Women of Courage (110 page)

Andrew came up a few minutes later. Simla was sweating and foaming slightly at the mouth.

She watched him critically as he dismounted. Perhaps there’ll be a little less arrogance now, she thought.

She asked: ‘Did you enjoy that?’

At first he did not answer. She had unsettled him and he was not used to that. He walked down to the edge of the lake, picked up a stone and skimmed it across the water. Then he sat down on a rock, took out a cigarette and lit it. As he exhaled the first breath, he said: ‘Do you always ride like that?’

‘Like what?’

‘Like - someone who’s afraid of nothing.’

‘You don’t have to be afraid if you trust the horse. I’ve had Grainne since she was a filly. Why? Did Simla scare you?’

‘A little. He hasn’t got any wings, as far as I can see.’

She laughed. And that was progress, he thought. There was no fear in the laugh, it was a shared thing. He didn’t want a girl who was afraid of him all the time. After last night’s conversation he had wondered if he might have made her too nervous; after this morning’s ride he wondered if she would ever be afraid of him again. Elsie had been afraid of him, a little, he remembered. That had added spice to it - the knowledge that he could do what he wanted, that in the end she would always submit. But too much fear would have made her a quivering jelly, like those girls in the brothels. No fight, no fun at all.

For Catherine, the laugh was a relief too. She had been so bound up in herself, she had not thought she ever would find anything funny again. But the exercise, the pleasure she got from feeling Grainne so perfectly at one with her, had released her tension more than anything that could have happened in Dublin. And now she had cut the man down to size a bit, he seemed more human.

A storm was darkening the sky a mile or so out to sea. Catherine said: ‘Since we’re here, would you like to see the family Ferguson wanted to evict?’

Andrew shrugged. ‘Why - are they paragons of peasant virtue?’

‘Hardly. That’s the whole point.’

As they rode round the side of the mountain and down a narrow lane, the rain caught up with them. At first it was a thin drizzle, sweeping out of the west under a gloomy sky. Then there was a flash of lightning and the rumble of thunder out at sea.

The rebuilt cottage was much as Catherine remembered it. Rough stone walls, with moss and plants clinging to them on the south and west; thatch that needed renewing, muddy footpaths through a garden full of stalky cabbages and undug rows of potatoes. A thin line of peat smoke came from the chimney, and there was a cow and a donkey in one field. Two young men, about fourteen and sixteen, were digging in the other.

‘Hello, Brian,’ Catherine called out. ‘Is your mother home?’

‘Sure, and where else in the world would she be?’

A thin, dirty, dark-haired woman of about fifty came to the door of the house, a scowl on her face, her children lurking in the background. When she saw who it was she wiped her face with the back of her hand, and the scowl changed into a grimace which might have been meant as a smile. ‘Is it yourself back again among us then, Miss Catherine?’

‘I am that, Josie.’

‘It’s the best place for you.’ The woman came down to the gate, pulling a shawl over her head against the sweeping rain. ‘That Dublin’ll be no place for a girl like you, what with all the shootings and murdering that’s going on there now. Is it true what they say, that even the Viceroy himself is shut shivering in his bedroom for fear of the boys that’s running round the town now?’

‘Not exactly, Josie.’ Catherine thought of Sean, locked alone in his tiny cell. ‘But those boys are doing their best. They’ll have the country free yet, you wait and see.’

The woman turned her head and spat expressively into the mud. ‘I wouldn’t have no truck with them. It’s them my Kevin went off to join, likely, when he said he was after taking the King’s shilling. And where’s the money he’s supposed to send me from their stinking republic, eh? You tell me that’’

Catherine shook her head. ‘Kevin probably didn’t go to either of them, Josie. But the Republic will come and it’ll make things better for everyone, you wait and see.’

‘Nah.’ Josie waved her arm dismissively. ‘You’re a good girl, Miss Catherine, but you’re after filling your head with moonshine if you believe that. There’s no one in this country but you and your mother ever did me a good turn, and that’s never a thing to do with soldier boys one side or the other. Will you come in out of the rain and take a dish of tay?’

Catherine glanced at Andrew and shook her head. ‘No thanks, Josie, I’m showing Major Butler around the estate. But I’ll look in again another day if I can.’

As they rode off up the lane, Andrew laughed. ‘So much for your support for Sinn Fein,’ he said. ‘Even that filthy old hag can see they’re a bunch of murderers. Wasn’t it women like her who threw horse dung on the traitors in 1916, because their service pensions couldn’t be paid during the Rising?’

The rain was coming down in sheets now, and a flash of lightning made the horses frisk nervously. Grainne danced round in a circle. Catherine yelled: ‘She’s just an ignorant old woman who doesn’t know any better. It doesn’t mean the Republic’s wrong – it’s coming, like it or not. You’ll see!’

Then the rain and the thunder made it too hard to talk. They trotted up the lane towards Killrath. Catherine was soaked, and the rain made her skirt cling to her. Andrew grinned in appreciation as he watched her slim back and haunches move at the trot. But the incident puzzled him. There were peasant families like that at Ardmore. All landlords suffered them, but they brought no conceivable benefit to the world that Andrew could see. He understood Ferguson’s irritation with the girl better now. A girl of her class needed such woolly sentiment knocked out of her.

He wondered if he were the man to do it.

That afternoon, Catherine wrote to Sean.

A ghra,

This may be the last letter you ever get from me, and I shall not know if you’ve received it because I don’t want you to reply.

You told me not to try to see you again so I won’t, but I have to say these things because they are so clear in my mind now and you must know them.

The times we were together were the most wonderful in my life. I will remember them always, every moment. I did what I did because I loved you and I believed you loved me, for a while. But you’ve told me you don’t love me, now. I believe you because of the way you told me - before the detectives came. I won’t beg. You wouldn’t want a girl who did that, anyway. It was the cruellest thing anyone has ever said to me. I shall never forget it.

I hope one day you learn what it is to love as much as I loved you. For your sake, I hope she loves you too.

You would agree with my father; he wants me to marry a man of my own class as you said. I may not be able to resist it, but it will be a sad cruel heartless business, like sending a mare to the stud, the way he thinks of it. Nothing like what we had.

You don’t understand my free speaking perhaps but that is what the world needs more of. If the Republic comes and women are not free to choose as men are it will be a poor thing, not what James Connolly died for.

I miss the touch of you, Sean. More than anything. Never lose your courage.

Your lover,

Catherine.

She wanted to tell him what she thought about his killing the policeman but that might be to condemn him with her own hand. As it was the thought of prison warders reading the letter hurt, but that was a thing for them to be ashamed of, she thought, rather than her. If what she felt was true, it should be said.

27. Two of a Kind

A
LONE IN his room, Andrew washed, shaved, and changed into dry clothes. Then he paced up and down distractedly. This was not supposed to happen, but the girl was getting under his skin. And into his mind, too, so that he could think of nothing else.

In part it was the enforced idleness, he thought - the empty time waiting for the next stage of the operation. He couldn’t stay in Dublin, or go back to Ardmore. But that he could cope with on his own. With this girl here, it was a different matter.

In a way what she had said was true. He did not know a lot about women. He had made love to a dozen or more - mostly high-class whores in officers’ brothels in France and London. But there was not a lot to understand in that. He had paid his money, bought them drinks, been forceful and manly, and always it had been over too soon. Most had failed to hide their obvious repugnance at the sight of his face. Then, when he had tried the tricks he had learnt with Elsie, they had been terrified. Only with Elsie had he had a relationship. And she had not been a normal girl either.

Catherine was not very much like Elsie. Elsie had been much more buxom, more earthy, broader and stronger in the face and the body. She had not been well educated or intelligent; in fact she had been simple and mildly insane. And he had never, even when he was wildly in love, considered marrying her.

Catherine was like Elsie in only two ways. She did things that were quite unpredictable and exciting; and Andrew had fallen in love with her.

He tried to analyse how this could possibly have happened. When he had met her everything had been going wrong for him. Ardmore had burnt down, his mission against Collins had failed, he had had no clear plan for the future. That was not unlike the time he had stumbled on Elsie’s cottage in the Schwarzwald, exhausted, starving, near to giving himself up. At that moment Catherine, like Elsie, had done something quite unexpected, challenged him in a way that forced him to take notice of her.

So whenever I’m in a mess I fall in love with the first woman I see, he thought. Or do women force themselves on me because I’m in a mess?

There was a lot more to it than that.

There was the fact that she seemed unaffected by the sight of his scar. She could be callous about it, cruel, but she was not horrified. That made him feel a man again, rather than a leper.

There was the fact that both women had something that Andrew badly needed: in Elsie’s case, food and shelter, in Catherine’s, a lot of money and a very big estate. So I’m a mercenary bastard, Andrew thought. Well, he could admit that.

But that wasn’t the whole story either. Although Andrew could be both cynical and ruthless, he was not unfeeling. Certain emotions could take him over completely, and then he would put all his energy and ruthlessness at their service. Anger and a desire for revenge, for instance, in dealing with a German machine-gun nest or the men who had burnt down Ardmore. Love - or was it lust? - in staying with Elsie for over two months, much longer than he had needed to.

And now, with Catherine Maeve O’Connell-Gort, what?

It seemed to Andrew like everything he had ever heard about love. He could still remember the first time he had seen her, down to the last detail of the cool, appraising look on her face. There had been something behind that look, some stronger emotion which she was trying to hide. Perhaps it was that emotion which had driven her to challenge him. Perhaps -
oh God I hope not
- perhaps there was a similarity with Elsie here too.

Perhaps Catherine was waiting for a Hans, as Elsie had been.

Oh Christ I hope not,
Andrew thought. But now the idea had come to him it made a lot of sense. That was the reason why she seemed, underneath that hard, brittle surface, so unhappy and self-absorbed. It might be the reason why she had come down from Dublin - to get away from a lover who had jilted her. Perhaps her father had even sent her away because the young man was unsuitable. And that was the reason why, most of the time, she seemed scarcely aware of his existence at all.

An obsession like that will be hard to get rid of, Andrew realized. I have to make her notice me and respond to me. I have to make her as obsessed with me as I - God help me - am with her.

He had no clear idea how to do that. If he could get her in bed he imagined - he hoped - he could get her to enjoy the sort of games he had played with Elsie. The sight of those lips parted as she gasped her orgasm would be worth - well, it would be worth a lot.

Especially if the inheritance of Killrath came with it.

When Catherine came downstairs for dinner she felt fresh, clean, empty. She had soaked for an hour in a hot bath, washed her hair, and put on a soft, loose-fitting green dress. She was pleasantly tired from the ride, relaxed and glowing from the bath.

Feelings that Sean would probably never have again.

She felt like a traitress.

But Sean didn’t want her, didn’t need her. That was all over now. She must forget him, or she would go mad.

Only there was nothing else in the world to think about.

Andrew was in the room too, smoking and reading a newspaper by the fire. He looked up, admiring the way her skirt swung as she crossed the room. She ignored him, walked straight across to the table in the corner, and poured herself a large glass of sherry.

He smiled, the scar twisting on his cheek. ‘The curse of the idle rich.’

‘What?’ She gulped the drink, and frowned at him as he sat staring at her over the top of the newspaper.

‘Drink. The curse of Ireland - especially those with too much money and not enough to do. I didn’t think you were like that.’

‘It’s none of your business.’

She refilled the glass and went past him to curl up in the window seat. She had to wipe the windowpane with her hand to peer out at the driving rain and low, scudding clouds.

‘That’s the other curse of this country - foul weather.’

She ignored him. He stood up, with his back to the fire, apparently amused, persistent. He had seldom seen a girl quite so haunted, so at odds with the world. Perhaps if she started drinking, some of her ghosts might come to the surface.

‘You still haven’t told me why you came down here.’

‘I was ordered to. By my father.’ She sipped the sherry without looking at him.

Progress, he thought. Play the fish gently and it may come to land. He strolled over to the drinks table and poured himself a small whiskey with plenty of soda.