Shamrock Green (53 page)

‘Why didn't you go with her?'

‘I decided to stay in case – in case you wanted to talk to me.'

Gowry seated himself on the sofa. He glanced into the recesses of the dining-room where four Guards officers were gathered at a corner table. From the saloon bar came the faint strains of male voices chanting one of the hymn-like battle songs of which the Welsh were so fond.

‘Why didn't you just come up to the hospital?' Gowry said.

‘I wasn't sure you'd want me to.'

‘Why did you have to use my mother as a go-between?'

‘There was no one else,' said Sylvie. ‘Charlie's in prison.'

‘Yes, Ma told me.'

‘What else did she tell you?'

‘That Hagarty was murdered. Is that true?'

‘Yes. I was in one of Vaizey's cells when it happened.'

‘I'm not surprised Vaizey wanted rid of him.'

He spoke in a strange pedantic manner, not slurred but clipped, the porcelain teeth clicking a little. He sat back, pressed into the box end of the sofa as if he might suddenly start up and leave at any moment.

Sylvie adjusted Sean's little jacket once more, praying that he wouldn't start fussing. What she had to do was difficult enough without having to wrestle with one of her son's tantrums. He was quiet for the moment, though, not drowsy but attentive, staring intently at Gowry as if he were envious of those fine, big, adult teeth.

‘Tell me what happened,' Sylvie said. ‘Where were you wounded?'

‘Guillemont,' Gowry stated.

If she'd hoped for an account of heroism and endurance she was disappointed. Gowry closed his lips over the awkward rubberised wedge and said nothing.

‘Your mother tells me your hand…'

‘Aye, my hand,' Gowry said, shrugging.

‘Don't you want to talk about it?'

‘No,' he said. ‘I'd rather talk about Maeve.'

She told him about Maeve, Jansis and the downfall of the Shamrock, how she had fared in the uprising and what had occurred afterwards. She spoke quietly, not fishing for sympathy. When she told him about the missing letters and how she had tricked Flanagan he shook his head, and when she told him how they had all supposed him to be dead he shook it again. He hardly seemed to be listening, though, and refused to look at her. He gazed into the depths of the room beyond the archway where the Welsh officers were gathered round a white tablecloth. She wondered if he felt more affinity with them than he did with her, if he had left a part of himself in the trenches, the way a bee leaves its sting.

She told him about Pauline, Breen Trotter and Father Mack: names new to him, folk who had no role in his life. And she told him a great deal about Maeve, for only when she spoke of Maeve did he give her his full attention.

‘So where is she?' he asked.

‘I sent her to Wexford to spend a few days with Breen and Pauline.'

‘Doesn't she want to see me again?'

‘She was desperate to see you,' Sylvie assured him. ‘But she wouldn't have been happy just seeing you. She would have wanted to go with her grandmother to the camp at Frongoch to visit her sweetheart.'

‘She's too young to have a sweetheart.'

‘Her friend then, her friend Turk Trotter.'

‘Trotter!' Gowry said, with another little shake of the head. ‘Why did you write to my mother of all people?'

‘To tell her you weren't dead after all.'

She waited for him to ask why she'd brought Fran's child with her. If she was asking Gowry's forgiveness – and she wasn't at all sure that she was – then she would have to ask it on her son's behalf too.

Gowry said, ‘You made a mistake, Sylvie.'

‘I know I did.'

‘You shouldn't have trusted her.'

‘Her?'

‘My mother.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘She only agreed to help you because she wants rid of the baby.'

‘Rid of…'

‘A mark of shame, she called him.'

‘Oh that!' Sylvie said. ‘I told her to say that.'

‘But why?'

‘To see how you would react.'

‘You haven't changed, Sylvie. You're just as devious as you always were. What are you doing here? What do you want from me?'

‘I want you back.'

‘Second-hand?' Gowry said. ‘Second-best?'

‘I admit I was taken in by him.'

‘I know you were.'

‘Fran wasn't the man I thought he was.'

‘In bed,' Gowry said, ‘or out of it?'

‘I'm not going to beg, Gowry.'

‘I'm not asking you to.'

‘We really thought you were dead. We thought we'd lost you.'

‘Perhaps you have,' Gowry said.

‘Is there someone else?'

He hesitated. ‘No, no one else.'

‘I heard you had a woman friend in Tipperary.'

‘Who told you that?'

‘Vaizey, I think. He said you had a woman on the road.'

‘I didn't have a woman on the road; I had a friend. Her name's Maggie Leonard an' she's old enough to be my mother. I lodged with her when I was down at Tipperary. She was never more to me than a friend, Sylvie, though why I should have to justify myself to you because of some lie Vaizey told…'

‘Do you want to go back to her?' Sylvie put in.

‘No.' He hesitated. ‘Besides, I don't think she's there any more.'

‘Isn't there?'

‘Her son was a sergeant in the Connaughts, killed at Heuvert. I wrote to Maggie but she didn't write back. I think she might have sold up and gone away. She has daughters in America.' He put out a hand, his good hand, scooped Sean from her arms and dandled him on his knee. ‘She was only a friend, Sylvie, and by God I needed a friend at that time.'

‘I don't blame you for wanting someone else.'

Sean wriggled, stretched out his arms and punched his tiny fists into Gowry's chest, not in temper but in play.

‘There's no one else,' Gowry said after a pause.

‘Then come back to Dublin,' Sylvie said. ‘There's room enough in Endicott Street for all of us, at least until you get back on your feet. Maeve still needs a father.'

‘An' you, what do you need, Sylvie?'

‘Whatever you're prepared to give.'

‘How do I know there won't be another Fran Hagarty? How can I be sure some other smarmy seducer won't come along and sweep you off your feet?'

‘You don't.'

He held the boy against his chest and, patient as always, let him poke and pry at his mouth with inquisitive little fingers.

‘You're asking a lot, Sylvie.'

‘I know I am.'

‘I don't have a lot left to give.'

‘I'll take whatever you have,' she said.

Still he would not or could not make himself meet her eye. It wasn't guilt or embarrassment that prevented communion between them but something else, something she couldn't put a finger on.

She had read that the war affected soldiers in odd ways or she might have played up to him, flirted with him, even shed a few pathetic tears. How many pals had he seen die, though, how many Germans had he killed? She couldn't imagine her husband killing anyone, not even a German. Whatever his experience in France, apparently it hadn't made him callous, only distant, unreachably distant. She was too astute to force herself upon him when he was occupied with Sean. She watched him tickle Sean's nose with his bandaged hand, the wrecked and ruined hand, and let the boy wrestle with the ugly, upright thumb.

‘Ow,' Gowry said. ‘Ow, what a grip. What a grip you have, wee man.'

Sylvie said, ‘When you're well again will you come home?'

‘I might,' Gowry said.

‘What does that mean?' Sylvie said.

‘It means I'll have to think about it,' Gowry said and, handing Hagarty's son back to her, got up and walked out of the Fortress without another word.

*   *   *

‘What did he say about me?' Maeve asked. ‘Did you tell him I want him to come home? Did you tell him about the mix-up with the letters? Did you tell him we've room enough here for—'

‘I told him as much as he wanted to hear,' Sylvie said.

‘Then he just walked out?'

‘He – he isn't himself.'

‘Well, I could have told you
that,
' Maeve said, grandly. ‘He's been fightin' in the trenches for months, never mind gettin' blowed up. How does he look?'

‘Awful,' said Sylvie.

‘Has he really only got one hand?'

‘He's waiting for a new one.'

‘They can't give him a new hand,' said Maeve. ‘Can they?'

‘They saved the thumb. Apparently they can do all sorts of things if they save the thumb, so he told Gran McCulloch. She didn't believe him. She thought he was raving. Even so, I think she got more out of him than I did.'

‘It's your own fault,' said Maeve. ‘You should've took me with you instead of Sean. Did Gran get to see Turk?'

‘She got to see Peter. He isn't well.'

‘If he dies it'll be another murder,' Maeve said. ‘Breen says the British are worried about what's happenin' in the camp. Breen says he's heard the prisoners run the place an' they've appointed new leaders.'

‘I didn't know Breen was interested in politics.'

‘It ain't politics,' Maeve said. ‘It's revenge.'

‘Whatever it is,' said Sylvie, ‘you'd best keep out of it.'

‘Uh-huh!' said Maeve with just a hint of scorn. ‘Sure an' I will.'

She was seated in the tub chair that Pauline had left behind, a nursing-seat with torn upholstery that Mam had covered with an old travelling rug. She had Sean on her lap, feeding him his nightly bottle. He seemed none the worse for his trip across the sea or his brief sojourn in Wales. The home crossing had been easier than the crossing out and there had even been a patch of blue sky over the Irish coast, so her mother had said.

There was no ambivalence in Maeve, no division. She was reconciled to life as a changing process, a seesaw of fortune and misfortune. It wasn't constancy she hankered after, just the presence of men to act with and react against in whatever role she chose for herself. It would not be a man like the man her mother had been taken in by, though, not a smooth, complicated chap like Fran Hagarty, for she was immune to charm now and the conceits that went with it. Breen had told her a lot about Turk and the manifest destiny of the Irish – though Breen hadn't put it quite that way – a lot more than she'd ever learned in class from poor martyred Mr Whiteside. Five days with Pauline and Breen Trotter in Wexford had been, she felt, the beginning of her education. She was more assured and more determined than she had been a year ago, even with Turk in jail and her daddy in hospital.

She watched her half-brother guzzle at the teat, wondered what sort of babies she would have when her time came, if they would be gigantic Trotter types right from the start. She had told Pauline of her plans and Pauline had encouraged her to marry Turk as soon as she was old enough. They would live in Wexford with the other Trotters and if Turk wanted to join a new rebel army to fight the English then she, Maeve, would stand with him, shoulder to shoulder.

‘Why did they send Daddy to a Welsh hospital?' she asked.

Mam was propped up in bed, sipping a glass of stout. The journey had tired her, or, Maeve thought, perhaps the shock of seeing Daddy so changed.

‘It's where they do the best repairs,' said Sylvie.

‘You make him sound like a motor-car.'

‘Well, perhaps there isn't much difference, not to the doctors.'

‘Talking of motor-cars, he won't be able to drive one, will he?'

‘I doubt it,' Sylvie said.

‘What'll he do for a living then?'

‘I expect he'll find something,' Sylvie said.

‘If he comes back here at all.'

‘Yes.'

‘Do you think he will?'

‘Will what?'

‘Forgive you,' Maeve said.

‘I don't see what else he can do,' Sylvie said with a sigh. ‘I mean he has nowhere else to go, really.'

Maeve took the teat from her half-brother's mouth and let him grope for it, his gaze hostile.

‘He might come back because he loves us,' she said.

‘You know,' said Sylvie, sitting up, ‘I never thought of that.'

‘Then it's high time you did,' said Maeve.

*   *   *

On the ninth day of November 1916, the 2nd Battalion of the Sperryhead Rifles was disbanded. There had been too many casualties and too few recruits and the remnants of that gallant fighting force were merged with the Irish Brigade. By coincidence, on that same day Private Gowry McCulloch received both his new wooden hand and his discharge papers and, within a week, was standing, aching, in the rain in dear old dirty Dublin. He felt neither joy nor relief at being there. He, like Dublin, had changed, had become older and wiser and that little bit more decayed.

Even in the rain, in grey afternoon light, he saw how broken the city was and that gangs were still working on clearing debris from the streets. There was dust in the air, a thin muddy dust that caught in the throat. He was no longer in uniform, no longer distinguishable as foe or friend. The haversack he'd bought in a shoddy shop in Cardiff contained everything he valued: Becky's letters, wrapped in canvas. He knew he should destroy them and that he was clinging to something that no longer existed, to memories that would only bring him pain, but pain was better than nothing and grief was his only consolation.

He walked slowly along the City Quay, over the Butt Bridge to ‘his' side of the river, the side of the river where the Shamrock had stood and which, against all logic, he still expected to find just as it had been, with Jansis grousing in the kitchen and Mr Dolan sulking upstairs.

He crossed the back of the station, entered a pub and bought himself a whiskey and a Guinness. He didn't know why he did such a thing for he wasn't celebrating and wasn't keen on company. He kept his left hand in his overcoat pocket and drank with the right for a while then extracted the heavy, black-gloved object strapped to his forearm with a cigarette packet pinched between thumb and wooden forefinger.