Shamrock Green (35 page)

‘Do they pay rent?'

‘Aye.'

Sylvie said, ‘Who collects the rent?'

‘I do.'

‘What if they won't pay – or can't?'

‘Fran sees to it.'

Sylvie let out her breath. She felt better now, much better. Fran hadn't gone at all. He was still here in Endicott Street and would be with her for years to come, for all eternity perhaps. No, she told herself, not for all eternity. Fran was dead, missing, gone to America. Something. What he'd left behind were the mysteries that remained in the aftermath of a life cut short, elements and issues left unsettled to which she, like the girl and the children and the Irish cause, were somehow all attached.

She put her hands flat on the mattress upon which Fran and she had first made love and pushed herself to her feet.

Pauline stopped swaying, drew the child up from his precarious position in the slack of her arm and hugged him tightly to her bosom.

‘I'm going now,' Sylvie said. ‘I'll be back soon.'

‘Back here?'

‘Yes,' Sylvie said. ‘In the meantime, Pauline, I'd be terribly obliged if you'd lend me half a crown.'

‘What for?'

‘A pork pie, a glass of stout, and a ticket to Malahide.'

*   *   *

Sylvie didn't begin to panic until she reached the seaside town and set off down the country road into the darkness. Up to that point she had put so much faith in her daughter that it hadn't occurred to her that Maeve might not be at Towers at all, but once doubt entered her mind it spread like wildfire and with her boots flapping painfully about her chafed calves, she broke into a run.

The rain had ceased and the night was mild and almost windless but the country road was darker than anything she was used to and she fell and tore her hands and elbows, and rose up and ran on again, sobbing in fear and desperation and calling out Maeve's name long before the square, whitewashed shape of the brewery came into view and the lights of the McCullochs' cottage.

She reached the cottage at last and bleeding, dishevelled and wild with grief she threw herself against the front door. Daniel opened it warily.

‘Are they here? Are they here?'

‘Aye, lass,' he told her. ‘They're here, all safe and sound.'

And Sylvie, swamped by relief, blacked out.

*   *   *

In the early hours of the morning she dragged herself from Maeve's side and went downstairs to feed Sean by the kitchen stove. She couldn't get warm, couldn't stop shivering. It was not until she'd bared her breast and felt her son's lips close upon her nipple that she came back into herself, and the shivering ceased. She was still filled with a strange accusatory aggression, as if everything that had taken place had been Daniel McCulloch's fault, as if he were to blame for her falling in love with Fran and driving Gowry away, for Fran's murder and the destruction of the Shamrock.

Her mind was a great ungainly jumble of guilt and anger and the sleep that had come upon her after her swoon had been more feverish than restful. When she'd heard Sean whimpering in the room next door she had wakened and had gone to him at once. The old woman had been sitting up in bed, the nightgown falling from her shoulders, a nightcap tied over her grey hair, her eyes bleary in the light of the lamp that she had lit only a moment previously. Daniel had lain lumped beside her and had stirred and rolled over but hadn't wakened, as if the infant's cry had been but a memory.

Sylvie had lifted Sean from the drawer and had carried him downstairs to the patch of light that fell from the grate in the stove. Seating herself on one of the kitchen chairs, she had exposed her breast and had let him suckle. A moment later she heard the creak of the stairs and lamplight brightened the kitchen.

‘You should have slept,' Gran McCulloch said. ‘I'd have given him his bottle.'

‘He's my son. I'll feed him.'

Gran put the lamp on the table and stationed herself behind Sylvie. For fully a minute there was no sound in the kitchen save the baby's little grunts.

‘Is it true what you told Daniel?' Gran said. ‘Is Hagarty dead?'

‘Yes.'

‘Are you sure?'

‘I saw him shot in cold blood. I witnessed it with my own eyes.'

‘What of my boys, Charlie and Peter? Have you any word on them?'

She had no cause to resent the woman's question. Perhaps what she really resented was the fact that Gran McCulloch hadn't lived up to the low opinion she, Sylvie, had of her. The conspiratorial bond between Forbes and Kay McCulloch had always troubled her. She thought back to the sight of the Shamrock blown to pieces, thought too of the soldiers crowding into the yard and what slaughter would be wreaked in Watton's warehouse if there was any resistance. In her concern for herself she had all but forgotten that Charlie and Peter were fighting for their lives. She glanced round at the woman's drawn features and realised how selfish she'd been, that Kay McCulloch must be just as worried about her sons as she had been about Maeve and Sean.

‘I'm sorry,' she said.

‘Is it bad with them?' Gran McCulloch said.

‘Yes, it's bad,' Sylvie said and proceeded to tell the woman what she had witnessed in Sperryhead Road.

‘They won't surrender.'

‘No, I don't think they will,' said Sylvie.

Gran McCulloch put her hand to her cheek and sighed. ‘Then they'll all be gone, all my fine boys.'

It was out before she could prevent it: ‘Except Forbes.' There was nothing sharp in the tilt of the old woman's chin. The motion was too small to be significant, yet Sylvie bridled at it. ‘Is it because of Forbes you don't like me?'

‘I don't want you going back to Glasgow, throwing yourself on his mercy and starting it all up again.'

‘I wouldn't go back to Glasgow for all the tea in China,' Sylvie said. ‘I shouldn't have taken up with Fran Hagarty, I admit, but I'm not the only one to blame for Gowry joining the army. You must bear some responsibility for that. How is your dear son Forbes, by the way? I take it
he's
not in uniform.'

‘He has ships to build.'

‘Navy contracts?'

‘Yes.'

‘How profitable that must be,' said Sylvie.

‘This is hardly the time to be talking about Forbes.'

‘You're right,' Sylvie said, without sympathy now, ‘not when you've three other sons fighting for their lives.'

‘On opposite sides,' said Kay McCulloch. ‘I think that's what galls me most of all. You Irish, you and your causes.'

‘I'm not Irish.'

‘No, but your son is, and your daughter.'

‘Well, we both made the same mistake, didn't we?' Sylvie said. ‘We were both daft enough to marry Irishmen.'

‘Was Gowry not good enough for you?'

‘Oh, Gowry was – Gowry is a good man, a very good man.'

‘Then why did you betray him?'

‘He didn't love me,' Sylvie said.

‘Did Forbes love you?'

‘Forbes would have married me if you hadn't pushed him into marrying his rich cousin instead.'

‘Forbes never had any intention of marrying you. I knew what you were from the first: a conniving wee trollop who thought she could get herself out of the gutter by marrying my son.'

‘But I did,' said Sylvie. ‘I did marry your son. I married Gowry.'

Brain-weary, soggy with grief, anger and anxiety, she had hoped that she might hold out the olive branch and that Kay McCulloch might snatch at it. But it was not to be. Just as she blamed Daniel and the brotherhood for all the bad things that had happened so her mother-in-law blamed her for the tragedies that shadowed her life.

Sylvie drew Sean from her breast to let him rest.

She looked down into the grate and seemed to see there the flames that had poured out of the Shamrock, the great soft, devouring flames from the gas pipe that would consume all that was left of her lovely Dublin house. It hadn't crossed her mind that Forbes might still think fondly of their days together, that she still might have a pull on him.

Glasgow, Forbes, her father, home and redemption; she wondered.

Kay McCulloch said, ‘What are you going to do, Sylvie?'

‘Take care of my children until Gowry comes back.'

‘If, as you say, your house is in ruins, where will you stay?'

‘Is that an invitation?'

‘No,' the woman said, not forcefully. ‘You can stay here until matters in Dublin are settled but after that…'

‘Have no fear, Kay, you won't have to put up with us for long.'

‘Do you have insurance for the Shamrock?'

‘Of course not. Even if I had, do you think the insurance company would pay me what the building's worth? I doubt it. Some folk might try to wring compensation from the government but it'll cost more in lawyer's fees than I can afford. No, I'll find work and a place to stay and try to keep body and soul together until my husband returns.'

‘And finds you nursing another man's child?'

‘Gowry's a good man. He'll forgive me.'

The woman seemed about to speak again, then changed her mind.

She went into the pantry and came out with a batch of freshly laundered towels. She placed them on the end of the stove and, kneeling, rattled up the coals in the grate and shifted the kettle on to the aperture to make it boil faster.

‘He'll need changed,' she said. ‘Will I do it?'

‘I'll do it myself. Thank you all the same,' said Sylvie.

The woman leaned against the iron and folded her arms. ‘You're very sure of yourself, Sylvie. Did Hagarty give you money?'

‘He did not. Fran never had any money.'

‘That's not what Daniel says.'

‘Daniel can say what he likes.'

‘What if Gowry doesn't come back?' Gran McCulloch asked.

‘He will,' said Sylvie. ‘I know he will.'

‘What makes you so sure?'

‘He has nowhere else to go,' Sylvie said.

PART FOUR

Gowry

Chapter Eighteen

Once affairs at Hulluch had been settled the Rifles' 2nd Battalion was pulled out of the line and promised leave. Naturally, there was no question of being allowed to return to Ireland and the lads were under no illusions that they would soon be part of the big push that everyone knew was coming. Even so a certain party spirit reigned over the training grounds and the drills they were required to undertake to earn their five-day passes did not seem too arduous.

Gowry had received his new pay book, duly signed and stamped, and had no inkling that he'd been reported missing. It would have astonished him to learn that his family was grieving for him and that his friend, Maggie Leonard, had mourned his passing along with that of her lovely son, Maurice, and, defeated at last, had sold her ponies, abandoned the cottage in the emerald hills and had gone to stay with her daughters in Boston.

He had written to Maggie, a most difficult letter. He had informed her that he had been with Maurice at the end, that Maurice had died bravely and that she should be proud of him.

In fact, he had no idea how Maurice had died. He assumed that the sergeant had simply been mown down by that damned machine-gun, like so many of the Connaughts. He could reveal nothing about the raid to Maggie, however, and fell back on platitudes and clichés, pathetic in their inadequacy to convey sympathy. He wrote her again from the temporary billet at Mallefort before the battalion moved on. But if she replied to his letters her answers failed to reach him and it was almost as if the woman had died with her son in the darkness west of Heuvert.

In the late May month, under a warm sun, sweating at the tasks that mean-mouthed sergeants allotted him, Gowry spared little thought for Maggie Leonard or the rest of the folks back home. His mother's letter had angered him, but once he'd calmed down he found some satisfaction in imagining Sylvie big with child and in the punishment nature had inflicted on that insidious seducer, Fran Hagarty, who would be stuck now with all the responsibilities of fatherhood. The news that Sylvie was pregnant also freed him from the constraints of conscience and gave him hope that his relationship with Becky might blossom into something more enduring than a paper romance. With that thought in mind he booked two rooms in a hotel near the great cathedral in Amiens that one of the quartermaster sergeants had told him about, and wrote to Becky inviting her to join him there for a few days' leave.

He waited anxiously for Becky's reply and lay huddled in his scratchy blankets counting all the impediments that circumstances could throw at him and all the military folderol and fatuous objections that might prevent Becky taking leave from Saint-Emile.

Amiens was a refuge for high brass, war correspondents and enlisted men alike. The city had not been beaten into the ground and offered many of the comforts of home to weary soldiers. There he would have a bath, a shampoo and a haircut and get his uniform properly cleaned. Then he would eat good home-cooked food, drink a few beers and stroll with Becky through the cathedral or go out to look at the market gardens and the boats on the canals and perhaps the poppy fields that flanked the road to Albert. The war would not be far away, however. Gowry guessed that they would be able to hear the rumble of the guns and that the night sky would glow brighter than moonlight; but he didn't care. He would be with his nurse, he would kiss her, hug her, feel her breasts pressing against his chest and if the gods were on his side, and Becky willing, would make love to her in a bed with clean sheets.

Becky's letter arrived just two days before leave passes were due to be distributed. She would, she said, be delighted to join him in Amiens on 22nd May and had successfully completed all arrangements at her end. She was, she said, greatly looking forward to renewing their acquaintance and was sure they would find many interesting things to do in the cathedral town.