Shamrock Green (37 page)

‘Not in Dublin, no.'

‘Not even your mother?'

‘Especially not my mother.'

‘How sad.'

‘Well, I made my own bed and I'll have to lie on it,' Gowry said. ‘But it's different now; some things have changed.'

‘Have they?' She squeezed his hand. ‘Yes, they have.'

‘You know I'm not a Catholic, don't you?'

‘Yes.'

‘But you are.'

‘Nominally,' Becky said.

‘Nominally? What does that mean?' Gowry asked. ‘When you're confirmed in the Roman faith don't you sign on for life?'

‘I suppose you could say I've lapsed.'

‘Does that make a difference?'

‘To what?'

‘If – I mean, after the war – if we…'

‘If we both live through it,' Becky said, ‘we'll worry about it then.'

‘Do you know what I'm talking about?' said Gowry with a trace of annoyance. ‘I'm serious about this, Becky.'

‘I know you are,' Becky said.

‘I – I'd like to know where we stand.'

‘After the war,' she said, ‘after the war we'll make plans.'

He nodded. ‘So we don't tempt fate?'

‘No,' Becky said, ‘it would never do to tempt fate.'

One of the serving girls brought a great blue bowl to the table and placed it between them. Gowry looked down at the light brown crust on the dish in the bowl and then, raising his eyebrows, said, ‘What on earth is that?'

‘Picardy pudding,' Becky answered and, smiling, handed him her spoon.

*   *   *

There was thunder in the air, though you could hardly distinguish it from the grumble of the guns along the winding course of the Somme. You could smell the heat, and the thunder, presaging rain, seemed frail and distant over the poppy fields. Becky could see nothing of the poppy fields from the window of the hotel. She looked down on a cobbled side street with soldiers spilling out of bars and cafés: Frenchmen, Irishmen, English, even the odd Jock reeling and prancing and holding up his kilt like a washerwoman. Music added another dimension: an accordion, a Victrola playing dance tunes, soldiers chanting about Piccadilly and Leicester Square and, like a descant, the whistle of a locomotive hauling ordnance to the front. She shivered when Gowry touched her. He caressed her so lightly that the material of the borrowed nightdress tickled her spine.

Gowry drew back. ‘I'm sorry,' he said. ‘I thought you were…'

She reached behind her, took his hand and put it to her waist.

‘It's all right,' she said. ‘It's just this dashed nightdress.'

‘It's beautiful.'

‘It's Angela's – and it tickles.'

‘Take it off then,' Gowry said.

He was wearing a nightshirt. She was glad it wasn't pyjamas; she had seen too many sick men in pyjamas. Her cousin Robbie had worn a nightshirt, a pretty little garment of pure Irish lawn that she had washed and ironed a dozen times without it becoming worn. She remembered how he'd looked in the nightshirt when he was only half grown, how he would come out into the kitchen yard behind her aunt's house of a morning, bare-legged and barefoot and throw himself against her as if she were his rock, his mainstay.

What age had she been then? Twelve or thirteen.

Gowry was rough by comparison. His palms were flinty from digging trenches and snagged on the nightdress when he closed them about her hips. Big, rough soldier's hands, clumsy and broken-nailed; he spread his fingers over the bones of her hips and put his thumbs on the knob of bone at the back of her pelvis. She shuffled her feet, spread her legs, and leaned back. The strap of Angela's nightgown slid from her shoulder. Gowry's lips were on the crown of her shoulder and his belly pressing against her back, the cotton nightshirt stretched. She was moved by his tenderness and not at all afraid when he stroked her and made her wet.

He kissed her shoulder and neck.

She turned her head and kissed him on the lips. He pressed into her, his hand on her belly, and she was filled with sensations that bore no relation to what she had heard about the act of love-making, sensations so deep and insistent that she felt something going off within her like the soft, white light of a flare.

She turned in his arms and let him rub himself against her.

Another rush, another explosion, and she was gasping, gasping as if the air in the room had been robbed of oxygen. She felt dizzy, dizzy but not dopey. Everything was so vivid, so unexpectedly clear that she seemed to be standing apart from herself. He danced with her, shuffling, her legs wide apart, his hips snug between her thighs, danced with her, shuffling, until her calves struck the edge of the bed and she tumbled back on to the quilt.

‘Wait,' Gowry said. ‘Wait, please.'

He looked massive above her, the nightshirt billowing about him as he pulled it over his head. It hooked on his nose and ears and she saw him headless for an instant. His torso was lean and energetic, unlike those of the men she'd nursed at Saint-Emile or the corpses she'd washed or the diagrams she'd learned from long ago. If he had been impatient she would have cowered before him, but Gowry – her good friend Gowry – held the nightshirt down by his side and gave her time to look at him, not arrogantly but cautiously.

She reached between her knees, took a fistful of Angela's nightdress and pulled it up to her waist. She was possessed by a desperate need to show herself to him. He settled over her, hands on either side of her head. He braced himself and lowered his hips and she felt the touch of his flesh upon her, just that part of him touching her. He lowered his mouth to her mouth and she let his tongue enter her mouth, and the thing beneath, the thing between them entered her too. Again she experienced the explosive shock and the trembling that came after it. She was wet now, wetter than she had ever dreamed possible and when he entered her properly it was smooth not hesitant and it was she, not he, who tilted up her hips and brought him down and into her.

One solitary flash of pain, one stab of pain, then she was filled with him, filled with love, love and no fear, pleasure and no fear.

And he asked, ‘Yes?'

And she answered, ‘Yes, Gowry. Yes, my love. Yes.'

Chapter Nineteen

Mass on Sunday was well attended by French and Irish soldiers. Gowry needed no persuasion to accompany Rebecca to a mid-morning service. They had already ventured inside the cathedral and marvelled at its space and Gothic splendour, and at the astonishing number of sandbags that had been stacked against the walls. In fact, it struck Gowry that the cathedral of Our Lady in Amiens must be the best-built bunker in the whole of France.

The mass was conducted in Latin. Becky did not understand it any more than did Gowry but she followed the form with a piety that Gowry envied. He wished he could pray so devoutly, preferably in Latin, for the souls of the glorious dead, for Maurice, Donnaghy and Tom Ring, even for poor old Lieutenant Quinn; pray too for his own salvation and negotiate with Rebecca's version of God to bring them both safely out of the valley of the shadow. But somehow he felt that the uncompromising potency of Catholicism might be mocked by prayers from a milk-and-water Protestant and, for the sake of what was left of his soul, he'd better not indulge in such hypocrisy.

The priests were very old and seemed bowed by the weight of their vestments. In contrast, the altar boys were very young, too young, Gowry reckoned, for the tasks they were expected to perform. When he leaned out into the aisle he saw that several of the boys were barefoot under their angel gowns, their heels browned by seepage from the sandbags.

Gowry did not offer himself for the sacrament but he was impressed and a little bit amused by the speed with which the priests dispensed the wafers and the wine; God's army, it seemed, was more efficient than most regiments. His amusement faded, however, when Becky returned to her seat and knelt to pray. When she rose from her knees she gave him a smile, a little, wistful, glistening smile that almost broke his heart.

He was still thinking of that smile when the mass ended and they moved with the crowd towards the door.

By the doors were iron racks of candles, dumpy little stumps that burned with yellow light. Beside the racks were a long trough filled with candles and a big worn wooden box to hold the coins. Smoke seeped up into the arch and many women and some men, soldiers, knelt on the stone. High above the racks was an effigy of Christ flecked with paint and grey with age. The Mother, Mary, flanked Him. She was serene and beautiful, unwithered by the prayers that floated around her.

Gowry watched Becky select a candle, light it from a taper, kiss the air over the flame and stick it down quite forcefully into the dripping wax. She bent her knee and crossed herself; lapsed or not, Becky Tarrant hadn't abandoned her beliefs entirely. She returned to him, took his arm and they went out together into the warm, moist air of the morning, into streets wet with overnight rain.

The band was playing once more, drums beating out march time while behind the musicians in column of route came the gallant French Lancers and behind them a column of infantry, whiskered and moustached, each man with a shako and a rifle and a pack. They were heading across the canal to the Bois Bonvallet where, Gowry guessed, transportation awaited to carry them to relieve the forces that were defending Paris.

Hastily, he drew Becky into a side street.

‘Who did you light the candle for?' he asked.

‘My cousin.'

‘Where did he die?'

‘Not too far from here, I think.'

‘Nowhere is far from anywhere in this country,' Gowry said. ‘Who was he with, what regiment?'

‘The Gordons.'

‘An officer?'

‘Subaltern.'

‘Be Loos, I expect,' said Gowry. ‘It was bad for the Jocks at Loos.'

‘Yes,' Becky said. ‘Loos – or somewhere like it.'

She walked stiffly, hobbling a little. He wondered if he had hurt her that early morning when playfulness had given way to sudden fierce passion. There had been no tenderness in either of them and she had twisted under him with wild urgency. Her willingness to yield had surprised him but her voracity surprised him even more. He ached a little in his parts and felt so relaxed that it was almost like fatigue. He wondered if Becky felt the same way but, being a gentleman, didn't dare ask in case she thought he was bragging.

He stopped to let her rest, an arm on her shoulder.

She was smaller than he was, not much taller than Sylvie. Her hat brim was level with his chin and when he tapped it with his forefinger, she obediently lifted her head and let him kiss her.

She smiled and they strolled on again, going nowhere.

‘Do you want to go home?' Gowry said.

‘Back to the hotel?'

‘No,' he said. ‘I meant home to Scotland, to your island?'

‘I'd like to see my mother and my aunt,' Becky said. ‘But I wouldn't ever go back to Mull to live. There's nothing there for me now.'

‘Is it not peaceful?'

‘The life is hard,' she said, frowning, ‘not peaceful. Besides, most of my relatives are in Glasgow and – my sister – in Portsmouth. I couldn't find a nursing post on Mull. It's too remote.'

‘Is that what you want to do – nurse?'

‘I don't know what I want to do,' said Becky.

‘I know what I want to do,' said Gowry.

She sensed what was coming and glanced up at him. They were in a narrow street, old buildings on either side of them, picturesque old houses set above shops, pretty but somehow depressing. The shops were shuttered and some were sandbagged and the windows of the houses impenetrable.

Becky said, ‘Oh, and what
do
you want to do, Mr Irishman?'

‘Marry you.'

‘Can't,' she said.

‘Because I have a wife?'

‘Yes.'

‘If I divorced Sylvie…'

‘Are you sure you want to?'

‘I certainly have good reason,' said Gowry.

‘But do you want to? Are you
sure
you want to?'

He hesitated, then said, ‘I'm as sure as I'll ever be.'

‘The Church – my Church – won't let me marry someone who's divorced.'

‘I see.'

‘Especially a Protestant.'

‘I see,' said Gowry again.

‘If you asked me to live with you, though…'

‘What?' he said. ‘In sin?'

‘Sin! My God, after what we've been through how do you define what's sinful and what's not?' Becky said. ‘Isn't hell what we've been through, dearest? Isn't it hell we're suffering now? I love you. I'll love you until my dying day. I'll live with you, darling, because I don't think I can live without you. There! I've said it. I expect I've scared you away for ever.'

‘Don't be so bloody daft,' Gowry said, pleased.

‘How long will it last?'

‘The war?'

‘Us,' she said. ‘Us, how long will we last, Gowry?'

‘There's nothing to take me back to Dublin,' Gowry said.

‘Your daughter?'

‘Yes, well, perhaps my daughter.'

‘You see?' Becky said.

‘If the war lasts another year – and I'm damned sure it will – then Maeve'll be grown up, or nearly so, and she'll have made her life without me.'

‘With another man for a father?'

‘She likes him well enough.' Gowry grunted. ‘She admires him. He stands for things Maeve believes in. I don't know where I am, Becky, to tell you the truth.'

‘You're in Amiens,' Becky said, ‘with me.'

‘Aye, sure and that's good enough.'

‘Gowry, take me back now, please.'

‘Back?' he said. ‘Where?'

‘Home,' Becky said.

‘Home?'

‘To the hotel,' she said. ‘Home to our hotel.'