Allegiance: A Dublin Novella (24 page)

“Goodbye,” he said.

28.

October 12, 1922

“Come on, Young. First round’s on me.”

“Maybe tomorrow, mate. I’m knackered.”

The locker swung closed with a rusty squeak. “Aw, come on, man, one pint’s not gonna kill you.”

“No, but I might kill you if you don’t give us a break.”

“Gonna pull your government chib on me?”

William grinned. He slipped on his shirt and quickly did up the buttons. “Look, Stewart, I don’t know about you but I just worked a ten-hour shift. The only thing I’m going to do right now is go home and sleep. Is that alright with you?”

Stewart shook his head. “Christ, Young, you’re a fuckin’ stodger these days. I remember when you used to drink the dockies under the table, tenner or no – last man standing.”

“Aye, and I remember when you boaked a pint of lager on Mary Ferguson’s shoes.” The wooden bench creaked as William sat down. He put a foot on the wall and began to lace up his boot. “I’ll go tomorrow, alright?”

They were alone in the locker room; almost an hour had passed since shift change; William was always among the last to shut down his belt, and by the time they got to the lockers nearly everyone had gone. That was just fine with William; he preferred to shower alone. Fewer questions that way. He set about tying his other boot as Stewart focused on his comb and the cracked mirror hanging from his locker door.

Frank walked in from the lav, wiping shaving cream from his jaw. He bumped Stewart with his elbow. “You get anywhere?”

“Nah.” Stewart tucked his comb in his back pocket. “We’re on our own, Frankie, you and me.”

Frank was checking himself out in the mirror; he licked a forefinger and ran it down one eyebrow. “Nah,
you’re
on your own, mate. I’ve a prior engagement at the establishment in question.”

Stewart looked ill. “Good God, Young, you can’t leave me on my own to watch Frankie chat up that spotty Connor hen again.”

William chuckled. He stood up and pulled his jacket from his locker, closing the door with his elbow. A plain wooden tag swung from the grate: W Young. He shrugged into the coat, still grinning. “I’ll walk you down pub,” he said, “but then I’m afraid you’re on solo hen duty.”

It was overcast when they emerged onto Westerhill; the steam from the stacks hung in a thick layer between the buildings and what remained of the sunlight. William shivered and buttoned up his jacket – after being behind the machines all day the October wind bore extra teeth. Behind him, Frank and Stewart lit up smokes and shared a laugh; the whine of the belts was still too loud in William’s ears to hear what they said.

Autumn felt like winter already; the sun, never a close friend of Glasgow, showed up less and less frequently between bouts of rain that mixed with the ashes and soot, coating the buildings with gray streaks and the streets with sticky mud. The industrial block smelled of burnt things and dirt, mildew and rust; but behind them William could smell the greasy warmth of the chip shop on the corner, the new smoke of a thousand dinnertime stoves. The sunset, like the city, refused to be smothered; its stubborn light lit the bricks to pale yellow and gold, and the newsboys hawked the evening papers as the pavements filled with homebound workers and Friday night pub-crawlers.

Frankie paused at a newsstand; Stewart and William stepped over behind him and waited, shielding themselves behind the awning while Frank haggled over the price of Red Indians. Stewart sucked on his smoke and huddled inside his coat, watching a group of girls coming down the steps of the shirt factory. William read the headlines spread out along the stand. They lay in tidy piles held down by brickbat paperweights
– the
Herald
, t
he Scotsman,
the
Socialist News,
the
Christian Gazette,
the
London Telegraph
,
News of the World
, and, at the far end, the
Dublin Times
.

VETERAN’S COMMITTEE PRESSES FOR BENEFIT LEGISLATION
, read the headline. Below that, a smaller story:
Autumn Festival Planned for Saturday
. Football scores and theater schedules, crime reports and almanac entries. Tiny print halfway down the sidebar:
Continued Fighting in Cork. Four Killed By Roadside Bomb
.
The pages rustled in the wind as he scanned the columns of typeset.

“Alright then, Young?” Frankie appeared at his elbow, swigging from a bottle of ginger. “Gonna stand there reading the papers all night?”

“He would if we let him.” Stewart peered over William’s shoulder and blew smoke across the page. “You looking for another mystery, Inspector?”

“Piss off,” William said.

“Eh?” said Frankie. “What’s that then?”

“Oh, didn’t you know? Dear William here used to have a secret job he couldn’t tell no one about. Some government thing – used to pop off for weeks at a time. Very shady.”

“Aye?” Frankie took another drink and wiped the fizz from his lip. “You don’t look much like a spy to me, man. I saw them in the cinema pictures – big black mustaches. Wee bit taller.”

Stewart shared his chuckle. “On His Majesty’s Service, eh Young?”

William gave them a two-fingered salute.

“Aye, but we reckon he must’ve got himself sacked
– now all he ever does is read the papers and stay at home with his sister,” said Stewart. “Tragic, mate. Pure tragic.” He looked down at the Times and flicked his cigarette butt onto the street. “Why you give a shite about a bunch of scuffling Tarriers is beyond me.”

“We ready to go or what?” William plucked the bottle from Frankie’s hand and took a swallow. He passed it back as they walked down the crowded stretch of Westerhill, away from the factories and toward the residential lanes. Stewart lit up another cigarette.

William didn’t buy the papers anymore. He had done, at first, since the day he stepped off the boat in Oban – read them, binned them, stored them in his head. He watched it all come apart, unfolding each day in cold black print: the Records Building going up in June, taking a thousand years of Ireland with it; Collins mustering the tanks and clearing out the streets, pushing the fighting out of Dublin to country roads and villages. Death on both sides – Brugha in July, Collins in August; nameless bodies in rural ditches, grainy shapes on white newsprint. No familiar faces ever stood out among them.

A small sidebar in August, just after Collins’ death:
Lord Director Christopher to Resign, “Post Become Too Dangerous for Crown Involvement”
.
William had read the line three times and then laughed until he coughed himself hoarse. After that, he stopped reading the execution lists. He scanned the headlines now only from some instinct too ingrained to let go – but the struggle he had known was long since over. The fight for freedom had mutated into a stagnant blood feud.

He had come home to his Glasgow, to his family, to his room and his bed and an envelope lying on his pillow. Inside it was his letter of resignation, refolded along his careful lines; behind that, a severance draft and a sheet of letterhead stamped
NOTICE OF DISHONOURABLE TERMINATION
. He had thrown both letters in the kitchen stove and watched them curl in the flames; the money he had put into an envelope and posted the next day, handwritten in his small print:
Miss Mary Sullivan, Wicklow Street, Dublin.

Two weeks later a postcard had slipped through his door bearing a Dublin postmark. It was a cartoon advertisement, a man and a woman carrying towering stacks of pint glasses through a swinging door.
Guinness Makes Us Strong
. Glued to the back was a small American flag. The card lay now in a cigar box in the back of his wardrobe, tucked beneath a collection of remnants: matchbooks and cigarette cards, keys and coins and bits of string, a packet of chewing gum and a rosary made of green and white beads.

The pub was just around the corner from the trolley stop on Pitmedden Street. Its windows glowed with welcoming light; warm air curled out each time the door swung open and spilled the sound of glass and laughter out into the growing dusk. They stood on the steps while Stewart finished his cigarette.

“You sure you won’t join us?”

“Nah,” said William. “Maybe tomorrow.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it.” Stewart slapped him on the back. “See you Monday. I liked you better when you were a spy.”

“I was never a spy,” William said. He put his hands in his pockets and hunched against the cold. “I’ll see you Monday.”

Stewart smiled. “Alright, mate.” The bells chimed as he and Frank stepped over the threshold. “You get yourself back to your home.”

The watery sun finally sank as William walked down the long stretch of Westerhill. The wind picked up, sweeping away the last traces of autumn and scattering leaves and paper across the empty street; William hunched inside his jacket and headed toward the residential blocks, alone in the dreary twilight.

“Home,” he said, and dead leaves rattled around his feet.

29.

October 29, 1922

“Tea, William?”

“Aye.”

Steam rose from the china pot as his sister filled his cup. William left it to cool on its saucer and reached for the plate of scones in the center of the table; he plucked one off the top and took an enormous bite. “Mm. These are the best this week, Meg.”

Meg smirked at him. “Flattery doesn’t get you a second helping, love. But don’t stop trying.” She filled her own cup and set the pot aside, flicking William’s crumbs off the tablecloth.

The light growing in the kitchen window bore the sharp edges of a winter sunrise, but it was softened to a cozy glow on whitewashed walls. The stove crackled with breakfast embers; Meg stirred her tea and moved the milk bottle away from the Sunday paper William had spread across the table. William tapped his pencil against his front teeth, rolling the tiny chew-marks against his lower lip.

“There’s a good one,” Meg said. “One bedroom flat in Ruchazie, window in every room. Rent’s good, too.”

William frowned. “Ruchazie? That’s a bit of a walk, isn’t it? Isn’t there something closer?”

Meg sighed. “You’re not compelled to live on our back doorstep, William. We can manage just fine.” She ignored the noise he made and sipped her tea. “Can’t we, girls?”

His nieces looked up from their dolls and nodded dutifully, grinning when William turned around. “Traitors,” he said, and they giggled.

He reached for the jar of marmalade. “You won’t get rid of me that easy. I’m too tight to pay train fare, and you know it. Anyway, you know I don’t want to
—
ah, Christ, fucking
—
” The jam spoon clattered to the china and he clamped his mouth shut, cradling his right hand to his chest.

Meg put down her cup. “Is it your finger, love?”

“Aye. Bloody machines.”

She drew his hand forward and examined the forefinger – stiff and swollen with a vicious bruise, the skin split from the second knuckle to the cracked black nail. William hissed between his teeth as Meg gingerly bent the injured joint; he snatched the hand from her grasp and stuck the knuckle in his mouth until the throbbing subsided.

He could feel her eyes on him as he picked up the spoon; he scowled and scooped up a glob of marmalade. A jammed finger was nothing to fuss about; he had certainly been hurt worse in his day. The marmalade plopped onto his scone in an unwieldy mountain and he stabbed the spoon back in the jar before returning to his research. He read down the newspaper page again – this week’s offerings were not much of an improvement from the week before. It looked like it might be better to wait until after the new year after all. He circled a note on the third row: two rooms with lav above the baker’s shop – decent rent, and not all the way out in Ruchazie either. And a baker’s shop, no less; maybe he could finagle in a discount.