Shamrock Green (11 page)

‘I hear there's been serious fighting in Flanders,' Maggie said.

‘Aye, two or three weeks of it.'

‘With horses?'

‘Cavalry against cavalry.' Gowry was relieved to be distracted by talk of the war. ‘Do you think the horses suffer much?'

‘It's not the horses I grieve for, it's the wives an' the sweethearts.'

‘Did you see any of the fighting on the veldt?'

‘No, I chose to remain in Ireland.'

‘Were wives not encouraged to travel with the regiment?'

‘To South Africa? Aye, some went with their men. I did not.'

‘Why not?'

‘The veldt was no place for women. I didn't want Joseph to see me unhappy.'

‘But if you loved him…'

‘I could love him as well here as there.'

‘Didn't you ever think that he might not come back?'

‘No,' Maggie said. ‘He was with me then and he has been with me ever since. No matter that I can't see him. I tell him how much I love him every day and I know he loves me – wherever he is.'

‘Still in Africa, buried on the veldt?'

‘There,' the woman said, ‘or elsewhere.'

‘You believe in heaven then?'

‘I do.'

‘I wish I did,' said Gowry.

‘Ah now, it's a great pity that you do not.'

‘Perhaps if I'd been born a Roman Catholic like you…' He shrugged.

‘Heaven is there for all comers,' Maggie said, ‘even Protestants.'

‘I don't like to think of it,' Gowry said.

‘Of what?'

‘Of you going to heaven before I do.'

She nodded, neither flattered nor put out by his confession. He wondered if she felt sorry for him, or if she regarded him as a hopeless case.

Maggie said, ‘You mustn't talk like that.'

‘Like what?'

‘Wishing your life away.'

‘Is that what I'm doing?' He smiled ruefully. ‘Aye, I suppose it is.'

‘Doesn't she love you, your wife?'

‘I don't know.' He made a little pop with the air in his cheek. ‘I think Sylvie has found another man.'

‘Another man?'

‘Someone else.'

‘Are you sure?'

‘Not certain, no.'

‘Who is he?'

‘A rebel, a writer.'

‘Perhaps it will blow itself out,' Maggie said, ‘if it is happening at all.'

‘Perhaps it will,' Gowry said. ‘As it is, I feel nothing much, not even disappointment. Isn't it sad, Maggie, not to be hurt by my wife's infidelity? That's not love, is it?'

‘How long have you been married?'

‘Eleven years.'

‘Long enough.'

He wanted consolation not agreement. He felt sulky for a moment. He was irked by her apparent indifference, for he had traded in pity himself and understood its workings all too well.

She got slowly to her feet, pushing herself up with her hands. Until that moment he had seen her as soft but now he realised that she was burdened by age and the manner in which she moved was cautious, not patient. He shouldn't have picked up her question about Sylvie. Love was no fit subject for a grown man. What he felt for Maggie Leonard was probably not love at all but some odd distillation of all the things he had never found elsewhere. Perhaps, he thought, shaken, he was using Maggie selfishly just as Sylvie had used him or – if it were true – as the man, Hagarty, was using Sylvie.

He got to his feet too. ‘I'm sorry, Maggie,' he said. ‘I am, truly.'

‘For what now?'

‘Burdening you with my woes.'

She smiled, put down the plates she had taken from the table, placed an arm round him and hugged him.

‘That's what you come here for,' Maggie said, ‘is it not now?'

‘It is,' said Gowry, sighing. ‘I'm afraid to say it is.'

*   *   *

At eleven she closed the bar. Turk and Charlie had gone and Fran had not returned. Mr Dolan and Mr Pettu had long since gone to bed. Mr Rice and two of his traveller friends remained and would have gone on drinking half the night if Sylvie had not called a halt to it. They were not rowdy except in the clumsy way drunkards have of banging into things and laughing in great coarse shouts. Maeve would sleep through it. Maeve had been disappointed when, on his return, Turk had sung just one more song, a silly music-hall thing, before going off with Charlie.

Sylvie tapped three pints of stout and carried them to the table under the window where the men were. She unloaded the tray, put the glasses on the table and swept up the empties.

‘On the house, gentlemen,' she said.

‘Ish – is thish a hint, m' darlin' lady?'

‘It is, Mr Rice.'

‘Well, yoush – you've t' be thankit for your gen – generoshity.' He bowed his head, a gracious nod that turned into a waggle.

She pulled the iron gate up from beneath the counter and fitted it into the slots, bolted the half door and put out the lights, all save one. She fixed the guard over the coal fire, though it was nothing much but ash now, and told the men not to make a noise when they finally came to bed.

They wished her goodnight and she went out into the hallway and climbed the staircase to Maeve's room, opened the door carefully and looked in.

In the arrow of light from the landing she saw that Maeve was fast asleep, the sheet pulled up and wrapped around her head so that only her face peeped out. Sylvie kissed her fingertip and touched it to her daughter's cheek, then tiptoed out of the room and along the corridor to the big bedroom that she and Gowry shared. She paused outside the door, heard a guffaw from downstairs and then, in the ensuing quietness, all the other small sounds that men make in the night, the clink of a jug, the clank of a chamberpot, a lion-like yawn, an explosive snore, the creak of springs as someone turned over in bed. Then, tired and unaccountably depressed, she entered the bedroom.

The flicker of the match flame made his face seem ghastly white.

‘My God!' Sylvie exclaimed. ‘What are you doing here? I thought you'd left with the others.'

‘I came back,' Fran said. ‘Are you not pleased to see me?'

‘Of course I am.'

He pulled back the covers and put one bare leg out of the bed.

‘I'll be going if you wish; just say the word.'

She shook her head vigorously. The sight of him naked in her husband's place in bed had fired her blood. She turned the key in the lock of the door, the door that was never locked when Gowry was at home, then walked forward to the bed. He was ready for her. Had he been lying here thinking of her, excited to be in Gowry's bed, her bed, under her roof, waiting for her as if she were a bride and he the groom?

She bent forward and kissed him on the mouth. He scooped at her skirts, bundling them about her hips, reaching up until his hands were above her stockings. He clasped her, cupped her and, in a rasping whisper, said, ‘Sylvie, Sylvie! God help me, I can't get enough of you.'

She moved closer, let him untie her drawers. Closer still, tilting her hips.

He let out a groan when he slipped into her.

‘Ah, God! Ah, God, Sylvie!' he said. ‘You'll be the death of me yet,' then gasped as she smothered the words within him once and for all.

Chapter Six

He had made the round trip of almost two hundred and fifty miles three times in the week and he was weary, bone weary, on the last homeward run. Behind him the empty bus jolted over ruts and potholes, the headlamps so feeble that he steered more by instinct than sight. His shoulders ached and his eyes itched and he felt as if the road between Tipperary and Dublin would never end.

The depot was deserted when he reversed the bus into the last slot. He climbed down from the driver's seat, stretched his arms wide, rolled his neck, heard the
crick-crick
of little bones adjusting and felt the muscles in the small of his back ease. He tossed his cap on to the seat and went round to unhook the lid of the compartment where the brush and shovel were kept.

It was a murky night with an autumnal fog seeping in from the sea. He had been smelling clean wet earth and fresh-fallen leaves all day and the Dublin air tasted rancid. He dug out the brush and, unbuttoning his tunic, returned to the front of the charabanc only to find John James Flanagan leaning on the bonnet.

Flanagan never looked anything less than prosperous with his swallow-tail moustache and black eyebrows and the best-tailored clothes that money could buy but it was his smugness that really stuck in Gowry's throat.

‘Well now, if it isn't my favourite driver come back from far-flung places.' John James rocked on the balls of his feet. ‘Leave the brush, McCulloch. I'll take your logbook, though.'

‘You, sir? Where's Mr Roddeny?'

‘Gone home. It's late, you know.'

‘Oh, I know that, Mr Flanagan,' Gowry said.

There must be a catch to it; John James Flanagan didn't drag himself away from the dinner table just to greet a driver. Gowry put the brush aside and reached for the logbook that was tucked under the driver's seat. He had been scrupulously careful about log entries and had purchased three gallons of petrol out of his own pocket to cover the extra miles he'd driven that day.

John James took the log and slipped it into the pocket of his overcoat.

‘If that's all, Mr Flanagan…'

‘Not quite,' John James said.

‘Something wrong, sir?'

‘Are you game for the weekend?'

‘Game, Mr Flanagan?'

‘Saturday night, through Sunday.'

‘I've had a hard week, Mr Flanagan. Can't someone else do it?'

‘They'll all be on parade. It's a big day for parades, you know.'

Ah, Gowry thought, so it's a punishment for not being one of them. God knows he'd done enough Sunday work, standing in for men who had some religious duty to perform or some obligation to the nationalists.

‘Is it more soldiers?' Gowry said. ‘More recruits?'

‘No, a funeral party.'

‘On a Sunday?'

‘We're not providing the hearse. The deceased is elsewhere. You'll be running a small party down in the limousine on Saturday afternoon and collecting them for return to Dublin late on Sunday.'

‘The limousine?' Gowry said.

‘Two passengers, sons of the dear departed, I believe.' Flanagan smiled, more smug and unctuous than ever. ‘There'll be a little something extra in your wage packet, Gowry, if you do me this favour. Shall we say five shillings?'

The bribe explained everything. Obviously he would be ferrying some great and glorious chieftain to a secret meeting and Flanagan preferred not to use one of the regular drivers in case it aroused suspicion. There was no funeral, of course, no corpse. In the foggy half-dark at the back of the garages the conspiracy seemed so ill conceived as to be almost laughable.

‘I'll do it,' Gowry said. ‘Where is the – ah, deceased?'

‘Woodenbridge,' Flanagan told him.

*   *   *

She was not so much sore as tender and the weariness that clung to her all day long eliminated any longing for Fran. In any event she was reconciled to not seeing him over the weekend. He had told her he had much writing to do and must apply himself to catch up on his deadlines.

If the other guests thought it odd that Fran Hagarty had spent the night in the Shamrock they kept their observations to themselves. Some of them were in no fit state to observe anything, of course, for an excess of black stout had taken its toll.

Sylvie got through the routine chores with Jansis's help, went to bed in the quiet of the afternoon and slept like something dead.

It was almost dark when she wakened.

She lay motionless in the bed where she and Fran had made love and thought how deceptive appearances could be, how she had misjudged him. For a man who had the reputation of being rather burned out, Mr Francis Hagarty had acquitted himself exceptionally well.

‘Mam?'

Maeve was leaning over the bed-end.

Sylvie sat up quickly, her head swimming.

‘Are you all right, Mam?'

‘What time is it?'

‘After six. Dinner time.'

‘Is your father home?'

‘Nuh.' Maeve gave her the wisp of a smile. ‘Not yet.'

‘When do we expect him?'

‘Tipperary?' Maeve calculated. ‘Half past nine.' She leaned closer. ‘Is Mr Hagarty stayin' again tonight?'

‘Mr Hagarty's gone home.'

‘Why'd he stay last night?'

‘He was dr— He took a drop more than was good for him.'

‘I thought he went before Turk.'

‘Well, he didn't.' Sylvie was puzzled by her daughter's complicity, if indeed it was complicity. ‘Tell Jansis I'll be down soon. I'll need to change the sheets.'

‘I'll change the sheets.'

She was too soggy for guilt to take hold. She threw back the bed covers, adjusted the throat of her nightgown to cover her breasts and, with effort, swung both feet to the floor.

‘No,' she said, firmly. ‘Go and help Jansis lay out the supper things.'

‘Done,' Maeve said. ‘All done.'

‘Has Mr Dolan come downstairs yet?'

‘Nuh.'

‘Knock on his door. Tell him supper in twenty minutes.' She was still woolly-headed, leaden limbed. ‘How many casuals do we have in?'

‘Four.'

‘Who booked them?'

‘Jansis. I helped.'

‘Suppers?'

‘Five – and Mr Pettu if he's back in time.'

‘I'll be downstairs directly,' Sylvie said.

She waited for her daughter to leave but Maeve remained, elbows on the bed-end, chin resting on her knuckles. She seemed fascinated by the sight of her mother in her nightgown at six in the evening and smiled the enigmatic little smile that she, Sylvie, had once had down to perfection.

‘Stop staring at me,' Sylvie said, testily. ‘Go away.'