Ashton Park (43 page)

Sir William responded with a slight bow of his head. Then he rubbed his hands together and smiled. “I shall ring Norah for the hot cocoa and coffee that was promised.”

The ladies sat in a room of white wallpaper and white furniture, where oil paintings of elegant women in gardens or on horseback were set in white frames. Lady Grace explained to Shannon and Christelle that it had been renovated in the 1870s but rarely used since the beginning of the new century. It was open again at her insistence, just like the Nelson Room.

“All the sealed rooms are opened up twice a year, my dear Victoria,” she added as she settled herself into a white chair, chasing away all help with a swish of her cane. “At that time each room is aired and dusted. So you needn’t make it sound as if the Nelson Room hasn’t seen soap and water since the Battle of Trafalgar.”

Victoria smirked. “I apologize, Lady Grace. A slip of the tongue.”

“Hm. Up to the same old mischief. Even as a married woman carrying her first child.”

Christelle sat next to Victoria on a white sofa with white pillows. “And how is everything with you,
ma soeur
, my sister? Are you still feeling a great deal of the sickness?”

“It comes and it goes, thank you, Chris. I can’t abide Ben frying up a pan of bacon, I’ll tell you that.” She put a hand on her stomach. “The baby reacts. I react.”

“But he cooks all the breakfasts for Kipp and Michael.”

“Yes. Before they go flying. But no bacon. Not for the past fortnight. I simply can’t tolerate the smell of it in the house.”

“I’m sorry for the ongoing turmoil in Ireland,” Lady Elizabeth said to Shannon. “Sir William had hoped your country might be granted a period of Home Rule decades ago to be followed by full independence. But no one was listening in the Commons or in the Lords.”

Norah knocked, wheeled in a cart of coffee, tea, and baked sweets, and left.

Shannon poured herself a coffee and smiled at Lady Elizabeth. “Many would have been satisfied with such an approach. But not all. I don’t look forward to news of my homeland while we are in Palestine. This year the fighting will be as bad or worse than the last, and even if the fighting comes to an end I’m certain there will be other conflicts.”

“Why do you say that?” demanded Catherine. “Surely enough blood has been shed by now to satisfy even the most violent revolutionaries?”

Shannon drank her coffee. “There are always factions in any country. Even at my parents’ home they argued. Sometimes they went too far and my father would have to intervene. The only reason we see so little of it right now is because they are fighting the English. Once that fight is over I’m frightened to think of what might happen next.”

“What’s this?” Lady Grace looked as if she wanted to bite something. “You think there will be another war after this war is finished?”

“Lady Grace, I’m so sorry.” Shannon held her coffee cup in the lap of her white dress, wrapping both hands around it. “I remember the strong opinions. If the present fighting comes to an end in a manner they can all feel good about then I expect there will be peace.”

“If.” Lady Grace sniffed.

“At least,” Lady Elizabeth interrupted, “you will be going to a quiet place for a few years. William and I have talked about visiting the two of you there. We would dearly love to see the Holy City.”

“Why, that would be wonderful. Robbie and I would love having you under our roof. What a time we’d have in Jerusalem, the four of us.”

The door opened and Emma’s face appeared. “Cheers. Am I too late for the party?”

“Jump right in,” said Victoria. “How are the three gentlemen?”

Emma helped herself to a small cake, catching the crumbs with one hand while holding the cake with the other. “The three gentlemen of Verona are fast asleep and Aunt Holly is keeping an eye on them. I just peeked in on the men, by the way. What a lovely room with all that brass polished to a gleam and the oak oiled to perfection. They are getting on famously.” She glanced at Catherine. “Especially Albert. All his stories. He has the lads roaring. What’s gotten into him?”

Catherine sipped her tea. “What d’you mean?”

“Well, honestly, Cath, you two have looked like a couple of rocks on your past visits. If we even got to see the pair of you together. Now you’re sitting here with lovely red cheeks and your hair half a foot longer and all black and shining again. Out there in the Nelson Room your husband’s the life of the party. What’s up? Are you about to be the next couple to have children?”

The red of Catherine’s cheeks spread over her face. She ducked her head. “Nothing like that. We’ve just been enjoying one another more than usual, that’s all.”

“Even with the fighting in the streets?” cackled Lady Grace.

“The fighting’s down south. There’s not much in Belfast. A shooting now and then. Not a lot more than that. Bertie has stopped writing letters to the editor and that puts me more at ease.”

Libby was seated in a chair next to Catherine. She took her sister’s hand and kissed it. “Bertie? And he puts up with it? That’s as bad as me calling my man Mikey or Char calling our brother Eddie. I wonder if Christelle calls her man Kipper?”

Everyone laughed and Lady Grace thumped the waxed wooden floor with the end of her cane, causing Lady Elizabeth to scowl.

Libby hugged Catherine as her sister’s face colored again. “It doesn’t matter. That’s wonderful news. Michael says he’s been having a great time with Albert’s jokes and stories. Seems like you woke something up in that man of yours. Did it take a kiss?”

Catherine smiled. “It took about four dozen cooked breakfasts. And he had to make every one of them. With bacon.”

The rain was still slashing down early the next morning when the military car showed up for Robbie and Shannon. Victoria lay in her bed, too ill to get up, and Ben held her hand and sat beside her, but the others stood under their black umbrellas to say goodbye. Since the SPADs could not fly back to London in the bad weather Sir William joined Robbie and Shannon in the car for the ride into Liverpool, where he would catch a train south.

At the dockside, he stood there with a dozen others to see the ship off. It took an hour but finally the troopship began to ease away. Shannon stood beside her husband in the hard rain until finally it drove her inside after a final wave to Sir William. Robbie stayed where he was. Finally, as the ship began to turn, he lifted his hand to his father. Sir William prayed for God’s mercy on his son and raised his hand in response. Then it was only the gray stern of the ship and the gray sea and the gray sky.

March and April 1921

“It’s March first and coming in like a lion.” Albert paused with the door to the street half open. The wind tugged at the door, making the doorknob in his hand rattle, and Catherine glimpsed people rushing past with their heads bent and their hands on their heads. “I could open my umbrella and use it as a sail. Fly to work as if I had Ben’s or Kipp’s SPAD.”

Catherine smiled and folded her arms over her chest. “You open that nice umbrella Da bought you in London and it’ll end up in Russia in about ten pieces.”

“No. No umbrella. Just clutch my hat like everyone else. See you tonight, love.”

“You will. God bless you.”

“And you.”

Albert closed the door behind him and was gone. She lingered a moment, looking at the door, a smile still on her lips, then went to the kitchen to wash up the breakfast dishes. The breakfasts were all cooked by Albert now and were always the fried ones he enjoyed so much. She turned on the tap to fill the sink.

The crash of machine gun fire made her jump. It came again. And again.
Oh, my Lord, it’s a killing.
She ran to the door and threw it open. People were crouched behind trashcans and lampposts. A car screamed past. Bodies were sprawled on the sidewalk across the street where the tramcars stopped to pick up passengers. Red was mixing with gray rainwater and pouring over the curb into the gutter. It was where Albert waited for his tram to the docks.

“No!” She ran across the street, ignoring the cars and horses, and fell on her knees next to the first man. She grabbed him by the shoulders and turned him over. The bullets had ripped opened his chest. A torn orange sash drooped over his suit. It was not Albert. The other two were lying face up in the rain with blood pooling crimson under their backs. Neither of them were Albert either. The final man was clutching an umbrella in one hand and his hat in the other. She turned him on his back.

“Cath! Cath! What are you doing here?”

A man’s hand was on her shoulder. She looked up and tried to see him through the hair that had plastered itself over her eyes. He dropped down and pulled her roughly into his arms.

“Albert!” she cried, sinking her face into the wet cloth of his suit jacket. “I thought you’d been killed.”

“Maybe I should have. Maybe I would have. I slipped into the shop to get a paper to read on the tram.”

“They gunned these men down for no reason.”

“Sure they had a reason. D’you see they’re all four in their Orange Lodge hats and the one had his sash? They killed them because they were Orangemen.” He helped her to her feet. “I’ll get you back to the house.”

“These poor men—”

“They’re past our help. Let’s go in and get dry and I’ll brew you some tea and we’ll have a prayer and some talk.”

“You have to get to work.”

“I’ll call in. Tell them what’s up and that I’ll see them all tomorrow.”

“No, you can’t—”

“I can. It’s better I’m here. The shipyards will not fall apart in one day, will they?”

He got her across the street and through the door just as she began to shudder and great sobs tore through her chest and throat.

Sir William rose to his feet. “Mr. Speaker, the Irish question has been debated in this House for hundreds of years. Yet we have never resolved it. The violence demands we put aside petty agendas and come together across all parties to find a solution. Not in another hundred years. This month. This year. Now, I tell you, now, sir.”

Members of Parliament shouted to support him and others shouted to drown him out.

“I have always been a proponent of Home Rule, as this House knows full well. I say this government reaches out with such a proposal this day, this hour, sir. There is not a moment to lose. Every hour more people die—Irish, English, soldiers, civilians. I am certain the IRA are as weary of the bloodletting as we are. Let a reasonable treaty be offered—”

Shouts and cries blotted out his voice. Used to such uproars, Sir William remained standing, his face showing neither frustration nor contempt, and waited calmly for the noise to subside.

“Let a treaty be offered that is good for Britain and good for Ireland. It may be that men like Michael Collins will put their pen to it. It may be it will silence the guns. It is scarcely two years since the cannon of the Western Front ceased their rage and their bellowing. Are we to have another war that lasts until hundreds of thousands are dead and the calendar on the wall tells us it is nineteen-twenty-three or nineteen-twenty-four or nineteen-twenty-five? Is that what the people of England who put you in these seats want? Hm? I think not.”

Again the roar. Again the tumult. Sir William remained where he was, his back straight.

“Mr. Speaker. I will close on a personal note. Last week gunmen shot a group of Orangemen waiting for the tram in Belfast. Many of you will remember reading of the incident. Terrible. What the members of the House of Commons do not know is my daughter’s husband was waiting at that stop. The only thing that saved him, by the grace of God, was that he went into a store to buy a newspaper. The gunmen opened fire while he was in the shop. When he came out he found my daughter had rushed across the street from their house and was kneeling over the dead bodies, certain he was one of them. Can you imagine, sir, her shock? Can you imagine, those of you who are fathers, my daughter’s pain? This has slashed me to the bone like a saber. I could be standing here telling you her husband was murdered. I could be standing here telling you the gunmen came back and shot her.”

The House grew silent.

“I have nothing more to add, Mr. Speaker. Mothers and fathers in Britain and Ireland are weeping over their dead today and many more will do so tomorrow. We must have peace.”