Women of Courage (115 page)

The warder beside him unlocked his handcuffs and the soldiers took Sean’s arms and propelled him through the door. Outside, a warder coughed discreetly.

‘No handcuffs, Major?’ he asked, looking at Sean pointedly.

‘What?’ That’s the second mistake, Daly thought. He gave what he hoped was a calm smile. ‘No, no need. I’ve got four men and they’re all armed. There’ll be no trouble.’

‘He may look pretty, but he is charged with murdering a policeman and trying to put a bomb under the Viceroy, you know, sir.’

‘I’m well aware of that, thank you.’ Daly unbuttoned his holster, took out a Webley revolver, and cocked it. It made him feel much more comfortable. He pointed it at Sean, but it could just as easily cover the prison warders. ‘One false move out of him, and I’ll save the hangman a job.’

The warder appeared satisfied. They marched, six of them - Sean, three soldiers, two warders - down the stone staircase and along a corridor. The sound of their boots echoed around them. There was a large closed door at the end of the corridor. Sean concentrated all his attention on it, willing it to open.

They reached the door and halted. The warder spoke to his colleague at the reception desk. The three soldiers and their captive stood unmoving. Almost like statues, if statues could have a pulse that beat like thunder in their throats.

The warder unlocked the door. The detail marched through. There was an armoured car outside. One of the soldiers got into the front seat beside the driver, tugging Sean in beside him. There was just room for Daly on the outside.

Daly saluted the prison warder, and then got in beside Sean. The warder stood on the steps, watching them, frowning as though something was wrong.

Clancy turned the keys of the armoured car. It wouldn’t start. He tried again. Still nothing. The warder came slowly down the steps towards the front of the car.

‘Give it some choke!’ Daly hissed out of the side of his mouth. Clancy pulled out the choke and tried again. The engine fired. He let the gears in with a sharp jerk and the car lurched bumpily across the yard towards the gate.

Sean saw the warder open his mouth as though to say something, then change his mind and step out of the way.

The warders at the main gate saluted as they went out. Clancy turned left into the traffic, narrowly missing a pony and trap. Nobody said a word. After about fifty yards Daly craned his neck round to shout to Kelly and O’Reardan in the machine-gun turret.

‘What’re they doing?’ he yelled.

‘Closing the gates, Commandant!’ Kelly yelled. ‘They just saluted and closed the gates behind us!’

‘We did it!’

A great yell of triumph erupted from every man in the car simultaneously. Daly grabbed Sean by the hand and thumped him on the back, the other man pummelled him in the stomach, and Clancy, the driver, reached across to ruffle his hair. Kelly and O’Reardan burst into a full-throated verse of the ‘Soldier’s Song’:

‘I’ll sing you a song, a soldier’s song

With a rousing cheering chorus …’

Daly shouted at them to be quiet, but as they lurched along the Phibsborough Road towards the city centre he found it hard to imagine that any other armoured car in the city was crewed by men with such broad, triumphant grins on their faces.

30. An Unsuitable Proposal

C
ATHERINE LAY in the bath and thought of her mother. The three bathrooms on the first floor at Killrath had been fully equipped and installed at the turn of the century under the orders of her mother, who was then in her early thirties. The bath Catherine was in was a massive iron tub eight feet long and nearly three feet deep, which had been specially commissioned from an ironworks in Belfast. It had feet like lion’s claws, and a fitted shower cabinet made of teak and brass at the tap end, with its own special mirror, taps, and a shower head a foot wide at the top. The rest of the room was of matching magnificence. There was an equally massive washbasin, cork matting on the floor, bamboo and cane easy chairs, a large mirror decorated with twining stained-glass leaves and flowers, and a sculptured ceiling where dolphins and mermaids could be seen sporting gaily.

Catherine lay back in one and a half feet of steaming, soapy water, and looked at them. People had confidence in those days, she thought.

She remembered how she and her brothers had admired the tall, distant, beautiful figure of their mother. She had been one of the most striking women in the west of Ireland. People had come to Killrath to write poems and songs about her, paint her portrait, vie for her attention. Catherine and her brothers had been brought in by their Irish-speaking nanny to sing at the parties, ride to the picnics, stand by their mother’s side in the photographs.

When did it all end? By the time she was twelve the parties were fewer, her mother more erratic, sometimes even dishevelled in her dress. Doctors began to come more frequently than artists. And by the time the war began her mother was clearly going insane.

Why? Because Father rejected her and took up with another woman. She must have been as lonely and unhappy as I am now, Catherine thought. And there was nothing she could do.

Catherine wondered if her mother had felt the same about her father as she herself did about Sean. Objectively, there ought to be no comparison. Her mother had been rejected for another woman; she, Catherine, had been rejected for …. what? A soldier’s life? Sean’s heroic vision of himself? The attractions of a secret brotherhood? The glory of assassination? Of secret murder?

It was the first time she had thought of Sean as a murderer. She knew and loved all the arguments - the fight against the foreign oppressor, the service of the old woman of Ireland, the
Shan Van Vocht
, the Fenian vision, the torch handed down over the generations, the unending struggle, the glorious rhetoric of the Republic. But the look of triumph on Sean’s face as he had shown her his gun had besmirched it all. Perhaps because he was rejecting her at the time. Perhaps because of the way he had used it - to blow away half a policeman’s face on a dark night before the man had time to fight back.

The worst of it was that she still loved him. That was it, that was the link with what her mother had felt. Sean did not need her any more, but she could not get him out of her head. And now that he did not want her, the world was an empty desert.

When Mother felt like this she gave up, Catherine thought. The fog of depression entered her brain and she went mad. That won’t happen to me. I’m not like Mother, I won’t let it. There must be other choices.

She slid down to the tap end of the bath to turn on the hot tap, and then, on impulse, stood up and looked at herself in the mirror. She wiped the condensation away with her hand, and saw a nude girl with steam rising around her, like Venus. I am as beautiful as Mother once was, she thought. Men could make poems and paintings of me. Other men. Not just Sean.

She turned the tap off and lay down again to soak. She had read somewhere that a woman would always love the man who took away her virginity. Later she had thought: That can’t be true, it wouldn’t be fair. What if you’re attacked, raped by a monster? Yet here she was, obsessed by the memory of Sean, her own first lover, when it was all over between them.

How could she break free?

Maybe there’s some truth in this myth. Maybe you can’t forget your first lover so long as he’s the only one. Maybe it’s a sort of medical problem of the mind that needs treating. How?

By taking another lover.

The thought appalled and thrilled her. She believed strongly in the idea that women should be as free to take lovers as men, and that no harm was done so long as no one was hurt and there were no unwanted babies. As an idea it seemed simple, translucent, obvious; but it was turning out harder than she had expected. The memory of Sean was like a bacillus that had invaded her bloodstream, and needed to be cleared out.

She thought about Andrew Butler.

He was an arrogant, supercilious pest, but he was obviously attracted to her. He must be, to stand up to all the rebuffs she gave him. Perhaps he is actually suffering, as I am suffering about Sean, she thought. The idea amused her. She did not love him, but he fascinated her. And men use women who fascinate them, she thought. They exploit them for their own pleasure, to get whatever they think they need. Why shouldn’t a woman do the same?

Could I?

It would be an utterly unprincipled, wicked thing to do. But then, perhaps such values are old-fashioned, out of date, blown away in the tempest of the war. Women who stick to them turn in on themselves and go mad, like my mother. That won’t happen to me.

She stepped out of the bath and stood on the cork matting in front of the large decorated wall mirror, watching the soap suds trickle down her body to the floor. I look nervous, she thought. I look like a sacrifice. But that’s what I was before.

This time it’s different. I’ll be the one who’s in control. Because I don’t really want him as much as he wants me.

I
won’t be the sacrifice.
He
will.

Andrew remembered the pattern of the past three evenings.

They would meet in the drawing room, she would drink more sherry than him, they would begin an argument which would carry on throughout the meal, and she would leave him early to go to bed.

Every evening he would try to gauge whether she liked him a little more. And he would be transfixed by her beauty, and wonder what he could do about it.

Tonight it was different. She poured herself a sherry but she didn’t freeze him out or start a quarrel. She didn’t sit down on the window seat as she usually did. She sat down in a chair by the fire and smiled at him.

‘That’s a change,’ he said. He was quite taken aback.

‘What is?’

‘A smile.’

‘Don’t I usually smile, then?’

‘Not until you’ve told me to leave the house, or tried to ride me over a cliff, no.’

‘I’m sorry.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I’ve been very shut up in myself. It makes me rude and - what did you call it? - prickly.’

There was a certain speculative amusement in the way she looked at him, he thought, as though she wondered what effect this new approach would have. He wondered himself. He said: ‘Well, I’m glad that I shall see you with your hackles down for once, before I leave. It should be an interesting sight.’

‘You’re leaving?’ Her plan would fail completely if he left.

‘Are you so concerned? Yes, on Wednesday, if I can get a train. My leave doesn’t last for ever, you know.’

‘No, I suppose not.’ Wednesday. The day after tomorrow. There was still time, then.

Their meal was curiously subdued. They talked a little about the fishing, the inevitable rain, the awful news from Russia and Poland, the introduction of Prohibition in America, and the proposed attempt to cross the Atlantic in one of Zeppelin’s airships. When they had finished they went back to the drawing room. Brophy, the butler, served them coffee and brandy, and Catherine thanked him and said he could go to bed.

There was a steady rattle of rain on the windows, and an occasional gust of wind blew smoke back down the chimney. Andrew was surprised that Catherine had not gone to bed immediately after the meal, as she usually did, and he wondered again at the curious way she looked at him. She knelt on the rug in front of the fire, watching the flames through the brandy glass. Her skin glowed, her short dark hair was smooth, soft in the firelight.

He said: ‘I still haven’t had a straight answer.’

‘To what?’

‘My proposal.’

‘Yes, you have. The answer is no, Andrew, the same as it was yesterday and the day before. I can’t help it if you’re deaf.’

‘You’re a cruel woman.’

‘I’m sorry. Why don’t you just forget about it? There are other ways for people to relate to each other, without getting married, after all.’

‘Such as?’

Again that strange, speculative look. There was a hint of mischief in her eyes, a ghost of a smile around her lips. ‘I don’t know. You’re older than me, and a man of the world. Surely you must have been on friendly terms with other women.’

On friendly terms. That was not quite the phrase he would have used. ‘One or two, yes,’ he said.

‘But you didn’t marry them.’

‘Of course not. You may think I’m just being flippant but I’ve never met anyone I wanted to marry before.’

‘All right then, tell me about it. I’m interested in the psychology of it. What does a man think when he has an affair with a girl who he’s not going to marry?’

He was used to her frankness and unpredictability by now. It was part of her, but tonight it annoyed him. She thinks she can mock and refuse and tease without realizing the effect it has, he thought. She’s a virgin; she’ll grow up to be an old maid.

‘He thinks, I suppose, about her body, and the pleasure she can give him. And whether she’s exciting and fun to be with.’

‘And don’t you think women think like that about men?’

‘Some do, perhaps. I don’t know.’

This isn’t working, she thought. He looks too morose, angry almost. She put her brandy glass down carefully on the hearth, and got to her feet, holding out her hands to the fire. Without looking at him, she said: ‘If I ever married a man I would want to know everything about him first.’

‘I could get an accountant to draw up a list of assets, such as they are; show you a copy of my war record, if that would help.’

‘Idiot. I don’t mean that at all.’

‘Well, what then?’

She turned round to face him. He was still sitting in the chair, nursing his brandy, scowling. She took a deep breath.
Oh, Sean, Sean, forgive me.
Trembling slightly, she said: ‘Stand up.’

‘What?’

‘Please.’

He put the glass down and stood up, facing her. If ever a man was made a fool of, he thought, it’s me. ‘Is that all right?’

‘Kiss me.’

He did. She slid her arms around his neck and it was very tentative at first; his lips were sullen, frozen. Oh, come on, she thought, I can’t do this all on my own. His moustache tickled, there was a nice, bristly feel to it. She put her hand on his cheek, and without meaning to, touched his scar. It felt hard, inanimate, gristly. Then suddenly his resistance snapped and he crushed her to him, kissing hard, earnestly.