The City of Shadows (42 page)

*

They left the next morning, on the seaplane to Kalmar and Stockholm. As there was now no one in Danzig or Berlin who had ever known anything about a plot to kill Bishop Edward O'Rourke, there was no one with any interest in either Hannah Rosen or Stefan Gillespie. But Seán Lester thought it was still better for them not to travel home through Germany. There were always lists and there were always Nazis with their own view of what working towards the Führer meant. At around the same time as they moved out on to the Dead Vistula from the seaplane station, Father Francis Byrne was being interred in the cathedral cemetery at Oliva. The bodies of Johannes Berent and Leon Kamnitzer, now surplus to requirements, were never found. They had been dumped somewhere in the forests above Danzig. Hugo Keller would find an unmarked grave in Langfuhr. The man called Karl was buried in the cemetery in Oliva too, close to Francis Byrne, after a requiem Mass at the cathedral. His family was given no explanation about where he died or why he had a bullet hole through the back of his head. Kriminaloberassistent Rothe was buried with full Party honours, and after the funeral, to mark his passing, a journalist from the Social Democrat
Danziger Volstimme
very carelessly fell under a tram and died. It was the least Rothe's friends could do. The Nazis still ruled Danzig, but Lester was there too, so was O'Rourke; and somehow enough people had braved the thugs at the polling stations to keep the Free City alive for a few more years.

Now, as the Dornier Delphin lifted up from the muddy waters of the Dead Vistula and banked over Danzig, the sun was shining. Hannah and Stefan looked down. It seemed peaceful enough. But there was no peace of course, and there would be no peace to come. In less than five years Seán Lester would be gone, along with the city's obstreperous Russian-Irish bishop. The first shots of the Second World War would be fired at the Polish fort on the Westerplatte by a German battleship in the Tote Weichsel. Most of Danzig's Jews would have left by then; the Great Synagogue would be razed to the ground so no sign of its existence remained. Some of the Free City's Jews would find safety, but many would simply be rounded up by the Nazis later, somewhere else in Europe, and sent to the ghettos and death camps. In less than ten years the German city of Danzig would be reduced to smouldering rubble by the guns and bombs of the Red Army. A quarter of its population would die in the battle for the city and in the forced marches and deportations that followed. No one would be very interested in mourning them. It was their war after all. And when the city was built again, German brick by German brick, it would be as the Polish city of Gda´nsk; it would only look like the German city of Danzig that once stood in exactly the same place. And the language that had filled its streets and buildings for five hundred years would disappear, along with the people who had once lived there. In all the rebuilding, though, no one would ever bother to rebuild the synagogue.

Freemasonry, the Jews and Communism were among the subjects discussed by the Rev. D. Fahey, C.S.Sp., D.D., in the course of a paper entitled ‘Will Ireland Remain Faithful to Christ the King?' which he read before delegates to the Catholic Young Men's Society Convention, at the Gresham Hotel … Wherever, in any country, he said, men had thrown themselves into the stream, of which the agents of Communism controlled the current, the end was slavery under Jewish finance, with the obliteration of the Christian family and the Catholic idea of native land … These truths must be borne in mind in connection with the rapid increase in numbers, power and wealth of the Jews in Dublin.

The Irish Times

Wicklow, April 1935

The field behind the house at Kilranelagh was full of sheep. On one side, penned tightly and bleating noisily, were the grubby, thick-woolled ewes waiting to be sheared; on the other were the newly shorn, bewildered by their sudden weightlessness, their gleaming white coats flecked here and there with blood. It was the day after Stefan Gillespie's return from Danzig, but nothing, not even Tom's excitement, could stand in the way of the shearing. The Farrell brothers would be there from the break of day, when the sheep were brought in from the fields, until the last one was clipped, late that afternoon. Stefan and his father carried ewe after struggling ewe from the pens to the thudding Lister engine that drove the shearing heads. The smell of diesel mixed with the smell of the animals. Their clothes reeked of sticky lanolin and sheep shit. Now the sun was almost overhead. Half the flock had been clipped and they would soon stop for dinner. Stefan looked up to wipe the sweat from his eyes. He saw the bent figure of Emmet Brady walking through the field towards him, leaning on his stick. It was four months since they had first talked about Tom. The threat from Father Carey and the Church had been brooding over the farm all that time. It was never quite forgotten, but for a time the business of life had pushed it away.

Stefan and the solicitor walked away from the noise of the shearing, saying nothing. David Gillespie watched them as he carried on his work.

‘I'm sorry, I'm not a very welcome guest, Stefan,' said Brady finally.

‘I thought after all this time –'

‘They won't let it go. You have the choice you had before, to go along with it and send Tom to his uncle and aunt's, or they'll take it to court. I think they'll move quite quickly now. And they have their reasons for that.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘They'll want to ensure it goes before a particular judge. No one ought to be able to guarantee that, of course, but let's just say it will happen.'

‘And why's that so important?'

‘The man is Alexander Phelan. I've looked very hard at what's been happening in the last few years, in cases like this. Phelan sat on one in 1934. A woman had custody of her children taken away from her. She was a Protestant. The Catholic husband was in hospital and dying. There'd been a falling out and the husband accused the woman of interfering in the children's religious upbringing. Not much evidence, other than his word, but Phelan refused to accept her assurances that she would continue to bring the children up as Catholics. He said he was duty bound to secure the fulfilment of any agreement that was made before a mixed marriage, because of the special position of the Catholic Church in the state. And because, and these are the words he used, “the state itself pays homage to that Church”.'

They walked on in silence again, looking up towards Baltinglass Hill.

‘When we first talked after Christmas, I gave you the bleakest picture, Stefan, but I believed that with the right barrister we could fight this. The more I've seen of what's going on the less sure I am. It's even bleaker now.'

‘It still feels like this should be impossible, Mr Brady –'

‘It should be. But you need to think hard before taking this on.'

‘Are we back to me accepting it and being grateful I still see him?'

‘I only know you have to tread carefully.'

The old man stopped.

‘There is another option.'

Stefan shook his head in weary disbelief.

‘You mean convert? Are we back to that?'

‘No, I mean leave the jurisdiction.'

Stefan turned back to the shearing, watching as his father struggled with a recalcitrant ewe. Then he looked round again, up to Baltinglass Hill.

‘That's the best our Free State can offer us? Leaving the country?'

‘Don't tell me you haven't thought about it.'

As he turned to face Brady once more he didn't need to answer.

‘If it's the decision you're going to make in the end, make it now. They can't pursue you for something that won't stand up in a court in England, but if we go to trial and lose, taking Tom out of the country when he's a ward of court is a different matter. You could end up in gaol yourself.'

The green John Deere tractor was chugging up the field towards them. Helena drove and Tom perched on the trailer behind her, with a basket of sandwiches and cans of hot, sweet tea. Tess the sheepdog ran alongside, barking.

‘Dinner! It's the dinner!' Tom's voice was shrill and happy above all the other noise.

That evening Stefan and his father were milking in the dark parlour that smelt of fresh hay and the warm breath of cows and the smoke from David Gillespie's pipe and the urine and disinfectant swirling in the open concrete drain. Stefan sat on one stool, his fingers squeezing milk into the galvanised bucket beneath an udder. On the other side of the cow, out of sight, his father's fingers pulled at the teats of another one. For a moment the only sounds were the rhythmic spurting of milk into the buckets and the mouths of the cows pulling the hay from the hay racks.

‘Did Mr Rosen pay you well?'

‘What?'

‘I'd say there was more to it than putting your woman on a boat.'

‘Maybe a bit more.'

‘Your mother was listening to the German news on the radio.'

‘You'd think she'd know better. They didn't mention me then?'

They couldn't see each other, but he felt the look of disapproval on his father's face. Stefan didn't want hard conversations; he wanted to think.

‘I'm not asking you to tell me what happened in Danzig, Stefan.'

‘I've told you, Pa, not much. It's over. It doesn't matter now.'

‘Other things aren't over, are they?'

‘Is this a conversation Ma told you to have?'

‘That's the way she is. We've all been avoiding it, haven't we?'

Stefan didn't answer. After a few seconds his father continued.

‘Lawyers are going to cost money.'

‘I know.'

‘What we've got is yours and Tom's. I hope you know that too.'

‘Perhaps it won't come to that.'

‘It's going to come to something, Stefan.'

‘I've a bit set aside.'

He was still sidestepping. David Gillespie couldn't see the shrug, but he knew it was there.

‘Emmet Brady's not so sure you can win, is he?'

‘Is that Ma's question?'

‘The question's do we give the money to the lawyers, or do you take it and start again, somewhere else? Wasn't Mr Brady saying the same thing? It doesn't mean there mightn't be a day you could come back home again.'

It was the first time the words had been spoken. For David, however hard they were, they were easier without seeing his son's face. Everyone knew how rarely anyone came home, even when somewhere else was only hours across the Irish Sea. There was only the sound of milk spurting into buckets again.

‘There's a way to go yet, Pa.'

‘You think so?' David was surprised by his son's quiet self-control. ‘If Mr Brady's not convinced, I don't know who else can help us.'

‘Sometimes it's not who you know, it's what you know,' said Stefan. It felt like the shrug was still there.

‘Should I know what that means?' There was a note of irritation in David's voice. Riddles weren't answers. These were difficult things to say.

‘No,' Stefan snapped in return, ‘and you wouldn't want to.'

At almost the same instant father and son got up from the milking stools and walked to the battered churn behind them. They poured the milk from the buckets in silence. Stefan knew what it had cost his father to speak those words, and what it had cost his mother to tell him to speak them. But it wasn't time for answers. They said no more till the milking was done and the cows were back in the fields.

When the two men walked into the kitchen the only recognition that the conversation in the milking parlour had happened was the look Helena gave David, and the slightly puzzled shrug he gave her in return. Explanations would have to wait, but she knew the questions no one wanted to ask still had no answers. Stefan and David stood next to each other at the sink, washing their hands. Tom sat at the kitchen table, unaware of anything except for the radio and a woman's voice reading a story that had taken him somewhere else altogether. Stefan listened too: ‘A faint glimmer floated down from the hills. That was Seamus, holding a candle and riding Long-Ears. The storm lantern the turf-cutter used danced across the bog like a will-o'-the wisp, and the big steady glow of the kitchen lamp advanced on the road and Eileen knew her mother carried it. All the lights came together at the crossroads. “Hee-haw,” sang out Long-Ears, and Eileen knew she was found.' As David Gillespie opened a bottle of beer and poured out two glasses, Stefan sat down at the table beside Tom, watching him happily absorbed in the story, and wishing he could just be where his son was now, far away from everything.

*

The following morning Stefan Gillespie set off early on the bicycle it had taken him the best part of the previous evening to repair, after its years in the loft of forgotten things behind the pigsty. His father was milking the cows. It would be a long ride into the mountains. The air was still cold but it was a clear, almost cloudless day; it would be hot as he climbed up to Glenmalure. The last time he had made this journey on a bicycle he was probably sixteen or seventeen, with Terry Lynch and Richard Kavanagh and Billy Harrison and Niall Quinn. None of them really kept in touch now. Terry was in America, somewhere in New York. Richard was still farming in Englishtown, just down the road, but there was never much to talk about other than the way the grass was growing and the price of cattle. Billy was in Yorkshire, a travelling salesman the last he'd heard, with an English wife and three children. Niall was in Baltinglass now, back from Dublin and trying to make something of the auctioneer's firm his father had drunk into the ground.

There was time to remember a lot as he cycled past the track up to the cemetery under Kilranelagh Hill where Maeve was buried, then through Balinroan and on past Tom's school at Kilranelagh Cross; by the long, crumbling wall of the crumbling Humewood Estate and on to Rathdangan and Rathcoyle; up on to the Military Road where it rose more steeply now, towards Aghavannah, and then suddenly, as the road turned sharply, he was riding down the steep slope into the valley of the Avonbeg River, beside the ruins of the English army barracks at Drumgoff. For a moment the reasons that had brought him into the mountains didn't matter as he looked down. He knew this place. It was in his blood. He needed it to be in his son's blood as well.