Habit of Fear (24 page)

“I wouldn’t swear to a man on any of them. I’m not in their counsel, sir. But the Provos marched this morning. And I’d take my oath that the man Donavan left the bar with last night was one of the gang that roughed me up and lifted the tape of my interview with Joseph Quinlan. I don’t think the IRA would have done that: Quinlan’s their voice in America.”

“Did Donavan know you saw him in the barroom?”

“I can’t say, sir. I spotted him in the back mirror when I went in to look around for Mrs. Hayes. If he had eyes, he’d have seen me.”

“Please describe the scene, Mr. Irwin.”

“Well, the place was ninety percent men—say a hundred or more of them, and most known to each other. Great camaraderie, sir, and you could cut the smoke with a knife. I was about to leave myself and find company to my own liking when I took a last look at Donavan. And there standing next to him was the bastard who put his knee in my groin while his partners grabbed the tape out of my coat pocket. He laid an arm across Donavan’s shoulders. From that distance I couldn’t tell how he took to the familiarity. But he went out with the man as meek as a lamb, and them going in the opposite direction from where I stood, I had no way of seeing if he went by choice or unfriendly persuasion.”

“Was there a reaction to either of them among the other men in the room?”

“Not that I observed, sir.”

“Did he have a glass in his hand while he stood at the bar?”

“He did. Turned it round and round, slopping the beer about. The barman wiped the bar and topped his glass.”

“And did he drink it down before leaving?”

“I don’t believe he touched it, sir. I remember thinking: at near a quid a pint.”

“Just so. At the moment you are one of the last persons to have paid attention to him alive, Mr. Irwin. Doubtless, we shall turn up others, but for now the question is: where did he spend the night? The Gardai have canvassed every hotel and public house in the town, and naught admit to having seen him. He was not an inconspicuous man, was he? Where did his assailants spend the night? With him in snug captivity? Where did you spend the night, by the way?”

“In a sleeping bag on the floor of a friend’s house in Old Town. The address is in your file there. Did his murderers come into the hotel after the funeral procession started? Or were they already in, waiting for the place to clear out?”

“We shall go over the bookings, room by room.”

“Weren’t there Special Branch men here for the occasion?”

“There were, Mr. Irwin,” the detective said dryly, “but their information is not made readily available in the case of mere murder. You may assure yourself, however, we shall not overlook the possibility of their assistance.”

Irwin settled his beard on his chest, a gesture of more humility than he was likely to have felt.

“Do you know, sir, how he got into my room?” Julie asked.

“Either he walked or was carried there alive.”

“But I’d locked the door.”

“We are a trusting people, Mrs. Hayes, and shouldn’t be burdened with keys at all. The chambermaid left the ring of them on her cart and went off to the funeral. I don’t know what to say about its happening in your room. We shall need to know in whose employ he was, and we shall find it out, you may be sure. There’s another question to be asked under the circumstances: is your father political?”

Julie was startled at the abruptness of the question. “I don’t know that, Inspector. I don’t even know that he’s alive.”

“But you said he was married to an artist woman?”

“I said he is—or was—married to Edna O’Shea.”

“Ah, yes. So you did. And you’ll be going on to look for her in Ballymahon. Is that so?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m going to allow you to continue your journey, Mrs. Hayes, but I want you to report in with the Gardai every day or so wherever you are. It’s for your own sake as well as in the interests of this investigation. Whether by their intention or otherwise, you have crossed paths with violent men—and women, I’m sorry to say—who are arrogant to the point of ridiculous: to tear that book into three pieces and leave it on the maid’s rig to be sure it was found.” He shook his head in disgust. “They’re full of mystical symbols and empty of human compassion, and, I might add, they’ve been known to use the identities of people they’ve killed.”

He thanked Julie for her cooperation and nodded a brisk dismissal. “Help her gather her things, Sergeant Carr. And you, Mr. Irwin, I want to hear more about this tape recording that brought you to their attention. Did you see any of these men at the funeral, by the way?”

“I didn’t, and believe me, I was on the lookout for them.”

“Engaged elsewhere,” the inspector superintendent murmured.

An artist woman, Julie remembered on her way from the room. Not ever to be confused with an artist man.

R
OY IRWIN STOMPED HIS
feet where he stood keeping her company in the bus queue. A fierce wind slashed at their legs. “I wonder, will I ever see you again?” he said.

“Are you always this cheerful in the morning?” she said.

He grunted. Then: “We did all this at the cemetery, didn’t we, good-bye and all?”

“Roy, why don’t you go? You have a long drive ahead of you.”

“I will, then. Good luck and come back safe. Give us a hug, for God’s sake.” He smelled of bacon as his crinkly beard brushed her cheek. “I’ll see what I can find out in Dublin without getting myself mugged. After all, I’ve five kids to think about. I’ve been very biblical. I’ve increased and multiplied.” He didn’t want to leave her.

“Give my love to Eileen,” Julie said. That made it easier.

THE ROAD WAS ROUGH
, the bus noisy with the rattle of many journeys. The wind kept blowing the door half open. She soon knew why the seat next to it had been available. She was getting soaked. Sudden rain bleared the window and then ceased entirely. In the distance she saw Ben Bulben Mountain again, long and flat as though it had been sheared off, and in between were sloping fields of vivid green. Here and there were stacks of turf, some covered with bright plastic tarpaulins. Then, passing through Drumcliffe, she saw the Round Tower and looked back to where she and Irwin had visited Yeats’s grave. At the same time she had a good look at the other passengers, farm people, she thought, many wearing heavy long sweaters. As she was about to face forward again, her eyes met those of a ruddy-faced, pleasant-looking woman across the aisle and a seat back. Alongside the woman was a woven carrier, bulging with packages, the handle of an umbrella poking out. She’d had the feeling of the woman’s eyes upon her since the beginning of the journey, she realized. They were friendly now, and Julie tried to avoid contact with them. Not like her. Bui she would have slept if she could after a night of troubled dreams and long stretches of wakefulness. A blast of wind struck the door and forced its way in.

“Come and sit here, miss,” the woman called, “before you catch your death.” She put the carrier at her feet.

“You’re a Yank, aren’t you?” she ventured when Julie tucked in beside her. “Do you know how I can always tell? You don’t pull yourselves up when you get on a bus. You
lift
yourselves.” She made a grandiose gesture of uplift. “Haven’t you ever noticed? Are you going to family?”

“I’ve always wanted to see Donegal,” she answered indirectly. The woman reminded her of Mary Ryan. Any Irishwoman over sixty would, and this one, Julie soon realized, was quite distinctly herself. She would no sooner say something than she would weigh it in the balance as though questioning its truth: there was very little forestation in Donegal, ah, but there was abundant turf, and the government was planting trees. A beautiful county, the cliffs having to be seen to be believed. Oh, but the winds, perishing. There was good grazing for the sheep, but it was a hard place to grow a potato. Three or four times she interrupted herself to inquire if Julie were going to this place or that, always with a qualified recommendation.

A van drew alongside the bus, and the driver signaled with his horn. Passengers wiped the misted windows, and the cry went up among them that it was the Wolfe Tones. The van pulled ahead, and the bus driver saluted with the same
beep-beep-beep
—
beep-beep
as the van had greeted the bus.

“Have you never heard them?” Julie’s companion asked. “Then you must. They’re a grand group.”

Julie thought of the Born Agains. “A rock group?”

“God love you, no. They’re ballad singers and they tour the States as well as here. Where do you come from?”

Julie admitted to New York.

“Oh,” the woman said, plainly meaning
that
place, and she cast a sly glance Julie’s way as though to reweigh her in the light of this new information. “And where will you go first in Donegal, dear?”

“Where the bus stops,” Julie said, irritated with the pushy curiosity. The woman ruffled her shoulders and did not try again.

The van was unloading instruments and luggage when the bus pulled in behind it curbside to the Abbey Hotel in Donegal town. Posters such as she now remembered at Greely’s advertising the Wolfe Tones’s tour were alongside the hotel entry: one performance only. Julie bought herself a ticket and at the same time booked into the hotel for overnight.

What decided her to stay over when she had planned to go directly on that day to Ballymahon? A fear of what she might—or might not—find there? The need to rest? Donegal town itself, a gathering place for rural people and the shops that served them? A place with the ruins of a monastery and a high castle, all settled in the hollow of a mighty hand with the roads and streams like so many tapering fingers from its center? Or might it have been the Wolfe Tones? They were named after a figure she was reminded of at every turn, the leader of the Rising of ’98. And then there was the weather, given to swift and dramatic changes. The afternoon sun was gently warm on her back as she sat on the wall of the Franciscan ruins and watched a white egret where it stood for a long time in the shallows of the estuary. When it finally flew away, she walked back down into the town. She found a bookshop off the diamond—as the center marketplace was called—and in the bookshop she found a copy of
The Far, Far Hills of Home
by Seamus McNally.

H
E CAME SUDDENLY
and slipped into the chair opposite her where she sat at dinner and had started to speak before she recognized him. “This is the first time in my life I’ve ever come on anyone reading anything I wrote unless I pushed their face into it.”

Her heart leaped. “Seamus!”

“It is you, isn’t it? I stood at the far end of the room saying to myself, ‘Is it or isn’t it?’”

“It is, it is!” She could feel the color in her cheeks.

He took her hands across the table, the book popping closed, and kissed them. “Would you have found me, I wonder?”

“I would. The woman at the bookshop promised to try to get a phone number where I could reach you.”

“Well, she did better than that, didn’t she?”

“Oh, Seamus, I am glad to see you.”

“It’s shameless of you to admit it. So, will you eat up and come home with me? I’m an hour’s wild drive from here.”

She hesitated.

“You’re booked for the concert. Is that it? You and half the county. All right, we’ll stay. You should hear them once. They bring out the best and worst in us. I’ll squeeze in somewhere, and we’ll go home by moonlight.”

“Have you had dinner?”

“I haven’t even had a bloody drink.”

“Be my guest,” Julie said and waved with a great sweep of her arm for the waitress.”

“I was right,” he said. “Shameless.”

T
HE DIVIDERS BETWEEN
the public rooms had been taken away and the long bar opened. People, young and old, crowded in, all of them tidily dressed. They took over the chairs in parties, and there was great coming and going, fetching of drinks, and gathering in of other friends met only on such occasions. Seamus was known, but not well known, as he put it, and better thought of as a schoolteacher than a playwright. Now and then he’d get a clap on the back or a quick handshake, and Julie got a hand crush or two without anyone’s waiting to catch her name. It occurred to her that Seamus might have a wife somewhere more popular with these acquaintances than he was.

“Seamus, are you married?” So much for Miss Page’s training never to ask a personal question directly.

“Yes and no, like yourself. We’re separated—waiting for the energy or the need to take the next step.”

“How about children?”

“None that I know of. But I have a great dog who makes sure that all the proprieties are observed in his house.”

By the time the Wolfe Tones came onstage, looking very “country,” the huge, L-shaped room was jammed. The lights were high, and so were the amplifiers. The stage was a low platform, so that whenever someone in the audience could restrain himself no longer, he would run up the aisle and try to climb aboard. The singer’s players seemed to love it, and the audience disciplined their own, pulling the interloper back among them. The Wolfe Tones were heavy on sentiment. Some of their songs were their own and some vintage protest, songs of exile and separation, of oppression and defiance. Malvernia: Julie tried to place the name. Seamus, watching her out of the corner of his eye, leaned near and said, “The Falkland Islands.” She was vague about what had happened there, but it was to be gathered the British had made fools and bullies of themselves in the eyes of this crowd. And how they loved it when the Tones shifted to the Broadway musical
Evita.
The phrase “I kept my promise” had political overtones. Everyone chorused it, even Julie, who had no idea of its association but felt deeply sympathetic. Two unaccustomed Irish whiskies helped. Seamus laughed and took her hand in his. She could feel the calluses, something new in her experience—the hands of a worker, the head of a writer.

During the intermission, Seamus got her another whisky and himself a Guinness, and put the evening into a saner perspective. For him this was a sad sight. “Don’t you see, we’re wafting all this energy like a puff of smoke, and when these lads move on to Derry in the morning, we’ll have naught left us but ashes in our mouths. Neither passive nor resistant, we’ve been crippled by the joy of suffering.”