Mrs. Engels (29 page)

Feeling sad for him—naught but death will wean him off his wild ideas of a free Ireland—I turn to look through the dirt on the window: a view of bricks and, between the two facing buildings, a thin slice of sky.

“Do you get out at all, Moss? Or is it
all
about the old country now, with no room left for a bit of distraction?”

“Distraction?”

“You ought make time for enjoying yourself. I don't like to think of you stuck in here all day, scheming and plotting and making yourself mad. We could go out one night together. To a show. Or a tuppenny hop. I'd say there's grand places for dancing around here.”

He strikes down on his thigh. Now holds the striking hand out in a pleading manner. “Lizzie, are you only here to torment me? Do you have any intention of helping us?”

Like after a cold gust on the face, I'm woken to my senses. I gather my ends and stand to leave, more to hide my embarrassment than out of a desire to be gone. “I'll see what I can do.”

On my way out, he gives me the bit about an Irishman's duty to take action. “We must fight,” he says, “or our names will go down in history as naught more than braggarts.” And it's an affecting speech, it touches the roots of me, though really I know it's only the same Manchester story repeating itself. I'd be a fool to believe it'll be any different on the second telling.

It's Lydia who tells me. I see more of her now that Mary's gone, now that there's less shame to having me as company. Salford being too far to come, she sends messages through Frederick at the mill, and we meet in town. I always get her a bit of cake and put a nip of something in her tea. She appreciates my good offices, though it'd gall her pride to say it.

“Moss wants to meet with you.”

“What for? I haven't seen him since Mary's thing. What have we to say to each other?”

“He's a changed man.”

“I don't give a fourpenny feck what he is.”

“He's writing poems now, I'm told.”

“Poems.”

“And I hear he's taken the oath.”

“Against the drink?”

“Aye, that. And against the Queen.”

“Mercy on us, the double whop.”

I don't go to him, despite the pressure of my feelings. Instead, like a man gone feral, he comes to me. Walks right across to Salford to knock at the house. I don't let him in. We talk through the gap in the door.

“No flowers?”

He seizes his hips with his empty hands. “Can we go somewhere?”

“Anything you say to me, you can say to the neighbors.”

“I've come to ask for your help. Won't you hear me out?”

“I'm listening.”

He sighs. Looks up and down the road. Brings his face close and lowers his voice to a whisper. “Can I trust you?”

“Desperate men must take risks.”

His face reddens, but he keeps it down. “Have you heard about Colonel Kelly and Captain Deasy?”

“Arrested for plotting. I heard. It's in the news.”

“Well”—he swallows—“I've come to tell you our plan.”

I slam the door. Put my back against it. Stay like this a minute. When my heart settles, I go to the window. He's still outside, muttering to himself and using the edge of my step to scrape the muck from his boots.

“All right, you moocher, come in. But don't take anything off. You'll only be staying long enough for me to kick you out on your back.”

He refuses my offer of a short but takes a hot coffee with milk. I pull him over a chair.

“I'd sooner stand,” he says.

Between slurps, he gives me out the particulars. There's a new man, come from America. A man called Condon. A man of action. Under his command, they're going to get Kelly and Deasy out from under the law.

“Where are the men being kept?”

“Bellevue.”

I let out with a mocking laugh. “You're going to break them out of Bellevue?”

“Not a bit of it,” he says with a seriousness that'd take you by the throat. What they're going to do, in fact, is rescue the men when they're being taken from the jail to the courthouse. The police van will be ambushed when it passes under the railway arches on Hyde Road, the keys will be nabbed, and the prisoners will be delivered to freedom.

“I see. And where would my money go in all of this?”

“We've no firearms. We've to send someone up to Birmingham.”

I fold my arms across. I'm frowning, I can tell. “Better to be alone, Moss, than in bad company.”

“Look who's talking.”

I almost laugh. “It's from
my
bad company you're looking for help, and don't you forget it!”

He winces.

I don't relent. “And another thing. It's a swindle, if you ask me, this Fenian business. Organized by smart Americans who are playing off your dreams to make money for their own excesses. It can only be that someone's making money out of this, Moss, and I can see it isn't you.”

He listens to me. Bides till I've had my rant right out. “Can you help us or not?”

I look away, at the floor, at the walls, but I can't think my feelings away. “When is it planned for?”

“The eighteenth.”

“I can't give you money.”

“We're not asking for much.”

“Did you hear me? I said I can't give you money. Hyde Road, but, is only a short walk from here. I'll keep the doors open on the eighteenth and you can come if you need somewhere. That's the most I can do.”

He seems happy with this; he sees the size of it once he's thought on it a moment. He holds out a cool hand. I overlook it and bring him to the door.

“Would I be right in saying you're off the booze?”

“Thirst produces thirst, Lizzie, and naught more useful than that.”

September

XXVIII. Means to Satisfy

The Girls are home looking adult and abraded. Janey appears to have dwindled to her bones. Tussy is pale in the face and has dark lines under her eyes. They come to the parlor door to greet us, kiss us on the cheek, and fill us with their new scents, but once this duty is done, they fall back to where they were, collapsed on the couch among the crowd of bickering Frenchmen.

It's a new lot. Communards just come over. Frederick gives me all the names. He manages it without interrupting the rumpus, and I'm thankful for it.

“What are they arguing over?” I says.

“The Commune,” he says. “Why it failed.”

We'll be here a while.

Frederick goes to join in. I take a seat outside the circle, by the second fireplace, and try to catch Tussy's attention. I want to ask her about France. I want to sit with her and have her tell me everythingfrom beginning to end. What did they see? How is Laura coping after the loss? Is it true they were all arrested? But she can't be reached. My looks land unheeded on her cheek, her ear, her neck, so taken is she by the man Lissagaray, with his untamed handkerchief and disheveled hair, who is now reaching so far forward on his seat to pay her court that he might as well be lying across her knee. Janey can't be got either. She, too, is fascinated by the foreign attention. Beside her, the man Longuet has put his hand on the brocade a dangerous distance from hers, and she's busy finding reasons to bring it ever closer. It's a touching spectacle, a real bowel mover, and it hasn't gone unnoticed by Jenny, who, after a last attempt to put herself between the straining bodies, comes away and demands my company, downstairs, immediate.

“In the kitchen, Lizzie. Please.”

I let her off and leave her fume a minute before making my way down. I find her playing tragedy queen on the square of floor between the stove and cupboard. Nim has put herself out of the way, in the far corner; her eyes, like gems in the gloom, meet mine; something passes between us, something I don't recognize nor have a name for.

“It's disgusting,” Jenny says.

“What is?” I says, turning from Nim to give the once-over to the leftovers from the lunch we weren't invited to.

“Lissagaray. He's twice Tussy's age. He must be stopped.”

I find a drumstick intact and smell it. “I'm sure it's only innocent.”

She halts, mid-pace, to take full possession of me. “Oh, Lizzie, you can be so naive. Has anyone ever told you how naive you are?”

Seeing a row threaten, Nim gives Jenny a plate of fruit and sends her out with it. “Go on now, Mrs. Marx. You have guests.”

I sigh and drop the drumstick onto the plate, make to follow Jenny up.

“No, you stay, Mrs. Burns,” says Nim. “I need you for something.”

She looks up the stairs for anybody who might be coming before closing the kitchen door. She takes me into the scullery, closes that door too.

“What is it, Helen?” I says, close enough to her now to see her fretful and quickened. “What's the matter with you?”

“You must take this back.” She reaches into her clothes and comes out with the money note, the same five-jack I gave her before. “I cannot account for it, Mrs. Burns. If it is found in my keeping, they will have questions I cannot answer. It is burning a hole in my pocket. Please, you must take it back, with my thanks.”

“If you can't use it, Helen, give it to
someone
who can.”

My meaning is plain to her, but he's a subject she'd rather not talk on. Given the choice, she'd die with her tongue under her belt and the identity of things hidden. She looks lost and exposed, like a little animal living outside its defenses for the first time. But there's no help for it now.

“I understand, Mrs. Burns. But how do you suppose I get it to him? Everything leaving this house is tampered with. It would be lost.”

“Can't you go yourself? Aren't you free to travel on your day off?”

“I have promised to stay away.”

“Promised? Who have you promised? Him or
them
?”

She pushes the five-jack against my breast. “Please, Mrs. Burns, no more of this. Take it now.”

I close a hand over hers in an effort to get it away from me, for I can't have this money either. If I have it, I won't be able to hold on to it for long: I'll end up giving it to Moss. And I mustn't do that. I mustn't have a reason to see him again. I mustn't start once more on the old round.

A call comes from upstairs and Nim runs out to answer it, leaving the note to drop to the ground at my feet. I bend down and crunch it into a ball and curse money for ever having come near me.

The comic singer has just come off and we're biding for the flash dancers. In the third or fourth row, we are, right up the front, a tuppence more than the places farther back, and for what? To be howled at, is what. Howled and hurled at by the children of St. Giles who come down from the heavens and nab the good seats not paid for.

“I've a surprise for you,” I says.

“What is it?” Moss says.

“If I told you,” I says, fanning away the heat from the gaslight, “it wouldn't be a surprise anymore, would it?”

Beside me, a girl with feathers in her tatty-looking bonnet calls out a filthy saying, and her intimates, the gang of roughs thick-spread about her, burst out.

“I swear they're getting worse than the boys,” I says, and he laughs and takes my hand into his, lays it on his thigh.

The lights dim, a drum is beaten, and the spectacle begins again. In the dark, I lean in and kiss him on the rough of his cheek. I feel my hand squeezed as a response.

Afterwards, we eat something quick from a stand, and now he takes me to a tavern, a quiet place with only ourselves and the Holy Ghost in it.

“I thought we were going to go dancing?” I says.

“I'm gone too old for that,” he says. “All the jostling and the noise. Aren't we as well off here?”

“You don't even drink! I'd be imbibing alone, and there's something improper in that.”

He shrugs as if to say my drinking and my habits for doing it are my own business.

“Arrah, you're useless. I won't go home without a dance. I've been looking forward to a dance all day.”

“Stand up there and give us a jig, can't you?”

“Stand up yourself, Moss O'Malley. Seeing as you're too embarrassed to go with me to a real place, you can dance with me here.”

“I will
not.
”

“Get up out of that, there's nobody about. What's stopping you?”

“There's no music.”

“We can make our own.”

I drag him up and start him off. “Stay with me,” I says, and hum a melody to keep his step in time and his feet from stomping on mine.

“Does this song ever end?” he says.

“Don't be lazy. We all have to work for our ready.”

But I see he's not finding the fun in it, he can't summon the proper pleasure, and I feel sorry for him, having to do what doesn't come natural because he feels obliged. “We can stop if you're tired.”

“Aye, let's sit down. Please.”

He gets something soft and I get something hard, and we drink. “To our love,” I says to myself when we touch glasses, “to our love and the day without end.” As soon as I think it, however, my mood sinks. I'm not used to happiness, and to feel it now makes me afraid. What if I can't make him feel it too, at any cost?

“I'm afraid,” I says.

“Never be afraid,” he says. “And if you are, tell no one.”

He gulps from his drink. Wipes with his sleeve the wet ring his glass leaves on the counter. He's got to be a quiet man, I can see that now. Learned his lesson, he has, about giving out too much, about revealing himself before he's aware, so now he does the other thing, which is to lock away feeling and impart little. And, if I'm honest, I like it this way; I prefer them quiet. I've had enough of talking men who use superior phrases to tell you naught. Moss, he'll tell you anything you wish to know, but in few words, because words are no use; there's no way to ever really say things.

“Give us a poem,” I says.

“Not a chance.”

“My God, has the soul been drained out of you along with the drink?”

He scoffs. “What would a poem be worth to you?”

“I won't know
that
till I hear it.”

He ponders this a second. “All right, but you must swear not to jeer.”

I throw my eyes up: “I swear.”

He taps a finger on his glass: a show of thinking.

“Well, do you have one or not?”

“Hold on, it has to come to me.”

Another moment, now, and he clears his throat and, keeping his eyes down, moans out a few passages.

“What was that?”

“A lament for departed lovers.”

“Is it your own?”

He doesn't say anything. “It might be my own,” his silence says, “or it might be someone else's, and it's your own ignorance that prevents you from knowing the difference.” Once upon a time, such a silence might have smothered me, or it might have made me want to smother
him,
but right now I feel him nearer to me than anyone else in the world; right now, in this quiet, my heart warms with attachment to him.

“Moss?”

“Aye?”

“Do you think you can forgive my spurnings in former days?”

He shakes his head. “I try not to think about times gone. They're gone for a reason. To be forgot.”

“So you don't ever think about it? About us, before?”

“I do, of course, but I don't encourage it in myself.”

And I know what he means. I can understand that. To think on what's past will only bring regret into your life and make you sad. But does he miss me at all? Would he ever want me that way again? For him to say he has found distance from our earlier mistakes is not enough. I need to know, does he yearn? Does he have wants?

“I reckon it's time for your surprise,” I says, for I suppose the sight of money, if naught else, will excite some feeling in him.

“Oh?” he says, and indeed, he does appear roused. And why should I judge him harsh for it? A love with no interest does not exist. We always expect something for what we give.

“Hand me my bag,” I says.

“Your bag?” he says.

“Didn't I give it to you? To mind?”

“I didn't see you with a bag all night. Are you certain you had one?”

“Of course I am. A reticule, it was. With beading on it. You know the one. Where did I put it?”

He checks around the stools and now around the floor where we danced. I delve into my pockets: maybe he's right, maybe I didn't bring it, maybe I put the money in here instead? But, nay. There's no mistake. I had my bag. The vision of it comes to me now: sitting on the floor between my feet in the theater.

“Christ. I left it in the penny gaff.”

“What was in it?”

“Money. For you. A whole five pounds.”

At first he's stiff and dumb, so surprised is he to discover he possesses the powers to change my mind. Only now does it dawn on him that his labors might have been in vain, the reward for his work lost. He jumps to a stand. “We ought go back and find it. Someone might have handed it in.”

“Oh, Moss, where on earth do you think you are? It'll be gone, and you know it.”

Desperate, he looks at the air all around him, as if God, the Great Doer of Justice, might drop a note down to replace the one lost. His desperation, however, turns quick to distrust. His eyes narrow at me. His arms fold across. How soon the aspect of things can change.

“Do you think I was born yesterday?”

“For godsake, Moss, this is no rig. I'm telling you, I had some money that I was going to give you, and I lost it. That's the fact of what happened.”

A hand goes up to cover his eyes from the horror of it. A curse flies out from between his clenched teeth.

“I'm sorry, Moss. Really I am. I'll try to get you some more.”

He whips his cap off the counter and uses it to swipe his empty glass onto the floor, where it breaks into sharp pieces. “I wish I knew what you wanted from me, Lizzie Burns,” he says on his way to the door. “I just wish I knew.”