Women of Courage

by Tim Vicary

  Despite his age, Henessy had asked permission to welcome in the year 1920 in the traditional way. So for an hour or two Andrew had sat in the great kitchen, listening to the stories and songs of his servants and the villagers and friends they had invited. But he was not in convivial mood, and soon after midnight he went to bed, knowing that he was lifting a pall of respectability from the proceedings, which could now take life without him.

  He lay in bed and fingered the long raised line of his scar. It was the main reason he gave himself for avoiding human company. When he had visited the girls in brothels in London and Paris they had gawped at it in pity or disgust, and he had caught the same look in the eyes of the serving maids here. And yet the right-hand side of his face was handsome enough; he could speak clearly, see, had good lungs, all his limbs intact; more than dozens of poor fellows he had known.

  He wanted Ardmore to be a great house again but he hated company. He had begun to buy in horses, with the idea of starting a stud, breeding perhaps for the turf. But it was a slow business, needing a stock of patience which he lacked. Some days he could be charming, on others he sank into a black mood, brooding. The little devil in his mind whispered to him of the pleasure they had had in Germany, on the run; and he told himself there was no place for that in peacetime, at Ardmore. He wanted the place to be the haven, the paradise it had seemed in his childhood. But for that he would need a wife and children. And a wife would have to be as dashing and handsome as his mother, as thrilling as Elsie. He fingered the ridge of his scar, and remembered the way the new housemaid had winced in distaste at the sight of it this evening.

  If she thinks you’re so horrible, the devil inside him whispered, why don’t you strip the clothes from her and lash her little pert buttocks with a riding crop until they look the same? He smiled to himself, knowing it could never happen. Ardmore was a peaceful, civilized place now. In time, perhaps, it would grow into something he could be content with. He fell asleep, listening to the distant sounds of revelry and laughter downstairs.

  Four years of war had made him able to sleep through any noise, so the whoops and shouts did not disturb him. Not until five o’clock did he wake, and realize that something was wrong.

  It was still dark, and the noise downstairs was as loud as before. He sighed, and pulled the pillow over his head.

  Then he heard a scream, and smelt the smoke.

  He leapt out of bed, and dragged back the curtains. Light flickered over the lawns - huge tongues of red light and shadows, dancing across the grass. He saw figures running. One, who looked like a housemaid, was lugging a bucket of water from a pond.

  He flung the door open and ran out into the corridor. But he could see nothing; great clouds of smoke billowed round him and there was a draught, like a gale, blowing past him up the stairs. He couldn’t breathe. His throat was like sandpaper and he began to cough continually. Using his hands to feel the way, he floundered back to his room and slammed the door.

  He pulled off his nightshirt, dunked it in the ewer, and put it over his head, like a gas mask. It might do. He pulled on a pair of trousers, opened the door, and hurried along the corridor.

  He remembered burning buildings in Flanders. Keep low, he told himself. Go below the smoke. As he reached the head of the staircase, he saw flames rushing up it like a chimney - ten, twenty feet high. What could it be, in the stone hall? Ah, God - as he watched, blisters burrowed like moles across the surface of the oil painting of his grandfather, and then the portrait exploded into flame.

  There was no way down there. He struggled back along the corridor to the servants’ staircase. But there was a solid wall of black smoke pouring up there too. If he did not get air in a moment he would drown in all this smoke. He reached up and pushed open the door of the nearest bedroom. It was the one his mother had used, before her death. The smoke poured in, but he slammed the door shut behind him and for a few precious moments he was able to breathe.

  He stood there, his bare chest heaving, gasping in the clean air. The light of the flames from outside the window flickered luridly over the soft shell-pink of the armchairs his mother had so liked, the damask bed-hangings, the mirrors of the walnut dressing table. That would all be burning beautifully soon. Already the floorboards were hot under his feet.

  He hurried to the window and opened it. Outside there was a windowsill, then nothing - a twenty-foot drop to a gravel drive. Too far. He ran to his mother’s bed, ripped the counterpane off, smashed a small pane of glass beside the stone upright in the window frame, and tied the counterpane to it. It was thick, heavy, difficult to tie. As he did it he had a sudden vivid memory of hiding under this counterpane as a child, pretending to fight the lions and embroidered Chinese dragons, while his mother laughed indulgently. Never again. The flames were licking under the door. He tugged hard on the sheet. It would hold. He climbed out of the window and walked backwards down the wall with the counterpane in his hands, his bare feet pressing against the stone.

  Some eight feet down he reached the end of the counterpane. Below him he could see the curtains in the library window blazing like a blast furnace. He swung out from the wall, let go, and dropped.

  He hit the gravel, rolled over, and stood up. Stones had embedded themselves in his skin, and he brushed them off. Then the library window burst and he stepped back, shielding his face against the sudden blast of heat.

  Flames were blazing out of every window on the ground floor, and great gouts of black smoke were pouring out of the chimneys and windows upstairs. As he watched, there was a crack as something important fell in, and a tongue of flame roared through the smoke over the roof.

  ‘Dear God.’ He ran round the side of the building to the stable block and heard the screaming of terrified horses. The stables themselves weren’t ablaze yet but a hayloft was beginning to burn. Inside it was bedlam: three horses rearing and screaming and old Henessy struggling with a bolt on a stable door as though it were as hard to open as a bank vault.

  He pulled Henessy aside and set the horses free. But it was a mistake. They clattered out nervously, saw the blazing straw, and bolted back inside. They were shuddering and kicking at shadows. Andrew managed to lead one free and tie him to a tree. As he ran back he saw Henessy staggering towards him with the second. But the stable roof was alight now and before Andrew could get near the third it collapsed, trapping the terrified animal inside.

  Andrew stood, watching, until the screams ended. Then he walked to the pump behind the house where he found Mrs Macardle.

  ‘What happened? How did it start?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir, truly I don’t. We were all singing, and then some more fellows came from Youghal and they was playing the game with the whiskey barrel, and I went to bed. And then this!’

  ‘Who were the other ones who came?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir. But it was the whiskey barrel …’

  ‘Never. One fire in a whiskey barrel couldn’t cause the whole house to go up like this, all at once, without any warning. This was deliberate. And I know who did it.’

  He walked away, round to the front of the house again. The upper floors were ablaze now, and the roof was caving in. He stood in the middle of the lawn and watched. Shortly before dawn, the main chimney stack collapsed, bringing down the rest of the roof and smashing through the two upper floors. When daylight came, there was nothing left but four blackened walls, and the ashes blazing merrily within.

  11. A Solitary Fisherman

  THE WIND swept in from the northeast, howling round the corners of the tenements, picking up leaves and rubbish and whirling them along the streets. Somewhere a tin bucket rolled to and fro, clanging against railings. The wind brought rain with it too, stinging cold sleety rain that lashed the faces of the few pedestrians foolish enough to be out, making them hurry to their destination, their hands thrust into their pockets, their chins tucked deep into the upturned collars of their coats.

  Catherine and Sean clung to each other, strugglin
g with the small blue umbrella she had brought. A few minutes ago they had been in the little tenement room, the heat of the fire glowing on their naked bodies; Catherine gasped with shock at the icy, stinging contrast of the sleet lashing her face. Inside her coat her body was still warm, languorous; and as she struggled along the street into the storm she could feel the pressure of his hips against hers and imagine every line of his body moving beside her.

  Because of the rain they took a less roundabout route than usual, but still they stopped once or twice, shivering and kissing in doorways while they glanced up and down the street for anyone following. Once Catherine thought she saw the same tall young man for the second time, but before she could point him out to Sean he was gone, and they did not see him again.

  Catherine insisted on leaving him while they were still out of sight of her house in Merrion Square. ‘It’s too much of a risk, Sean,’ she said. ‘Father will be back tonight, and it would spoil everything if anyone saw us together.’

  ‘He’ll have had a rough trip, in a storm like this,’ said Sean. ‘Even the sea hates Ireland’s enemies.’

  ‘Don’t speak of him like that, my lover.’ She kissed the freezing rain from his lips, and licked a drop from the tip of his nose with her tongue. ‘He only does what he sees as his duty. And I have to live with him, after all.’

  She thought for an instant, that he would say: ‘No, you don’t have to live with him, you can leave home and marry me.’ But he didn’t; and anyway it would be far more complicated than that. If she left home she would lose her inheritance, and the power and freedom which that would give her. She could use her parents’ wealth to build hospitals, and benefit the poor from whom it had been taken. But to do that she had to get control of the wealth in the first place.

  She had never discussed this with Sean. She was not quite sure he would understand. I will defy my father if I choose but that doesn’t give my lover or anyone else the right to mock him.

  Sean said: ‘Yes. I forget sometimes. You’re a fine lady and I’m just the gardener’s boy.’

  ‘Sean! Not exactly …’

  ‘I know.’ He stopped her mouth with a kiss, long and casual and masterful, so that she forgot the protest she might have made. Then he stood back and said: ‘Home you go now, my lady. Daddy’s waiting with cocoa and the Union flag.’

  It was not enough to quarrel about, but she resented it nonetheless. The words were like a pat on the rump, they demeaned her. But it was probably just because he hated to see her return to a home so utterly different from his own.

  As she handed her dripping coat and umbrella to Keneally in the hall, she saw her father through the open door of the drawing rom. He was sitting by a blazing fire, reading the Irish Times, with a glass of whiskey on the table beside his armchair. He looked up as she walked in.

  ‘Out to your Irish classes again? I should scarcely have thought it was worth it, on a filthy night like this.’

  She answered in Gaelic: ‘A little rain never scared a good Irishwoman yet.’

  Sir Jonathan scowled. If he understood he would not admit it. ‘Don’t swear at me, girl. Why the devil don’t you learn more Latin, if you want to do something useful? That’s what all the medicos speak, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s only to confuse the patients.’ She didn’t want to quarrel; she felt too relaxed and indolent for that. She stood in front of the fire, warming herself, and thought: Father looks tired and - shrunken in on himself, somehow. Why is that? ‘Did you have a bad crossing?’

  ‘Foul.’ He sipped the whiskey, grimaced and said: ‘This is the only thing I’ve kept in my stomach all day.’

  ‘If you weren’t so important, you wouldn’t have to go.’

  ‘No.’ He stared at her, thinking it was a strangely unaggressive way for her to refer to his work. She looked radiant, somehow, her cheeks glowing, her wide dark eyes sparkling in the firelight. She sat on an embroidered stool in front of the fire and flicked her short dark hair from side to side, combing it with her fingers to dry it in front of the flames. He might be wrong, but she seemed unusually happy. He was glad of it; she was all he had left. Abruptly, he decided to confide in her.

  ‘I saw Sarah Maidment in Bournemouth.’

  ‘Oh?’ A slight shiver went through her. She thought: This is it, then. He has decided to disinherit me and leave Killrath to one of her sons. If he does that I shall be free to leave home and live with Sean. In love and squalor. She asked: ‘How was she?’

  ‘Dying.’ Sir Jonathan looked away from his daughter, into the fire. ‘We said our goodbyes. I shan’t see her again.’

  ‘As bad as that?’

  ‘Yes. You’ll see plenty of death, if you persist with this career of yours. It’s not pleasant.’ He drained his glass and held it in his hand, reflectively. ‘Anyway, you never liked her, I understand that. I suppose it shows loyalty, in a way.’ He paused, and looked up at her. ‘She was a good woman, though, whatever you think. If she’d been born with a silver spoon in her mouth, like you, she could have been as fine a duchess as any in the land.’

  Catherine thought of the little dumpy woman she had met in this house during the war; a charlady taking over her mother’s place. In principle she agreed with what her father said; but in practice … it was a quarrel she did not want to repeat, not now.

  She wondered if her father had ever thought he would take such a mistress when her mother was young and beautiful, the toast of Galway. If he had loved her and been faithful, so much would have been different. I might even have become the daughter he wanted.

  There was a silence. The fire crackled and the flames cast long dancing shadows on the walls. Catherine said, slowly: ‘I suppose we’re all born to a certain fate, and we can’t escape it completely, however hard we try.’

  ‘Very philosophical of you, my dear.’ Her father sipped his whiskey again. ‘And your fate is to keep our agreement, and inherit this house and Killrath. I wish you much joy of it.’

  Catherine sat on the edge of the comfortable armchair, holding out her hands to the blaze. She thought of Sean trudging back alone through the wind and sleet. ‘I don’t know if I can keep the deal, Father. Anyway, my fate may be to change things.’

  ‘That’s what you think now. But it’s my fate and duty to pass on our heritage to you intact. Just as it’s my duty as a father to lead you down the aisle and hand you over to a decent young man. I look forward to that day, you know.’

  She looked across at him, smiling sadly. ‘You may have to wait a long time, Father, I’m afraid.’

  Kee put down his pen gratefully as Radford came into his office. He hated writing reports. The point of the job was to be out on the streets, observing, talking to people, making arrests. Not pushing paper around.

  Radford flung an envelope on the desk and said: ‘That’s it, your copy of the postmortem on Savage’s body. Nothing in it that you couldn’t have deduced in the first two minutes. The body’s being collected by relatives this afternoon and they’ve arranged a funeral for tomorrow.’

  ‘With a eulogy by the priest and a massive parade of Sinn Feiners, no doubt.’

  ‘Probably. It’s in the Pro-Cathedral.’ Radford hesitated. ‘There’s been no request for police to marshal the funeral.’

  ‘There wouldn’t be.’ Kee met his colleague’s eyes, and saw that the same idea had struck them both. ‘No doubt young Brennan will be there.’

  Radford nodded. ‘Not just him, either. Chances are they’ll all want to pay their respects.’

  ‘And us without a hope in hell of getting anywhere near and coming out alive. Not without an army escort, of course.’

  ‘I’ve already canvassed that idea. The military view is that it would be impossible to make arrests without endangering the public. The Volunteers will be armed, and the soldiers wouldn’t know who to shoot at and who to miss. There’d be a massacre.’

  ‘Hm.’ Kee rubbed the skin behind his ear. ‘That’s why detectives wear plain clothes.’<
br />
  ‘We can’t just join the crowd, Tom. It’d take more than you and me to make an arrest in a place like that, and the Shinners know all the other G men by sight.’

  ‘At least we can keep an eye on things, can’t we? See who comes in and goes out? Follow young Brennan home, perhaps ?’

  Radford nodded. ‘We can do that, Tom, at least. The funeral’s at two-thirty tomorrow. I’ll organize it.’

  The river Blackwater swirled under the single arch of the stone bridge. The river was full, and the water had overflowed the bank in some places. The solitary fisherman had been there for most of the short winter afternoon.

  He never went more than a few yards from the bridge, although there were much better stretches of the river upstream. There was nothing in his keepnet. But Andrew Butler didn’t mind. For him, the excitement of the afternoon had nothing to do with fish.

  During the four hours he had been there only three cars had passed him. One, as Mary Macardle had predicted, had been the black model T Ford. Andrew had recognized the two young men in the front seat, and there had been another in the back. He was almost certain they had not recognized him.

  Behind him a wood came within ten yards of the riverbank, and there was a pile of cut logs waiting to be carried away. On the opposite side of the stream, the peat bog stretched endlessly. Little white heads of cotton grass nodded in the wind, and above them, dark-grey clouds swirled from the west, carrying the threat of rain.

  Andrew could see any car approaching the bridge for miles, but there was less than an hour of daylight left. After that he would have to give up, or risk ambushing the wrong car.

  He had moved two of the logs from the pile by the forest to the edge of the bridge. There were two shorter lengths of wood as well, quite thick, about three feet long.

  All his guns had been lost in the fire, but he had a hunting knife on his belt, in the small of his back. It was very similar to the bayonet he had used in Germany. Surprise, he knew, would be his biggest advantage. That, and the lust for revenge.