Women of Courage (107 page)

She sat as far away from him as she could, on a music stool in the corner by the harp. She had deliberately not lit the lamp, so she was half in shadow.

‘You were my last child,’ Sir Jonathan was saying. ‘You have defied me enough times before but this time we made a bargain which I thought you would keep. I did not marry Sarah Maidment, I have made everything over to you in my will, and now I find that all this time you have been going behind my back, like a … street girl, it seems. Sleeping with a murderer.’

‘He’s not a murderer, Father, he’s a soldier. He fights for his country like you did. And Richard and John, too. They killed Germans, didn’t they? Wasn’t that murder as well?’

That hurt. When she saw his pain she wished she had not said it. But she was in too much despair to think clearly.

‘If you think that, Catherine, you must be as mad as your mother was,’ he said quietly. ‘Your two brothers were fighting in uniform in the most terrible war the world has ever seen. They gave their lives for king and country. You cannot compare them for a moment with swine who skulk around in back streets in plain clothes, and dash out like cowards to shoot men in the back.’

‘Sean’s not a coward.’

‘Of course he is, they all are. Cowardly murderers who stab us all in the back, like Pearse and his rabble did in ‘16. No better than Whiteboys who cut off the tails of cattle. If he wasn’t a coward he’d have joined up to fight for his country.’

‘Father, this
is
his country. That’s what he’s fighting for - they all are.’

‘And you think Ireland will be a better place when it’s ruled by a bunch of murderers, do you? Is that what you think?’

‘I think it already is run by murderers.’

She had thought that at that point he would end the conversation entirely, and perhaps throw her out into the street, to take her chance with such of Sean’s colleagues as she could find. She had thought of that possibility on the way home, and wondered if she should go to Parnell Square and throw herself on the mercy of whoever she could find. But she had her pride still. Only Sean, in the movement, had really accepted her. Once. Without him there seemed no point. There was a terrible loneliness in leaving the only home she had, with nowhere to go. So she had come back here, more out of inertia than anything else.

She felt enormously tired now. The day had been too full of shocks: the discovery of what Sean had done, his rejection of her, his arrest, and now this. Despite it all she bore her father no ill will: he had even tried to protect her, in his way. It was just that he was so utterly, hopelessly wrong.

To her surprise he flushed, as if embarrassed at the last point. ‘If he did kill someone he’ll be hanged, you know.’

‘That’s what I mean.’

To his surprise she did not cry at the thought of Sean hanging. She swept her hands idly, irritatingly across the strings of the harp, then stilled the sound with her arm. She stared at him out of the shadows, still clasping the instrument, which he knew she had never learnt to play. Her arms, in the sleeveless turquoise dress, were bare, and the line of her neck and shoulders was quite slender and beautiful. Her small, delicate face, framed by the short dark hair, watched him so seriously; pale, intent, determined. He thought she would make a marvellous portrait, just like that, if any artist could capture it. A portrait of what, exactly? Of a new type of young woman that I can’t understand or control at all, it seems.

How did I get a daughter like this? She had that look on her as a child of four or five, I remember. And she would scream and kick the house down if she didn’t get what she wanted then, too.

But, by God, she can’t have what she wants this time.

He said: ‘I take it the story the police told me was true.’

‘The details were true. They missed out the fact that it was all done in love. I don’t expect policemen can understand that.’

‘No one could understand a girl like you falling in love with a murderer.’

‘He’s not - Father, you don’t know he is a murderer.’

Sir Jonathan said nothing. He moved away from the fire, and stood looking down at her. The firelight flickered on her smooth, defiant face. He felt an immeasurable sense of desolation.

He said: ‘
You
know, though. Don’t you, Cathy?’

She turned her eyes away.

He walked to a cabinet in the corner and poured himself a whiskey. For a while neither of them spoke. Sir Jonathan was glad the room was dark. If his daughter was crying he didn’t want to see. He hoped she was. It would be some small sign of decency, of shared human values.

But I have sinned, too, he thought. I must have done, to have all this inflicted on me. I betrayed her mother, and that was done for love. The boys understood that but this child never forgave me. Now she is all I have left. And she has betrayed me. Perhaps that is my punishment.

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?

25. A Soldier of the Irish Republic

S
EAN 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.