The Blood Upon the Rose (38 page)

I have a duty to try again.

He said: ‘If he is a murderer, that policeman could lock you up as an accomplice. You realize that, don't you?’

‘He’s got no evidence.’ Her voice was quite dull and flat.

‘Did you help him, Cathy? Did you help this man to kill a policeman?’

She shook her head. ‘He wouldn't have let me if I’d asked.’ Then she looked up at him suddenly. He was sitting on the arm of a chair quite close to her, gazing down into the whiskey glass. His shoulders sagged: he looked utterly forlorn. Catherine saw how he might look as an old man. She put her hand on his shoulder.

‘No, Father, I didn’t help him kill anyone.’

She took her hand away, stood up, and walked across the room. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to bed. I can’t talk about this any more today. I’ll go mad.’

Like your mother, he thought, as she went out of the door.
I’ll go mad
- that's what Maeve said, and she did it, too.

He poured himself another whiskey, and sat staring gloomily into the fire. At least my daughter is not a murderess, he told himself; I'm sure she was telling the truth then. Is that what life has come to - to be glad I can believe a thing like that?

20

SEAN SAT ON his bed in his cell, and confronted his fears. There were a number of them. He was afraid that he might be beaten and tortured; he was afraid that he might betray his friends; he was afraid that he might be shut in here for life; he was afraid the police would find out about the murder of Radford; he was afraid that he would be hanged.

He sat on the narrow, hard bed and forced his brain to examine these one by one. He had heard many stories of beatings and torture; all the Volunteers had. Men had had their arms twisted, fingernails crushed with pincers, fingers bent and broken, pistols held to their heads; in the hunger strikes in Belfast prisoners had been hosed down and had their hands fastened behind their backs for weeks, so that they were unable to undo their trousers to use their chamberpots.

So far little of this had happened to Sean. He had been punched and beaten on the first day, but since then the Ulster detective had behaved with reasonable correctness. He had shouted at him certainly, and repeated the same questions again and again with wearisome regularity, but no more. So long as this man was in charge, then, it seemed likely there would be nothing worse.

And without torture he would not betray his friends or admit to the shooting of Radford. There was no need for it. He had found the right formula. ‘I am a soldier of the Irish Republic; I refuse to answer that question.’ He had said that for two days. He believed he could keep on saying it for ever.

So there remained the fears of being shut in, and of being hanged.

Others have been imprisoned for Ireland before me, Sean thought - all the greatest men of our nation. Parnell, though in a better cell than this; Wolfe Tone, Napper Tandy, Robert Emmet, O’Donovan Rossa, Padraig Pearse, Thomas Clarke, Sean MacBride … the list went on and on. The heroes of 1916 had died in Kilmainham, but others had suffered in Mountjoy. Sean felt proud to be in such illustrious company; already he had found several names carved on the cell wall, and begun to add his own. But it was the living death, year after year in a stone tomb, with the walls closing around him, that he feared. Still, others had survived it: Thomas Clarke had been in gaol for fifteen years, breaking stone, sometimes forced to lap his food from the floor with his hands behind his back - but he had come out, to marry, run his newsagent's in Amiens Street, and be the first signatory of the Declaration of the Republic in 1916.

And then be court-martialled and shot.

If he could face it, Sean thought, so can I. It is an honour and a duty, the other side of what I have prepared for. Outside, I had to be ready to face death and kill for the Republic; in here, I must suffer. Become a martyr if necessary
. 'From the graves of patriot men and women spring living nations,'
Pearse said. The side that can suffer longest will win in the end.

The key to survival was to accept your fate, not fight it. It would be easier without choices and hope. He could choose, he realized, to hang or to be imprisoned. If he admitted nothing they were unlikely to hang him, because they had no evidence. But if he wanted to die, all he had to do was tell them that he had killed Radford. When the heavy cell door closed on him, and he thought of all the years he might spend here, he was tempted.

But then there were the hopes. In a few short years the British might be thrown out of Ireland, and then he would be freed, a national hero. That was a fine hope, for it involved no action on his part. The other hope was more practical. It was the possibility that one of the detectives might arrange an escape.

The man - Davis, he was called - had come to see him on the first evening, when Sean was still in the police cells. He had come in hurriedly, and gabbled his message in a low murmur.

‘You’ll know my face, boy, so you’ll know I didn’t like hitting you, believe me, but it had to be done, or you’d have betrayed me, and let us both down, likely. Do you see that now?’

‘Maybe.’ Sean had been cautious, reluctant to commit himself. His jaw and stomach had both been aching badly, he had been sick on the floor, and they had left his hands fastened behind his back. He had not cared greatly whether he betrayed this detective or not, at the time. The man was agitated, sweating profusely.

‘Well, you’d better see it. It’s a bloody dangerous job I do here, I can tell you. So you keep your damn mouth shut or I’ll tell them all I know about you, and then you’ll swing and no mistake.’

Davis had illustrated his point graphically by seizing Sean’s collar and pulling it tight around his neck, so that he found it hard to breathe. Sean's contempt for the man increased.

‘But if you just keep mum there's a chance we can get you out, boy. It’s been done before and it may be done again. I’ve already told Paddy Daly you’re here and they’ll be having a meeting to decide what can be done. So you’ve a chance yet.’

Perhaps, Sean had thought. The leap of hope had made him more than ever conscious of the squalor and pain, and an urgent longing had arisen in him to be free and out of here immediately, cycling through the cold crisp air by the Liffey.

‘Will you take off my cuffs, then?’ he had asked.

‘Don’t be daft, I can’t do that. That’d be the first way of getting a finger pointed at me. I’m not supposed to be in here at all, let alone cleaning you up and making you look nice. When we do the interrogations I’ll be the hardest cop of all if I can, just to avoid suspicion. You’ll have to put up with that. Just keep your mouth shut, now, boy - remember that!’

By the afternoon of the third day he had determined to abandon all hope, and resign himself to a long sentence, if he could. If he could not, he had only to admit the shooting of Radford, and the British would send him to heaven, to shake the hand of Padraig Pearse, Thomas Clarke, James Connolly, and all the other angels …

He was elaborating this thought in his mind when a key clanked in the lock. A warder stood with his back to the open door. ‘Out!’ he said.

Sean stood up. ‘Where to now?’ he asked.

No answer. The man clamped one handcuff bracelet round Sean’s wrist, the other round his own, and led him out into the long, echoing corridor. As they went down a staircase Sean thought wearily: Another interrogation, more questions – ‘Do you know him? Did you do this?’ ‘I am a soldier of the Irish Republic, I have nothing to say’- again and again and again. Or had the detective, Davis, managed something at last?

There it was - the niggling, irritating weakness of hope, followed always by the disappointment which made him weaker than before. I must suppress it, he thought. I'm a martyr; I’ll never get out. Think that, and be strong.

Kee was in the interview room, as he had expected.

So was Catherine.

She was wearing a pale-pink dress with white lace at the throat and a single pearl on a gold chain round her neck. Her eyes were wide and shining as though she might have been crying. She smiled at him.

‘Hello, Sean.’

Sean had been so obsessed with his own fears that he had scarcely thought about her consciously for three days. She had surfaced only in his dreams, and in those last moments before he fell asleep. Even then he had tried to suppress the memories as being unnecessary, likely to weaken him when he needed all his strength. Now he was stunned by the femininity of her body, the tantalizing scent that came from her, the thought that he had kissed that face, that neck, the breasts under that dress …

He looked away from her, to Kee, and saw a broad, cunning grin on the man’s face. Damn him, Sean thought, he knows exactly what I’m thinking. The man’s enjoying this.

Kee said: ‘Miss O'Connell-Gort has come to visit you. You have ten minutes. The warder will stay with you but I will spare you my presence. I hope she persuades you to tell the truth.’

He went out and closed the door. The warder sat down on a chair by the wall. Sean sat at a table facing Catherine.

‘Sean. How are you? Have they hurt you?’

She reached out her hands across the table to touch his.

The warder coughed loudly. ‘No physical contact, miss. Regulations.’

‘How stupid and cruel.’ She laid her hands flat on the table, a few inches from his.

Sean said: ‘Why did you come?’

‘Why? To see you, of course. I’ve been asking permission for the last three days.’ She studied him, sensing his anger but misinterpreting it. ‘Believe me, Sean - I’d have come earlier if they’d let me.’

Sean remembered Kee’s last words. ‘What have you told them?’

‘Nothing. No more than they knew already.’ She smiled. ‘I told them I was proud, Sean.’

‘Proud of what, for Christ's sake?’

‘Proud that you’d been my lover. Proud even of what you’d done.’

‘
What
did you tell them I’d done?’

She was shocked by his vehemence. The smile on her face faded to something harder. ‘I told you, Sean - nothing. If you think for one moment I’d betray you, you’re wrong.’

‘You may have said something without realizing it.’

She did not answer. Sean realized that the warder could hardly fail to hear every word. It would be madness to talk about details. He looked at her for a long moment, taking in every detail of the delicate, proud face, the slender neck, the rise of the small breasts under the dress, the slim, fine-boned hands that had scored lines in his buttocks and back as he thrust inside her. He said, very coldly and clearly: ‘It was good of you to come,
a ghra,
but you must never do it again. Promise me that, will you ?’

Tears rose to her eyes. ‘But why, Sean?’

‘Because, Cathy. That’s all. Just because.’

‘But I can help you. Bring you comfort, take messages. Tell the papers if you’re being ill-treated.’

‘No. You said it yourself. We were lovers once, but we’re not any more, and we never can be now. It weakens me, for God’s sake, to see you here, all soft and … It gives them a handle over me, helps them put pressure on. I want you to go right away and stay away. I’m a martyr now, I’m dead to the world.’

‘But you might get out, Sean! You might …’

‘Escape, you mean?’ He glanced meaningly at the warder. ‘Not a chance. Now go now, will you? Go! Forget I ever was.’

She sat there, stricken, not moving. With an impatient jerk he got to his feet, scraping the wooden chair back across the stone floor. She stood up too. He meant to walk away without a word, but somehow, without ever intending to, he took her hand for a second and pressed it.

It was a great mistake. The touch only lasted for an instant before the warder stopped it, but the soft human femininity of it destroyed his belief in everything he had said. He wanted to hold her, to kiss her, do all those things they had done together before, again and again forever …

The warder snatched his hand away, clipped the bracelet on his wrist, and marched him roughly to the door.

Back in his cell, he lay face down on his bed and wept. Then he prayed, desperately, that Davis would get him out before the walls closed in and drove him mad.

The one thing Catherine could not do was take second place to others. She had not been brought up to it. As a child she had fought her elder brothers all the way, to prove that she was better than them: she rode better, learned to read sooner, could paint and draw better, even row a boat as well as they could. The country folk around Killrath had a stock of tales of her leaping her pony over stone walls at breakneck speed, climbing cliffs to steal gulls’ eggs, capsizing a dinghy in the surf.

Then the boys were sent away for long periods to boarding school, her father took up with Sarah Maidment, and her mother began her long slide towards insanity. For all that time Catherine had been left alone with a series of governesses, feeling her own pain, triumph and confusion as the centre of the world. She learned about the world, but was not part of it. She knew how to challenge, dare, defy, and command, but not how to cooperate.

As a student, she had continued her isolation without feeling it abnormal. Most of the others she had met had been sympathetic to the cause of Irish nationalism, but not actively involved. Sean had been her one real friend - her link with the world where these things were actually happening. Now he had rejected her, and she did not know what to do.

She had told Professor O'Connor about Sean's arrest and he had been sympathetic, but he implied that the Volunteers already knew, and were doing all they could. He wondered if she would like to join the women's movement,
Cumman na mBann
, but she saw no point. She was sure they would disapprove of her. She could not face the discipline of running messages, taking orders, waiting, cooking, cleaning, and supporting the men which she was sure it would involve. Such things demanded an acceptance of comradeship and subordination which were no part of her nature. So she refused, and went miserably home to her green and gold sitting room in Merrion Square, to sit and think.