Shamrock Green (44 page)

On Sundays she sat on the bed with Sean at her breast, listening to Breen's booming laugh and longing for a man – not any man, not Fran, but Gowry. How odd that when she had been married to Gowry she had yearned for other men, but now that Gowry was dead she wanted him back. And at night, with Maeve asleep beside her, she would pinch her nose with thumb and finger and weep for the green times that were gone, for Gowry, Gowry and Fran, in a spiral of sorrow that seemed to have no end.

*   *   *

Sunday evening: Breen had gone loping off to the railway station to catch a train back to Wexford and Maeve had taken Sean out for a breath of air. Sylvie had prepared supper – a pork pie and cold potatoes – and was seated at the little table at the window, where Fran had so often sat. She had taken the hood from the typewriting machine and had it in mind to write another letter to the authorities asking for information about her husband, but she had lost the inclination to chase false hopes and when Pauline knocked on the door she was doing nothing more constructive than feeling sorry for herself.

For once Pauline did not have the baby stuck to her and her distant eyes had width and brightness. She slipped into the room and stood before Sylvie in a spotless white dress to which someone – Breen, of course – had pinned a little posy of wild flowers.

‘He wants me to marry him.' Pauline pursed her lips, frowned, then laughed. ‘Asked me to marry him. Just now. Downstairs. In front of everybody. Came right out. Said it. Got down on his knees. Gave me these flowers. Said he was in love with me. Said he'd take me away from here. Take me an' the kiddies to live with him an' his mammy an' pappy in Wexford.'

‘Oh!'

‘If that fellah comes again, that Mr Finnegan…'

‘Flanagan,' said Sylvie.

‘Him, an' the peeler. What a surprise, eh! I'm not here. I'm gone away to Wexford with Mr Trotter. He says he's in love with me.'

‘If you marry Mr Trotter,' said Sylvie evenly, ‘what will happen to this house and all the people in it?'

Pauline had obviously given no thought to that problem.

‘They can stay here,' she said, airily.

‘What happens when Fran gets back?'

‘Fran's not comin' back, you said.'

‘You didn't believe me, though, did you, Pauline?'

In spite of having borne a child, Pauline retained a virginal quality that Breen Trotter had obviously been unable to resist. He was Turk's brother and from what Sylvie had heard the Trotter boys were well known in Wexford for being wild, though Turk's father ran a profitable dealership in cattle, his mother was a good God-fearing Catholic woman, and, so far, Breen had given no indication that he was involved in rebel politics.

‘What if I'm wrong?' Sylvie said. ‘What if Fran does come back? How will he feel if he finds you've married someone else?'

‘He'll know I done it for the kiddies.'

‘I'll have Fran to myself then, won't I, Pauline?'

Sylvie knew she was being unkind.

‘You told me Fran was dead.' Pauline sank down on the bed. ‘I never had a pappy before.' She shrugged apologetically. ‘I want a pappy.'

‘Yes,' Sylvie said. ‘I've no doubt Mr Trotter will make a very good pappy once he gets used to the idea, but will Breen make you a good husband?'

‘Algie likes cows.'

‘All children like cows,' said Sylvie. ‘Pauline, where did Fran find you?'

‘Mammy was ill. Long time she was ill. Fran came with the priest one time. He took me out when Mammy went to heaven. I stayed with the nuns in Kingstown for a while. Then Fran came and took me away. Brought me here.'

‘What age were you when he brought you here?'

Pauline shrugged.

‘Did he – did Fran…' Sylvie said. ‘Were you his wife then?'

‘He had another wife then.'

‘What was her name?'

‘Maureen.'

‘Was she kind to you?'

‘Aye, she was. Kind to all of us.'

‘Did Fran stay with you, with Maureen?' Sylvie said.

‘Aye, when he wasn't visitin' 'Merica. He left Maureen money.'

‘To look after you?'

Pauline nodded. ‘Then Maureen went away. She tooked the money an' went away with Mr Weekes.'

‘Did Mr Weekes live here too?'

‘One down,' said Pauline, tapping the floorboards with her toe.

‘What did Fran say when he got back from America? Was he angry?'

‘Aye, he shouted.'

‘At you?'

‘Shouted at everybody. We all hid.'

‘How many of you were there?'

Pauline held up one hand, fingers spread. ‘Nine. When they growed up, he took them away.'

‘Took them where?' said Sylvie.

‘To A-merica. He had jobs for them.'

‘What sort of jobs?'

‘Just jobs. He paid their fares on the boat.'

‘Did he take the girls too, or just boys?'

‘Three girls: Margaret-Anne, Ellie, Nuala.'

‘Do they ever write to you,' said Sylvie, ‘from America, I mean?'

‘They wrote to Fran.'

‘I wonder,' Sylvie said, ‘what he did with those letters.'

Pauline had already lost interest in the fate of the orphans.

‘Mr Breen asked me to marry him,' she said.

‘So you told me,' Sylvie said. ‘Do you think you'd like to marry Breen Trotter? Do you think you'd be happy in Wexford?'

‘He says he'd care for the children, even the baby.'

‘How…' Sylvie hesitated. ‘How can you marry Breen when you're already married to Fran?'

‘I'll ask the priest,' said Pauline, nodding. ‘He'll tell me what to do.'

‘Pauline, dearest,' Sylvie said, ‘why won't you believe me? Fran is dead. He has no claim on you now, no hold.'

Pauline offered no denial, made no protest. She stared past Sylvie at the patch of dusty blue sky that showed above the tenement roofs and the skeins of pink-tinted cloud entangled in the chimneypots.

‘Do you know where Wexford is, Pauline?'

‘No.'

‘Were you frightened by the men who came here?' Sylvie said. ‘Is that why you want to run off with Breen?'

‘Algie likes horses too.'

‘You don't have to be frightened,' Sylvie said. ‘Really and truly you don't. Take my word for it, Vaizey can't harm you.'

‘I never had a pappy,' said Pauline, wistfully. ‘Breen says he loves me. Do you think it's true, Sylvie?'

‘I think it might be,' Sylvie said. ‘When does Breen expect an answer?'

‘Next Sunday,' Pauline said.

‘That doesn't give you much time to make up your mind.'

‘No,' Pauline said. ‘I think I'll have to ask Fran. Yes, that's what I'll do. I'll ask Fran.'

Sylvie felt the hair on the back of her neck rise.

‘How, Pauline? How can you possibly ask Fran? Fran's dead.'

‘Sure an' that doesn't matter,' Pauline said, eyes wide and shining. ‘Madam Lomborosa knows where to find him.'

‘Madam who?' said Sylvie.

Chapter Twenty-three

‘The dead,' said Madam Lomborosa, ‘are always with us. The ego, as I hope to demonstrate tonight, is no mere secretion of the nervous tissue as scientists would have us believe but a link to our loved ones in the spirit realm. Our loved ones' existence in the world beyond is personal and unbroken. They know what's happening to you even if you cannot comprehend what has happened to them.'

The woman reached for an ebony cigarette holder that rested against a green glass ashtray the size of a soup plate. She lifted the holder between finger and thumb and inhaled smoke from its amber mouthpiece. When she let her breath out smoke rose like ectoplasm into the circular lampshade that hung above the table. The corded tassels around the shade, Sylvie noted, oscillated as if the spirits of the dead were already there and chafing at the bit to get a word in edgeways.

Sylvie was not taken in. In spite of her fancy handle and polished speech, Madam Lomborosa was no more Italian than she was. The woman was probably the daughter of a fishmonger from Bray or a publican from Galway who had rehearsed her act in the halls and who, with a hundred thousand war widows to exploit, had gone into the more lucrative business of personally consoling the bereaved. At the cost of two guineas for a private sitting, small wonder Madam Lomborosa could afford to live in a splendidly furnished apartment in Kearns Court and employ a servant to greet you at the door and show you into the drawing-room.

Resentment not anticipation made Sylvie tense. She wished she had heeded Maeve's words of warning. ‘Rot!' Maeve had told her. ‘It's all rot. If you go anywhere near that place with Pauline then you need your head seen to.'

For all her cynicism, a grain of longing lay deep in Sylvie's heart, longing not for reassurance, not to have the empty void filled by false hopes, but to see what Pauline had latched on to and to make sure that by some miraculous contrivance Fran wasn't still alive. Far, far down within her, below the level of conscious thought, there also lurked a faint hope that Pauline's naïvety might be infectious and that by accompanying Pauline to a séance a little of the young woman's optimism might rub off on her.

‘Are we all here?' Madam Lomborosa pinched out her cigarette and detached it from the holder. ‘Is this the lot of you?'

‘It is,' said Pauline, reverently.

‘Have you been in communication before?' Madam Lomborosa enquired.

‘I have,' said Pauline. ‘She ha'n't.'

The apartment was lit by electrical light but the bulb was dim and the room, even on a summer's evening, shadowy. The maidservant – tall as a guardsman and gaunt – had drawn heavy velvet curtains across the windows before she left the room. A coal fire burned in a marble fireplace and the atmosphere was stuffy. Sylvie dabbed little globules of perspiration from her brow with her handkerchief and carefully studied the woman who sat by her at the oval table.

Madam Lomborosa was about sixty, sallow-skinned, olive-eyed. Her hair was dyed jet black and worn in a style that Sylvie thought of as Parisian. She had small, tight-set ears, like an otter's. Her hands were freckled with liver spots, her fingers weighted with big silver rings and one plump ruby in a gold setting. She had a mobile little mouth and a delicate, dark moustache on her upper lip accentuated the movement of her lips. She wore a loose dress in a dark blue arabesque pattern fastened just below her breasts with a pale blue sash as broad as a cummerbund. The chair she occupied was well upholstered but tall and the firelight made a strange sort of wavering halo behind it.

The oval table was enormous and could, Sylvie reckoned, have accommodated fifteen or twenty diners in comfort. Pauline and she were huddled at one end close to the medium, and the collection of vacant chairs that ringed the shadowy surface to her right seemed as if they might already be occupied by guests unseen.

‘I saw you down the Ockram Hall,' Pauline said. ‘Been three times.'

‘Ah, I thought I recognised you,' Madam Lomborosa said.

‘You got a callin' from a man friend o' mine.'

‘Did I? A soldier? Wait. I remember: a sad soul who died a violent death.'

‘Is he here tonight?' said Pauline, looking round.

‘That remains to be seen,' said Madam Lomborosa.

‘Can you bring him down?'

‘Patience, child, patience. This ain't – isn't an exact science, you know. It's one thing to mediate in a crowded hall when the anterooms are filled with clamour and many are waiting to come through but here – well, I'll do my best to contact your loved one, though I can't make no guarantees. There are laws governing the spiritual empire that we know nothing of.'

‘What sort of laws?' Sylvie chimed in.

‘Laws, like the laws of nature – a different sort of nature.'

‘Why don't you ask them?' Sylvie said.

‘Pardon?'

‘About the laws. The spirits must know what the laws are. Why don't you ask the spirits?'

Madam Lomborosa was quiet for almost half a minute, her expression not one of annoyance but of melancholy.

In the lull Sylvie could make out the grinding of tramcars in Grafton Street and the rattle of a van going by just under the window. She had forgotten that she was close to the heart of the city, the fashionable heart, and wondered if smoke, beer fumes and bustle in the poorer area round by the Ockram Hall might not be more appealing to ethereal travellers than this sober, almost sepulchral setting.

‘Well,' Madam Lomborosa said, at length. ‘I think we should begin, don't you? By the by, you do understand, ladies, that I cannot promise a materialisation. My powers are not at the beck and call of every random spirit and I am not attuned to everyone who waits in the anteroom. Besides, the person you wish to contact may not be with us this evening.'

‘If that's the case,' said Sylvie, ‘do we get our guinea back?'

‘Oh dear! Dear, dear, deary me!' Madam Lomborosa sighed. ‘Here, take my hand, will you please.' She lurched forward from the chair and grabbed Sylvie's left hand. ‘Reach across the table and take your friend's hand so we make a ring, a circle, then we'll see what I can do for you. Right?'

‘Right,' said Sylvie.

Obediently she stretched her arm across the polished surface, found Pauline's hand and clasped it tightly.

‘Now,' Madam Lomborosa said, ‘you mustn't be alarmed at anything you hear or see. I'm not a trance medium. Do you know what I mean by that?'

‘No,' said Sylvie.

‘I do not go into a trance,' said Madam Lomborosa. ‘I will be entirely conscious at all times.'

‘Will you be doin' the voices, though?' Pauline asked.

‘I will be a conduit for whoever might wish to communicate,' the medium said, ‘a mouthpiece for anyone who wishes to speak. You won't be able to communicate with the spirit – the loved one – except through me and I would ask you not to cry or shout out. The spirits are remarkably sensitive and dreadful easy upset. If we are fortunate enough to witness a manifestation—'