“Go on up. I won’t be a minute.”
She grabbed an armful of spare blankets from a chest in the girls’ room, ran up the stairs. Cormac had found the bed, which was stripped to the bare mattress, and had toppled onto it like a fallen tree. Already he was almost asleep.
“Cormac, get up! You can’t sleep in those things. You’ll catch your death!” Desperately she dragged him to a sitting position, helped him to pull off his shabby coat and wet trousers. “Here, wrap yourself in this. I’m sorry it’s so cold up here. But I can’t light the fire—” She wrapped him in the thickest, softest blanket and as soon as she was finished he fell sideways, drew his knees up to his chest like an exhausted child. She tucked the other blankets snugly around him.
He moved his head, without opening his eyes, muttered into the pillow.
“What?” she leaned closer.
“Don’t – tell anyone.”
“I won’t. I promise I won’t. I’ll come hack as soon as I can with some food. I’ll have to lock you in—” That brought one eye open. His body tensed. “I have to, Cormac, the children play up here sometimes.”
The thin frame relaxed again. “Whatever you say,” he said, and slept.
She smuggled food up to him, later, before she went to bed, and a glass of whisky. For a moment as she bent over him in the darkness it seemed that he must be unconscious, or dead, so still was he. Then she felt his warmth, heard the light, shallow breathing. He was sleeping the sleep of utter exhaustion. She set the food on a small table near him. In the light of her lamp the lines of his unshaven face were softened, almost he looked again the boy she had known.
It was the next afternoon before she finally contrived to be alone in the house with him. With Jack and the children packed off on an errand to Sarah’s she flew up the stairs and unlocked the attic door. Her brother was sitting on the bed, his tousled head in his hands. As he jerked upright there was a wildness about him that made her think of a hunted animal.
“Come downstairs,” she said. “There’s food, and a fire. Were safe for a while. The others won’t be back for a couple of hours.”
He sat in Jack’s big chair before the fire, his head back and his eyes closed. “You’ve done all right for yourself?”
“Yes. Here.” Molly handed him a glass with an inch of golden whisky in the bottom. “Make it last. If I take any more Jack’ll think I’m hitting the bottle.”
He toasted her, tossed it back in one gulp, grinned at the look of exasperation on her face. “Learned a long time ago to make the most of what I’ve got while I’ve got it.” He held the empty glass on the flat, filthy palm of his hand.
“All right. Just one more.” She poured it, handed it to him. “Now, let’s hear it. What’s happened? How on earth did you find me? Who’s after you?”
“In that order?”
“In any order.”
“Let’s start at the end, then. Who’s after me? The police, the army, God and all His angels for all I know. You call it, they’re all after Cormac O’Dowd.” It was said with no bravado, tiredly.
“Why?”
He leaned forward, elbows on knees, stared into the fire. “Because I got tired of their hospitality.”
“You escaped from prison?”
“I did.”
“And?”
“And killed one of the bastards on the way out. Maybe two.” The bitterness in his voice and face had returned.
Molly let out a long, slow, unsurprised breath. “I don’t understand how you found me?”
Without looking at her he dug into his breast pocket, pulled out a much-folded and tattered piece of newspaper, held it out.
Molly stared at it. “Good God,” she said.
“It’s a good likeness. And coming out of Holloway, too. A chip off the old block after all, eh, Moll?”
“I wasn’t – oh, never mind. Where on earth did you get it?”
“In an English gaol you get English newspapers. Even in Ireland. Oh, yes, I can read as well as yourself now, thanks to the English. At least I’ve something to show for twelve stinking years.”
“You mean you saw this, how many years ago? Two? Three? And recognized me?”
“Look in the mirror, girl, and then look at me. I’d recognize you with your head in a sack. You knew me yesterday, didn’t you? Even with this,” he said rubbing his black-stubbled jaw.
“If you knew where I was, why didn’t you get in touch? Why didn’t you write?”
He looked at her quietly for a long time. “Would you have wanted me to?”
She got up, fetched the bottle from the sideboard. He extended his empty glass in silence.
“How did you get this far?” Molly tipped the bottle and the rich liquid splashed.
“I got out with a mate, Paddy Butler. He had contacts in the docks at Dublin. We stowed on a boat for Liverpool. Plan was that we should contact an organization there that arranges passages to America for—” he smiled acidly “—us Irish patriots.”
“What went wrong?”
“What always goes wrong? Someone got themselves bought. Or scared. The army was waiting for us. I got away. Paddy didn’t.”
“He was caught?”
“He was shot. Dead. They saved themselves the rope. Damn their putrid souls.” His fingers round the glass were bone-white.
“So now what?”
He shook his head. “You tell me, girl. I’ve no friends and no money. I took a chance on this—” he indicated the faded newspaper picture. “It’s taken me near two weeks to find you. I’m finished.”
Panic rose. Every moment he spent in the house meant danger; danger to the children, danger to Jack, danger to herself.
“But this organization you spoke of—?”
“You joking? After what happened? I’d have to be crazy to go back to them. No.”
“I’ve some money,” she said, “and some clothes of Jack’s. They’ll be a bit big, but they’re better than the ones you’ve got—”
He lifted his head. “You’re right, girl. I know what you’re thinking, I shouldn’t have come.”
“I’ve children, Cormac, three of them—”
“So I’m an uncle, am I?” Beneath the tired smile was defeat. And fear. She could not bear to see it. “I can give you money,” she said again.
He laughed, short and sharp. “And I’ll be takin’ it to the nice man at the ticket office, will I? And askin’ him politely for fast passage to America? Me feet wouldn’t touch the ground. Not for long, anyway.” The germ of a disturbing idea moved in Molly’s mind. She pushed it away.
“So what will you do?”
He buried his head in his hands. “I don’t know, for Christ’s sake! But I’ll tell you this. I’ve not come this far to be taken easy. And I’ll not be dragged home to hang. When it comes I’ll go down fighting, and take as many of the bastards with me as I can.”
“Don’t talk like that.”
“What else? If I can’t get out of the country they’ll nab me sooner or later. We both know it.”
And possibly me, Jack and the children with you. She did not say it. She looked at the thin frame, the hunched shoulders, thought of a childhood shared. Against the stakes at hazard here personal pride counted not at all. If she had to beg Cormac’s life from the only man she could think of who might be in a position to help, then so be it. Standing up she walked to the window, stood staring into the garden. “Supposing,” she said at last into the silence, “that I said that I might know someone who could help you?”
“Help me?”
“To get to America.”
“Who?”
“You don’t have to know that. I’m not even promising that I can – persuade him…” The pause was fractional. “I haven’t seen him for some time. Are you willing for me to try? There’s obvious danger in asking someone else’s help.”
“There’s danger in breathing for me. Do you trust this feller?”
“Trust is a funny word,” she said drily
. “Let’s just say that I don’t think it would be to his advantage to betray you. Even if he can’t help, I don’t think he’d tell on us.”
Cormac was watching her closely, his eyes her own smoky blue in spiked, soot-blacked lashes. “You’re an O’Dowd to your boots, girl, however much you might try to deny it. The poor feller doesn’t stand a chance.”
She turned to leave and with a fleeting, crooked smile said, “Don’t bank on it.”
* * *
The ornate lift clanked upwards wretchedly slowly. George, dapper as ever, stared straight ahead as the landings slipped past, his face expressionless. Molly marshalled her nerve; Adam’s voice on the telephone had been cool – it was New Year’s Eve, he had arrangements—
Molly, who had been trying unsuccessfully for some days to get in touch with him, had been reduced to pleading.
“Adam, please. It’s very important. I wouldn’t trouble you otherwise, you know it—”
There had been an interminable and nerve-wracking pause. “Very well. This afternoon. My apartment. Four o’clock.”
She looked now at the little enamelled corsage watch that hung from her lapel. Ten past. The traffic had been awful. Supposing he hadn’t waited? The lift lurched to a stop. George, his eyes impersonal, slid the gates open. She stepped past him, high colour in her cheeks, knocked on Adam’s door feeling the little man’s gaze still on her. The lift remained stationary. George was making certain that her visit was a welcome one.
“Come in. It isn’t locked.”
The lift gates clashed behind her as she turned the polished brass doorknob.
Adam was standing with his back to the fire, his head up, watching the door, the smoke from a thin, aromatic cigar wreathing about him. It was impossible to discern anything in his closed face. She shut the door carefully, waited by it. Adam’s hat and coat were lying across the arm of a chair and he was dressed formally, ready to go out.
The sight of him hurt her more than she could possibly have foreseen.
He stood, unhelpful, waiting for her to speak.
“Thank you for seeing me, Adam. I realize that the time is probably very inconvenient.” Outwardly she was calm, businesslike.
“It is.” He did not smile; nor did he make any move to welcome her. A light impatience, held more or less politely in check, emanated from him, a feeling enhanced by the travelling clothes tossed waiting on the chair.
“I’m sorry.” Over the past eighteen months she had contrived to convince herself that absence had exaggerated his graceful good looks, that indefinable attraction that was a physical shock to her each time she saw him. She was dismayed now to discover that she had been wrong.
“Will you sit down?”
“Thank you, no.” There was no disguising the animosity that charged the air between them. The stubborn months of separation were a chasm. Yet she watched his eyes, saw the tension in him, sensed that Adam Jefferson was not as cool as he would have her believe.
A quiet moment ticked by.
“You did not come, presumably,” Adam said, brutally polite, “to stand by my door in silence? I am, as you know a busy man—”
She held the spark of anger in check. “I have – a favour to ask.” Where were all her carefully prepared phrases?
“Oh?” Unfeigned, sardonic surprise.
No way now but to say it, bluntly. “I need passage for someone on one of your ships. To America. I know Stowe, Jefferson have their own runs to New York. I want you to take someone for me—” In her nervousness it had come out all wrong, the words had sounded more a demand than a plea. “Please,” she said, hoping it would soften the edge.
“I see.” Very deliberately he stubbed out his cigar. “Can you give me one good reason why I should do anything for you? Let alone anything that sounds as – shady as this?”
She had for the moment exhausted her courage and her self-control. She did not answer.
He moved with sudden, violent swiftness to where she stood. His face was pale, tight-drawn with anger. “You have your fair share of gall, haven’t you? What in hell makes you think I’d lift a finger for you?”
“I’m not asking you to do it for nothing,” she said quickly. “I’ll pay. As much as you want, within reason. Everything I have, if that’s what it takes.” There was no point in trying to hide her desperation. Every moment that Cormac remained in hiding at The Larches meant danger for the other occupants of the house.
Her tone cut through his anger. She saw the stiffness in him. “Who is it that needs to get to America so urgently and so ‘unofficially’?”
“I don’t think you need to know that.” She tried to walk past him into the room, wanting –needing – to put a physical distance between them. He caught her arm as she passed. She stood still under the bite of his fingers, not looking at him.
‘I thought you’d given up this Irish rebel stuff, Molly O’Dowd?” he said softly.
“You’re jumping to conclusions.”
“Maybe. Now give me one reason why I shouldn’t go straight to the authorities with this strange tale of an Irish girl who needs ‘unofficial’ passage for someone on Stowe, Jefferson’s cargo ship to New York? As a patriotic Englishman should?”
“Would you do that?” There was a sharp pain in her arm where his hand encircled it. She felt rage rising in her blood.
“Why shouldn’t I?”
The blaze was uncontrollable. “Because there are things in your own dealings, Adam, that you would not care for the authorities to hear about. Nor your wife or father-in-law, if it comes to that. You could get my brother hung, put me and probably Jack, too, in gaol. But I’d see you ruined for it, I promise. Is it worth that, the satisfaction you might get from betraying me because I hurt your pride?”
They were standing as close as lovers, each roused to a storm of rage. She tried to pull away from him and he caught her with his free arm. In a sudden flash of blinding temper she lashed out at him and to her own surprise, before he could prevent it, her hand cracked hard against the bone of his cheek. With a furious exclamation he pinioned her, burying his hand in her hair, dragging her head back. Appalled, she watched the bright stain bloom on his cheek. She had never seen such anger in him before; she felt it wild in his body and in his strong hands, recognized, too, that other blood-fire that matched her own, despite their blazing hostility. Then he released her, almost throwing her from him. She could not take her eyes from his marked cheek.
“I’m sorry,” she said, lifting a hand.
He jerked his head away from her touch as if from red-hot metal.
“I didn’t want this,” she said, unable to control the miserable trembling of her voice, “I didn’t want to quarrel. Truly I didn’t. I know what I’m asking. I didn’t mean to threaten. I need your help, Adam. Please. I don’t know anyone else to ask—” Cormac’s face was in her mind, bitter, frightened.
“You have an extraordinarily strange way of begging a favour.” His fingertips brushed his bruised face.
“Please, Adam. Please help us.” There was neither dignity nor pride in the plea. She knew it and did not care.
He heard the change. She saw it in the lift of his head, the dark, narrowed gaze.
“What price would you put on this ticket to freedom that you needed so badly that it brought you to me?”
“Anything I have.” Her cheeks burned.
“And what makes you think that you have anything that I want?”
She bowed her head, closed eyes that were suddenly hot with tears. She had lost. Through her own stupid, hot-headed fault she had lost. Now what? She turned blindly towards the door.
“Molly.” There was no trace of softening in the savage voice. She stood with her back to him, her shoulders tensed as if against an expected blow. “We’ve a cargo loading in three days. I’ll let you know the arrangements.”
She could not believe her ears. She turned.
“It will cost you nothing.” His eyes raked her. “Leave now. If you re
ally want to.”
She stood as if rooted to the spot. He gave her time, then came quietly to her, anger still in him, bent upon punishment.
She shook her head miserably. “Don’t, Adam. Please don’t.” But there was no conviction in the words. She had known the danger of coming here, of seeing him again, had given herself credit for more strength than she actually possessed. She had been ready to blackmail, ready to use any means to gain his help. And now the jaws of a trap of her own making held her firm.
“Go,” he said, before he kissed her, “if you can. I won’t stop you.” But he said it knowing, as she herself knew, that she could no more have left him in that moment than she could have flown, unharmed, through the window.
* * *
Three days later the S.S. Caroline J. steamed downriver from the Port of London fully loaded for New York. A couple of weeks after that a cryptic telegram was received at the offices of the Venture Employment Agency.
Cargo N.Y. safe and sound. Thanks for life. COD.
Chapter Thirty-Three
“Post,” Nancy said, holding out a bundle of letters. “And Mr Danbury’s waiting to see you.”
“Danbury? George Danbury?”
“That’s right. He looks worried.”
“Everyone looks worried,” Molly said as she took the letters, “it’s the expression of the age.”
George Danbury was tall, stooping, kindly-faced. He was one of Molly’s original clients, and a favourite of hers. This morning he was apologetic. “I have absolutely no complaint about Miss Brown’s work. It’s quite simply that I can no longer afford to keep her. Business has been very slow these last months. Competition from motorized vehicles has almost destroyed the horse-drawn trade.”
Molly dropped the unopened post on her desk. She genuinely liked George Danbury. He was an honest, gentle-natured man who had run a small carting business, which he had inherited from his father, more or less successfully for thirty years before the revolution of the internal combustion engine had overtaken him.
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