No Peace for Amelia (5 page)

A
melia’s alarm sounded in the dark. It rang for some time before the small, neat nose of its young
mistress
peeped out from under the covers and twitched in a puzzled way in the crisp air of the very early morning. The alarm clock rang on, tirelessly flip-tripping its tiny, frantic drumstick against the little cup-shaped cymbals, and executing a small, angry dance on Amelia’s bedside table. At last the rest of Amelia’s face, and then,
gradually
, her head, shoulders and arms emerged, tousled and yawning, from her body-warm cocoon of sleep, and a blind hand groped the table top for the noisy metal beast and eventually put a stop to its irritable serenade.

Amelia sighed with relief as silence filled the
bedroom
, and then she flopped back onto her pillows. Why? she thought. Why so early? She opened one sleepy eye and observed the dark. It’s still the middle of the night. It’s not even dawn yet.

Dawn. The word was oddly familiar. Dawn. Good heavens! Amelia leapt from her bed and scrambled into her clothes, standing awkwardly on the sides of her feet, to avoid too much contact with the chill linoleum until she got her stockings on. Dawn. She’d promised herself that she would be there at dawn.

She wouldn’t bother to put her hair up. Her night-time plait was still secure. That would save time anyway. She’d just brush a few wisps out of her face and put her hat on.

She crept onto the landing and mounted the narrow, ladder-like stairs to Mary Ann’s room under the roof. Papa had constructed the stairway himself, to make the attic accessible, and Amelia had always thought it so
romantic
to sleep in a room at the top of a ladder – almost as good as sleeping in a tree-house or on a high bunk. Frederick would have a bunk at sea. She hoped he’d get the top one. It was more fun.

‘Mary Ann! Mary Ann!’ Amelia whispered urgently at Mary Ann’s door, and creaked it open softly. She needn’t have worried. Mary Ann was already dressed and brushed. She was twirling her braids into a loop to pin at the back of her head as Amelia’s anxious face appeared around the door.

‘It’s all right. I’m nearly ready,’ said Mary Ann, flinging a shawl around her shoulders and looking for a pin to keep it in place.

‘We won’t have time for breakfast, will we?’ Amelia’s
voice was worried, but whether at the prospect of the delay breakfast would cause or at the thought of that long walk to the docks on an empty stomach, Mary Ann couldn’t tell.

Luckily Mary Ann had thought ahead: ‘No. But I made us a few jam sandwiches last night. We’ll collect them from the kitchen on the way out.’

Moments later, the two girls were trotting along the Lower Kimmage Road towards the canal in the murky light of the gas street lamps, munching their jam
sandwiches
as they went. The streets were eerily still, as well as dark, the houses all shut in on themselves and
secretive
, like hulking beasts with grievances.

‘It’s like being small again, isn’t it?’ remarked Amelia.

‘I dunno. I never got up in the middle of the night when I was small,’ said the ever-practical Mary Ann, with misgiving in her voice.

‘No, I mean the jam sandwiches. Nursery food.’

‘For them that has nurseries,’ Mary Ann rejoined.

Amelia, sensing Mary Ann’s disapproval of the whole escapade, said no more till they reached Christ Church, when she observed: ‘Oh look, there’s a definite glow in the east. We’d better hurry.’

‘Glow in the east, yer granny,’ said Mary Ann. ‘It’s not a poem we’re in. Anyway, sailing at dawn doesn’t mean they’ll raise anchor as soon as there’s a bit of pink in the sky. It just means they’ll be off early. It’s the tide they’ll be depending on, not the sun.’

‘Oh, I see,’ said Amelia, amazed at Mary Ann’s
knowledge
. ‘But at that rate, they might be gone already.’ And she quickened her pace again, almost running down the incline of Lord Edward Street.

‘Hold yer horses,’ yelped Mary Ann, coming up
behind
, ‘if they’re gone, they’re gone, and running now isn’t going to make any difference.’

‘Stop being so blessed
logical
, Mary Ann!’ Amelia called over her shoulder. ‘Just get a move on.’

And with a mutter, Mary Ann did.

They were in plenty of time. The boat didn’t actually sail for a good hour after they arrived, damp and
breathless
, at the North Wall. There was fierce activity: men (boys, in fact, a lot of them), all in matching rather lumpy looking khaki tunics and puttees, milling about in a cordoned-off area, waving and smiling to individual faces in the throngs of wives and mothers and
sweethearts
on the cobbles, a hubbub of talk and laughter and not a few tears, cries from the seagulls wheeling
overhead
, occasional deep-chested booms from the boat’s belly – a foghorn perhaps, clearing its throat – and
endless
whistles and shouts and bellows and roars from
sailors
and landlubbers alike, metallic rumblings as barrels were rolled up a gangplank and creaking as crate after crate was hoisted aboard by a giant crane, and
everywhere
the hysterical whinnying and clattering of horses and carts and traps and cars and drays and vehicles of every description, jostling for position on the quayside,
the horses doing desperate little gavottes to stay upright and keep their cargoes balanced in the mêlée.

Suddenly there came a steady rumbling followed by an ear-piercing scream and with a rhythmic roar a train pulled up, almost beside where Amelia and Mary Ann stood and stared at it all. It wasn’t a proper station with a platform and a ticket office, just a sort of dead-end, but the train didn’t look at all disconcerted by its arrival, and it promptly disgorged more hordes, some in khaki, some in civvies, to join the fray. When it had satisfied itself that it had rid itself of its incumbents, the train gave another high-pitched yelp, spewed out filthy clouds of smoke, and nonchalantly shrugged its couplings and lurched off again, this time going backwards.

The ship was most disappointing. Amelia had
expected
a galleon, billowing on the waves, dotted about with blue and scarlet figures and with a fo’c’sle and a crow’s nest and all the usual accoutrements visible and obvious, with perhaps an agile deck-hand or two
swinging
from the ropes or cheerily waving a bandanna. But it was an unprepossessing, though exceedingly large, boat, all grey and black, rather like a very overgrown trawler, and about as romantic. No doubt it did have a fo’c’sle and all the other things ships are supposed to have, but these features were indistinguishable from chimneys and cranes and gantries and such unengaging appendages.

Amelia scanned the crowds for a sight of Frederick,
watching out for a gleam of auburn in the dawn light that would identify his dear head. But of course all the men wore stiff peaked caps on their severe haircuts, and abundant chestnut curls were nowhere in evidence. She buttoned her cape more closely to her throat and
miserably
tore another bit off a jam sandwich.

All at once something started to happen among the khaki-clad rabble. It was like watching iron filings
obediently
lining up under orders from a powerful magnet. With unwieldy grace, the military throng started to align itself into rows and columns, and in a moment or two, they were all square and at attention. A band struck up. It played something noisy and cheery with a good deal of drumming and a few tootly bits at the end of every bar. This was more like it – a bit of brass and glory at last. The ranks of soldiers moved in rhythm, up, down, up, down, marching on the spot, and then, at a strangulated cry from someone with a powerful throat, they all moved forward as with a single step and approached the gangplank. The music played gaily on, and the civilians began to wave handkerchiefs, scarves, shawls, hats, neckties or whatever pieces of unattached clothing they could muster – even small children, in one or two
instances
– in time to its rousing beat. A great cheer went up as the first men marched up the gangplank and on board, never once missing the beat. Slowly, the whole battalion snaked up that plank, left-right, left-right, to the beat of the drum and the roar of the crowd.

Still peering for a glimpse of Frederick, Amelia
loosened
the kerchief at her neck and waved it with the best of them. All the other men here had families to wish them well and wave them off, Amelia was sure. He only had her, and he didn’t even know she was there. And Mary Ann of course. Not that you could count Mary Ann as a well-wisher. She was there strictly as Amelia’s friend, and she made that quite clear. She stood
tight-lipped
and unmoved as the crowd waved and cheered and swayed to the music.

When the men were all aboard, the band ceased
playing
, and the men must have been released from their
orders
, for suddenly they could be seen moving about again, clipping each other about the ears, slapping each other’s backs and waving to loved ones in the crowd on the docks. The sun was hovering on the horizon now, and it was light enough to pick out faces on deck. With the dying away of the band the murmuring of the crowd picked up again, and people started to fidget and look at their watches and rub their hands together for warmth. They looked as if they wished the boat would set sail now and be done with it, so that they could all get home to their breakfasts. A few women sobbed quietly into the
handkerchiefs
they had been waving so bravely a moment ago, and if Mary Ann hadn’t been standing there looking
unmoved
by it all, Amelia would have had a little sob herself. As it was, she swallowed hard and turned to her friend.

‘I didn’t see him, did you?’

‘Ah sure, there’s hundreds of them, all dressed the same. And he didn’t know to look out for us.’

‘Oh, Mary Ann, to think of him going off to Flanders, thinking that there is nobody here to see him off! Poor Frederick!’

‘They’re going to France, actually, northern France,’ said Mary Ann, matter-of-factly. ‘I heard somebody next to me saying it. They’ll be docking at a place called Le Harver. Would you think that’s a place, or is it just the French for “the harbour”?’

‘Well, France, Flanders, what does it matter? It comes to the same thing. There he goes, and nobody to see him off and wish him godspeed.’ Amelia sounded mournful.

‘Ah not at all.’ Mary Ann relented. ‘Sure, we’re here.’

‘Yes, but he doesn’t
know
that.’

‘That doesn’t make any difference. Wishing godspeed counts, whether the person knows it or not.’

‘Oh, do you think so?’ asked Amelia earnestly. ‘Do you think if we closed our eyes, and concentrated very hard, we might somehow get through to him, that he might sort of sense that there’s somebody out there?’

Mary Ann looked at Amelia’s sad little face and said: ‘Oh, definitely. Let’s do it now!’

So the two girls stood very still and closed their eyes and concentrated on transmitting farewell messages to Frederick. Amelia still had her eyes closed and her face all screwed up in concentration when she heard a shout of ‘Aaa-meel-i-a! Aaa-meel-i-a!’ When she opened her
eyes, the sun was right up and the scene was filled with light, but all she could see, having had her eyes so tightly shut, were purple and green after-images swimming
before
her face. Gradually her vision cleared, and she could see that the boat was moving very slowly and
gingerly
away from the quayside, and there were dozens of khaki figures hanging over the side of the boat and
waving
and shouting. Had she imagined it? But no. She heard it again, she was sure, her name called long and loud from the deck of the boat. She still couldn’t pick Frederick out, but she knew he was there somewhere and was calling to her. Hesitantly she raised her
neckerchief
again and, feeling slightly foolish, she waved it in the general direction of the boat. But there was no point in feeling foolish at a time like this, and as the boat drifted away she waved with more conviction and called to the squirming masses aboard: ‘Goodbye. Goodbye, Frederick. Good luck!’

Just then, a small dawn gust of wind got up and snatched her neckerchief out of her hand. It fluttered for a moment just out of her reach, and then, with a little flourish of its tail, it sailed off after the boat.

A
s Mary Ann and Amelia made their way home, away from the docks and along the quays, they were met by Dublin awakening. On their way to the dockside that morning, the streets had been deserted, except for occasional seagulls, screaming and wheeling overhead, but now the city was coming to life. The shops weren’t open yet, and the workers hadn’t started their day, but there were plenty of people about, making deliveries and getting ready for the coming day. On Sackville Street, Amelia was amazed to see a
raggle-taggle
band of men marching along the middle of the road towards the river carrying rifles. They were led by a woman in military uniform with brass buttons on her
tunic
, and her skirt was swinging as she marched.

‘Mary Ann! Look!’ Amelia cried, astonished.

‘That’ll be the Countess,’ said Mary Ann.

‘Not Countess Markievicz?’ said Amelia in disbelief. This woman used to be a friend of Mama’s when Mama protested for women’s suffrage, but look at her now, leading an armed gang.

‘Yes.’

‘But where did she get the men, and the guns?’

‘Oh, that’s the Citizen Army,’ said Mary Ann.

‘Who are they? How are they allowed to march around with guns? Is it legal?’

‘I don’t know if it’s legal. They’re trade unionists, mostly. They’re a bit like the Volunteers.’

‘But why are they armed? I don’t understand.’

‘I suppose they’re getting ready for a rebellion.’

‘Oh, Mary Ann, is there going to be a rebellion, do you think?’

‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ said Mary Ann cautiously.

‘But why? There’s going to be Home Rule, isn’t there, as soon as the war is over. Isn’t that what people want?’

‘No, there isn’t going to be Home Rule, Amelia, that’s all just hot air. The unionists aren’t going to put up with Home Rule, and the government is depending on the
unionists
. As long as the unionists mean the difference
between
power and no power, the government will keep the unionists happy, and to blazes with the rest of us.’

Mary Ann sounded very angry, all of a sudden. Amelia looked at her warily.

‘I don’t know, Mary Ann, it all seems very violent.’

‘No more violent than the war in Europe, and with
much better reason. What’s the difference between
Frederick
Goodbody with a gun and Johnny O’Leary or Liam O’Malley or Patrick Maloney or whoever with a gun? He’s fighting your war, they’re fighting ours.’

‘It’s not my war,’ said Amelia tearfully.

‘Well, you’ve changed your tune, so,’ said Mary Ann, icily. ‘You were all excited at the idea a few days ago.’

‘Oh, Mary Ann, I don’t know what I think about it. I have to believe in Frederick, don’t I? Everyone else is against him.’

‘You do Amelia, you do,’ said Mary Ann, more softly, ‘but you don’t have to believe in his war.’

‘Nor you in this rebellion,’ countered Amelia.

‘That’s different,’ said Mary Ann.

‘How is it different?’

‘Well, in the first place, I think the cause is just. And in the second place, I was always in favour of this cause, I didn’t just take it up because some young fellow got himself involved in it.’

Amelia’s face burned when she heard it put like this, and tears stung her eyes.

‘I’m sorry, Amelia, I don’t mean to be hard on you.’

Amelia sniffled. ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I – I’m just a bit confused about it all. And I’m worried about Frederick. Mary Ann, what if he gets killed?’

‘Oh, Amelia, we’ll just have to pray that he doesn’t. That’s all we can do.’

And what about my Patrick? she thought to herself.
He’s just as likely to get killed one of these fine days with his antics and his guns and his fine notions about
rebellion
. Mary Ann, just like Amelia, wasn’t half as sure of her position inside her head as she was when she spoke about it.

When the girls got back, footsore and with their hair in wisps about their faces from the sea breeze and their cheeks rosy from their adventure, everyone – except Grandmama, who always breakfasted alone – was seated around the breakfast table.

‘Thank God!’ exclaimed Mama, as soon as Amelia’s dishevelled head appeared around the dining-room door.

‘Where on earth have you been?’ thundered Papa at the same time. He stood up from the table and leant threateningly across the breakfast things.

Amelia entered the room shamefacedly and sat at her place. It was clear from the state of the breakfast table that Mary Ann hadn’t been there to supervise its laying. Cutlery lay about haphazardly and there was no butter knife.

‘Good morning, Papa, Mama,’ said Amelia, shaking out her napkin and smoothing it on her lap. ‘Mary Ann and I have been out for a walk. Sorry we’re late back. Did you have to get the breakfast yourself, Mama? What a shame!’ And calmly Amelia spread butter on a piece of cold, hard toast.

‘Went for a walk! You and Mary Ann!’ Papa repeated, incoherent with anger.

‘That’s right, Papa,’ said Amelia sweetly. Her knees were wobbling under the tablecloth, but she thought it best to maintain an unruffled aspect. If she showed that she was nervous or guilty, it would only draw suspicion on herself. So she tried to act as if going out for a walk with Mary Ann in the early morning and keeping her from her work was the most natural, normal behaviour imaginable.

‘What do you mean by this, Amelia?’ said Papa,
beginning
to be able to construct a coherent question at last.

‘Nothing, Papa,’ replied Amelia steadily.

‘Don’t you “nothing-Papa” me, young lady!’

‘I’m sorry, Papa.’ Amelia knees shook more than ever, and her hands shook too. She laid down her knife, and put her hands in her lap, so that her parents wouldn’t see how agitated she was.

But Amelia’s mother noticed. ‘Hush, Charles,’ she said softly, and then, turning to her daughter: ‘Your father and I have been very worried, Amelia.’

‘Me too,’ said Edmund, who’d sat wide-eyed through the scene so far.

‘I’m sorry, Mama,’ murmured Amelia, looking at her plate, which had a floral pattern on it and curlicues around the edge.

‘I think you have a duty to tell us where you’ve been.’

‘We didn’t mean to be late for breakfast. We thought we’d be back before you were all up.’

‘Back from where, Amelia?’

‘I’m sorry, Mama, I can’t tell you that.’ Amelia’s body had stopped shaking, but her limbs felt cold and her throat ached.

‘What do you mean, can’t tell?’ Papa broke in. Before she could answer, he went on: ‘No daughter of mine is going to go wandering about the streets in the middle of the night with a servant girl. I absolutely forbid you to do anything of the sort again, Amelia. Do you hear me, Amelia?’

‘Yes, Papa,’ whispered Amelia, still staring at her plate.

‘And now, you will tell us where you’ve been.’

‘I’m sorry, Papa.’

‘Sorry is not enough, Amelia. Where – have – you – been?’

‘I’m sorry, Papa,’ Amelia whispered again, steadfastly avoiding her father’s eye.

‘Hush, Charles,’ said Amelia’s mother again.

‘Don’t tell me to hush in my own house, Roberta!’

‘Oh please,’ wailed Amelia, looking up, ‘please don’t quarrel over me. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’ And she snatched her napkin up from her lap and buried her face in it.

Edmund jumped up from his seat, without asking if he might leave the table, and ran to his sister. He put his two thin arms around her and patted her back
awkwardly
. ‘There, there,’ he said, ‘there, there.’

Amelia’s arms crept around the little boy, and she kept her head hidden in his bony shoulder, and the two
rocked back and forth, Edmund still saying ‘There, there,’ at intervals.

After a few moments, Amelia dabbed her face with her napkin and looked up at her parents. Her father sat stony-faced and her mother looked anxiously from daughter to father but said nothing.

‘Oh, Amelia!’ said her father in an anguished voice at last. ‘You must see that we just can’t have you behaving like this, and most particularly, we can’t have you
wandering
about and not letting us know where you are. It’s terribly, terribly worrying for us. You could have been knocked down in the street by a runaway horse or you might have fallen into the canal or anything, and we wouldn’t even have known where you were.’

‘Yes, I know. I just didn’t think,’ said Amelia, a small sob escaping with the words.

‘There, there,’ said Edmund again, patting Amelia’s knee, now that she was sitting up straight.

‘It’s all right, darling,’ said Amelia to her brother. ‘You go and finish your breakfast, now.’ And Edmund, with a final pat, left her side and went back to his scrambled egg.

‘I have to go now,’ said Amelia’s father, standing up again. ‘But by the time I get home this evening, I want a full account of this morning’s escapade.’ But even though he still sounded cross, he gave his daughter a
little
squeeze on the shoulder as he left the room.

In silence, Amelia crunched her toast. In silence,
Edmund finished his scrambled egg. In silence, Mama drank her breakfast coffee.

‘May I be excused please, Mama?’ asked Edmund at last, sliding off his chair, even as he sought permission to do so.

‘Yes, Edmund, dear, of course,’ said Mama, and patted his head as he walked by her chair.

Edmund in turn patted Amelia again as he passed her chair, and, with great tact, he closed the door very softly behind him.

Amelia and her mother sat in silence for a little longer, Amelia keeping her gaze averted. But she couldn’t
sustain
this for long, and when she’d washed down the beastly cold toast with beastly bitter cold coffee, she
finally
lifted her face and looked her mother in the eye.

‘I went to see Frederick Goodbody off on the boat for France,’ she said quietly. ‘Please don’t blame Mary Ann. She only came because she said she couldn’t have me wandering the streets on my own. It’s not her fault.’

‘Oh, Amelia!’ Her mother leant across the table and lightly touched the back of Amelia’s hand where it lay in a fist beside her plate.

‘I knew you and Papa wouldn’t approve, and I’m sorry to have gone against your wishes, but I’m afraid I am not sorry to have gone.’

‘Poor Frederick!’ said Mama.

Amelia looked at her in surprise. Foolish Frederick, she thought Mama might have said, or Bad Frederick or
Reckless Frederick. After all, Mama was an active
pacifist
, a member of the Fellowship for Reconciliation and the Women’s League for Peace and Freedom.

‘Did you say “Poor Frederick”?’ she asked. Why, this was just what she thought herself!

‘Why, yes. That poor lad, off to fight in such a
horrible
, filthy, bloody, man-slaughtering war. What sort of chance has he got out there? The poor, poor lad, and his poor, sad parents, how wretched they must feel!’
Amelia’s
mother’s eyes filled with tears. ‘And poor Amelia, too. You must find it very hard, darling.’

Amelia thought the conversation was taking a curious turn. She expected that her mother would have chided her for her foolishness and defiance in walking to the North Wall to see the soldiers off, but instead she was being sympathetic about Frederick. She felt quite choked up.

‘He didn’t have anyone else to see him off, Mama,’ she said, determined to explain her action, even though no explanation was being required of her.

‘No, no, of course not, of course not. His parents were so opposed to his going. Such folly.’

Amelia wasn’t sure whether the folly applied to
Frederick
or to Frederick’s parents, so she said nothing in reply to this. After a while she asked: ‘Why do you say it is such a filthy, bloody war, Mama?’

‘Oh, child, all wars are filthy and bloody. That is why we are so opposed to them. But I believe this one is
particularly filthy and bloody. Thousands of young men are being killed every week. And for what, for what?’

‘Thousands, Mama?’ Amelia thought she must be exaggerating.

‘Thousands,’ confirmed her mother.

‘So you don’t mind that I went?’

‘No, no. Just because we don’t approve of what
Frederick
is doing doesn’t mean that we would want to be unkind to him. You did the right thing.’

Amelia beamed.

‘But,’ her mother went on, ‘you were wrong to do it in secret. You were wrong to sneak out of the house in the night like a wayward servant, and you were wrong to
involve
Mary Ann in your duplicity.’

Amelia stopped beaming and looked at her plate again, but her heart was light. She knew Mama was right, but she didn’t see how else she could have behaved. And she was pretty sure that Mama would put it all right with Papa that evening.

‘Mama, we saw Countess Markievicz marching through the streets with the Citizen Army. They had guns, Mama, real ones.’

‘Oh dear, oh dear, that foolish woman!’ said Mama, shaking her head.

‘She was a friend of yours, Mama. I remember.’

‘I knew her some years ago, when she was working for women’s suffrage. She’s always been interested in the nationalist cause.’

‘Mama, what do you think of the nationalist cause? Mary Ann has very strong feelings about it.’

‘Well, I agree with Mary Ann, to a very great extent, Amelia. There have been a great many injustices in this country. But as a pacifist I can’t condone the use of
violence
, no matter how strongly people may feel about these issues. I am committed to believing that the way to resolve these problems is through reconciliation. I am sad that Constance has got so mixed up with the violent side of the nationalist cause now. There are rumours that she is drilling youngsters and teaching them to shoot and let off bombs. That can’t be right, Amelia, and it’s very, very dangerous.’

Amelia felt uncomfortable at this little pacifist lecture, though she knew Mama was right.

‘Women are going to get the vote, Mama, aren’t we?’ she asked, to change the subject.

‘Well, I hope so. But while this wretched war is on, there will be no developments. Everything has to stand still in war time. There is time only for the war.’