Shamrock Green (42 page)

Sylvie had no answer to give to her daughter. Perhaps, she thought desperately, it wasn't deception on Fran's part but just another manifestation of his love for her. Perhaps Fran had been afraid of Gowry, afraid that Gowry would try to steal her back. Fran couldn't have been seeking information about the whereabouts of the guns – how remote that episode seemed now, how immaterial – for the letters had not been opened. She guessed that Fran had removed them from the stand in the hallway of the Shamrock, whisked them away so she would think that Gowry no longer cared what became of her, and in so doing had cut Gowry off from the scant consolations that remained in the wake of her self-centred affair.

It was all so puzzling, so disturbingly ambiguous, like Fran himself: Fran and his women, his conspiracies, his drinking; Fran and his flattery, his charm, his generosity; Fran alone and enigmatic, cruelly condemning Gowry to his fate. And both of them dead now, both of them dead. She had no way of knowing which of them had loved her most. And no way of making amends.

Maeve gave her a shake and reached for the rest of the letters.

Sylvie yielded them without resistance.

‘And the letters I wrote to Daddy, did Fran steal them too?'

‘Probably,' Sylvie said. A month ago she would have dissolved in tears but she had changed, and when it came down to it, it hardly mattered who had done what to whom. She turned to Pauline. ‘I'll take these letters. They're mine.'

‘Aye.' Now that she knew she wasn't going to be blamed, Pauline emerged from her protective trance. ‘Take anythin' you want, Sylvie. Take the whole boxful if you like.'

How incongruous, Sylvie thought; every scrap, every jot of her life with Gowry had gone up in smoke and what she had in its place were scrappy reminders of Fran. It dawned on her then that Fran hadn't intended to write an end to his own history. He had simply left her out of it, jettisoned her with the same casual cruelty as he had jettisoned the wife and sons in Huddersfìeld. Fran Hagarty had been master of his own destiny, nobody else's.

‘Yes,' she said. ‘It might be interesting to see what else is here.'

‘Mam!'

‘Maeve,' Sylvie said, quite adamantly, ‘carry that box upstairs.'

*   *   *

On a dreary Sunday afternoon not much more than a week after her mother had found her father's letters, Maeve and Algie were playing on the pavement when a great big enormous chap whom Maeve had never seen before came striding up the street. He had a moustache but no beard, a little caterpillar moustache, far too small for the size of his face. He wore a cutaway jacket like the Irishmen in
Punch
and a bowler hat was stuck on a mop of dark brown curly hair.

Algie had been to mass with Pauline and the rest of the brood and Maeve had accompanied Sylvie and Sean to church around the corner. Now, about half past one o'clock, true blue boozers had wakened parched for a hair of the dog and, with tongues hanging out, were scuttling into Mistress Cafferty's boarding-house for young country girls which, on Sunday afternoons, somehow transformed itself into a shebeen.

Maeve had eaten dinner in Pauline's apartment. The children were still dressed in their nice neat clothes, clean and patched, and trailed the air of piety that Pauline had dinned into them out of respect for the Man on the Cross who had died for their sins and who would be waiting for them with a host of angels and a hot dinner on the day they went to heaven which, of course, wouldn't be for a long time yet.

‘Look 't him.' Algie dug Maeve in the ribs. ‘He ain't from round here.'

‘I'll bet he ain't.' Maeve leaned on Algie's shoulders as if he were a windowsill and peered at the approaching stranger. ‘I bet I know who he is, though.'

‘Sure an' you don't.'

‘Sure an' I do. I'll bet his name's Trotter.'

‘Is he a peeler?'

‘Nup, he's lookin' for me.'

Maeve's deductive powers were not stretched by the observation, for the gentleman in question had a piece of paper clutched in his fat-fingered hand and consulted it from time to time. The size of him and the length of his stride were unmistakable.

‘Mr Trotter, Mr Trotter,' Maeve called out before he could be waylaid by a stray country girl from Mistress Cafferty's. ‘Mr Trotter, we're this way.'

The man came lumbering up to them. He was so big that even Algie quailed and slid behind Maeve for protection.

‘Are you Maeve McCulloch?' the man asked.

‘I am, sir. Did Turk send you?'

‘That he did.'

He was hardly Turk's double, except in size. He had bad teeth and the curly brown hair was already turning grey and there were wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. He must be quite old, Maeve reckoned, thirty or thirty-five if he was a day.

‘Has Turk sent me a letter?' she asked.

The man shook his head. ‘You're awful young,' he said. ‘Are you sure you're Maeve McCulloch?'

‘I was when I got up this mornin',' Maeve said. ‘An' I'm not that young.'

‘Well,' the man said, ‘I'm Turk's brother, Breen.'

‘Brian?'

‘Breen,' he said. ‘Breen Trotter.'

‘It's a funny lot o' names you Trotters have,' Maeve said, striving to show her sophistication. ‘Is Turk still incar-incar – in jail at Richmond?'

‘No, he's been sentenced,' Breen said.

‘What?' She felt her bowels turn to water. ‘To death?'

‘Now, now, lass, no need to alarm yourself.' He put one big paw on her shoulder and patted her as he might have patted a nervous calf. ‘Did you not hear the cheers from yesterday?'

‘Ch-cheers?'

‘From the dockside?'

‘I never heard nothin' – anythin',' said Maeve.

‘They shipped the first o' the prisoners away to England. Turk an' his friends Charlie an' Peter were among them. I thought you'd have heard.'

Maeve was surprised that Pauline hadn't said something about it. Pauline knew she had a sweetheart in Richmond Barracks and had visited him there.

‘Where have they taken them?'

‘Stafford,' Breen told her.

‘Where's that? Is it on Dartmoor?'

The man still had his hand on her shoulder. The friendly gesture made Algie agitated and he was beginning to show signs of an imminent war dance by huffing and puffing and whistling through his teeth. Maeve ignored him. Breen Trotter's hand on her shoulder made her feel as if Turk were with her.

‘Dartmoor's a convict prison,' Breen went on. ‘Those prisoners who had a death penalty commuted – about seventy I think – were given penal servitude an' sent to Dartmoor for life. Turk wasn't one o' them, thanks be to God. There's hundreds, thousands goin' over the sea to English jails but' – Breen gave a cheerful wag of the head – ‘there's nary a one o' them been tried. Officially they're all prisoners o' war. Isn't that all to the good?'

‘Will he be in – where is it?'

‘Stafford.'

‘Stafford for long?'

‘Can't say,' Breen told her.

‘When did you last talk to Turk?'

‘Friday. He knew he was soon to be moved.'

‘Was he sad?'

‘Nah, not him, not any o' them. They were singin' like larks and undiscouraged. By Gad, they were even more cheerful yesterday when they were marched through the streets to the boat. What a send-off the folk gave them, cheering and blessing their names and running out through the lines o' soldiers to press gifts upon them.'

‘I wish I'd been there,' Maeve said. ‘I wish I'd known.'

‘Aye,' Breen Trotter said, ‘it's the turnin' o' the tide, sure an' it is.'

‘What?' said Maeve. ‘What tide?'

‘The uprising didn't fail after all,' Breen Trotter said. ‘It's wakened our people, rallied their fightin' spirit. Just you wait an' see, the standard of independence will be raised before much longer.'

‘Really?' said Maeve. ‘Really an' truly, Mr Trotter?'

‘Aye, really, lass, really an' truly.' He hunkered in front of her, hand on her waist to steady himself, and looked straight into her eyes. ‘Turk says I was to give you all his love. He says he'll write you soon as he can. He says you've not to forget him.'

‘Forget him! As if I would!'

‘Good.' Breen got up, rising up, it seemed, out of the pavement until he was half the height of the tenement above her, a huge amiable figure softened by the little moustache and the creases around his brown eyes. ‘Well, that's my message delivered so I'll just be goin' for a bite to eat before I head for the railway station.'

‘You'll do no such thing,' Maeve said. ‘Come along inside an' we'll see if there's still somethin' in the pot.'

‘Your mammy won't be too pleased at a stranger landin' on her doorstep at the dinner time, I'm thinkin'.'

‘No, but my friend Pauline will,' said Maeve and, taking Breen's hand, led him into the tenement in search of a spot of lunch.

Chapter Twenty-two

At about the time that Breen Trotter first clapped eyes on Pauline Rafferty and fell instantly in love, the devil was stalking Dublin in the shape of General Sir John Maxwell. Maxwell had been Commander-in-Chief in Ireland for some time and, while Westminster debated what was to be done about the Irish, he devoted himself to the task of rounding up insurgents with a zeal that made him the most hated man in Ireland. Sylvie shared the universal loathing of Maxwell but because she was unable to claim assistance from the National Aid Association and because her husband had fought for England her loyalties remained divided.

She was scrubbing the upper landing when the men arrived.

The door of her little room was open and sunlight streamed through the windows and new cotton curtains. It was not unpleasant to be on her knees scouring away a week's dirt with a big bristle brush. She was well aware that it was a queer old existence she had slipped into but there were many queer goings-on in Dublin and the eccentricities of one tenement in Endicott Street were nothing compared to what took place elsewhere.

Monday morning, about eleven: Maeve was at school and all the men were at work, all bar Mr O'Dowd who was a coal-heaver on permanent night shift. He was sound asleep, and snoring, in his room on the second floor.

Sean was seated in the middle of the room in his little baby-chair. Sylvie had purchased the chair at the Anglesea market, had scrubbed it thoroughly and dusted it with Lenger's powder before she had strapped Sean into it. Harry Houdini himself couldn't have escaped from the baby-chair's clutches but, scowling like a gargoyle, Sean persisted in trying to pick open the lock with his soft, inadequate fingers until frustration got the better of him and Sylvie had to appease him with milk or a biscuit.

Peaceful, almost serene it was in the tenement with just the swish of the scrubbing brush, Mr O'Dowd's snores, and Sean's contented mumbling. Then: voices in the hallway. Sylvie wondered if Pauline was at home. Most mornings Pauline took the youngest out shopping, trailing them up to the vegetable market or the wholesale butchers to buy an oxtail or a sheep head that, thickened with floury dumplings, made a grand big pot of stew.

Pauline was at home; Sylvie heard her cry of alarm. She slipped the brush into the bucket and, on all fours, crept to the railing and peered down into the hallway. She could see little from that high angle, not Pauline or the men to whom Pauline was talking, only elongated shadows and the backside of a man in a long black overcoat. Mr O'Dowd had stopped snoring. Sean was staring at her, a wet fist stuffed into his mouth. Far away, the sound of a locomotive whistle drifted down from the Dublin loop.

Heart in her mouth, Sylvie leaned out over the rail.

‘It's not a matter of whether you like it or not, Miss Rafferty,' Vaizey was saying, ‘it's a matter of what has to be.'

‘Fran's not here. He's the one you've got to talk to.'

Sylvie saw John James Flanagan turn and exchange a glance with Vaizey. They knew – they both knew – that Fran Hagarty would not be talking ever again. ‘That, I'm afraid, isn't possible,' the inspector said.

‘Fran – Fran'll be back soon.'

‘Will he?' said Flanagan. ‘Where, may I ask, is he coming back from?'

‘'Merica.'

‘Merica?'

‘She means the United States,' said Vaizey.

‘It's just as well you speak their language.'

‘I'm well practised. Now – America you say, Miss Rafferty?'

Some women reasoned with their hearts not their heads and when it came to squaring up to men like Flanagan, let alone a slimy lickspittle like Vaizey, Pauline had no powers of resistance.

‘Fran's visitin' 'Mer … A-merica.'

‘Did he tell you that?'

‘He – he did.'

‘Did he indicate when he would return?'

Vaizey spoke in a jocular, almost teasing manner. Loathing flamed in Sylvie. Her cheeks grew hot. Anxiety turned to resentment, resentment to hatred. She had no idea if Vaizey knew that she had taken up residence in Fran's apartment, but sense told her to keep her head down.

‘He – he'll be back soon,' said Pauline, shrilly.

‘What if I were to tell you that Hagarty will not be returning to Dublin?'

‘He will. He will.'

‘What if I were to tell you that he, ah, intends to remain in America?'

‘He won't.'

‘What if I were to tell you, Miss Rafferty, that Hagarty is selling off his properties in Dublin and that this building has been purchased by Mr Flanagan.'

‘Pur-chased?' said Pauline. ‘What?'

‘Bought,' John James Flanagan explained, indulgently.

‘Transfer of ownership has been arranged,' said Vaizey. ‘In the very near future you'll be obliged to pay your rent to Mr Flanagan's representative.'