’ The hand left his arm, only to be joined with another as it closed round Timothy’s throat, the unexpectedness of it hurling him backwards and taking Patrick, too. The old man fell heavily atop him. No word came from Patrick, only a strength he had thought to have been bled with his youth. It seethed down his arms and into the fingers that were locked round the back of Rabb’s neck, into the thumbs that squeezed the protruding Adam’s apple, pressing, kneading the life from that treacherous throat.

  To be realistic it was only the shock that kept Tim at this disadvantage, but that was of no consequence; he was still on the losing end. Gasping, face crimson, he attempted to struggle out of the murderous grip, his legs lashing out at the encumbrance on top of him. This was madness. This was an old man! Stars had suddenly appeared in the sky, the trapped blood thumped viciously in the sinews of neck and temple as he heaved and writhed in desperation and fear, bucking his whole body to remove the dreadful weight.

  The world was going black when miraculously he felt the pressure suddenly give and, taking rapid advantage, thrust the weight from him, rolled over and struggled to his feet. He steadied himself on a capstan, waiting for another onslaught, gasping down at Patrick and clutching his bruised throat. The old man remained on the ground, shouting and cussing for all he was worth. A number of seamen had gathered to watch the strange incident. They waited for the fight to resume but, as Timothy staggered up to the groaning man, hauled him to his feet and straightened his clothes, they trickled away.

  ‘Take your filthy hands off me, Rabb!’ Patrick wrenched himself free. ‘Christ, if it wasn’t for this bloody stomach o’ mine you’d be dead!’

  Rabb was angry too, shaking Patrick by the lapels. ‘You silly old bastard! What reason have you got to kill me? Ye got what ye wanted, didn’t ye? Ye got Rosanna.’

  ‘Got her?’ roared Patrick. ‘Aye, with a fucking hole in her head. An’ by Christ if I had a bloody gun now…’

  Timothy never heard the rest. The flush that Patrick’s near-strangulation had brought about drained completely away.

  ‘…that’s how you’re gonna free Ireland? By shooting children? Damn you all to hell!’

  ‘You’re telling me Rosie’s dead? She’s dead?’ The taut fingers slackened their hold, slithered lifelessly down the old man’s chest.

  ‘You oughta know, Rabb, you did it!’ Pat lunged for him again but this time Timothy was prepared and held his aged oppressor at bay.

  ‘No! No, I tell ye! I loved Rosanna.’

  ‘Aye, loved her so much ye didn’t want anyone else to have her!’ Pat fought to get at him. Damn these old man’s limbs.

  ‘If anyone’s guilty o’ that ’tis you! She was supposed to follow, come to Ireland. But you caught up with her and stopped her. I waited,’ his face bore his anguish, ‘thought she might escape… but she never came.’

  ‘Who gave you that shit?’ sneered the old man.

  Detachment vanished. The young man’s hands gripped him persuasively. ‘Look, I know it’s true. Dorgan was there. He told me how you had to drag her screaming…’ He broke off suddenly, reliving the experience. The doubt that had crept into his expression at the old man’s scornful rejection now turned to awareness. ‘Oh, f… oh, Mother o’ bloody Christ!’ He began to pace and hold his head, moaning.

  ‘Rabb!’ Patrick grabbed him determinedly, having come to understanding at the same time as the young man. ‘D’ye know where to find him?’

  Tim stopped pacing, wild eyes locking with Patrick’s as he mouthed, ‘I know.’

  Grim-faced he broke away and made in the direction of the town. Pat collected his tortured senses and started to shadow as quickly as his age would allow.

  ‘Fuck off, old man, I’ll do this on my own.’

  ‘Rabb! Rabb!’ Patrick clutched his side as he broke into a crouching trot. ‘Ye’ll give me this. At least let me share it with ye. God blast your eyes, stop, I say!’ He could hardly find the breath to fling one last sentence but fling it he did. ‘You’re to blame as much as he is. You introduced her to her murderer!’

  The brake worked. Timothy, hate in his eyes, waited for the old man to catch up, but offered no explanations, no plea of vindication.

  ‘What will ye do?’ panted Feeney. ‘Not kill him. There’s been enough o’ that…’

  ‘Sure, I thought you wanted to share the experience with me?’ said Rabb derisively.

  ‘I did… I do want to see him dead… but not by your hand or mine. We have to go to the police.’

  Rabb didn’t even credit this with an answer. At least, not with words. But his response was graphic enough. Before moving on he grasped a stevedore’s hook that someone had left on top of a barrel and dropped it into his pocket.

  * * *

  Patrick, elbow pressed into his right side, pounded after the younger man. The cancer dug in its teeth and spread a little further. If he had ever felt death as a tangible presence he felt it now. Every nerve, every cell shrieked with extinction. But first he had to see this man. The man who killed Rosanna. Rabb’s legs seemed tireless, striding out purposefully along the cobbled streets and alleys. Though they had distanced themselves from the quay the distinctive smell trickled after them: fish crates, tar, mussel shells… Another alleyway – for God’s sake make it this one, came Patrick’s desperate thought, as it had each time their feet had turned. Street after street after street… Oh, Jesus, the bloody pain. He had lost all sense of direction; knew only that his feet were taking him to meet Rosanna’s murderer. Houses flashed by his peripheral vision, chintz curtains, peeling whitewash, chalk on brick, ‘Sile loves Danny’. On and on and on.

  The smell of fish was replaced by baking bread, warm, homely smells. Such paradox to herald a murderer. Rabb suddenly stopped before a modest terraced dwelling and without a word to his companion rapped on the door. Imperceptibly the bedroom curtains moved. Dorgan tried to discern the identity of his visitor. A snatch of curly head told him it was Rabb. He did not recognise the other.

  A short period elapsed before he answered the door, angelic face a-beam. ‘Why Timothy, what a pleasure it is, an’ so long!’ He was given little opportunity to say anything else. Timothy gripped the feeble old man and propelled him back down the passage, while Patrick, breath rasping, closed the door and hobbled after them.

  Without preface, ‘You callous bastard!’ spat Tim into Dorgan’s bemused face. ‘Giving me all them lies about Feeney dragging her back – you killed her!’ He threw the old man into a chair and paced the room, hands clasped to the sides of his head.

  ‘Killed who, for God’s sake?’ Dorgan remained in the position he had fallen, expression one of amiable bewilderment. ‘Tim, what’s got into ye?’

  ‘My wife, damn your filthy black soul!’ Tim visibly shook with rage.

  ‘Rosanna?’

  ‘How’ many fucking wives did I have? Yes, Rosanna!’

  Dorgan attempted to pull himself straight in the chair, affecting smiling reproach. ‘Oh now, Tim…’

  ‘Don’t lie!’ Tim started towards him again and Dorgan shrank in the chair. ‘I’ve a witness here.’ He jabbed at Patrick who stood wordlessly. />
  Dorgan’s eyes moved to the other occupant of the room, who swayed slightly. ‘An’ who might this be?’

  ‘Ye know who I am,’ growled Patrick. All the revulsion, the screaming agony of bereavement that had been with him at the viewing of that pathetic body came welling back. It bubbled up inside him, surging right into his finger-ends.

  Dorgan turned to the younger man again. ‘Tim, if he said I killed her then he’s lying. She was fine when I…’

  ‘He thought I killed her!’ roared Timothy, banging his chest, the whites of his eyes reddened with blood. Then pitiably, ‘Why, why did ye do it?’ Even now he could give his old hero the benefit of the doubt. The things they’d shared together, the joint patriotism.

  ‘I didn’t. Believe me. I’d never dream o’ such a thing. I thought the world of her, ye know that. Ah, Tim, y’always were a fine one for a tale. Can ye not see he’s after taking ye for a fool?’

  Tim did not hear him, his next words emerging on a sob. ‘She came to help us escape. If it wasn’t for Rosanna you’d be six foot under an’ covered with lime… and you killed her.’ He had never loved another woman since Rosie.

  ‘Tim, ye surely don’t believe it? Can’t ye see the man’s just trying to split up the Brotherhood? He’d say anything.’ But the panic and fear in those eyes told it.

  ‘Stop lying!’ Tim’s rage took his hand to his pocket. It pulled out the stevedore’s hook, lifted it to strike.

  Dorgan had seen the death-threat seconds before it was enacted. He pulled the minute gun – such an innocuous-looking thing, thought Patrick – from the pocket of his trousers. Simultaneous to Patrick’s shout he levelled it and shot his compatriot through the chest.

  Surprise came to Rabb’s face as the velocity of the weapon suspended him in mid-air for a second. Then he crashed forward, the hook still gripped in his upraised hand. On impact the gun went off again. Patrick ducked involuntarily, then scrambled behind a settle, waiting for Dorgan to get up from that chair and finish him off.

  After some moments the crevassed face slowly emerged round the edge of the settle. Half-lying with his head on the arm of the chair, left arm trailing to the carpet was Tim. Dorgan’s left hand was rested on the other man’s head as if in a gesture of affection. His other hand, Patrick saw, was empty now, hanging rag-like over the arm of the chair, the gun lying inches beneath the trailing fingers.

  Patrick heaved his body out of his crouch and gazed in horror at the hook still gripped in Timothy’s right hand, the majority of it disappearing into Dorgan’s belly. When Dorgan blinked he jumped, having believed him to be dead. His eyes went once again to the gun. Stooping, he picked it up and toted it, staring into Dorgan’s pallid face. His nostrils flared. He pictured Rosanna lying on that mortuary slab with the neat hole in her temple. With trembling hand he brought up the gun and pointed it at her killer’s brow, forced his finger to touch the trigger. Momentarily he closed his eyes and roared at the pain which engulfed him for the millionth time. When he opened them Dorgan’s bloodless face was observing him mockingly. Through mutual agony the old Fenian voiced his contempt. ‘Go on, why don’t ye?’ Saliva, bloody-hued, drooled from the wounded man’s chin as he uttered his scorn.

  Whether or not Patrick would have been able to pull the trigger he would never know. As his trembling hands strove to keep the gun level Dorgan gave a bubbling sigh and expired. The gun remained in place for an age, until the film over his enemy’s eyes spoke for itself. Slowly he lowered the weapon, placing it on the table.

  A large fire danced in the grate. Patrick’s weary eyes toured his surroundings, cosy until the intrusion of violence; now a tomb. He left the house the same way he had entered it. The sky was still grey – yet he felt as though he had stepped out into brilliant sunshine. For a while he didn’t understand it… and then he realised, the pain was gone. It was as if he had passed some sort of test in there: God was smiling upon him. And in that moment he knew that he was going to make it home. Gaining his bearings, he set off, slow but resolute, not really sure if he was going in the right direction, knowing only that he must get back to the docks.

  Again, God smiled: the welcome rumble of carriage-wheels brought Patrick’s hand aloft and he climbed into the cab gratefully. ‘The docks! An’ please go as quickly as ye can or I’ll miss my boat.’ And I can’t miss it. I can’t.

  The bumping of the carriage as it sped over the cobbles jarred an exclamation from him – not for his pain but for his foolishness. Why had he ever left her? Houses whizzed by, children’s laughter bringing memories, the smell of bread – please go faster! – of Grogan’s porter house, of… yes! there it was, the smell of fish-crates, tar, the noise of the sea. We’re there! I’m coming, Tommy, I’m coming!

  ‘Sorry, sir, I did me best.’ The cabbie offered profuse regrets as he and Patrick watched the smoke from the steam-packet curl above the horizon. ‘But sure, ye know they’re quite regular. There’ll be another in no time at all.’

  Patrick’s eyes were still on the horizon. God, it seemed, had stopped smiling.

  ‘There’s a little place serves tea round the corner,’ said the cabbie. ‘Let me take ye. Sure, ye’ll be half-frozen to death if ye wait here.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Patrick wearily and sought for payment. ‘I’ll just go enquire when the next boat sails…’

  This he did, then, fearing he might miss this trip too, found himself a seat on a pile of someone’s luggage and stared out across the choppy waters. ‘I don’t know why you’re so miserable,’ he could hear her tell him. ‘Haven’t you got what you wanted – to die in Ireland?’ Die? You can cut that out! he told her forcefully. Who said I was going to die – I’m going to get home if it kills me.

  Still, the pain was absent. That was good. Without its interference he could sit here and think about them all to his heart’s content: Tommy, with that tiny head pillowed on her breast, fluffy black hair, the smell of warm skin, round blue eyes peeping from a lace bonnet, the flash of auburn across a white pillowslip…

  Amid the hoot of sirens another steam-packet docked. Patrick felt a wave of intense happiness: on its return it would be taking him home. Through the haze of memories he watched the thick ropes being secured to the capstans, the noisy lowering of the gangway, people awaiting loved ones. In dribs and drabs, rushes and embraces, the passengers disembarked. Portmanteaux, cases, trunks were seized and hefted onto strong shoulders, crates trussed up in a rope sling were lowered from boat to quay. Cratefuls of memories…

  An elderly woman came slowly down the wooden ramp, stirring recognition. Instinctively, Patrick unbent his spine. The woman trod the gangway gingerly, looking about her as she gripped the rail.

  But the Irishman’s eyes did not see an old lady. He was looking beyond the years to the vibrant, red-haired girl in the green dress, the girl who faltered with the unexpectedness of seeing him there, then held up her face in gladness as she made straight towards him. She reached the place where he was still sitting – stood before him. ‘Did you really imagine I’d sit by and let you out on your own among all these fallen women?’ She gestured at a prostitute who was touting for custom.

  He smiled ruefully. ‘I doubt I could raise the energy, nor anything else – not that I’d dream of trying, naturally.’

  She gazed at him for a while longer. Then a hand came up to cup his cheek – a cheek that was smooth and handsome. ‘You soft old chump.’ She spoke gruffly, but her eyes glistened and a gentle thumb caressed the creases of pain and age from the face she loved.

  Then just as abruptly she dropped her hand to cup his elbow, forcing him to rise. ‘Away then, I can’t be lozzocking here all day, I’ve got an important visitor coming… it’s somebody I think you might want a few words with.’

  And with this she linked her arm through his, her smile – that old Tommy smile – lending him all the strength he needed to carry him home.

  First published in the United Kingdom in 1987 by Century Hutchinsonr />
  This edition published in the United Kingdom in 2017 by

  Canelo Digital Publishing Limited

  57 Shepherds Lane

  Beaconsfield, Bucks HP9 2DU

  United Kingdom

  Copyright © Sheelagh Kelly, 1987

  The moral right of Sheelagh Kelly to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 9781911591214

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Look for more great books at www.canelo.co