Shamrock Green (52 page)

‘Did they stop my pay?' he asked.

‘Yes,' his mother answered. ‘They were considerin' signing her on for a widow's pension when a sheaf of postal orders turned up and she knew by the dates that you weren't dead. Then she had a letter from the War Office saying you were wounded and in hospital in Wales.'

‘That must have been a shock.'

‘It was. Why didn't you write to her?'

‘Why didn't she write to me?'

‘Well, we both know the answer to that, don't we, son?'

Kay looked up as a couple of soldiers in dressing-gowns swung past on crutches. They glanced at Gowry, nodded amiably and went on into the dining-room. From upstairs came the scratchy sound of dance music from a gramophone in need of a new needle.

‘If the Shamrock's uninhabitable, where's she staying?'

‘Up near the Mountjoy in a tenement he used to own.'

‘Hagarty?'

‘Yes, Hagarty. It seems he had property.'

‘Is the baby with her?'

‘It's his baby, you know.'

‘I know it's his baby,' said Gowry. ‘Is it all right?'

‘Why would it not be all right?'

He shrugged. ‘I mean, is it healthy?'

‘Aye, a big, healthy lump of a boy.'

‘What did she call him?'

‘Sean.'

‘Not Francis?'

‘No. Sean – Sean McCulloch. Can you imagine?'

Gowry smiled as best he could. ‘Tell me about Maeve.'

‘She's fine.'

‘What about the brewery?'

‘Closed up, at least until the boys are released.'

‘I see,' Gowry said. ‘Dad didn't feel like keeping it open?'

‘He's not capable, Gowry. He's – gone a bit funny.'

‘Is that why you've taken him to Glasgow? Out of harm's way?'

‘It was Forbes's idea. We're lodging with him. He likes having us there.'

‘I'm sure he does,' said Gowry.

Resentment stirred within him. He was tempted to tell his mother that he had achieved more than Forbes had ever done, that the king's shilling had purchased more than a shipbuilder's fortune could ever do; that he had met a girl, had fallen in love, and that she had died.

No, he told himself, closing his lips on the rubberised wedge. He wouldn't boast about Becky and he wouldn't use her as an instrument of revenge. He would never tell anyone about Becky, not his mother or his brothers, not Maggie or Jansis or Maeve, certainly not Sylvie. Becky would remain his secret.

‘You'll get a pension, won't you?'

‘Probably, but it won't amount to much.'

‘Well, you won't be driving for Flanagan again, not with that hand,' his mother said. ‘Can they do anything about it?'

‘Sure an' they'll fit me with an ornament.'

‘A what?'

He lifted his arm and displayed the stained bandage.

‘They'll fit me up with a wooden hand with little hinges to give me some sort of grip. That's the important thing, Ma, to restore my grip. That's why they're so pleased they managed to save the thumb. Doctors tell me it's what makes us human. This' – he waggled the thumb painfully – ‘is what separates us from the apes. I've exercises to do to free the knuckles but once they loosen up I'll be able to hold things. With a nice wooden hand and a glove, by God you'll hardly know I'd been in the war at all.'

Now that he had started talking it was difficult to stop. Only by concentrating on the inconsequential details of his treatment, however, could he prevent himself from revealing the things he didn't want her to hear.

He rattled on. ‘There's a workshop in Bristol where they make these things: glass eyes, false teeth, wooden legs and arms. Crippled ex-servicemen are being trained to turn them out and thousands of ex-soldiers are queuing up for jobs there. Funny, isn't it? All those one-armed, one-legged soldiers sitting at benches making artificial limbs for other crippled soldiers.'

‘Is that what you're going to do with yourself?'

‘No, Mother,' Gowry said. ‘That isn't what I'm going to do with myself.'

‘You can't work in the brewery.'

‘I know.'

‘Forbes said he'll look after you if you're stuck for work.'

‘I don't need looking after,' Gowry said.

He still couldn't fathom why she was here or what she wanted from him. He doubted that mere motherly concern had brought her to Maidenhall.

‘She'll take you back.'

‘Who?'

‘You know who.'

‘If you mean Sylvie, I'm not sure I want her back.'

‘Don't you want to see Maeve?' his mother asked.

‘Of course I do.'

‘Can't you let bygones be bygones?'

‘Oh, for God's sake, Ma, stop interfering. You never liked Sylvie. You never approved of Sylvie. Just because Forbes and she—'

‘Forbes?'

‘Don't pretend you don't know.'

‘I have no idea what you're talkin' about.'

‘All right, all right,' said Gowry. ‘Let's just say I'm not ready to forgive anyone for anythin' just yet.'

‘I told her to get rid of the baby.'

‘Why should she get rid of it? The baby's done nothing wrong. He didn't ask to be born any more than I did. Is that why you've come to see me, Ma, to talk me into helping you get rid of Sylvie's baby? Why?'

‘It's a mark of shame, that's why.'

‘Jesus!' Gowry said.

Anger broke through his indifference, rising like something from the depths of a deep, dark, icy ocean. Becky had been a virgin until she'd lain with him in the hotel bed in Amiens. Becky had given him what every husband should have, her love and her devotion. He would have given her what every loving wife desired, a child of her own, his child, and the security that went with it. But those promises, like so many others, had been broken through no fault of his. He was alone now, without role or purpose. After what he'd seen, what he'd done, how could his mother talk as if the world had been standing still all this while, mired in the old moralities.

‘A mark of shame!' he said. ‘You don't even know what shame is. I'm not sure I do either any more but, by God, I know what it isn't.'

‘She deceived you. She cheated you.'

‘Out of what?' said Gowry. ‘Sylvie never belonged to me.'

‘You gave her a child, you gave her Maeve.'

‘Maeve?'

He had never spoken of it to anyone, not even Becky. He had never dared express his doubts that Maeve was really his and not his brother's child. God damn it, what did it matter now? He had raised the girl, had loved her more than anything, and had given her away as lightly as he had thrown away his marriage.

He raised the stump of his hand and stared at the cocked thumb that the doctors claimed distinguished him from the apes. He pressed down on the knuckle joint and felt pain scissor into the sinews of his wrist. He would have movement, pronation they called it, articulation; the rest would be mere ornament. He pressed down on the joint until sweat came on his brow and the faint serous stains on the gauze were tinted with blood.

His mother watched impassively.

‘Gowry,' she said, ‘you'll hurt yourself.'

‘What if I do?'

‘Stop playing the fool.'

He loved it, loved the pain. He could feel knots of gnarled tissue beginning to crack and delicate bones creak under pressure. He cupped his good hand over the thumb and closed his fist, crushing the thumb into his palm, ridding himself at last of that farcical gesture of resignation; then he sat back, grunting, and unfolded his good hand. The thumb was bent, not supple, not healed but bent as it should be, folded across the remnant of his palm. He sucked saliva from under the vulcanised plate and wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

‘See,' he said, ‘I'm not a monkey. I'm not an ape.'

‘Gowry, what's wrong with you? Why are you sayin' these things?'

She leaned forward, glowering, genuinely concerned now. He knew what concerned her: irrationality suggested madness, and madness too was a mark of shame. He'd learned a lot in the past year, how to obey, how to rebel, how to cope with being in love and, the hardest lesson of all, how to embrace grief in preference to nothingness. It had taken his mother to drag him back to reality, to the pettiness and spite that tainted all family matters.

‘Nothing,' he said, with a wheezy laugh. ‘Nothing's wrong with me, Ma.'

‘Why are you laughing? Are you laughing at me?'

‘No,' he said. ‘No, no.'

‘It's no laughing matter, Gowry, none of it.'

He tucked the hand into his lap again, hiding it. He cocked his head and regarded his mother, that old strait-laced renegade who in her day had been a black sheep too and had run off to Dublin to marry an Irish brewer.

‘Why didn't Sylvie go back to Glasgow?' he said.

‘I asked her to, I begged her to.'

‘Why didn't she go back to Forbes?'

‘She wouldn't.'

‘You mean she refused?'

‘Yes.'

‘After Hagarty…'

‘Yes.'

‘What was she waiting for?'

Kay hesitated and in her eyes he could see something that he had never detected there before, some quality, some soft ineluctable measure of admiration.

‘You,' his mother said, reluctantly. ‘I think she was waiting for you.'

‘She's with you, isn't she?'

‘Yes.'

‘Where?'

‘Down in the town, in a hotel in the town.'

‘The Fortress Hotel?'

‘Aye, that's the one,' his mother said.

*   *   *

There had once been a Roman garrison close to the town of Maidenhall. There were no baths or amphitheatre as there were at Caerleon but you could still see the foundations of the barracks stretched on the narrow plain between the river and the first uprising of the hills. Gowry came down to the little town quite often, not to pop into a pub or the saloon bar at the rear of the Fortress Hotel but to wander along the stone lines of that long-gone Roman garrison and wonder at the nature of the men who had served there. He wondered whether they had longed for home or if, in time, this had become their home and they had taken wives from among the dark-haired, dark-eyed natives and fathered children and, when time was up and arms laid down, had claimed an acre or two of rich bottom land or green grassy hillside to farm away their days in peace.

Wales was not his land either, not his home, yet he felt an affinity with the place through his grandfather Owen Franklin who had chosen to emigrate to Scotland to fashion a better life for himself. He could have chosen Scotland too, Gowry supposed, could have been snug in some protected trade that Forbes would have conjured up for him, safe and whole and married to some girl – not like Sylvie, not like Becky – some plain, unexceptional Glasgow lassie whom he would have loved and looked after without ever realising what he had missed.

He came down in the dark, following the pavement that led from the back of the hospital, down the steep hill past terraced houses, past new cottages, past the first of three public houses, past the Methodist hall and the railway station, past the yew hedge that surrounded the remains of the ancient garrison, and saw ahead of him the lights of the Fortress hazed with a mist that was not quite rain.

He had put on his greatcoat – he was still a soldier after all – and his cap and had wound a muffler round his throat. He had his bad hand in his pocket, his teeth in his pocket too, wrapped in a clean piece of gauze. He had shaved twice to make his haggard features smooth, and standing on the pavement across from the old hotel felt so nervous, so unsure that what he was doing was right that he almost turned tail and fled back to the hospital.

She had travelled a long way to see him. The crossing from Dublin had been rough, so his mother had said, and the baby had been sick and the train journey from Fishguard slow and lumbering, and he could not in all conscience ignore her, no matter what she had done. He wished, though, that it could have been Becky who was waiting for him in the big, high-ceilinged lounge under shabby chandeliers and whispering fans; that when he opened the door and looked into the room Becky, not Sylvie, would be there, eager and understanding in the light of new love, and that he might begin again, begin anew, to repair and redeem the happiness that he had lost somewhere along the line.

He took a deep breath, crossed the street, climbed the three shallow steps, stuck out his good hand, pushed open the heavy, glass-panelled door, crossed the foyer under the fans and went straight into the residents' lounge.

She was dozing on one of the knobbly leather sofas, the baby drowsing on her lap. She looked pale, pale and fat, not healthy. He felt a little stab of anxiety, a fear that she too was ill. He stepped across the worn carpeting and peeped down at the sleeping child, at the quiff of black hair and the little pursed Sylvie-mouth on him and the dribble wet on his baby cheeks.

Reaching into his pocket Gowry took out the vulcanite wedge, stuck it in his mouth and bit down.

Then, softly, he said, ‘Sylvie. Sylvie, it's me.'

*   *   *

She sat up, hugging the baby to her breast, and her first words – out before she could stop them – were, ‘Oh, Gowry, what have they done to you?'

He had changed so much he seemed almost like a stranger. The handsome chap she'd run off with half a lifetime ago had been stripped to skin and bone, his nose misshapen, his mouth filled with artificial teeth. He smiled not at her but at Sean who, waking, stared cross-eyed at the creature and blew a few derisory bubbles. Sylvie propped her son on her knee, adjusted his woollen jacket and wiped dribble from his cheeks with her handkerchief.

‘Did Ma not tell you what to expect?' Gowry asked. ‘Where is she?'

‘Gone back to Glasgow,' Sylvie said. ‘She left just after six.'