Shamrock Green (55 page)

‘Why are you crying?' he asked. ‘Because I'm not dead? Because you lost Hagarty an' are stuck with me instead?'

‘No, damn you, Gowry McCulloch.' She slapped both palms on the table, making plates and cutlery jump. ‘No, you fool, you don't see it, do you? I love you,' her mother said. ‘I want to love you, and you won't let me.'

‘Sure an' I don't think that's it at all,' her father said. ‘I think you want
me
to love
you,
Sylvie, just the way I used to – and that's impossible.'

‘Why? Because of – of what happened? Because I kept Sean?'

‘Sean has nothin' to do with it,' Gowry said. He was still close to her and his arm had tightened and he seemed, at least to Maeve, to be holding her mother down now, pinning her against her will. He spoke softly, though, very softly, so softly that she, Maeve, could hardly make out what he said. ‘If you're askin' me to love you, Sylvie, the way I did before I went away then' – he gave an almost imperceptible shrug – ‘no, I can't; and you can't expect me to pretend that nothing's changed.'

‘If you hate me so much—'

‘I don't hate you.'

‘Is it her?'

‘Who?'

‘That woman in Tipperary?'

‘God, no,' Gowry said. ‘No, no.'

‘Go to her, see if I care.'

‘I can't go to her,' Gowry said. ‘She isn't there any more.'

‘If she was, I suppose you'd…'

He leaned closer still, pressing her down, covering her. To Maeve, they looked like one thing, one entity, bulky and not beautiful. Although he breathed the words into her mother's ear it seemed to Maeve that he was speaking to no one but himself, that what she heard was a secret voice, an inner voice, like thought itself. ‘Perhaps,' he said, ‘yes, perhaps I would.'

‘You slept with her, didn't you?'

‘That hardly matters now.'

‘You did, didn't you?'

He drew away, lifting his arm high, letting Sylvie slide out from beneath him. There was pain in his eyes, a kind of suffering that Maeve had never seen before and when he squeezed his eyes shut she wondered if he would ever open them again. She wasn't looking at her stockings and worn shoes now. She was staring at her father, at a man whose principles she had spurned, whose intelligence she had doubted, whom she had loved only when she had been young enough to know no better. Now she had an inkling that he was more man than father, more man than husband, more than a provider and that what he had done in coming back to them was bravery itself. She saw her father then as clearly as she ever would; saw into him and through him to the struggle that was in all men. He was a good man, her father, as brave in his own way as Turk.

‘No, Sylvie.' He let out a wheezy sigh and opened his eyes. ‘No, I did not.'

It was not the denial, the lie, that brought her mother down but the manner of its delivery.

She was suddenly as fussy and feathery as a hen, and as helpless. She reached out, wrapped her arms about him and laid her head against his chest.

Still as a stone, Maeve watched, hoping that all would be well now and that she would never again have to see the sort of pain that she had glimpsed in her father's eyes, promising herself that Turk, her Turk, would never have to suffer in that way, that she would never give him reason to doubt her loyalty.

‘I'm sorry,' her mother said in a tight, constricted little voice. ‘Oh, Gowry, I'm sorry,' and reached up to kiss his mouth.

*   *   *

There had been talk of going to visit the Trotters to celebrate Christmas in Wexford but her father had a late shift on Saturday and that had put the kibosh on that. Besides, he was none too struck with the idea of meeting Turk's family, and even Father Mack, who had called round to visit the hero, had been unable to convince him that the Trotters were anything but wild-eyed fanatics who would blow up a pillar-box as quick as look at you. So there she was, stuck in Dublin over Christmas but being a very obedient young woman just at present, she heeded her mother's pleas not to rock the boat and to let Daddy have his way.

In later life, when Maeve cast her mind back to those disastrous months when her mother had taken up with another man, her father had gone off to war and the Shamrock had gone up in smoke, she found that she could only really remember the little, individualised moments when love in one of its many manifestations had touched her. She remembered, for instance, the gloomy morning when her father had left to enlist and had come to her room in the wee small hours and kissed her; remembered too the night when her half-brother had been born and her mother, worn out, had insisted that she take the tiny, shawl-clad bundle in her arms and hold him; remembered how Turk had looked at her through the barbed-wire fence in Richmond Barracks and how she had known then that he was the man for her.

Of all the wayward memories of that difficult time, however, the one she cherished most was of Christmas Eve morning in 1916 when her father came into the room on the ground floor and stood above the bed, dark and gaunt, his overcoat freckled with sleet and the smell of the cold sea air coming off him, and how she had wakened an instant before his lips touched her brow, surprised but not alarmed to find him there.

There was still a flicker in the coals in the grate and a hint of light from the street outside and she could see the transient shadows of the snowflakes drifting against the glass.

He kissed her on the brow and, leaning over, said, ‘They're out.'

She sat up, and her mother sat up.

She said, ‘How do you know?'

‘It's the word on the quays.'

‘Is Turk with them?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Is it Wales?' her mother said. ‘Is it Frongoch?'

‘It is.'

‘All of them?'

‘All of them,' her father said. ‘Lloyd George let them go.'

Maeve felt a great wave of gratitude to her father, as if he had personally signed the release order. She loved him for coming to tell her the good news in the half-dark dawn of a winter's day just before Christmas.

For weeks she had been scanning the papers for news from Westminster. She was well aware that certain factions in the government were concerned that the risk of detaining internees was becoming greater than the risk involved in letting them walk free. The change of heart for which Maeve, and the whole Irish nation, had been waiting had taken place by fits and starts: General Maxwell had been recalled in November and in early December Asquith had resigned as Prime Minister and Lloyd George had taken the helm. Now, at last, release orders had been signed and Turk and her uncles would be coming home.

‘When?' she said.

‘Tomorrow,' her father said. ‘Today.'

Cold air nipped at her shoulders and breasts as the warmth seeped out of the bed. She didn't care. She was hot with anticipation and the excitement of seeing Turk again. Daddy sat on the side of the bed and pulled the quilt over her. He said, ‘I don't know whether they'll be in time to catch the steamer from Fishguard. If they are, they'll land at Rosslare. I think, though, that if they have enough cash, they'll head for the late-night steam packet from Liverpool, and dock at Rogerson's Quay early tomorrow morning.'

‘How early?'

‘Eight o'clock.'

‘I'll be there,' Maeve said. ‘I'll have to be there.'

‘We all will,' her father said.

‘You too?'

‘Me too.' Then he kissed her, and Mam too, and slipped out into the hall and clambered upstairs to snatch a few hours' sleep.

Maeve snuggled down against Mam, heart beating like a drum at the prospect of seeing Turk again. ‘Will they know, will Breen have been told?'

‘I doubt it,' Sylvie said.

‘How can we let them know?'

‘They'll find out soon enough.'

‘Telegraph, we could send them a telegraph.'

‘No, dear,' Sylvie said. ‘Don't spoil the surprise.'

‘Charlie an' Peter too. Will they reopen the brewery?'

‘Yes, I expect they will.'

‘An' Gran'll come back an' everything will be like it was before.'

‘No,' her mother said, stroking her hair, ‘not like it was before.'

*   *   *

It was still pitch dark and bitterly cold when she wakened. She heard her half-brother breathing in the darkness but saw nothing except a faint line of light under the door. She was too excited to go back to sleep and, not knowing quite what time it was, dressed herself and stole out into the hall.

She had no idea what she was doing out in the hall, for at that early hour all the other residents in the tenement would still be dead to the world. She was bursting with excitement, though, and needed reassurance, someone to keep her spirits high. She peered up the spiral staircase and wondered if the alarm clock had gone off yet and if Dad would mind very much if she wakened him a little bit early. She crept upstairs to the top landing. Light spilled from under the door of Fran's old room, a flicker of firelight that warmed the boards of the landing. She knocked on the door, heard him stir within.

She knocked again, and entered.

He was kneeling by the tar-blackened fireplace. He wore a striped flannel nightshirt, his pea jacket draped over his shoulders. She could see the wooden hand, ungloved, and the bite of the straps in the flesh of his forearm and the stoop of the shoulders that war and age had given him.

He looked round guiltily when she stepped into the room and the flare of burning paper in the grate angrily illuminated his face.

On the table by the window were a half-pint bottle of whiskey, an enamel coffee mug and the ashtray – Fran's ashtray – brimming with cigarette butts and spent matches. The alarm clock ticked loudly, firelight gleaming on its tinplate face and round brass bell. He had lighted the oil lamp, though, and by its light she could see the haversack on the bed and the trinkets that he had taken from it spread out on the quilt: a battered tin cigarette case, an oilskin-covered matchbox, tarnished German buttons and the Shamrock badge he had torn from his cap – and letters, a shoal of letters written on blue or buff-coloured paper.

‘Daddy?' she said. ‘Are you cryin'?'

‘No,' he said, wiping his nose with the back of his hand.

Instinct told her not to venture further. She sensed that she had interrupted a ritual, a vigil, that there was something here that it was better for her not to know about. She was too selfish, curious and happy to heed the warning voice, however.

She stepped to the bed and look down at the letters, all written in the same precise, manicured hand, some in pencil, some in ink:
Dear Gowry … My Dearest, Dearest Darling … To My Darling. My Love …

She reached out a hand, and he said, ‘No, Maeve, please don't.'

He was standing now and looked ridiculous with the nightshirt hanging below the pea jacket, the strapped hand dangling by his side, hair tousled and eyes puffy, a letter, one page of a letter, crumpled in his fist.

Deliberately she turned her back on the bed.

‘Who is she?'

‘No one.'

‘What's her name?'

‘Rebecca.'

‘Are you goin' to see her again?'

‘She died.'

‘Oh!' Maeve said.

She experienced a queer mingling of awe, protectiveness and pity and longed to reach out to him, hug him and tell him that everything would be all right, but she had reached the age when that lie would no longer hold.

‘Oh!' she said again, softly this time. ‘What time is it?'

‘Ten after six.'

‘I'll start the breakfast then, shall I?'

‘Yes,' he said.

‘Will you…'

‘I'll come down for it.'

‘Soon?' Maeve asked.

‘As soon as I've finished here,' he said.

*   *   *

Sleet was thickening into snow as they climbed down from the tramcar at the O'Connell Street Bridge and set off along the City Quay.

Across the Liffey the Custom House stood out against a brown canvas sky, Britannia, Neptune and the roof of the portico draped with wet grey snow, the dome capped. It was a fair walk to the quay where the Liverpool steamers docked but the cold was less intense now and lights in the shipping offices glowed in the gloom. Word had leaked out that the boys were expected home and relatives were gathering on the North Wall and at the boat-train terminus and a small but raucous crowd was trailing out to the British & Irish berth on Rogerson's Quay.

Strange to be on the river front at that hour of a Sunday morning; Maeve felt as if she were floating in grey space, as if the long quay were moving and she was standing still, caught in this hurrying moment but not part of it. Boys ahead of her, a group of eight or ten, were singing and cheering, giving every peeler they passed the sign of the fist and the folded arm; not a soldier to be seen, though her dad said the platoons would be marshalled behind the offices, very rigorous, very disciplined, and not looking for trouble.

Daylight seemed a long time in coming and the air was heavy enough to catch the flicker of the lighthouse below the Basin. The British & Irish steam packet looked small with the sky and the sea, smeary with sleet, behind her. The peelers had put up ropes, for the Christmas boat would be packed with Liverpool Irish and from what she had heard of the Liverpool Irish there would have been more drinking than sleep on that cold crossing.

She watched the boat grow larger.

The fretwork along the rails solidified into heads and shoulders, into men and women. Maeve pressed anxiously against the sagging rope.

Mam had insisted on bringing the baby. Sean was cocooned in a huge, warm shawl, nothing much of him showing but a pink nose and alert brown eyes. He had been unusually quiet during the tram ride and on the long walk along the riverfront, absorbing every sight, sound and smell, adding, Maeve supposed, to his experience of the queer world he lived in. Her father had carried him most of the way, holding him securely against his shoulder, the artificial hand under his bum and his good arm wrapped round to keep him snug.