by Rose Doyle
'You'd be found out,' I said, 'it would be said that you married a whore, a barbaric Irish woman who lived in the wild.'
'Not if I leave the army and we marry quietly in England. You could change your name, begin all over again.' He propped himself on an elbow and looked down at me. 'What will you lose by leaving Ireland, Allie? What is there you want to stay for?'
The question was a good one and the answer dismal enough. I'd long ago lost my mother. My father might very well have given up on me by now too. My reputation was gone. My best and lifelong friend would soon be gone as well, married to her soldier and living God knows where.
And the man I'd loved too late, who would have made me his life's companion and helped me become a doctor, was dead.
'Not a great deal,' I said.
'You'll marry me then?' he said.
I might have said yes if he'd been more like Daniel. I liked him a great deal, even if I didn't love him, and we'd have got along well enough. He lacked Daniel's courage and would doubtless live by my side to a ripe, and safe, old age.
But while Alexander wanted us to run and hide and deny my life Daniel had accepted me as I was, even been glad of what I was.
I held Alexander's hand when I gave him my answer. I was grateful to him; he'd shown me love and helped me see what I had to do. He lacked Daniel's courage but he would find someone like himself to be happy with. He would never be truly happy with me, nor I with him.
'I can't marry you, Alex, but thank you for…’
'Spare me the courtesies, Allie,' he released his hand from mine, left the bed, covered me with a blanket and got dressed. He left the room and came back with water and toiletries which he left for me on the washstand. He did all of this in a matter-of- fact, unhurried fashion.
My body, as I washed, looked the same as it always had been. I wasn't sorry for what I'd done. I wouldn't be in the future either. I was no different to the other wrens now. I was prepared for the life I'd chosen.
Alexander was in his uniform when I came into the other room.
'Duty calls,’ he smiled. 'What will you do now?'
'I will nurse Beezy back to health. I'll be a doctor and nurse to the wrens and their children and to any other woman who calls on me.’
'You're as foolish as the man who died,' he observed as he put on his hat, 'you do that and you won't be thanked and you'll probably die of some contagious disease yourself.' He took my arm and led me to the door. His tone and manner were almost lighthearted. 'I'm letting you go, for now, but only because I can't restrain you. You won't escape me, Allie, and I won't let you destroy yourself.' He opened the door and helped me down the step to where a horsecar stood waiting. 'This man will drive you back to your wrens - but we'll be reunited before long.'
He was wrong. I knew that we would never again lie together.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Sarah
Daniel Casey's dying changed everything.
Or so it seemed at the time. When I looked back on it later, with a bit of a distance between me and the Curragh, I could see that all he'd done was arrive into the middle of change. What his dying really did was hasten the end.
The biggest change was the weather. The end of summer revealed the countryside as the ugly place I'd always known it to be. The village began to fall apart. The nests fell because of the battering by wind and rain, the numbers of wrens when women began leaving to spend the winter elsewhere. Lucretia Curran and Lil Malone left. Better to take their chances on the streets of the towns and cities, they said, than die in the cruelty of the open.
Those who stayed, like Ellen Neary and Clara Hyland, were either waiting for soldiers or far gone in drink.
If Allie blamed herself for Daniel's death then so did I. He died because he became caught up in the terrible, ruinous course mine and Allie's lives had been following for a long time. Maybe since we were children together, for all I knew. All that was left to do was pray that the worst had happened.
The police were conducting a big inquiry into what had led up to Daniel’s death and how it had happened. The hope was that justice, in the fullness of time, would be meted out to the priest and to the cowardly, murdering members of his flock.
Allie's grief over Daniel was terrible. She was desolate and forlorn and wouldn't speak about it. I knew she was full of bitter regrets for the times she'd been cool with him, at her slowness in letting him be close to her, at the loss of a love that had just begun to grow.
I knew all of this because I knew her so well and not because she shared any of it with me. She didn't share her grief with anyone. After Daniel Casey's mother came and took his body away to Galway she developed a detachment that wasn't natural. I told her so.
'It would be better for you to weep and talk about him,' I said, 'it's the normal thing to do. Don't you think him worth your tears?'
'Don't try to goad me,' she was sharp, 'I'll grieve in my own way, Sarah.'
'What way is that? Where did you go the day his mother took him?'
She turned away, beckoning to Moll Hyland. The child was more than ever besotted with Allie and forever hanging about our nest.
'I went on a journey,' she said, 'that I needed to take.'
She'd been on a journey, right enough. She'd arrived back in the village worn and exhausted, carrying Daniel Casey's doctor's bag. She'd refused to answer questions then, just as she was refusing now. I had my suspicions about where she'd gone but if she didn't want to tell, then she didn't. She might, in time or not, as the case might be. There are some things can never be told. Especially if they're between a man and a woman.
What she'd said was that she intended devoting herself to the medical care of the wrens. She wouldn't be leaving the village when I married. She would make Beezy well. She expected chest and other infections to be rampant through the winter. She would be on hand to care and do all that she could.
She was of the opinion that this sacrifice would be a tribute to Daniel Casey. When I told her he was most likely turning in his grave at the idea she walked away from me.
Just as she was doing now with Moll, going with the child to check on her mother. Clara Hyland was in a bad way with drink.
I had my own problems, but they were pleasant enough ones, in the circumstances. Two days after Daniel Casey's death Jimmy arrived with our marriage licence.
'We can be married in a week,' he said, 'the Catholic priest in the camp says he will do it for us in the chapel there…'
'So easy, in the end,' I interrupted, full of the joy of it and surprised too. 'After all the waiting it's to happen so quickly, and so simply.'
'The ceremony, yes.' Jimmy laid James, whom he'd been holding, on the ground, 'and giving James my name.'
There were just the three of us in the nest. Allie was with Beezy in Nance Reilly's nest.
'But it'll be another week or two before we get a place to live together,' he watched James's kicking legs. 'I'm asking you again, Sarah, to move out of this place and into a room.'
'Into the "she-barracks" is it?'
I wasn't as sharp with him as I'd been in the past. The cold and rain and constant patching and repairing of the nest had me demented with worry about James's health. Allie, thin as she'd been as a child of ten and pale, had had a fit of coughing in the night too. I couldn't leave her.
'It would be dry there,' Jimmy said.
'Drier than here anyway,' I conceded. 'But I'll stay here until we marry, since it's only to be a matter of days. Then, if there's any hold-up at all on our married quarters in the camp, I'll move as a temporary measure into the "she-barracks".' I knew I was choosing between Allie and James, that I was putting my son first, as I had to. I was hoping that she would have come to her senses in the week between me getting married and moving out of the village.
Jimmy Vance and I became man and wife on a bright, frosty Saturday in mid-November. I wore my blue cotton dress, transformed by Allie. Working through the night she'd sewn pale gold-coloured ribbon
s on to the bodice and neckline. On the end of the sleeves and around the hem she'd sewn a darker gold ribbon. My hair she bound and threaded through with more of the pale gold ribbon. As my bridesmaid she herself wore her lilac silk dress.
Clara Hyland was there with Moll and Ellen Neary came too. Both of the women looked respectable enough to be housemaids. Poor little Moll was so excited at the prospect of a wedding that she vomited early in the morning.
Beezy, too ill to do more than wish me well from her sick bed, wasn't there. It felt wrong to be married without her. I cried as she admired my dress and wished me good luck, feeble and hot-eyed from drink and fever, her rings rattling on bony fingers when she lifted a hand to say goodbye.
It felt wrong to be married without my mother and father and grandmother too. I tried not to think about them, especially my mother, and to think instead how pleased they would be when they heard that Jimmy Vance had at last made an honest woman of me.
Captain Ainslie was there for Jimmy's side. There wasn't another army person present and I was glad. To have included Jimmy's soldier mates would have meant John Marsh being present. I didn't want that fiend next or near me on my wedding day.
Jimmy not being a Catholic meant we couldn't be married on the altar. This caused no great hardship since, by gathering around the Holy Water font in the porch and rechristening James as part of the ceremony, we managed two sacraments for the price of one.
Afterwards we filled two horsecars as we went to Newbridge and the Prince of Wales Hotel, all of us sitting down together to a meal. Marriage is a respectable business, and the meal had in any event been organised by Jimmy and Captain Ainslie, so we were attended to with decency and courtesy.
Allie and Captain Ainslie behaved in a polite, distant fashion towards one another. This was dictated by her. It was plain the captain would have liked to resume the easy friendship they'd had before Daniel's arrival, and death.
It was hard to see how she could do other than keep the captain at arm's length until her heart had mended. I wished all the same she would be less hard on herself. It wouldn't have killed her to allow him take her hand as she stepped down from the horsecar.
Or maybe it was that he'd already done more than hold her hand, so that she had other reasons for not touching or being close to him. There was something I didn't know about going on and I wished she would tell me. But I was too happy to be married to Jimmy to suffer much on account of it that day.
It was as well I enjoyed my happiness. It didn't last long.
'The captain's here. He came on his horse and he's in a great hurry to see the pair of you.
Moll, breathless and only half dressed, came to the nest to Allie and myself early on the day after I was married. It was another bright, sharp morning.
'He's climbed down from the horse but he won't come into the village,' said Moll. 'I said I'd send you to him at once.' She held out her arms. 'Give me the child. I'll mind him while you talk with the captain.'
Captain Ainslie was stroking his horse and looking severe when I got to him. Allie came slowly after me.
'What's happened to Jimmy?'
I was sure Jimmy was hurt, or maybe even dead. I felt strangely calm and thought I was ready for news of any kind. I wasn't, though if Jimmy had been hurt or dead the news might have been easier to take.
Captain Ainslie handed me a letter. 'I can prepare you for the contents if you like,' he spoke quietly, his eyes on my face all the time. A tiny muscle flickered in the scar over his eye as Allie came up behind me. He didn't turn to her.
I noted these small things very clearly. It helped me avoid looking down at the letter in my hand.
'Tell her,' Allie put an arm round my waist. I allowed myself lean on her, a little.
'Private Vance left for India with his regiment early this morning. There's money in the envelope, as well as a letter. He wants you and the child to go to Dublin, Sarah, to take lodgings there and await his return. He's promised to send regular payments.' He stopped, then said the rest of what he had to say to Allie. 'I didn't know, yesterday, that he planned to do this today.'
'But you knew his regiment was going to India?' Allie was cold.
'Yes,' his lips tightened, 'but he told me he planned to feign illness and stay behind. He wanted to transfer to another regiment, one going back to Dublin.'
'He lied,' Allie said, 'to everyone.'
I looked down at the envelope. My name was there, written in Jimmy's own, careful, hand. The one I'd taught him.
'He lied right enough,' I said, 'but please don't be upset on my account, either of you.' I smiled at them. I really didn't want them to worry. There had been too much concern spent on me. This I would take on my own shoulders. 'At least James has his father's name,' I assured them, and myself, 'at least he's no bastard.'
Later, I told myself, I would face the loss of Jimmy. Later, when I'd had time to get used to it.
'Will you have tea?' I said to Captain Ainslie. He looked at Allie who said quickly, 'I think you had better read your letter, Sarah. First things first.'
She sounded so like our old schoolteacher that I nodded obediently, a habit from long ago, and turned away with my letter. I walked until I couldn't see the village any longer and then I stopped, in the flat open, and read what Jimmy had to say. His letter was no more than half a page in length. Even so, it must have taken him the night to write it. He'd laboured over it; the letters were well formed and there were no misspellings. But he was not a gifted writer and there was nothing in it of the Jimmy Vance I'd loved and now, it seemed, lost.
My dear Sarah, he began,
By the time you read this I will be on my way to India with the regiment. I will be gone no more than two years. When I come back I will have money and be in a position to discharge myself from the army.
I love you, Sarah, as much as I love life itself. I love my son. I do not want the life I see in the married quarters for us. Go to Dublin. I will come there for you to your parents' house. You will get money from me every month.
He signed it 'your ever loving, Jimmy Vance' and added a postscript telling me he'd deceived Captain Ainslie because he needed his help.
He'd deceived me too, and our son. He didn't seem to think this worth mentioning. Something in me died as I finished reading the letter. Died and then hardened into a knot of fury.
I'd believed so much in Jimmy Vance. For him, and love of him, I'd kept our son from the nuns and come to this hell-hole to find and live beside him. Allie had come with me, and Beezy Ryan who was now dying. All of us because of him. It was too much. Even the worm turned when he was trodden upon. If I could not have love then I would at least have back my dignity.
I counted his money. He'd given me thirty pounds. Thirty pieces of silver to buy me off. It wasn't a fortune but, together with the money Beezy Ryan owed me, it would open some door to a future.
I tore the letter into the smallest pieces, scattering them to the wind as I marched back to the village. By the time I got there I knew what I was going to do.
Allie, with Moll still holding James, was waiting for me outside the nest. She'd built the fire bigger than we'd ever had it. I worried the nest would burn and told her so.
'The wind's in the other direction,' she frowned and took my arm. 'I've made tea. Sit and have it.'
To humour her I sat on an upturned pot. Moll, rocking James in her arms, stepped away a little and eyed me cautiously. That child was four hundred years old. I didn't take James from her. He was quiet and she liked nursing him. She wouldn't have many more opportunities to do so.
Allie put sugar in the tea and gave it to me. 'Some of Beezy's whiskey would do you more good,' she said.
'I'm going,' I said.
'To Dublin?'
'No . . .'
I saw Moll slide closer and lowered my voice. I wanted to be the one to tell Beezy that I was deserting her, just as I was about to tell Allie. I had James to think about, they only had themselves. This, cruelly and
finally, was what Jimmy's letter had brought home to me.
'I'm going to America. I'll do what many before me have done and start a new life there. You can come with me, or not, as you choose.'
'You know that I've already made my choice.'
'You could become a proper doctor in America. You'll never become one here.'
'I'm a better healer as I am than many men who've spent years in universities,' Allie said and I knew she was thinking of Dr Maurice McDermott.
'You won't be healing here and you know it.' I poked at the fire. Her stubbornness had always irritated me. 'You'll be making things more comfortable for the dying and making the rest strong enough to go on drinking and killing themselves. The village will destroy you, Allie. You'll be finished by Christmas, diseased yourself and with no doctor to look after you.'
'You're wrong,' she was forbearing, treating me as if I was slightly gone in the head. 'I'm needed here. I will make the sick well.'
'You won't make Beezy Ryan well,' I stood. ‘No one can make Beezy well. I'm going to her now. It's time she was persuaded to go to the hospital. She'll at least have the comfort there of dying in a warm bed.'
Allie followed me through the village to Nance Reilly's nest, two of her steps matching every one of my own furious strides. Moll, faithfully holding James, followed up in the rear.
The nest was full of a smell like rotting meat. Since it came from Beezy's wounds that, in a sense, was what it was. Beezy herself was a sight, weaker even than she'd been the night before. The drink was doing it, every bit as much as the poisoned and festering wounds on her back. Her hair had grown to below her ears and under it her face was a feverish mauve and thin as a knife blade. The only resemblance to the old Beezy was in the length and boniness of the long body stretched across the nest.
