Shamrock Green (3 page)

‘Du-dunno.'

‘Turn off the waterworks, girl,' her father said. ‘I'm not impressed.' He continued to hold up the cartridge, aimed at the ceiling. He put his hand on her shoulder so she couldn't run away. ‘Have you heard what's been happening over on the quays?'

‘Nuh.'

‘Has Mr Dolan or Mr Pettu not told you?'

‘Ha'n't s-seen e-either of them,' Maeve stammered.

To her mother she might seem much older than ten but to her father she was still a little girl of five or six, trusting, innocent and loving. She wouldn't have lied to him then. She would have been incapable of lying to him then. He cursed the influences that had made her so furtive and deceitful.

He said, ‘Well, one poor woman and two men are dead and the whole town's buzzing with government officials looking for someone to blame.'

Maeve said, ‘It was the soldiers, the soldiers are to blame.'

‘So,' her father said, ‘you
have
heard about it. Where are they?'

‘What?'

‘The guns. Sure and they're here, are they not?'

She pursed her lips to stifle tears. She wasn't fey the way her mother had been once. She was stubborn. Gowry felt a tiny prickle of pride in his heart at her defiance even though it was he himself she was defying. He was Irish enough to respect her courage but he scented danger in what had happened in the quays, more so now that a war was boiling up in Europe.

‘What if they are?' Maeve said. ‘I'm not the one to say they are, but what if they are? Are we not the martyrs to the foreign rule just like – just like Belgium?'

‘What's this?' Gowry said, still crouched, still holding her by the shoulder. ‘Where have you been hearing such nonsense?'

‘It is not nonsense,' Maeve said then, her nerve breaking, tossed back her head and bawled at the pitch of her voice,
‘Mam. Mam-eee.'

He straightened, cupped his fist over the shiny cartridge he'd found glinting under the slant of the stairs where Turk or Charlie had dropped it, and released his daughter. She was off in an instant, darting out through the kitchen into the enclosed yard, and he felt again the panic that he'd felt so often before, the terrible clawing fear that something bad would happen to her, something he would be powerless to prevent.

Sylvie appeared from the dining-room. No one had shown up for dinner that evening, not even Mr Dolan. Gowry wondered where Dolan had got to. He was a milk-and-water old nationalist and unlikely to venture out into the streets when trouble was brewing.

‘What's wrong? Where's Maeve?' Sylvie said.

‘She's gone out the back.'

‘Has she? Why?'

‘Because I showed her this': the cartridge erect in his fingers. ‘Because I asked her where her granddad had hidden the guns.'

‘Guns?'

‘Don't
you
start, Sylvie,' Gowry said. ‘I know there's tackle here. Do you want me to tear the place apart to find it?' He didn't wait for her reply but went on. ‘My dada was here this afternoon, wasn't he? Was Charlie with him?'

‘I have no idea what—'

‘Sylvie, waken up,' he snapped. ‘If the peelers find smuggled guns under our roof they'll shut down the hotel and drag me off to the Castle. Do you suppose my father or Charlie will step forward and confess? Not them. They'll let me take the blame without a qualm of conscience and mourn only because the shooters have been lost. What did they bring and where have they hidden it?'

‘You're not going to turn them over?' Sylvie said.

‘I won't turn them over. I just want to know what they brought.'

‘I won't let you turn them over.'

‘You've no say in the matter.'

‘The Shamrock's mine. You said it was mine.'

‘Licensed in your name, Sylvie, paid for with our money.'

‘Forbes's money.'

For the first time in years she had uttered Forbes's name. She thought Gowry would be shocked to hear it again from her lips, to be reminded that she had been bought off with money enough to purchase the goodwill of the Shamrock's previous owners and the remainder of the lease.

Once the name was out she felt guilty. Truth was that she could hardly remember Forbes McCulloch or the intensity of her feelings for him. Even so, the sensation of reliving something that had happened before was strong and connected her to what had taken place that afternoon in the sitting-room when she had held Mr Hagarty's hand and felt his blood drip into her palm.

‘All right,' Gowry conceded. ‘Forbes's money. It's immaterial now.' He put the cartridge into his pocket and glanced upstairs. ‘What is it, guns?'

‘Yes, it's guns,' Sylvie said. ‘You'll have heard what went on today?'

‘I have,' said Gowry.

‘They were desperate.'

‘Who was it – Charlie?'

‘Daniel and Charlie and Turk.'

‘Is that all?'

‘A boy, just a boy, was with them, and a man. I don't know who he was.'

‘Had they been out at Howth with the volunteers?'

‘I think they had, yes.'

Gowry said, ‘I might have known my old man would be mixed up with gun-running and wouldn't rest happy until he got me tangled in it too. Where did he stow the tackle, Sylvie?'

‘I don't know. I haven't been upstairs since they left.'

Gowry grunted and headed for the stairs.

Sylvie switched on the electrical light that would guide him to the first floor. Above that there was no wiring and he would have to light one of the oil lamps that were set out on a long whatnot on the second landing. She watched him swarm up the stairs two at a time and, after a moment, followed him, prompted by the fear that he would find out that Fran Hagarty had been here.

She followed the oil lamp to the top floor. There was no wallpaper on the walls only bare boarding. The rooms were small as closets. She watched the distortions of the lamplight as Gowry went from room to room. He even peered into the attic, though it contained nothing but a few dusty trunks and the water cisterns. He came back to the head of the stairs. Sylvie trailed down floor by floor after her husband while he flung open bedroom doors, poked into closets and looked under beds.

‘Who's in this room?'

‘Mr Rice.'

‘Where is he?'

‘In the bar along with the others. They've been out walking together, I think, seeing the sights.'

‘Some sights!' said Gowry. ‘Who else is booked in?'

‘No one,' Sylvie said.

They were on the second floor now. The corridor was tee-shaped and one window looked out into the road. The rooms here were long let to Mr Pettu, who worked for a Catholic wine merchant, and Mr Dolan, who existed on a meagre pension from the port authority. He had been a harbour pilot until his eyesight had failed. He had no living relative left in the world. He had been here when the McCullochs had taken over the hotel and in all likelihood he would die here.

Gowry paused. He glanced at Sylvie at the stairhead. She shook her head and shrugged. Gowry knocked on Dolan's door.

‘Mr Dolan, Mr Dolan are you there?'

There was a smell of smoke from the lamp but no other smell, save the dry, summer-night odour of the house itself. It was still daylight outside, twilight, but the window at the corridor's end did not admit much light. Gowry gave the lamp a shake, making the oil in the base slop and the flame run up the wick.

‘Mr Dolan?'

Gowry rattled the door handle.

‘Go away.'

‘Mr Dolan, what're you doing in there, sitting in the dark?'

‘Go away.'

‘You've not had your dinner, Mr Dolan,' Sylvie called out. ‘Are you sick?'

‘Go away.'

From the pocket of her apron she fished out the key that opened all the bedroom doors. She walked along the corridor and gave the key to Gowry. He handed her the lamp. She held it in both hands and watched Gowry stoop and fit the key and turn it.

‘Mr Dolan, I'm coming in.'

‘Ah no, ah no, ah no,' the old man moaned. ‘Ah no, my dear God, no.'

Gowry opened the door. Sylvie held out the lamp.

Mr Dolan was hunched in the half-light on the side of the bed, his feet propped on the boxes. He looked not cross but terrified. He wore woollen stockings and an undershirt and his braces hung slack on his shoulders. In a frame above the bed was a print of the Sacred Heart and on the dressing-table a small plaster statue of the Virgin.

‘So this is where you've been hiding yourself, Mr Dolan?' Gowry said. ‘And what's this you have for a footstool? I don't recall having put in any new furniture.'

‘Oh, God! Oh, Mother of God!'

Sylvie had never seen a man so terrified. His ancient yellow eyes stared out of his head, popping with the fear in him. His legs and arms twitched and his head flew back and forth on his leathery neck, denying the obvious. He was afraid of Gowry, Sylvie realised, of her husband's denunciation, his anger.

‘Ah now, and it's all right,' Gowry said gently.

‘They told me, they told me not to tell you.'

‘Sure and what else did they tell you?' Gowry said.

‘It was for Ireland, they told me, for the sake of the country.'

‘And so it was,' Sylvie heard herself say. ‘So it is, Mr Dolan.'

Gowry was on one knee, hands flat on the lid of the box. It looked, Sylvie thought, as if he were praying over the coffin of a child.

‘Did they tell you what's in the boxes, Mr Dolan?' Gowry said.

‘For Ireland, they said. For Ireland.'

Gowry drummed his fingers on the wood. ‘Well, I'll be taking them away, if you've no objection. There is no room for them here.'

‘You'll tell. You'll tell them. You'll tell him I told you.'

‘Nah,' said Gowry. ‘Nah, nah, Mr Dolan. It'll be our secret. You go on downstairs now and Mrs McCulloch will see you fed. When you come back, or soon after, there will be nothing here.'

‘They said…'

‘Who said: my father?' Gowry, standing now, asked.

‘Him. He came up with them afterward.'

‘Who did?'

‘Mr Hagarty,' said Mr Dolan. ‘He told me it was for the good of the mother country. He gave me the drink and money for the drink and he told me not to tell you the tackle was in my room – and now I have.'

‘Hagarty?' said Gowry, frowning. ‘Who the devil's Hagarty?'

He glanced round at Sylvie. She shook her head.

She put the lamp on the floor, came forward and, reaching over the boxes, took Mr Dolan's hand and lifted him up.

‘Come,' she said. ‘Mr Rice is downstairs. You like Mr Rice, do you not? And Mr Pettu will be in from church any minute. He'll tell you what's been going on. Come on, Mr Dolan. I've stew in the pot and it'll spoil.'

He rose reluctantly, trembling still, and clambered over the boxes with the German words stencilled on the sides. Sylvie supported him while he hoisted up his braces and groped for his boots. She was annoyed at how poor Mr Dolan had been used by Fran Hagarty but at the same time she was impressed by the soft-voiced, insistent ruthlessness that had bewitched an old man and led him willy-nilly into abetting a cause he did not fully understand.

‘What are you going to do, Gowry?' she asked from the doorway. ‘You're not going to hand them over, are you?'

‘No, not that,' Gowry said. ‘I'm going to hide them, hide them where they won't be found.'

‘And where might that be?' Sylvie asked.

‘Never you mind, dearest,' Gowry answered. ‘Ah no, never you mind.'

*   *   *

First thing in the morning as soon as breakfast was over Sylvie put on her straw bonnet and best jacket and set off for Amiens Street railway station.

The day was soft but hazy and there were thin strands of cloud that might turn to rain later. Newspaper billboards shouted out the massacre. In town there was a queer drone in the air like a beehive about to swarm. In the streets and in the railway station the police were much in evidence, burly-looking officers from the Royal Irish Constabulary. Around the ticket-office and the platform gate were little parcels of soldiers with carbines slung over their shoulders. She bought a ticket to Malahide and boarded the train just three or four minutes before it pulled out. She sat with her hands folded, small as a child, her shoes hardly touching the floor and listened to the chat in the compartment about what had happened to the poor innocents in Bachelor's Walk.

She listened to the talk jabbering back and forth, and said nothing. Today it was a different sort of nothing, though. Today she listened intently to her fellow-travellers' opinions and thought how easy it would be to jump in and tell them a tale that would shut their gobs quick enough and how they would regard her then not as a neat, pretty little woman in a cheap straw bonnet but as someone involved, a friend of the great Fran Hagarty.

Nine miles the line ran, the train stopping now and then. When it came out on the flat land with the sea on the right Sylvie looked out at the sea for a moment or two then inland while the train jogged past Towers, a couple of miles short of Malahide. Away across the barley fields were the whitewashed walls of the brewery and, sheltered by elms, the two-storey cottage where Gowry's father lived with his wife Kay and the remnant of their brood.

She got off the train at Malahide and, ignoring the gigs at the pavement's edge, headed out of town on foot. There was no breeze to speak of but the waves broke in creamy arcs across the sand and out to sea the sails of the water wags were full. Children, bright and tiny, played at the water's edge. She walked quickly and soon left the trippers behind.

She had been to Towers only three or four times, for Gowry's mother, Kay, who had been born a Franklin and who spent much of the year in Glasgow staying with Forbes, had never made her welcome. There had never been enough coming in from brewing hardly to feed them, Gowry claimed, and certainly not enough to satisfy his mother's aspirations and pay off the debts his father accrued by betting on three-legged horses. These days Charlie and young Peter kept the brewery ticking over while Daniel messed about with the affairs of the brotherhood.