Women of Courage (124 page)

Number 16 looked quiet, deserted. He went up the steps and rang the bell. It echoed away inside discouragingly. No one came. He rang again, then, looking round to see no one was watching, leaned forward and surreptitiously tried the door. It was locked.

This is a waste of time, he thought. There’s no one here anyway, and even if there was, what would I say? But if I could get inside I could sit and wait for her. At least it would be safer than wandering around the streets.

He went down the steps and walked slowly away down the road. A few houses further on there was a gap in the terrace, leading to some small mean dwellings behind the larger ones. He went down it, and saw an alley to his left, behind the houses in Nelson Street. He walked along it, counting the houses back again as he went.

The smoke from the burning sofa was everywhere. It was thick and black and it scoured the back of her throat so that she coughed nonstop and wanted to be sick. She was dripping with sweat and coughing and despite the lurid flashes of light from the flames it was so dark that she couldn’t even see the bloody lock. But she had the pin of the brooch in the keyhole and even when she was coughing her fingers moved it back and forth, searching, more quickly and desperately than ever before.

She felt as if her body were breaking up. Her lungs were choking and her eyes were streaming and her head was bursting but her fingers, they would never give up. They would go on picking and worrying at the lock when the rest of her was dead, like a chicken’s feet carrying its headless body round and round a yard.

Something moved in the lock. Her fingers tugged at the hasp. It came loose.

The fingers fumbled, not knowing what to do next. She had not planned further and now her brain was too full of the futile, rasping struggle for breath. It sent no messages. Her fingers were on their own.

They pulled the hasp of the padlock free of the chain and dropped it. The chain slipped off her ankle. She moved her foot.

A message got through to her brain. She began to crawl, coughing and choking, across the floor. She kept her head down below the worst of the smoke because she did not have the strength to stand up. She was breathing in great, shuddering gasps, again and again, faster and faster. Each breath brought in less and less air and more and more smoke, so her need became greater and her strength ebbed. She reached the door.

Of course it was locked.

She got up on her knees and tugged at the handle and nothing happened. She had not thought this far. She had no plans. She had thought if she ever got the chain off there would be time to plan out the next stage. Now there was no time at all.

She rattled the door handle and then smashed both her fists against the door and screamed. There were no words to the scream and not much sound either because she had no breath and halfway through it ended in a fit of coughing and her lungs ached and her head was bursting so she gasped and drew in more smoke.

Her fists hammered at the door all by themselves for a few seconds more. Then she slumped down at the foot of the door where there was a little, a very little draught of air that came in between the foot of the door and the floor.

Each house seemed to have a different-sized wall behind it, with its own individual gate. Some were old, battered wooden ones, falling off their hinges, one or two were brightly painted, one or two were wrought iron.

The back yard of number 16 was fairly primitive. There was an unpainted wooden door bolted on the inside, and a six-foot-high brick wall. As Sean tried the door, a man opened the door of a yard a little further on. Sean moved away from the door. The man went back into his yard, and came out wheeling a bicycle. He got on it and cycled away to the far end of the alley.

Sean took a quick run at the wall, got his forearms on to the top, swung himself over, and dropped down the far side.

No one there. Two dustbins, a shed for an outside privy and another for coal, a rusty old bicycle, a window and a door. No one was looking out of the window. He tried the door. It was locked.

He glanced quickly up at the backs of the houses on either side. Some windows overlooked the yard but if he stood close up against the door like this people would have to lean out quite a way to see him. He couldn’t see anyone watching at the moment.

I’ve got a right, he thought. I’ve got a right to know what sort of a man he is. He stood back from the door and kicked it, hard, with his hobnailed boot, just beside the door handle. The door shuddered, but did not open. He kicked it again, afraid of the attention the noise might attract. This time something gave. The lock rattled, but still held.

The third kick burst it.

He stepped into the kitchen. He shut the door and stood quite still, listening. His hand fingered the revolver in his pocket. A man he could cope with; a woman, a cook or maid, coming in flustered with a dustpan and brush in her hand, would be harder to manage.

There was no sound at all.

He stepped through the scullery into the hall. There were doors on each side. It was very quiet, dusty, with an empty feel to it. The hat and coat stand was bare. There were no umbrellas, no shoes, no letters or newspapers. He caught sight of himself in a mirror. A young man in a cloth cap, wide-eyed, scowling, nervous, with his right hand in a bulging coat pocket. A burglar, certainly. If I meet anyone, that’s what they’re bound to think.

There was a smell of smoke, as though someone might be lighting a fire somewhere and the chimney wasn’t drawing. If there was a fire, someone must be here.

If someone was here, sooner or later they would make a sound. He waited, listening. Then he heard it.

It was not the sort of sound he expected. It sounded like a scream almost, as if someone were in pain or ill. And there was a muffled banging.

It came from behind a door to his left. When he tried the door it was locked, but there was a key on the wall beside it. When he opened the door, there was a stairway leading down, and smoke floated out. The banging came again briefly, then stopped.

Sean waved his arms in front of his face to clear the smoke, and went down the steps. He unbolted the door at the bottom.

To be certain of success, Kee thought, I’ll need the army.

He sat at his desk, sipping a cup of coffee, and thought of the detectives he could call up from G Division.

Except for Foster, Kee did not think he trusted any of them. Those whom he had seen had taken the news of Davis’s arrest with shock, apparent concern and, most worrying of all, silence. Perhaps if he called a meeting now and told them they were going to raid Clancy’s, the whole bunch of them would walk out in a block and phone Collins. And it would only take one.

Kee decided to use the army instead. He picked up the phone and rang Dublin Castle.

He was put through to Colonel Sir Jonathan O’Connell-Gort. Even his daughter is a blasted Sinn Feiner, Kee thought. The whole town is riddled with them, like maggots in a mouldy cheese.

Nonetheless, Sir Jonathan, it appeared, was duty coordinating officer for the day, and Kee had no actual doubts about the man’s loyalty. He explained what he wanted. Sir Jonathan responded briskly enough; in fact he sounded unusually cheerful.

‘Right-ho, old chap. I’ll get on to it right away. Usual thing - lorries front and back, you say, street cordoned off, and a section to go in with you?’

‘Yes, sir. And I don’t want any new recruits, either. The place could be empty but if my information’s right we might find half a dozen of them and they’ll be shooting to avoid arrest.’

‘I’ll see to it.’ Sir Jonathan seemed to hesitate as though a thought might have crossed his mind. But all he said was: ‘Sounds like an interesting show. I’ll try to get down there myself if you like, Inspector, make extra sure there are no cock-ups, what?’

Cock-ups by whom? Kee wondered. But the man sounded too cheerful to be intentionally malicious, and Kee had no more objection to him than to any other army officer. They agreed a time and an assembly point, and then Kee put the phone down, yawned, and rasped his hand across his bristly chin.

Perhaps I should smarten myself up, he thought. Can’t be showing Davis’s murderous friends any disrespect now, can we?

He lurched to his feet and strode down the corridor to the washroom, in search of hot water and a razor.

Sean was panicking. He wished desperately that he had studied the medical books more closely and that he could remember what to do, because he thought she was dying. And he blamed himself because he had nearly left her down there for good.

When he had opened the door a vast cloud of black, choking smoke had poured out, and he had staggered backwards up the stairs, coughing wildly. He had already reached the door at the top and was just about to close it to keep the horrible smoke down there, when he had remembered the scream and the banging.

Even then he had retreated into the hall to suck in clean air before he thought of returning. Then he had taken off his jacket, wrapped it round his head, and plunged back down the steps.

He had trodden on the body, not seen it.

He had felt something soft, moving feebly under his boot. He had picked it up and lugged it up the stairs, letting the legs bang all the way on the steps, and only when he had got it out and into the now smoke-filled hall had he looked and seen who it was.

She had been lying slumped, face down on the floor. She was filthy, some of her hair seemed to be burnt, and her face was blackened by the smoke, but there was no doubt.

He opened one of the doors off the hall, dragged her in there, and flung the windows open. Then he turned her over and wondered if she would live, and what he would do if she did not.

She was breathing in a very strange way - great snoring gulps one minute, and then nothing at all, feebly, the next. He felt for the arterial pulse in her throat. Not steady, but something there, anyway. He tilted her head back, opened her mouth and felt inside with his finger to make sure her throat wasn’t blocked.

She gagged, opened her eyes, and saw him.

He took his fingers out. She closed her eyes, took another great shuddering breath, opened them again, and sat up.

‘Sean!’ she said.
‘Sean?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s me.’

‘Oh, my God, we’ve got to get out of this place! It’s on fire, Sean - quick, it’s on fire!’

He looked round. There was not a lot of smoke in this room, and he could see no sign of flames coming into the hall. What worried him more was the thought that the smoke, blowing out of the windows, would attract attention. But far more important was the fact that he was here, with her, and she was alive.

He said: ‘No rush, it’s all right for a minute or two. Was there anyone else down there with you?’

‘No. No, I was alone.’ She gathered her wits. Maybe the sofa had not set light to anything else yet. ‘Sean. Why are you here?’

‘I came to look for you.’

‘But … you’re in prison! You’re going to hang!’

‘Not if I can help it.’

That wide, boyish grin, the smooth face, the stick-out ears - he was here, he was really here! She put her hand on his cheek to prove it. ‘But how? How did you get out?’

‘It’s the long story you want, is it? I think we may have to save that, Caitlin. We’ll be getting ourselves an audience.’

He heard some shouts, and glanced outside. A group of boys were staring at the smoke floating out of the window, and a woman was coming down the steps of the house opposite.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘I came to find
you
, not the whole street. Where can we go?’

‘I don’t care where, but I want to get out of this house,’ she said. ‘He might come back, any time!’

‘Who?’

‘Andrew, of course. Sean,
you don’t know?
’ She stared at him.

Sean said, carefully: ‘I saw you come in here with a man. Yesterday. I didn’t know who it was.’

‘It was Andrew Butler. He locked me down there, the pig.’ She was struggling to make sense of Sean’s presence. ‘Sean. Why are you here if you didn’t know that?’

‘Just … I had to see you. Mick Collins would thrash me if he knew.’

The mention of Collins triggered something else in her mind, but someone was hammering at the door. There were too many impressions crowding in on her. She said: ‘I don’t want to see these people. They may be friends of his. Is there a back way?’

‘It’s how I came in.’ He took her hand, led her out through the smoking hall, through the kitchen, and across the back yard to the door, which he unbolted. They were halfway down the alleyway before he noticed she had no boots on. One silk stocking was in shreds, and the ankle was grazed. ‘Where are your boots?’

‘I threw them at a rat.’ She grinned at him, her face all smudged with smoke, part of her hair crinkly where it had been burnt. My God, he thought. Mick Collins tells me to stay out of sight and here I am walking through the city with a barefoot girl in black make-up. He didn’t care. She wanted to come with him. He didn’t know why yet but it was more than he had ever expected.

He said: ‘I could lend you my boots.’

They looked down together at the big, hobnailed boots and laughed. He put his arms round her and kissed her, very gently, nervously on the lips, and she didn’t move away. Shakily, she stood on tiptoe and touched his nose with hers, and it was like that first moment in the tenement, the time when she had been quite naked and he had held her against his shaggy, rough outdoor clothes. He said: ‘I came to say I was sorry, Cathy.’

‘For what?’

‘For all of it. I shouldn’t have sent you away.’

Over her shoulder he saw a group of boys in long trousers and noisy boots clattering by. One looked at him curiously and said: ‘There’s a fire in a house in Nelson Street, mister. Our Seamus has gone for the peelers. Will you help us put it out?’

‘I’ll be right there,’ Sean said. Then when they had gone he asked: ‘How are you going to get around town without boots ?’

She shrugged. ‘The beggars do it.’

They hurried away, through the maze of small, one-storey houses and down an alley into Blessington Street, and then down Mountjoy Street to a square with a church in it and a school on one corner. Sean had an idea. He turned left. ‘If we cross Dorset Street we can go to Parnell Square,’ he said. ‘At least you can get a wash there, and maybe find something for your feet.’