Women of Courage (92 page)

When he had met her, he had never believed such a fine thing could happen to him. He had not even been able to imagine it. The girls he had known, his sisters, the girls of his village, had been ordinary, bumptious creatures, with their share of snub noses, gawkiness, giggles, silly secrets, bossiness, generosity, and love of children. There had been no mystery to them; no sense that eventual marriage would be anything more than a further round of the same, with a wife becoming rounder and more distant and harassed as her children multiplied around her. To the young Sean, women provided cooking and comfort and children and control. They were something a young man would want to escape from as long as he could; his own father, like most men in the village, had not married until he was nearly forty.

Catherine had awakened something in him which he had not known existed. From the moment he had seen her he had not been able to get her out of his mind. He had wanted to talk to her just so he could watch the way she spoke, admire the perfection of her hands so close to his in the library or lecture room. Images of her had filled his dreams at night. The graceful way she walked obsessed him; he imagined her swinging into the saddle of a great brown hunter, leaping hedges, cantering along country roads. She was very fit, yet so slender. He was fascinated with the way her body contrasted with those male ones he had wrestled and struggled against on the school sports field, and was overcome with tenderness, a desire to hold and touch …

As he had now done. He had not slept for hours after she had left him the other night. The vision of her had stayed with him so clearly he had thought he might be arrested in the street for following a naked ghost. And the day after he had found it so hard to think about what Paddy Daly was saying that his orders had to be repeated three times.

He knew it was a sin, but he did not want to see it as the priest had. Once or twice when he was alone he felt shame, but that was for the squalor of his room, for the fact that he could offer her no home, no future. But that seemed so far away when he saw her; it did not matter.

The other reason for shame was that she was taking him away from his duties. The future of the Republic might depend on his surveillance of this German officer, and here he was, remembering the touch of her thighs …

A man came down the steps of the hotel, briskly, and set off across the street, dodging between the traffic. He had his back to Sean, his coat collar turned up against the rain, and a soft hat pulled down over his eyes.

Is that him? But I didn’t see his face, Sean thought, I can’t tell.

The man was moving so quickly along the far side of the street that in a moment he would reach the crossroads and be gone. Sean glanced inside the foyer, then set off hurriedly after him.

At the crossroads the man turned left. Sean was on the wrong side of the road. A motor lorry was coming towards him on one side, and an ancient hansom cab clattered along on the other.

Sean dashed out between them.

When he reached the crossroads, the man was gone.

There were a group of men staggering out of a pub, and beyond them, no one at all.

He sprinted down the side street towards the next junction, nearly forty yards away. When he got there, there was no sign of the man in either direction. Only then did he think to look back.

I’ve lost him, he thought. I’ve lost the bugger in ten seconds flat!

It had been even easier than Andrew had hoped. Before he had left the hotel, he had checked from his window that O’Shaughnessy’s Bar on the corner had, as he remembered, an entrance in the main street as well as another round the corner. He had gone round the corner, stepped in at one entrance, glanced through the windows to see Sean sprint past, and calmly walked out of the other. Now he strode briskly past the Lambert Hotel in the opposite direction.

It was twenty past eight. Probably Radford would reach the house in Nelson Street before him. It didn’t matter, Andrew had given him a key.

He took a deliberately circuitous route, doubling back on himself several times, until he was quite sure no one at all was following.

Radford felt distinctly uncomfortable in the empty house. He had let himself in at the back with his key, but despite his caution he had bumped into a dustbin and set a cat yowling, which was hardly the way a professional burglar would have made his entry. The last thing I need, he thought, is for some honest citizen to get suspicious, and call the police.

Well, almost the last thing. There were other people the neighbours might call. Twice in the past week Radford had been followed in the street by burly men in cloth caps, who watched him intently, and kept their hands in the pockets of their coats. Even in the spy campaign in Belfast during the war, that had never happened. He had taken to wearing a bullet-proof waistcoat, and, even so, had to nerve himself each time he went out alone.

He wished he could have brought Kee with him, but Kee would never have approved of this. That was the trouble with old Tom, he could not see when rules had to be broken. If we play it by the book in this city, we won’t survive. But even if he could have persuaded Kee, the man Butler had insisted that no one else in the DMP should be involved. He could not fault Butler’s reasoning. Undoubtedly there were people in the Dublin force sympathetic to Collins, and since Butler had no idea who they were, he preferred to trust no one. I would do the same in his place, Radford thought. Especially if I were risking my neck as he is.

On his other visits Butler had been here before him. This time he explored the house quietly, shining a torch around each room to try to get some idea of the character of the man he was dealing with. But the chief impression was of emptiness; of a house untenanted, bereft of its soul. The walls had pictures of horses hunting and racing, sketches of a large country house, pictures of sailing ships. Most of the furniture was solid, heavy, old-fashioned, though the bedding and curtains were a blend of light pink and lemon colours in one bedroom - a woman’s, he supposed. To his surprise he found a number of German books and magazines in here, too, beginning to yellow with age. Then he remembered - Sir Jonathan had said something about Butler’s mother being a German. That must be where the son had learnt the language, so well. Well enough to fool the Sinn Feiners, anyway, he hoped.

The room he settled down in was a sort of living room and library combined. There were books on three of the walls, comfortable leather armchairs, and yesterday’s ashes in the grate. There was a bottle of whiskey on the table too, an unwashed glass and some biscuit crumbs. Presumably this was the room Butler used when he came here, and sat, alone.

The thick curtains were closed. Radford lit the oil lamp, poured himself a glass of whiskey, and sat down to wait.

This is an odd man, Butler, he thought. Cold, hard, sharp as a whiplash when he speaks, and apparently in love with danger. Yet he’s been out there in the carnage with the rest of them - got a row of medals to prove it. Most of the men Radford had known who had come back from the western front were shadows of themselves; they wandered around as though something inside them were missing, or sat listening and staring at God knew what awful memory. Many of them trembled, or shook and started for no apparent reason; and they could get angry quite suddenly, and walk out of rooms. Radford supposed that the everyday world seemed strange to them, meaningless perhaps after what they had been through. The thing that seemed to comfort them most was to find someone who had lived through the same battle that they themselves had been in. They would relive it in every detail, for hours on end, as though those had been the finest days of their lives. And yet most of them said they never wanted to see a gun again.

Not a lot of this seemed to fit Andrew Butler, Radford thought. Despite the horrific wound on his face, there was nothing dazed, shaky, or gun-shy about the man at all. He had been through the worst of it like the others, yet Radford could not imagine him reminiscing nostalgically with his comrades. He wondered if the man had any comrades - indeed, if he had anyone he could talk to. This house bore no witness of it, and Butler’s country home had been burnt down. Surely every man needs some companionship, to get the war out of his system, he thought - yet here he is, all alone, volunteering for one of the most dangerous jobs he can find.

He heard a quiet, scratching, scrabbling sound. Rats, perhaps, or was it a key in the lock? Radford got up and stepped softly across the room, to stand in shadow by a curtain. He was away from the oil lamp here, and could see the door. He rested his hand on the revolver in his pocket and waited. No sense in trusting what you can’t see.

Footsteps in the corridor, a tall figure dimly lit in the doorway. Sharp, intense face, scar, shadowed eyes, narrow moustache. It was him.

‘Radford?’

‘Here.’ He moved slightly. The figure turned swiftly to confront him, then they both relaxed.

‘All right.’ Andrew stepped into the pool of light, surveying the room briefly. ‘You’re alone? Good. And made yourself at home, I see.’

He took another glass from a cupboard on the wall, poured himself a glass of whiskey, and sat on the arm of a chair.

‘It’s tomorrow,’ he said. ‘In Brendan Road.’

Radford felt a surge of excitement. ‘Where? What number?’

‘I don’t know. Or what time. They’re coming to collect me at the hotel, either late morning or late afternoon. That’s it.’

Radford thought. ‘I don’t know where it is either. But I can find it on the map, and keep it watched …’

‘Listen.’ Andrew leaned forward, staring at Radford and emphasizing each point with a stabbing finger. ‘I don’t want a single policeman seen on that street until I’m inside. Nor anywhere near. This whole show depends on them trusting me. If you can’t keep out of sight, don’t come at all.’

‘Sure,’ Radford said. ‘But you’ll need us afterwards. You don’t know how many guards he’ll have with him. If they’re too many for you, I can still flood the place and take him alive.’

Andrew shook his head. ‘There won’t be too many for me.’

‘How do you know? What if they search you before you go in?’

‘Leave that to me.’

Radford sighed. It seemed to him the man was mad. Perhaps this was the way the war had damaged him: he had a desire to die in a blaze of glory.

‘At least we’ll be there to get you out. With luck we’ll arrest quite a number of them.’

‘Listen.’ Andrew leaned forward again. ‘I’ve told you the name of the street, but I want your word that it won’t go any further - no one else is to know - until you see me go down the street. You can have your men in the general area, but they don’t know - none of them - what the target is, until you call them up. Understood?’

‘If that’s what you want.’

‘I do.’

‘So we wait until you come out? How long? I can’t keep a street like that sealed off for any length of time without someone noticing.’

‘Give me half an hour. If anyone comes out after I’ve gone in, you can pick them up, but only when they’re out of sight of the house. If I don’t come out in half an hour, you can knock on the door and put me in a box.’

‘And if someone sees us before then? It’s difficult to keep a large number of men outside a place like that without being noticed. Look.’ Radford spread out his big hands, trying to explain. ‘You’re leading us to him, there’s no question about that. But it may be a lot better politically if we just arrest Collins. It’ll restore belief in the police, and show the government can be strong without …’

‘And in two weeks he’ll be free. How many people has that man sprung out of prison already? How many prison officers work for him? Anyway, do you think this government’s got the guts to hold a man like that for long? They’ll do a deal with him, you know that. No, Mr Radford, tomorrow I’m going to try to kill him. That’s what we agreed on that contract Sir Jonathan signed. That’s what I’m going to do. You can come in and clean up the mess afterwards, if you like. If I’ve failed, you can charge him with murder.’

Radford sighed again. He wished he had not agreed to this. Kee would say it was a crime and strictly he would be right. This wasn’t what he had joined the police to do. But then ordinary criminals didn’t carry guns and declare war. Ordinary criminals didn’t set out to decimate the police force. If he played it strictly by the book, Radford thought, there soon wouldn’t be any detectives left alive in G Division for him to command. And Sir Jonathan and Harrison had convinced him that Butler’s mission had prime-ministerial backing. That was why he was here, to keep them in touch with the details of their plan.

‘All right. We’ll do it your way.’ He raised his glass. ‘You’re a brave man, Major Butler. I wish you luck.’

16. The Song of Songs

I
T WAS not easy to arrange meetings in the little back room in the tenement, but Sean and Catherine managed it three more times in the weeks after Ashtown. They met in the evenings, once after, and twice instead of, the Irish classes at Parnell Square. ‘You’ll be losing the language,’ Catherine said to him the second time, and for the next half-hour she spoke only Gaelic, whispering soft endearments as they kissed and wrestled languorously on the narrow bed by the blazing fire. It was an odd feeling: the words she knew were the sort a nurse would say to a young child; she had not learnt the words you would use to a young man who lay naked and sweating above you. So the baby words seemed naughty and thrilling and exciting in themselves. As though they were two children who had escaped the adult world, and were doing something deliberately wicked in a secret hiding place of their own.

The next time, by way of reply, he read to her from a book of Irish love poetry he had found. He sat on the bed, while she knelt before him, warming her naked body in front of the blazing fire. He stumbled over the unfamiliar words, and she tried to correct him, dreamily, watching the dancing patterns of the flames. When he had finished she leaned her head back against his hips, and ran her fingertips teasingly along the inside of his thigh. She giggled as she saw the obvious result.