The City of Strangers (8 page)

Valerie walked up the slope ahead of him. She had a head of yellow hair to her shoulders. She was thin and tall, and strong enough to stand beside the men who worked on the estate and do the same job when she needed to. The clothes she was wearing, as they often were, had come out of the back of her husband’s wardrobe.

Stefan watched her, climbing gracefully and quietly up the slope. He was aware how much he liked her. She had the carelessness that somehow went with her class, even about their relationship, but she had a well of kindness that often didn’t. Whenever he thought about her, she was laughing. She laughed with everyone, but he sometimes felt that her laughter only really came from her heart with the children, and the children had come to include Tom Gillespie, more often than not.

The track across the fields from Kilranelagh to Whitehall Grove had become well-trodden by the children over the last two years, and the woods that filled the valley between the farm and the estate seemed to have become their world. At the moment, after the arrival of the film
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
at the small cinema in Baltinglass three weeks ago, it served as the countryside around St Petersburg, Missouri; the tiny stream at the bottom of the valley, on the other side of the motte, was the Mississippi River. The voices Stefan and Valerie could hear, floating down from the top of the mound, were now those of Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, Becky Sharp, Joe Harper and, intermittently, of Injun Joe, Muff Potter and Aunt Polly too.

‘I was at Garda Headquarters today,’ said Stefan.

‘Be quiet, Stefan,’ she hissed again.

‘It sounds mad, but I’ve got to go to America.’

She turned round, glaring, holding a finger to her lips.

‘You can tell me later, darling!’ The last word meant nothing very much; it was simply the word Valerie called everyone she cared about.

She continued up the slope. He followed, amused. It was a very different reaction from the ones he had got both at the Garda barracks in Baltinglass and at home. The idea of flying to America was, immediately at least, a prospect of such extraordinary wonder that reasons paled into insignificance, especially where Helena Gillespie was concerned. Stefan’s father smiled and joined in, but he still thought it all sounded very odd.

David Gillespie, like his son, had a policeman’s nose; he could smell the politics too, perhaps as acutely as his son. He had worked in Dublin Castle under the British once, when he was an inspector in the Dublin Metropolitan Police. He picked up the excitement in his son’s voice too. It was something he hadn’t heard in a very long time. He felt that the wind was changing; he could see it in Stefan’s eyes; perhaps it was changing for all of them. He wasn’t sure whether that was a good thing or a bad thing, but then the wind and the weather were nobody’s to control.

By now Valerie Lessingham had reached the top of the hill. She crouched down behind a fallen tree, and as Stefan arrived behind her she grabbed his hand and pulled him down. There were no voices now, just the sounds of the rooks overhead, a great crowd of them heading home to roost. Then Tom Sawyer appeared among the bushes across the flat top of the motte, in the form of Tom Gillespie; he was holding Becky Sharp, in the shape of Jane Lessingham, by the hand; things were getting very serious.

‘Becky, I was such a fool!’ lamented Tom. ‘I never thought we might want to come back! I can’t find the way. It’s all mixed up. Don’t cry.’

Becky didn’t look much like crying. Jane was older than Tom Gillespie and she was quite a bit taller – she felt Becky needed to buck her ideas up; crying wouldn’t get them out of the cave they were lost in.

‘Tom, if you can’t find your way out of here, I will!’

‘That’s not right, Jane. It’s Tom who gets them out!’

‘I don’t see why it always has to be that way.’

‘It’s in the film. It’s in the book too.’

Suddenly there was a loud whooping noise, then crashing through the undergrowth came Harry Lawlor, as Injun Joe, his belt tied round his head and a pigeon’s feather sticking out of his headband, and screaming loudly.

‘I’m a-going to get you, Tom Sawyer! I’m a-going to get you!’

‘Becky, run, it’s Injun Joe!’

Tom put his fist up to defend Becky, who scowled and looked like she was perfectly capable of protecting herself, but before Harry reached his prey a small figure wearing a wide-brimmed, very torn straw hat, flung himself at Injun Joe. Alex Lessingham, more accurately Huckleberry Finn, was coming to the rescue. Tom Gillespie clenched his fists and shouted.

‘That’s not what happens!’

‘Who cares?’ said Jane.

She ran. Injun Joe followed.

‘Come on, Tom, let’s go!’ said Huck, racing off. And Tom ran after them, laughing, finally abandoning accuracy for fun.

Valerie got up, laughing too, pulling Stefan up on to the mound by the hand. The voices of the children echoed through the darkening trees for a moment longer, and then there was silence again.

‘Come on, you lot!’ shouted Valerie.

‘Tom, we’ve to get back! Tea’ll be ready! Harry needs to go too!’

‘Jane, Alex, it’s almost dark!’

‘Tom! I mean it!’

Valerie sniggered.

‘What’s that for?’

‘I mean it, indeed! Sure, don’t you put the fear of God into them?’

‘They’ll have us standing here all night, Valerie.’

‘Really?’ She took his hand.

He pulled it back.

‘Don’t be so daft.’

She giggled. They walked on a few steps.

‘Did you say you had to go to America?’

‘New York.’

‘What on earth for?’

Out of the twilight four forms launched themselves at Stefan and Valerie, leaping up and pulling them down to the ground, laughing and whooping, in whatever characters they still carried in their heads. Tom and Harry Lawlor pinned Stefan to the ground; Jane and Alex held their mother down, demanding immediate surrender and a considerable ransom. But after a few moments the hostages were released. As they all got up, Valerie grabbed at the severely battered and torn straw hat that had fallen off her son’s head. She frowned a frown of considerable severity.

‘And who did this?’

The children looked at one another and said nothing.

‘This came out of my bedroom. It was new last year. Look at it!’

‘It’s like Huckleberry Finn’s hat,’ muttered Alex.

‘It certainly is now,’ replied his mother. ‘Who did it, please?’

Tom stepped forward, his head hanging down.

‘We were going to put it back, Mrs Lessingham.’

‘Oh, well, that’s all right then.’ Her voice was still very stern.

‘I only cut it a bit, so it looked right. But it’s got quare ripped now.’

‘Quare ripped indeed, Tomás Gillespie!’

She put her arm round Tom; then she put the hat on her head.

‘So what do you think?’

As Valerie and her children walked down the track through the woods, Stefan turned towards the farm with Tom and Harry. The boys climbed over the fence into the field and walked on. He realised he hadn’t explained anything at all to her yet. He called out in the near darkness.

‘I’m leaving for New York tomorrow!’

‘How long will you be?’

‘Five days, six. I’m flying.’

‘What? You still haven’t told me why.’

‘I’ll catch you in the morning, Valerie!’

‘I don’t know what I’m doing tomorrow. I’ll see what –’

She was gone from sight; her voice had gone too, fading into the trees. He wasn’t sure how much she had heard but when he clambered over the fence it was clear Tom had heard enough. He stood with a look of bewilderment and awe on his face, waiting for his father; it was a look shared by Harry Lawlor too. The Mississippi had disappeared from view.

That evening, after tea, Tom Gillespie brought down the newspaper cuttings he had collected earlier in the year about the flying boats that had just taken to the air, flying out of Ireland, across the Atlantic, to America. It was a wonder that no one could have dreamt of, even a few years ago. There were photographs of the planes, gigantic yet graceful; a great, wide, heavy wing of engines and propellers, with the sleek lines of a ship hanging underneath, cutting down into the waters of the River Shannon as they landed at Foynes. There were men in the navy-like uniforms of Pan American Airways and Imperial Airways, names that on their own conjured up for Tom all the vastness of the earth. There was a map that showed the route the flying boats would take, from Southampton Water on the English Channel across England and Wales, across the Irish sea and all of Ireland to Foynes on the Shannon Estuary; from Foynes over the whole of the North Atlantic, the longest, barely imaginable leg of the journey, to Botwood in Newfoundland; then across the Gulf of St Lawrence and down through Canada and New England to New York, the city of skyscrapers that Tom had only seen in newsreels; a city that felt like it was on another planet.

The atlas was pulled out to join the cuttings, and for more than an hour the farmhouse on the western edge of the Wicklow Mountains was open to the skies and the oceans and a light that seemed to shine on all the distance in the tiny maps and make it almost tangible. David and Helena too were swept up in the adventure that filled their grandson’s head, and when Tom finally went up to bed he had exhausted them all with his excitement. He felt as if he was going too.

For a moment even Tom’s father had forgotten that the man he was going to bring back from New York, on the return leg of that great adventure, might be coming home to meet the English hangman.

And the hangman was still English. Despite the fact that two years earlier, in Éamon de Valera’s new constitution, the Irish Free State had officially been renamed Éire, Ireland, and that it considered itself now, for all practical purposes, a republic, there was still one job no Irishman would ever be asked to do in Ireland. So when that job did need doing it was the English hangman, Thomas Pierrepoint, who took the boat train from Euston, the mail boat from Holyhead, and a taxi from Dún Laoghaire to Mountjoy Prison.

Stefan was thinking about what his journey meant now, as his mother and father washed up. He folded up his son’s newspaper cuttings and put them away in the Cadbury’s chocolate box that had a picture of a flying boat pasted on it; he closed the box and put it aside to go back to Tom’s room.

As he returned to the kitchen the telephone rang. It was Valerie Lessingham, her voice bright as always, pushing away what was in his mind.

‘Stefan, I only got a bit of what you said. How long are you away?’

‘It’s not even a week.’

‘I have to be in Dublin tomorrow. So I’m going up there anyway. I thought I might drive you. You said you’d be staying the night. I could too.’

In a relationship that largely revolved around their children, the time Stefan and Valerie had actually spent alone together didn’t amount to much. When the chance did arise, Valerie dealt with it simply enough. Where Stefan approached it all with caution, she just got on with it.

He laughed. ‘Well, I suppose if you’re going anyway.’

It was unlikely she had been going anyway but, like the practical woman she was, there would, naturally, be things she had to do in Dublin.

As he walked back into the kitchen the last dishes were being dried and put away. His father and mother looked round. In a household where the telephone was still a novelty, an explanation was always expected. Stefan would rather it hadn’t been expected right now. It was an area of his life where the less said, especially as far as his mother was concerned, the better.

‘Valerie Lessingham’s got to be in Dublin tomorrow. She’s going to give me a lift up.’

David Gillespie nodded and turned to put a cup in the press. Helena’s pursed lips told another story. Open skies were forgotten.

‘Well, as usual, there’s nothing much happens here that Mrs Lessingham doesn’t want a part in. I suppose we should be used to it.’

David shot a warning glance at his wife, but she took no notice.

‘Normally it’s Tom of course.’

‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’ said Stefan. His irritation was defensive; he wanted to tell her to mind her own business. His father shot him the same warning glance he had shot Helena, and it had the same effect. ‘Leave it alone, Ma. You know no one could be kinder to Tom.’

‘And what does he think about that?’

‘What?’

Helena turned to the range, taking off her apron and folding it very purposefully, several times, before she hung it over the rail to dry.

‘Think about what? You know what he thinks. He loves being at Whitehall Grove, and he loves it when Jane and Alex come here. They have a grand time, don’t they? Leave it at that!’ He knew perfectly well why she wouldn’t leave it at that, at least he thought he did. ‘Valerie gives him more time than anyone outside this house. He thinks the world of her! Why not?’

His mother still had her back to him.

‘Why not indeed? I’m sure she’s an angel come among us!’

Even David Gillespie thought this was unnecessary.

‘Helena, will you come on? That’s enough.’

She turned, smiling now, but it wasn’t a smile of agreement. It was a smile that said she had more to say, and obviously no one wanted to hear it.

‘Probably it is. Trust me to blow out the candle when it’s burning so bright.’ She walked across to Stefan and kissed his cheek. ‘You’ll need an early night, son. You’ve a lot to do. I’m sure there’s more to all that travelling than they say. It’s still a long way, however quickly you get there.’

She walked out and went upstairs.

Stefan sat down at the table. He looked down at the picture of the flying boat. There had been times, more times recently, even before the call to Dublin, when he had felt he needed to get away. It had nothing to do with Valerie Lessingham, or with his mother’s tight-lipped disapproval, or even the slow repetitiveness of his life; it had nothing to do with his family really. It was the feeling that sometimes the mountains around him closed in, watching him grow older, watching his son grow up as he did no more than mark time.