Women of Courage

by Tim Vicary

  Why? To this there was an obvious answer, and it was one which sent a chill through Davis’s bloodstream. Radford didn’t dare share his information with anyone, because he was afraid it was being passed on to the IRA. Davis smoothed the paper in his typewriter thoughtfully, making sure that the extra carbon - the one for Michael Collins - was in line with the others.

  I should really finish this report soon, he thought, before that beggar comes back and starts checking up on me. Because if he’s afraid that information is being passed to the IRA, his next move is going to be to find out who’s doing the passing.

  Radford’s an Ulsterman, for heaven’s sake, Davis thought; he’d hardly been in this city until two months ago. He doesn’t know the difference between Donnybrook and Drumcondra. Who’s he been in touch with?

  It has to be someone within the movement itself, he decided. And that, to Davis, was the most frightening thought of all. Because if someone within the republican movement was passing on high-quality information to Radford, then there was no knowing what that information might contain. It might contain, for instance, the name of the detective in G Division who was working for the IRA. The informer might even come across one of the flimsy carbons from Davis’s typewriter in the republicans’ files, and show it to Radford. It would be easy enough to check which typewriter the report had been typed on - each machine had its own distinctive faults in the way the letters came out on the page.

  The informer might even have heard of the time when Michael Collins had been spirited into Brunswick Square itself, and sat all night at the desk of Radford’s predecessor, reading through the files which Davis brought him. At the time, Davis had thought it his proudest moment, but he was not particularly anxious to explain his pride to a British judge, or to spend the next ten years remembering it in a cell. They would probably send him to a prison in England, Davis thought. English prison officers did not like Irish republicans, or bent police officers.

  He shivered, and looked round to see if someone was coming in, or if the window had been opened. No. The building was quiet, as it usually was in the early part of the evening.

  I’m getting jumpy, he thought. Time to finish this report. I need a drink, a bite to eat and a breath of fresh air.

  He stubbed out his cigarette, and for ten more minutes his fingers hammered hard on the keys.

  But as he unwound the completed report from the machine, he thought: Wherever he gets his information from, that man Radford is becoming a menace.

  He’ll have to go.

  19. Society Hostess

  SIR JONATHAN was pleased with the afternoon at the races. It had been one of those fine, crisp days that come sometimes in midwinter, when the sky clears, the sun shines down out of a blue sky, and for a few hours everyone can unbutton their topcoats and remember what it can be like in summer. The atmosphere consoled him a little after the fiasco of Andrew Butler’s failure, which he had learnt about the previous night.

  To his delight, Catherine gave at least an appearance of enjoying herself. She had been a lover of horses since she could walk, and as they paraded in the paddock she gazed at their silken, gleaming flanks with close attention. In the twelve thirty she had picked an outsider, Scheherazade, who had come in by a short head at fifteen to one; and from then on her advice had been sought on all sides. Colonel Roberts and his wife, who had just come over from England, were delighted, as was MacQuarry, a tall, thin Scotsman who worked in the official solicitor’s department at Dublin Castle.

  The young men were less of a success, so far. MacQuarry’s son, David, the heir to several Highland grouse moors and trout streams, had even turned up with a young lady of his own, who looked likely to become his fiancée at any moment. The other, Simon le Fanu, a short, powerfully built captain in the Inniskillings, seemed so uncharacteristically pale and morose that Sir Jonathan wondered if he was ill.

  Sir Jonathan stood beside him as they took their places in the stand for the penultimate race in the day, the three o’clock. It was a novice handicap over a mile and two furlongs, once round the course.

  ‘Have you got any money on this, young Simon?’ he asked.

  The young man shrugged. ‘A couple of quid on Shangri-La, for the name. But I’ve no idea really.’

  Sir Jonathan grunted, offended by the lack of enthusiasm. In his opinion racing could be enjoyed only if pursued with passion, even by those without knowledge. He considered the scene around him, still lit by the declining rays of a sun which shone miraculously out of a clear blue western sky. What he knew about young Simon could be summed up in five facts: he had served for two years in Flanders; he had been wounded; he had won the Military Cross; he was the heir to 5,000 acres in west Meath; and he was unmarried. All of these, so far as Sir Jonathan was concerned, were positive recommendations.

  He tried a different tack. He said: ‘There was a time, eighteen months ago, when I thought I’d never see a sight like this again. I dare say you felt the same, eh?’

  Simon shivered. ‘True enough. The nearest we got to it was when some troopers organized a racecourse for the rats, along the duckboards in a communication trench. They used to shoot them as they came through the finishing post.’

  Sir Jonathan laughed. ‘Never keep an Irishman from a bet, eh? If you put some of these fellows in a hole in the ground, they’d bet on something.’

  ‘That’s what we did, didn’t we?’ said Simon. ‘They kept a book on the new recruits, once, till I put a stop to it. Two to one they wouldn’t last a fortnight.’

  ‘My God,’ said Sir Jonathan, horrified. ‘Hardly cricket, that. Court-martialling offence, I should think. Was there a charge?’

  ‘No.’ Simon did not elaborate, and in a moment the excitement of the race was upon them, and the story forgotten. Only much later, when they had returned to Merrion Square, and the butler, Keneally, was carrying round a tray of drinks in the main drawing room, did Sir Jonathan think of it again. He noticed le Fanu standing politely by himself on the edge of the hearth, took his daughter firmly by the arm, and steered her across the room.

  ‘Cathy, my dear, come and talk to young Simon here. He didn’t have much luck this afternoon - I think he’s been a bit put off betting by some of the things that happened to him in Flanders. Perhaps you can cheer him up.’

  ‘I doubt it, if he’s thinking of the war.’ Catherine had purposely been avoiding Simon all afternoon, precisely because she understood her father’s designs in inviting him. But a few words could scarcely hurt. Indeed, they might even have a healing effect. All afternoon, she had been aware of a dull ache in her chest, which had threatened to break out into agony once or twice, when she had seen a hand or the side of a face in the crowd that might have been Sean’s, until she looked closer and saw it was not. The only relief, as she had found with other types of pain in her childhood, was to throw herself with relentless determination into a bright, brittle surface appearance of energy and laughter. She might atone for it later, she thought, with floods of tears into her pillow; but not now, not in front of these people. She had too much pride, and her pride gave her strength.

  ‘What happened to you then, Simon?’ she said lightly. ‘Did you see the error of your ways, and wish you were at home, fighting for Ireland instead?’

  ‘I was fighting for Ireland,’ said Simon stolidly. ‘I volunteered; we all did. Ten thousand of us at least.’

  ‘There were nearly the same number of Englishmen stationed behind in the old country, to keep us all in order. Poor mathematics, was it not?’

  Simon flushed. ‘I didn’t know you were a Sinn Feiner, Miss O’Connell-Gort. I should have thought with your family …’

  ‘I should have had different views. Yes, I know.’ She smiled at him sweetly, thinking: It’s funny how one man can be devastatingly attractive, and another, roughly the same size and shape, can look ugly as a toad. When that flush spread upwards, I’m sure the veins in his neck began to swell, and the pimple on his forehead looked as if it w
as about to burst. The thought amused her, and she said: ‘I’m sorry, I’m eccentric, that’s all. I just do it to tease. Now, what was it Father was saying you bet about, in Flanders?’

  Whatever it was, she never learned, for Keneally coughed importantly at the door, and announced another guest.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, Major Andrew Butler.’

  Catherine glanced around curiously. She remembered that her father had threatened to inflict three of these absurd suitors on her, but he had said that the third might not be able to come. Here he was, apparently. A dark-haired man in civilian clothes. Tall, broad-shouldered, rather athletic. And - sweet Christ! - his face was disfigured by the most horrendous scar. A livid line of white like a snake down the side of his face. Where did Father dig up these horrors?

  The man caught her staring at him, bowed ironically, and stared back. She flushed, realizing how rude she must seem, and then another thought struck her. When he looked straight at her most of the scar was hidden, and the rest of the face, the undamaged part, was really rather attractive. Slim, strong, with a short military moustache, dark, slightly shadowed eyes that surveyed the room with a sort of …

  What, exactly?

  Whatever it was, there was something about them that had to be more interesting than gazing at the pimple on Simon le Fanu’s forehead, or talking to that emaciated stork David MacQuarry, who had so hilariously turned up with his own cheerful bouncing fiancée-to-be. No, she had to hand it to Father, this monster did at least look interesting. So when her father went forward to shake the new arrival’s hand and then turned to look for her, she did none of the things, like turning her back or striking up a passionate conversation with Mrs MacQuarry about furniture covers, which she might have resorted to if she had wished.

  Instead, she smiled brightly, held out her hand and, feeling the ache in her heart sharpen, decided to challenge him unmercifully, in order to help herself forget Sean.

  ‘I’m so glad you could come, Major Butler. Father said you were a busy man. Forgive me, but you are in the army, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I am.’ Andrew accepted a drink from Keneally, and frowned at her. ‘Oh, I see. The clothes, you mean. Well, we don’t have to wear uniform all the time.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that,’ she said. ‘I meant, if you’re in the army, I don’t see how you could possibly be so busy as to pass up an afternoon at the races. Most of the rest of our Imperial garrison was there.’

  Andrew looked at her for the first time. He had declined Sir Jonathan’s ridiculous invitation to the races for obvious reasons: anyone might see him there, including Patrick Daly and the other three who had escaped from Brendan Road. He had only decided to come here tonight because he was bored, because there was very little danger of discovery, and because the Collins mission was almost certainly blown anyway. Tomorrow, or the next day, he would leave Dublin and go back to Ardmore, and see if he could patch up one of the cottages to live in.

  And then decide what to do with the rest of his life.

  In the meantime, for some reason, he was at a dinner party. He gazed at the young woman in front of him, trying to take in the fact that she, and the others in the room, were real, and not just passers-by in the street whom he could ignore. A delicate, sylphlike face, short black pageboy hair, red lips, wide dark hypnotic eyes. He remembered she had said something to him.

  ‘Sorry. What did you say?’

  Catherine was piqued. Her dart did not seem to have got through. ‘I said, I don’t understand why anyone in the army can claim to have anything really useful to do.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’ With a shock, he realized that she was actually trying to be rude to him. The shock was compounded by a realization that he had not been in a situation remotely resembling this for a very long time indeed. There had been mixed evenings in the officers’ mess at Aldershot, before demobilisation, but that had been almost a year ago. And there had been that month in London, when he had visited almost every high-class brothel he could find, in an attempt to exorcise the German girl, Elsie, from his mind. He thought he had succeeded. Since he came back to Ardmore he had lived the life of a recluse, a celibate. There had been women around, of course, but only cooks and servant girls - he had kept his distance from them.

  He thought he had closed that door in his mind and locked it.

  Now, quite suddenly, he was faced with an attractive young woman of his own class. A quite remarkably attractive one, in fact. Fairly tall, slender, in a loose green silk dress which showed off a considerable area of neck and shoulder. A hint of a body that was lithe, athletic, overpoweringly feminine.

  But it was the scent that really aroused him. She was wearing some kind of perfume that he had not smelt for a very long time, and which took him back, irresistibly, to Elsie, and the way she had unbuttoned a similar, cheaper dress, very slowly and suggestively, and then pulled it down, smiling as he watched, all the way down to her hips …

  Something about his gaze caused the young woman in front of him to flush a light pink, and he thought for Christ’s sake, get a grip - this is a dinner party in Dublin, not a whorehouse.

  And this girl’s probably a silly little Irish virgin.

  Nonetheless he said: ‘Why are you being rude to me? Are you frightened of my scar?’

  And Catherine, who had got quite a shock at the wolfish, yearning look in the man’s eyes as they travelled down her bare shoulders, said: ‘I couldn’t care less about your scar. If you join the army you must expect to get hurt, mustn’t you?’

  Andrew was stunned. No young woman had ever said anything like that to him before. And truly, she did not look revolted. Only challenging, almost deliberately provocative. He said: ‘Why are you being rude, then?’

  She shrugged. ‘Because - I don’t like the army, I suppose.’

  ‘So what do you like?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Horses, for one thing. You should have been there this afternoon.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It was a fine day. And I won fifty pounds.’

  Andrew laughed. ‘Bully for you. What are you going to spend it on?’

  ‘Books, perhaps. Or some new paintings for this room. It needs some more, don’t you think?’

  Andrew looked around the room vaguely. There were several large ancient portraits of noble ancestors, most of them turning a uniform mud colour under many years’ exposure to firesmoke and sunlight; and at the end of the room a slightly more cheerful one of a huntsman, with his horse and hounds, sitting proudly in front of a quite phenomenal heap of dead pheasants, ducks, partridges, rabbits and deer. It reminded him of a similar one in the dining room at Ardmore, and for the first time it dawned on him that this young woman might actually own this house one day.

  ‘Yes, surely,’ he said. ‘What are you thinking of buying?’

  ‘I don’t know. Something different from these, anyway. Perhaps a portrait of myself by Augustus John. Or a nude man by Modigliani - if he did any men.’

  ‘Now you’re trying to shock me.’

  ‘Would you be shocked to see a picture of a naked man on the wall? I see plenty of nude women, and I’m told it’s fine art.’

  ‘Yes, but - not in the living room, surely?’

  For answer, she pointed across the room to a table by the window. On it was a sculpture, about two feet high, of an athlete throwing a discus. He was clothed only in a flat Grecian sunhat.

  Andrew laughed. ‘All right, all right, I have no arguments. Install a life-size oil painting of a male nude over your mantelpiece if you like. I’ll come along and watch the faces of your guests, if I may.’

  The laugh had an effect on them both. Catherine thought it attractive - cheerful, manly, a point in his favour. Andrew realized, dimly, that it was the first time anyone had made him laugh like that since - since at least before the fire.

  But the ache in Catherine became sharper too. It was foolish to talk like that about naked men. She knew who she would want to model for any such p
ortrait, and it was no one here in this room.

  Andrew said: ‘You’re an unusual young woman, Miss - Catherine, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. Am I? It’s probably because I’m a medical student, and used to thinking about bodies. Also I’ve spent a lot of time on my own, in the country, so I’m used to thinking for myself. And I’m a Catholic, like my mother. And a nationalist - a Sinn Feiner, in fact. So I would seem unusual to you, I suppose. In fact, I’m hardly suitable for you to talk to at all.’

  He had expected a boring evening, full of tedious social chitchat. Not a full-blooded attack from his hostess the moment he came in the door. He looked at her closely, thinking: Why is she doing this? He remembered a nervous young lieutenant who had talked like this to keep his courage up, the night before battle.

  He said: ‘Are you afraid of me?’

  I would be, she thought, if I met you alone on a dark night, and you were looking for a woman. The eyes - it was the expression in them that set him apart. They were bright, watching her intently, but from somewhere very distant, deep within himself. Yes, I am afraid of you, she thought, but I have to face you down.

  She said: ‘I expect I can shoot as well as you.’

  Again, he laughed, and this time Sir Jonathan looked over, pleased. He had felt sure that Andrew would be a match for his wilful daughter; he had not guessed she would manage to amuse him.

  ‘With a pistol, I mean,’ she went on. ‘My brothers taught me to use one when I was twelve. I could outshoot them.’

  He said: ‘I’ll take you on, then, one day, and we’ll see. Come to my estate, at Ardmore. The house is burnt down, but I still have a shooting range, and you can bring your own pistol, if you like. But it would have to be for a bet - something serious on both sides. You choose first, and I’ll match it.’

  ‘All right, then,’ she said. Her eyes held his, boldly. In her stomach, excitement flickered like an adder’s tongue. ‘But first I have to learn a little bit more about you, so I can decide what you would most hate to lose.’