The Blood Upon the Rose (9 page)

The waiter brought three coffees but there were only two men sitting at the table. From which, Radford thought, an astute mind might deduce that the meeting had not been an entire success.

Kee rubbed his cheek with the palm of his hand and looked at Radford across the table. ‘Sorry, Bill,' he said. 'If you didn't want to hear it, you shouldn't have asked me.’

Radford stuffed tobacco into his pipe, lit it, and regarded Kee thoughtfully through the clouds of smoke. That simple, undeviating sense of morality was one of the things he most valued about his old friend. Paradoxically, it also came between them. He said: 'You're too good for this world, old son.’

‘Maybe. There are times I'd rather not know what the military are thinking.’

Radford shook his head. ‘You need to know, Tom. For two reasons. First, because at any time they may be crossing your path. And secondly, because I, Bill Radford, may not always be here. Don't worry, I fully intend to be - I've even ordered one of these steel and silk bullet-proof waistcoats. But I was appointed to free this city of political murderers, and that's what I intend to do, in any way I can. These Sinn Fein bastards are getting very damned efficient, and it can't have escaped their notice that at last there's someone in G Division who intends to carry the fight to them. I know what I'd be thinking, if I were Michael Collins.’

‘No, you wouldn't,' Kee said. 'Because you're a policeman, not an assassin. That's what gives us the right to govern the country, and makes him a common murderer.’

Radford sighed. His attitude to the interview with the Colonel had been rather different. He took his pipe out of his mouth and waved it in the direction of the main entrance, where Sir Jonathan had just gone out. 'It's not us who govern the country, Tom,' he said. ‘It's men like him.’

5.

Catherine had been looking for Sean for three days. He was not at the university, he did not come to the Irish class in Parnell Square, and Professor O'Connor could tell her nothing. She did not know where else to look.

She began to realize how little she knew about him. She had known he had lodgings somewhere on North Strand, but she had never been there, and clearly there was no point going there now. She had teased him about being a gunman, but never really believed, before Ashtown, that he was actively involved with the Volunteers. She had not realized, until now, that they always met on his terms, when he chose. If he wanted to, he could just completely disappear. It intrigued and annoyed her at the same time.

She had not realized, either, how much she needed to see him. The war, and her isolation at Killrath, had kept her out of the company of young men, and those whom she had met, even at UCH, she had mostly scorned, until now. She felt they were too like pale versions of her brothers; they had no mystery for her. Sean was the first young man she had really kissed; and when she had kissed him once he had got into her system like a drug so that she wanted to do it again and again. The meetings after lectures, the evenings at Parnell Square, the slow walks home after a drink in a pub, had become the high points of her life, with everything in between grey, unsatisfactory. She studied and ran the house in a daze, and lay restless in bed at night, dreaming of him, sometimes kissing the soft parts of her hand as though it were his lips.

And now at a stroke he had become an Irish revolutionary hero, and vanished. She felt like an addict deprived of her drug. It made him more appealing than before, and less attainable. On her way to and from college she found herself scrutinizing every young man, seeking a certain shape of the face, a smile, a turn of the hand, that would be his.

On Sunday she went to a Christmas party at University College Hospital, given in a ward for the incurably shell-shocked. Professor O'Connor had insisted that all his students attend, and Catherine had come because Sean had promised to be there. But that had been before Ashtown. He was not there at the beginning, and she sat for an interminable hour on the bed of a one-armed ex-soldier. The man began by slyly trying to persuade her to diagnose an illness in his lower stomach, and ended by fulminating against his wife who had abandoned him for a cowardly stay-at-home Sinn Feiner. The man in the next bed had his children there, dressed up in beautifully starched and crimped pinafores and ribbons for their father's glazed, unrecognizing eyes to ignore. The nurses in their tall white hats gathered a group around the Christmas tree and crib. A student played the piano and the professor led carol-singing. The male students' voices were loud, defiant, jolly. One of the patients had a fine tenor, three were raucous, and the rest sang like ghosts. Their mouths moved, but the sound that came out was scarcely detectable. Catherine only heard it because the singers sang more slowly than the piano, so that they did not quite finish when everyone else did. She shivered. It was the sort of whispered singing she could imagine hearing alone in a graveyard at night.

She felt irritable and guilty. Professor O'Connor was right. These were the people she was training to serve. This was what it was like, being a doctor. But she could not focus her mind on the patients at all.

Then Sean came in, and the room filled with sunlight.

He sat on the bed, helping her patient unwrap his present, and winked at her. She had thought he would look different, somehow; she found herself looking for lines on his face, or scars. But there were none; only the smooth skin, as though he scarcely shaved; the grin from the wide, cheerful mouth; the smooth, neatly combed hair. The hazel eyes watching her - a little tired perhaps, but happy, unafraid.

For a moment she felt not love as she had expected, but anger. A voice inside her screamed that he should look hard and cold and guilty. If that bomb had come inside the car I would be a broken cripple like these men here. But the voice cried in a wilderness and was forgotten. He could not have meant to hurt her, he hadn't known she was there. He had risked his own life, and he was here, unharmed, at her side!

He smiled at her, and only the smile mattered, not what might have been. She felt oddly light and tender all over, curiously detached from the world.

On the way out of the ward Sean took her hand. ‘I was going to Sandymount for a walk. Would you come with me?’

She smiled. ‘Is that your idea of an invitation?’

‘It is that. I've been wanting to talk to you.’

‘Then I might spare you a moment or two, if you're lucky.’ But she thought, if he hadn't asked her, she would have hated him for ever.

It was a cold, grey day, hinting at snow but then disappointing, as so often in December. They walked eastwards along Wilton Terrace, with the grey water of the canal on their right. She noticed how Sean looked up and down the road carefully, his eyes never resting in one place for very long. A motor omnibus for Sandymount stopped in front of them, and they boarded it.

On the bus their thighs touched, and she felt every jolt of the road. She said: ‘You weren't followed to the hospital?’

Sean's smile faded. ‘No. Why do you say that?’

‘I'm not stupid, you know, Sean Brennan. I've got a thing or two to tell you, as well.’

They spoke little more on the bus, for people were crowded all round them. When they got off, they walked along the promenade beside the beach. Here, surely, they were safe from pursuit. There were a fair number of people strolling up and down - mostly couples and families, seeking a breath of fresh air before dusk - but not a policeman or soldier in sight. Small children ran after hoops or kicked balls under the eyes of indulgent parents.

Catherine leaned back against a pillar in the low sea wall, taking both Sean's hands in hers and pulling him towards her. She would not let him go now. He looked solemn, and opened his mouth to speak, but she touched a finger to his lips.

‘It's all right, I know what you have to tell me. And I'm proud of you, Sean, as any true Irish girl would be. Except for one thing.’ She shivered, and felt his fingers between her own. Big, smooth firm fingers, that had pulled the pin from the bomb and thrown it. 'If you'd succeeded, I wouldn't be here today.’

‘What do you mean?’ He scowled at her, the boyish face slightly flushed, a little angry. He really didn't know, then.

‘I was in the Viceroy's car, Sean.’

It is true, she thought. A sudden shock does cause blood to drain from the face. She could see it happening. He stared at her, wide-eyed, then took his hands from hers and turned guiltily away. And she thought, I didn't mean that, don't abandon me now.

She said: ‘It's all right, Sean, I told you. I'm not hurt. And I know why you did it. I would do the same, if I dared.’ She touched his cheek gently, to comfort him. He shuddered, and jerked his head violently, as though her hand were a wasp.

‘What the hell were you doing in the damn car, then? You had no right to be there!’

‘It's not a crime, you know! Anyway, I was tricked into it.’ She explained the trick her father had played, and her attempts to argue with Lord French on the train. But she could see he was only half listening. He turned away from her, and thrust his hands into his coat pockets angrily.

‘You couldn't expect me to know you were there! I'm a soldier, and French is the enemy. You shouldn't go near him!’

Will he reject me for that?
She stood quite still, not touching him, waiting to see if he would walk away. When he did not she said gently: ‘I know that, Sean. I want him dead too.’

'’You do?’ He turned back, looked in her eyes, surprised. ‘Yes. If it will help Ireland, I do.’

It struck him how slender she was; yet very straight-backed too, strong, determined. The delicate beauty of her hurt him. He thought of the way a crocus could be strong enough to burst its way through the tarmac at the side of a road, and then be crushed by any casual passing boot. He might have maimed her for ever.

‘I'm sorry, Cathy. It's you that has the right to be angry, not me. I might have killed you.’

‘You might have been killed yourself. You took that risk.’

He reached out his arms, and she slipped gladly into his embrace. They held each other very close, very still, while the seagulls screamed on the beach behind them. A mother, passing with two small children, glanced at them nostalgically.

They walked along the promenade, arm in arm for warmth. There were some steps down to the beach. They went down them, and stumbled across the sand to the sea's edge. It was dusk, and a small cold wind was coming off the sea. She told him of the detective who had visited her, and the photo he had shown her. She gave him Kee's card.

‘What did you tell him?’

‘Nothing. Only that you were a student in my year, but he knew that already. He had searched Martin's room, and yours. He thought I might have seen you at Ashtown.’

‘And you told him you didn't?’

‘Yes.’

‘Martin.’ Sean skimmed a stone across the grey water. Its splashes were oddly bright, like snowflakes in gaslight. ‘He would have been alive now, if it wasn't for me.’

She had been too bound up in herself; she had never thought of this. ‘Why, Sean?’

He picked up another stone, and flung it high in the air with a vicious twist of his arm. It fell into the sea with an odd sucking noise. ‘Because I told him to run out and chuck his last bomb, that's why.’ It all came back to him: the sudden dash out into the middle of the road, the bullets splattering around them like hailstones, Martin falling on his face like a stuffed doll. ‘And the bloody car was empty all the time!’

She linked her arm through his, tentatively, so that he could break free if he wanted. ‘You couldn't have known that.’

‘No.’ He touched her hand and looked round at her. Her face was pale, indistinct in the twilight. ‘And if we had known it … Sweet Mother of Christ!’

‘She was watching over me,’ Catherine said. ‘Will you try to kill French again?’

‘If we get the chance, and Mick Collins learns where he plans to go. But he'll be walled in by guards now, more than ever.’ Sean gave a short bitter laugh of triumph and frustration. ‘The man's a fugitive now. Viceroy, indeed! He's a criminal on the run!’

They stepped back hurriedly to avoid a wave larger than the others. Catherine leaned her head against his shoulder. ‘What about you, Sean? Now they've got your photo, what will you do?’

He frowned. ‘It's too risky to come to college. I'll have to give up studying for a while. But this is more important. It's the birth of our country, Caitlin - there has to be blood!’

She shuddered slightly at the sentiment, but she did not question it. Padraig Pearse had said things like that. She liked it when he used her Irish name; it reminded her of her nurse, of childhood. She asked: ‘Where are you staying?’

‘That's not a thing for me to tell you now, is it?’

‘Why not?’

‘Your Inspector Kee might come back and ask some more questions. If you don't know, you can't tell him.’

She unwound his arm from her waist and stepped back. He might be a hero in the Volunteers, but she would not let him control her. ‘Sean Brennan, do you think for one moment I'd tell the police a thing like that?’

He considered her, seriously weighing the question, and her genuine indignation. His face was shadowy in the growing dusk.

‘No,
a ghra
, of course I don't. But I have to be as safe as I can, now I'm on the run. You wouldn't mean to tell them, but they have trick ways of putting the questions. You might be taken in.’

She thought for a moment, and then relaxed. He was right; it was his life that was at risk. ‘I’m sorry, Sean.’ She put her arms around his neck, and kissed him quickly on the lips. It was as she remembered. ‘I only asked, because I want to be taken in by you. I want to be a soldier's girl.’

Surprised, he kissed her back, and she responded warmly. It was like the first time, outside her house. And she thought, this is what I need, this is what I want him for. The sense of touch, of contact with something real, outside my study and loneliness. But then he drew back.

‘We can't do this here, Cathy. It's  …’