Shamrock Green (9 page)

‘I can't.' There was more argument in him, more prophecy and pessimism, but he would not burden her with it. He pushed away his plate and put a hand on her arm. ‘We are born fighting men, we Irish. The warrior strain is in our blood and the English will exploit it. I can't say I blame them.'

‘I thought you'd gone and left me,' Sylvie said.

‘No,' he said. ‘I'm not sure I could even if I wanted to.'

‘That's a comforting thing to hear. Will you come back tonight?'

‘It wouldn't be right,' he said again.

‘You can come back after dark.'

‘I wouldn't be wanting your daughter to hear us.'

‘We'll be quiet as mice,' Sylvie said. ‘Besides, Maeve likes you.'

‘No,' he said again. ‘No.'

‘Is it because I have an enemy?'

He paused, then said, ‘It is.'

‘Have you no idea who it might be?'

‘None,' Fran said.

‘Is it Gowry they're after, Gowry and the guns?'

‘I don't know what they're after, or who they are.'

‘If I could find out where the guns are hidden…'

‘Keep out of it, Sylvie.'

‘How can I?' she said.

‘I'm sorry,' he said. ‘I should never have done this to you.'

She laid her fingers lightly against his lips.

‘Sssh!'
she said. ‘
Sssh!
What's wrong with making me fall in love?'

‘Is that what's happened?' He answered his own question. ‘Aye, that is what's happened, I suppose.'

‘Will I try to persuade Gowry to tell me where the guns are?'

Fran rubbed his lips with his forefinger. ‘I couldn't ask you to do that.'

‘I will,' said Sylvie. ‘I'll do anything I can for you.'

‘It wouldn't be for me.'

‘I know, I know: it would be for the cause.'

‘You mustn't confuse the two,' Fran said. ‘I'm not what you think I am. I'm not a good man raised up by a just cause.'

‘You're a good man in my book, whatever your politics.'

‘Politics! God, but I wish it was just politics.'

‘What is it then?'

He would not, or could not, answer.

She put down the cup. He took her hand and kissed her fingers. No one had ever kissed her fingers before. She told herself that she must expect no more of him. His profession was words and he surely knew how to weave words into lies. There would be no
I love you
from Fran Hagarty; a kiss was more honest and sincere.

Maeve breezed in through the back door.

‘Hello, Mr Hagarty,' she said, unsurprised at finding her mother's friend in the kitchen, holding her mother's hand. ‘I thought you were still in Cork with my granddad.'

‘I was but, as you can see, I'm back.'

‘Is that where you were? Cork?' Sylvie said.

‘Secret meeting,' Maeve said. ‘Very hushy.'

‘Some secret!' Fran detached himself gradually from Sylvie as if it were the most natural thing in the world for a married woman and a man who was not her husband to be spooning at the kitchen table.

Maeve slung her school satchel on to the dresser and, crossing to the stove, lifted the lid of one of the pots. ‘Where's me dinner, Mam?'

‘Ten minutes,' Sylvie said. ‘It's soup and tinned salmon.'

‘Tinned salmon! Ugh!'

‘There's nothing wrong with a bit of tinned salmon.' Fran patted the chair that Sylvie had just vacated. ‘Sit here, Maeve, and tell me what else your grandfather told you about our meeting in Cork.'

‘He said he would bring me something nice.'

‘Ah well, a promise is a promise,' Fran said. ‘I'm sure he will.'

Maeve folded herself into the chair, an elbow on the table, her thin legs crossed under the pleated green skirt. Even in school clothes she looked older than her years. ‘I hope he brings me ribbon. Mr Whiteside says girls my age should not be putting up their hair. Is he not wrong then?'

‘I would say he's wrong,' Fran answered, ‘in practice if not principle.'

‘Mr Whiteside says the government will force all our young men to join the British army for to fight against the Germans.'

‘I would say he's wrong on that score too.'

‘You wouldn't go fighting against the Germans, Mr Hagarty, would you?'

‘Not I,' said Fran. ‘I'm far too sensible.'

‘I wouldn't neither.' Maeve twisted a strand of hair about her finger, cocked her head and gave Fran a look that was unintentionally coy. ‘I would fight for Ireland, though. I'd fight for Ireland in a minute if she needed me.'

‘Ah well now,' Fran said, ‘perhaps she will – in time.'

Jealous and unaccountably afraid, Sylvie planted the round tin and a wicked-looking opener on the table before him. Obediently he opened the salmon and tipped the pink meat out on to a saucer.

‘Will you be staying with us now, Mr Hagarty?' Maeve asked.

‘No.'

‘Are you not staying here tonight?'

‘Would you mind if I stayed here tonight, Maeve?' Fran asked.

‘I wouldn't mind at all,' Maeve said. ‘And I wouldn't tell.'

‘Tell?' Sylvie said.

‘Daddy,' Maeve said, innocently.

‘And why would you not be telling your daddy?' Fran asked.

‘Because,' the girl answered him, ‘my daddy's not one of us.'

*   *   *

In accordance with Army Council instructions and with the approval of His Majesty King George V, the 16th Irish Division was formed to supply the British army with cannon fodder or, as some would have it, the finest fighting soldiers in the whole wide world.

The lot that Gowry collected from the recruiting base in Dublin did not seem like warriors, however, more like survivors of a drunken spree. They had been paid a bit of bounty on making their marks and, still in mufti, guzzled bottled beer and sang, not battle songs or songs of yearning but the rebel songs their fathers had taught them. After a while, though, the lads grew boisterous and bottles flew and the sugary tenors were drowned out by barnyard noises so rude that Gowry pulled his cap over his ears and switched on the big wiper to drown out the worst of the racket. He was glad to see the mountains rising up blue and grey under the rain-cloud and to come down into the Golden Vale.

He drove through the town and steered the vehicle through the barrack gates and braked in front of the guardhouse. He counted the recruits out as if they were sheep and had one of the regular warrant officers sign his logbook. Five hours would take him back to Dublin, but he wasn't due to pick up another batch of recruits until one o'clock tomorrow. Once he filled the bus with petrol at the army taps, he would drive off to his lodging, not in Tipperary but out in the Galtee mountains, his home away from home.

Roddeny had first suggested that farm lodgings were cheaper than those in town. That first night, two years back, Gowry had steered the bus through a maze of sheep walks and wooded tracks until he had come to a low, isolated cottage on the plain under the ridge of the Galtees, close to the Limerick border. By that time he had been cursing Roddeny, for the night had been dark and the track rough and there was sod all by way of habitation except that one lonely cottage clinging to the foot of the mountains.

He'd had no choice but to climb out of the bus and knock on the door.

The glimmer of a lantern had showed in the tiny window, and a voice had asked, ‘What is it you want here?'

‘A bed for the night, that's all.'

‘Are you lost?'

‘Aye, I'm lost. I'm down from Dublin, driving a Flanagan's bus. I need a place to sleep until morning.'

‘How many are with you on the bus?'

‘None. I've dropped my passengers at the Imperial where I will collect them tomorrow at half past nine, after they've had their breakfast.'

‘Why did you not put up there too?'

‘Because I'm not a rich tripper, only the driver.'

She had stayed safe behind the door.

The wind had made odd noises, he remembered, lonely noises in the tussocks and he could see saplings behind the cottage swaying against a starless sky. He had smelled turves and ponies, wood smoke, cooking, and had thought she would turn him away. He wouldn't have blamed her if she had, a woman alone in the wilderness. When she opened the door, however, he found no fair colleen but a big, bluff, brown-faced woman not quite as old as his mother. She was holding a storm lantern in one hand and a revolver in the other.

‘You've nothing to fear from me,' he'd said.

‘Why are you out here? Why are you lost?'

‘I was looking for a cheap lodging.'

‘Are you a Dublin man?'

‘I am.'

She'd lifted the lantern and inspected him thoroughly.

She had on a smock, like the old-style smocks his mother had worn years ago when they'd been scrambling to make ends meet but, unlike his mother, the woman before him had had a kindly face and soft brown eyes.

‘If you have no accommodation…'

‘I have,' she'd said. ‘I have beds.'

‘How,' he'd hardly dared ask, ‘how much?'

‘Sixpence.'

‘And for a bite of supper?'

‘All for sixpence,' the woman had said.

‘I would – that would be fine.'

‘Come in then,' she'd said. ‘Come in and be welcome.'

The revolver was army issue and not loaded. She had lost her husband in the campaign in South Africa, for he had been a regular with the Connaught Rangers. He had died not of battle wounds but of some malevolent disease that had claimed more soldiers than bullets or spears. She had also lost a son to the sea. He had gone out with the mackerel fleet from Dunmore and had been washed overboard in a spring night storm. All that tragedy, all that loss had not hardened her, though, for she was a woman of character and counted herself fortunate to have one son still alive – he was a sergeant with the Connaughts – and two daughters in Boston in America, both married to policemen.

Her name was Maggie Leonard and she proved to be a sound, practical, down-to-earth Catholic woman with no liking for nationalists. She farmed the fifteen acres that soldiers' pay had bought, and bred compact little Connemara ponies that she showed around the fairs. She was one of the most contented women Gowry had ever encountered, with a big flouncy bosom and sturdy bare calves and a soft, soft, wind-whispering voice.

He lodged with Maggie whenever he possibly could, for he badly needed her sixpence worth of optimism to keep him going. He soon became her friend, a close, affectionate friend. Indeed, if Maggie had been younger and he had been free he might have swapped driving buses for the pony trade and thrown up everything to live with her. When he told her how he felt, however, she just laughed and said he was far too much a town-boy for her taste and even if he had been a bold bachelor and she not a good God-fearing Catholic woman, she wouldn't have entertained his proposal, for she was satisfied with the single life and would never find another man as loving as her husband had been.

Gowry reached the cottage just as dusk was falling. Cloud had cleared from the tops of the mountains and the colours of autumn were vivid in the last watery gleam of sunlight. Ponies were bunched behind the birch fence and a curlicue of smoke rose from a hole in the cottage roof – the place so old and peaceful and romantic that Flanagan's bus seemed totally out of place there.

Maggie waited in the open doorway. She had flour on her hands. She had been baking bread and the aroma of bread was warm in the air. She baked in a tin oven on the stones in the hearth and the dirt-floored kitchen was hot with the flames of the fire and the candles that burned in dark corners.

‘I heard they were bringing down more recruits and I thought you might be doing the driving,' she said.

He gave her a hug and followed her into the kitchen, watched her kneel before the tin stove on the grid over the stones.

She was a strong woman, large in scale, not so much stout as solid. He loved that about her, that granite strength. If there had been other women whom he loved – Maeve was the sole exception – he would not have been here at all, would not have had to submit himself to the melancholy truth that something had gone wrong somewhere in his life.

‘Why are you looking so glum, Gowry?' she said. ‘Are the soldiers getting you down again?'

‘Well, they are a rowdy lot,' Gowry said, ‘but you can hardly blame them. If they knew what they're in for they would be singing all the louder and drinking even more.'

‘Ah, it's a priggish man you are, Gowry McCulloch,' Maggie said. ‘There will be those on your bus today who will be thinking they've died and gone to heaven when they reach the barracks.'

Gowry took off his tunic and hung it on a chair back. In a canvas satchel were his nightshirt, a clean shirt and his razor. He hung the satchel on the chair back too. The woman poured him a glass of Guinness. He drank it slowly, letting the tensions of the day ease.

He said, ‘It will be heaven some of them will wind up in before this war is much older, I'm thinking.'

Maggie took the loaves from the oven and put them on a wicker board to cool. The bread was brown on top and smelled delicious. Gowry supped a mouthful of stout. He lifted his shoulders when the woman touched him as she passed on the way to the tub to crank the pump that brought water up from the spring beneath the house. The house had been built around the spring. After heavy rain or snow melt you would hear the gurgle of it under the dirt floor and the water would come gushing out of the spout of the pump in a great, cold, crystal splash, so cold that it made your teeth ache to drink it.

‘Think where they might be coming from, those passengers of yours,' Maggie said. ‘How bad their lives might be at home. The army has been the making of many a young man. The army will feed and clothe them and give them a bed to themselves and will train them to be useful.'