Shamrock Green (2 page)

He eased himself forward and studied the wound.

He was half her age again, forties. He had the worn sort of shabbiness that was not uncommon in the commercials who lodged in the Shamrock, but none of their affability. He was puffy about the gills and his greying hair needed trimmed. His sad brown eyes were filled with resignation, not self-pity.

Outside in the corridor there were thumps and bumps.

She could hear Turk cursing and her father-in-law's nervous snigger.

Fran Hagarty said, ‘How many rooms are in the house?'

‘Ten, in addition to domestic apartments.'

‘How many are occupied?'

‘Five,' Sylvie answered. ‘Are you looking for lodgings? We charge one shilling and sixpence a night for a bed and a meat breakfast.'

‘You're Scottish, aren't you?'

‘I am,' she said. ‘From Glasgow.'

‘I did hear that Daniel had relatives in Glasgow.'

‘I'm only related to the McCullochs by marriage.'

She was tempted to blurt out the whole story, to tell him that she was Forbes McCulloch's rejected lover and that only Gowry's kindness had saved her from going straight to the dogs after Forbes had abandoned her. Imparting such information went beyond the pale of first acquaintance, however, and she doubted if Mr Hagarty would be impressed by her history.

‘Only one child?' Fran said. ‘What does the priest have to say about that?'

‘It is none of the priest's business,' Sylvie said ‘We're not Catholic. But I imagine you knew that already, Mr Hagarty.'

‘I did,' he said. ‘I did, and I forgot.'

‘What are they doing out there?'

‘Hiding the tackle.'

‘Tackle?' Sylvie said.

‘Guns.'

‘My God!' Sylvie tossed his hand back at him. ‘You can't dump guns in my house. My husband'll have a fit if he finds weapons here.'

‘Are there no empty rooms upstairs?'

‘That's beside the point.'

Sylvie spun round as Maeve breezed into the sitting-room carrying one of the big wooden kitchen trays. She was tall for her age, already gawky, not at all like her dainty, doll-like mother. She had Sylvie's curls, though they were glossy brown like ripe horse chestnuts, not fair. Her eyes were alert to everything that was going on and she often seemed too knowing and bold for her age, a precocious quality that Sylvie recognised and feared.

‘Powers,' the girl said, ‘in a clean glass. Gentian and lint and water.'

‘Thank you, dearest,' Sylvie said, a little more sweetly than she would have done if Mr Hagarty had not been there. ‘Put the tray on the table, please.'

The girl set the tray down carefully, then, turning, stared at the man in the armchair. ‘You're the chap who writes for the papers. I've heard of you.'

‘Ah, but have you read anything I've written?'

‘Only the stuff in
Scissors & Paste.
'

‘Where I'm usually quoted out of context.' He seemed grateful to have found an admirer, even one as young as Maeve. He said, ‘I'll not be taught on the syllabus at your school, I'm thinking?'

‘Aye, but you are,' said Maeve. ‘Mr Whiteside reads
Scissors
to the class. He thinks you're funny.'

‘Do you think I'm funny?'

‘I don't understand what you're on about half the time.'

‘Heresy,' Fran said. ‘Sheer heresy.'

‘What does that mean?' said Maeve.

‘It means you'd better make yourself scarce,' said Sylvie.

She got up, crossed to the table, picked up the whiskey glass and carried it back to the man in the armchair. He reached for it with his good hand, took in a great gulp and blew out his cheeks. He looked at Maeve and winked then straightened his shoulders and tilted up his chin. With the stoop gone and a smile on his face Sylvie realised that not so long since he must have been handsome.

‘Tell your grandfather and Charlie to stop what they're doing,' Sylvie said. ‘I'll not have them dumping guns in my house.'

‘Guns, is it?' Maeve said. ‘I thought it might be.'

‘Mausers,' Fran said.

‘Where did you get German weapons?' Sylvie asked.

Fran drank again and held out the glass.

‘Fetch the bottle,' Sylvie told her daughter and when the girl had gone out of the room, said, ‘Is this the war they've been talking about for so long? Is this the start of the – the
thing
itself?'

‘Would that it were,' Fran said. ‘No, it is not the start of the rebellion but it will give the government something to think about.'

‘Isn't there a law against gun-running?'

‘Oh, indeed there is,' said Fran. ‘But no effort has been made to apply it. It will be a different story now, after what's happened on the quays.'

‘Is that where you got shot?'

Sylvie carried the tray to the fireside and placed it on the rug at Fran Hagarty's feet. She knelt again and anointed his wound with stinging violet liquid. He made no complaint save a little hiss and, sipping from the whiskey glass, watched her work on his hand.

‘Bachelor's Walk,' he said. ‘Before that it was all pretty smooth and easy. For those in the ranks it was just another Sunday route-march out to Howth. Only a handful of officers knew what was going on.'

‘And what was going on?' said Sylvie.

It felt odd to be crouched on her knees in her own parlour, doctoring a stranger's hand. The wound was closing, blood congealing. She cut a strip of lint with her scissors and then, to be safe, another. She bound them tightly over his thumb and around his wrist with clean linen bandages. He talked on, pausing only to sip from the glass now and then, and seemed oblivious to her ministrations.

‘Fifteen hundred Mausers purchased with American money and brought in by yacht. What a cheer there was when the lads saw what she was carrying. Only the firmness of the officers stopped them spoiling things with their eagerness.'

‘What were
you
doing there?'

‘Observing.'

‘Observing – with my father-in-law, Turk and Charlie?'

‘Daniel got wind that something big was about to take place and invited me to go with them in the motor-car.'

‘I don't believe you,' Sylvie said.

‘Do you not now?'

‘I think it was the other way about. I think you took them there with you.'

‘Well, perhaps you are right, Mrs McCulloch.'

‘Sylvie.'

‘Sylvie; perhaps you are right.' He paused then went on, ‘It wasn't until we reached the entrance to the Dublin Road that we met fixed bayonets.'

‘Were you marching with them, Mr Hagarty?'

‘I am not the marching sort. I was riding in the motor-car behind the column. When we met the bayonets there was scuffling and fisticuffs but no shooting and many of the men managed to scatter, taking the guns with them. We rounded up Charlie's friend and gathered about thirty guns for safe-keeping. We slipped away and headed back into the city – and that's where I got shot.'

‘In Bachelor's Walk?'

‘The Walk was crowded,' Fran Hagarty said. ‘Women and children mostly. They were just jeering at the soldiers who were marching back to barracks. Then the order was given to fire on the crowd. I had just got out of the motor-car to look for a clear way. I was not in the fray, not in the thick of it. I had just held up my hand to show my peaceful intentions when the soldiers started shooting.'

‘How many were killed?'

‘I was in no fit condition to count. I saw several, many in fact, go down just before Charlie bundled me into the motor-car and got us away.'

‘Why did you come to our house, Mr Hagarty?' Maeve asked.

Man and woman glanced round. They had been so intent upon the narrative and upon each other – Sylvie's forearm on Fran's knee, his hand resting on her shoulder – that they had failed to notice that Maeve was loitering in the doorway.

‘We thought we were being pursued,' Fran answered.

‘Couldn't you have gone back to Towers, to my granddad's place, and hidden the tackle there?' Maeve said.

‘Young lady,' Fran Hagarty said, ‘that is a very sensible question. I will tell you the answer. We couldn't hide the guns at Towers because the brewery's one of the first places the inspectors will look when they start hunting down the caches.'

‘What does that mean?' said Maeve. ‘Catches?'

‘Stop asking so many questions,' Sylvie said. ‘What's Charlie doing? Why has it gone so quiet?'

‘They're in the bar, having a glass and waiting for Mr Hagarty.'

‘What have they done with the – the tackle?' Sylvie said.

‘Left it upstairs, I think,' said Maeve.

‘Well, we'll have to see about that,' Sylvie said and removed Fran's hand from her shoulder.

She was dressed in a drab cotton dress and a soiled apron and looked like a common skivvy. She wished she'd had warning that an important person like Francis Hagarty was about to arrive at the Shamrock, for then she would have dug out one of her pretty dresses from the chest in the attic and put it on, along with lip rouge and the pink powder that Gowry said made her look like a trollop. It had been years since she'd done herself up to please a man. She had remained true to Gowry since the moment they had set foot on Irish soil, for she had been big with the baby inside her and grateful for the hasty civil ceremony that Gowry had arranged to give Maeve a name and a father.

She was hurt by the fact that she had not impressed Mr Francis Hagarty however, or had not impressed him enough. She got to her feet. He rose with her, protecting the whiskey glass with his bandaged hand. He seemed, she thought, recovered. He was not vital. He was languid. But that, she guessed, was how he always was. He wasn't even looking at her. He was looking at Maeve who was posted in the doorway with a little scowl of concentration on her face.

She waited for Maeve to start flirting with him but the child, though precocious, was not so advanced as all that.

‘Cache,' he said softly, ‘is a word derived from the old French. Cash-ay. It means a hole in the ground, a hiding place.'

‘Cash-ay,' said Maeve. ‘Cash-ay.'

‘There you are now, young lady,' Fran Hagarty said. ‘You have learned something new, so the day has not been wasted.'

Then, lifting the whiskey bottle, he ambled out of the sitting-room to join the other rebels in the bar.

Chapter Two

Gowry had always looked well in uniform. In Glasgow he had chauffeured for the Franklin family and had worn a leather topcoat, quilted motoring cap and elbow-length gauntlets whenever he'd called upon her on his brother Forbes's behalf. She had been so blindly, stupidly in love with Forbes, however, that she had hardly noticed Gowry at all at first. Now, in the blue-black, high-collared tunic and braid-trimmed cap of Flanagan's Motoring Company he looked so military that he had often been spat upon by urchins and corner boys too ignorant to tell an omnibus driver from a British officer.

Now and then Gowry would be employed to drive one of Flanagan's handsome limousines to a wedding or a funeral but usually he was hired out to drive charabancs filled with drunken football supporters or severe, if not always sober, committee men to rallies and parades in far-flung rural townships.

In summer he collected parties of tourists from the big hotels, stiff-necked English ladies, sentimental Americans and a fair sprinkling of well-off Italians who tipped generously. In fact, the local gentry were no less generous and a good deal less patronising and a bus full of racing gentlemen with a skinful of brandy inside them was like money in the bank.

Rallies and race meetings often kept Gowry away overnight and in the tripper season he could be away for the best part of a week while, unknown to him, his father and his brother's pals made hay in the bar of the Shamrock.

Maeve kept quiet about what went on when her father was out of town but she carried his timetables in her head, the way the daughter of a fisherman carries knowledge of the tides, and would warn her grandfather or uncle when Gowry was due back. She saw no harm in dividing her loyalties, for nationalism was taught like holy writ at Sperryhead school and her teacher, Mr Whiteside, was forever preaching the benefits of home rule. She helped Jansis empty ashtrays and mop up spillings after the men had gone and would polish sticky fingerprints from the beer handles and the lid of the piano.

It was Turk who played on the bar piano. Turk Trotter, with his Ottoman colouring and big fat fingers, could coax from the battered instrument melodies both rousing and sweet and after a dozen pints of stout would lift his voice in song and sound, Maeve thought, just like the Harp of Erin.

When Daddy, not ten minutes back from the lakes and still in uniform, shouted, ‘What in God's good name is this?' Maeve had no ready answer. He held the cartridge up between finger and thumb and pushed it towards her the way a beau might offer a flower. ‘Tell me the truth. Has Trotter been here again, or Charlie, and who did they bring with them this time?'

She would have bolted for the front door or out through the kitchen into the yard but she was so scared she couldn't move.

‘I – I don't know.'

He crouched, bending from the waist. He had a longish face and a furrow down each side of his mouth. He had grown a little moustache when he'd worked in the Dublin ship repair yard and she'd liked his little moustache, but the job in the repair yard hadn't lasted long and he was always close-shaven these days. He had shaved somewhere that evening, for she could smell the faint soapy tang off him and see a fleck of lather dried behind his ear.

‘Do you know what this is, Maeve?'

‘Nuh.'

‘Don't lie to me.'

‘It's a bullet.'

‘It's a cartridge, a live round. Where did it come from?'