Women of Courage

by Tim Vicary

  ‘Let’s hope not. But the longer you stay, the greater the risk. And as Harrison says, it might be unwise for you to go back to Ardmore at the moment. Why not go down to my house in Galway for a few days? There are none of Collins’ men there. You could relax, ride, breathe the sea air. Good shooting, too.’

  Andrew did not particularly want to be beholden to Sir Jonathan for a home, but the prospect of staying alone in the house in Nelson Street, indoors most of the time to avoid a chance meeting with Daly, was beginning to pall. And Ardmore was just the contemplation of ruin, and now, it seemed, awkward interviews with the local RIC. At least, if Harrison knew he was in Galway, he couldn’t pressure him for instant results.

  ‘All right,’ he said gracelessly. ‘Why not?’

  Harrison left, but Sir Jonathan asked if Andrew would mind staying behind for half an hour. ‘I have some letters and bills to send to Ferguson, my estate manager at Killrath,’ he said. ‘And with the posts so unreliable as they are, I would be grateful if you could take them with you.’

  ‘By all means.’ Andrew settled down in a corner to smoke, when the door of Sir Jonathan’s study opened and Catherine looked in. She saw Andrew and hesitated, her hand on the doorknob. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Father. If you’re busy it can keep for another time.’

  Andrew got to his feet - slowly, as though it was a thing he had just remembered to do, rather than an automatic courtesy. She looked pale, he thought, more tired than before, with dark smudges round her eyes that were not artificial at all. He said: ‘No, please don’t leave on my account. I was hoping to see you and pay my respects or whatever one does, after the other evening.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Sir Jonathan looked up. ‘Catherine, don’t go. I’m just writing a couple of letters for Major Butler to take to Killrath. Could you entertain him for half an hour or so while he waits?’

  Catherine was not sure she wanted to be bothered with this. But then, what else was there? With Sean gone, everything seemed drab, wearisome. At least this man had brought a little colour to the other evening, for an hour or so. So she said: ‘Of course,’ took him to the drawing room downstairs, and ordered tea.

  There was something incongruous about this man in a flowered armchair. He looked tense, ill at ease, angry. When the muscles of his jaw moved, the livid scar on his cheek writhed like a snake. Catherine had the impression he was far away in his own mind, unaware of her. Keneally brought tea and she poured it, feeling foolish and annoyed by the silences that fell between them. Being a society hostess was a role that bored her, and she particularly hated being forced to do it and then ignored.

  ‘Well,’ she said suddenly. ‘Have you made up your mind yet?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘About your half of the bet. As I remember, the other night you said I could have your ruined house, Ardmore, if I could shoot better than you.’

  She was gratified to see that she had his full attention. The hard dark eyes focused on her coldly. He said: ‘As I remember it was the other way around. You decided you wanted it.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ She sipped her tea coolly. ‘I can’t imagine it’s worth much now, anyway.’

  Not to you perhaps, Andrew thought. Something about her eyes - dark, intense, determined - reminded him of the way Sir Jonathan had looked at him as they discussed their deal upstairs. It annoyed him. These people held all the cards, suddenly.

  He said: ‘That house is my life, young lady. It would be stupid for me to bet about it unless you were ready to offer something equally valuable to you in return. Which you aren’t.’

  She flushed. ‘Aren’t I? Try me.’

  ‘All right then.’ Andrew was annoyed now, but the situation amused him, too. At least, if he had to do what Sir Jonathan wanted, he could still take this high-and-mighty girl down a peg or two. He said: ‘Let’s pretend we’re in a fairy tale. If you win, you get the ruins of Ardmore; if I win, you still get them.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘As a wife, dear girl. I need one, and you seem to be reasonably well brought up, and able to pour the tea without spilling it. I offer the house; you offer yourself. Then you get Ardmore whatever happens.’

  Despite herself, Catherine flushed bright red. Then she laughed. The laugh sounded forced even to her. My bluff has been called, she thought.

  ‘What’s the matter? My face is so unsightly you wouldn’t even consider it, I suppose.’

  ‘Oh no.’ She put her teacup down and stood up, feeling the blush mercifully drain away. ‘Your scar is the most attractive thing about you, as far as I can see. It’s not very gentlemanly, though, to compare me to a ruin. I’ll get the pistol now.’

  ‘Now?’ Surely the stupid girl didn’t mean it?

  ‘Why not? There’s a small walled garden behind the house. That’ll do.’

  Stunned, he followed her out into the corridor. There was a locked cupboard round a corner, which she opened, and took out a Webley revolver. Deftly, she loaded six cartridges into it. ‘Three shots each. We’ll need something for the marks.’ She gave him the pistol, walked through to the kitchen, and came back with two sheets of paper, a pencil, some small nails, and a hammer.

  The garden was about thirty feet long, surrounded by high walls, with a terrace, a small lawn, and some espaliered trees and rockeries around the edge. Catherine drew a thick pencilled cross in the middle of each sheet of paper, with a circle about two inches in diameter around the point where the lines met. Then she walked down the garden and nailed them to the branches of a tree. She walked back and looked at him with a slight, cool grin on her face, pushing a strand of her short black hair away from her face with a finger.

  ‘Will you shoot first or will I?’

  Andrew burst out laughing. ‘All right, you’re mad, I admit it. Don’t worry, I won’t hold you to it against your will.’

  The small, tight smile had not changed. ‘Then I don’t get the house.’

  ‘It’s only a ruin anyway. Go on, you shoot first.’

  ‘All right.’ She took the pistol from him, cocked it, and held up a finger for a moment to test the breeze. Then she lifted the gun slowly. He thought it might be too heavy for her but he saw it was not. She held it in one hand, her right arm straight out from her shoulder. He saw it was quite still, rock steady.

  The three shots came very swiftly, in almost as many seconds. The sound in the little walled garden echoed deafeningly.

  Andrew could see one shot near the centre of the cross. There was another towards the edge of the pencilled circle. From this distance he could not see the third at all.

  She handed the revolver to him. It was light, he noticed, a smaller model than the one he had used in the war. It had been one of his pastimes, in the long, boring weeks in the billets and trenches, to set up makeshift targets - food tins, paper, dead mice and rats pinned to a door by their tails - and knock holes in them. Once he had drawn the face of a German officer and drilled holes in its eyes, nostrils, and teeth from ten yards.

  He lifted the gun, sighted, and fired.

  As the echoes rang in their ears, a door opened behind them and Sir Jonathan came out. ‘What the devil …?’

  ‘It’s all right, Father,’ Catherine said. ‘You asked me to entertain him so we’re having a shooting match.’

  ‘Good God, I thought we were being attacked!’

  ‘No such luck, I’m afraid.’ Andrew noticed with amusement that the Colonel had his own revolver holster unbuttoned, and his hand on the butt of the pistol inside.

  Catherine and Andrew walked down to the end of the garden together. Andrew looked at Catherine’s target first. He had thought her third shot had gone wide, but to his surprise he saw it had clipped the hole of the first, so that there was one single large hole within half an inch of the intersection of pencil lines in the middle of the paper. The third shot was about an inch away, to the upper left, just touching the circle she had drawn.

  His own shots were grouped closer, in a clu
ster less than an inch wide straddling the intersection.

  He held the two sheets of paper together. Their eyes met. Andrew said: ‘I win, I think, Mrs Butler.’

  He was pleased to see that a slight flush had returned to her face. She said: ‘You’re a better shot than I thought. Well, when I’m a ruin like your house, you shall have me.’

  Then she turned and walked back into the house.

  As Sir Jonathan gave him the letters he said: ‘She’s not used to being beaten, you know. Did you have a bet on it, or what?’

  ‘Nothing serious,’ Andrew said. ‘Just a game, that’s all.’

  It was the end of the next day when Andrew saw Killrath.

  All day, as the train wound its way steadily westwards, through Tullamore, Athlone, Ballinasloe, and on to the town of Galway itself, he had sat at the window of the first-class carriage, sunk in depression. This retreat to the west was a combination of all the things he most hated.

  It was a mark of defeat, first of all. He had failed to find Collins, or kill him. Instead, he was now hunted himself.

  He was angry, too. Very angry at Harrison, for the threat of blackmail. For all its clumsiness, Andrew was forced to accept it as a possibility. The little man was clearly ruthless in his own way, devoid of scruples. If he has to throw me before the courts, he will, Andrew thought. Probably his own job only hangs by a thread. If the Shinners’ campaign goes on, and he can point to no successes against it, that thread will be cut; and then he’ll drag me down into the mud with him. Certainly Sir Jonathan believed it was possible. He’s got no love for the little slug, either.

  For the hundredth time, Andrew searched for a better method of approaching Collins. But he had considered and rejected all of them before; they were as full of holes as a colander. Even if he had not been scarred, Daly had seen his face. They knew who he was: he was a German officer, Count von Hessel. Andrew hoped, fervently, that they still believed that. If they did, he still had a remote chance of success. A chance that would be totally dissipated if he were to turn up claiming to be someone else.

  So Count von Hessel would have to re-establish contact. After all, von Hessel warned Daly of the approach of the police; he fought the police; he was arrested and deported. Von Hessel was a stubborn fellow: he would come back to Dublin and try again. There’s no reason why Collins should think it was not true.

  He hoped not, anyway. He had been through all this last night, sitting in his study in Nelson Street. What would a German count do, he had asked himself, if he were rash enough to come back a second time?

  He would write them a really harsh letter, complaining of their lack of security. He would be outraged that Collins hadn’t kept his appointment on time. He would demand better security, and better guarantees, in future.

  So that was what Andrew had done. He had written a letter on a sheet of paper embossed with his grandparents’ German address; and early this morning, before leaving to catch the train, he had delivered it to Sir Jonathan in Merrion Square.

  Sir Jonathan had been surprised. ‘Why are you giving it to me?’ he had asked.

  ‘Two reasons. First, because I’m not a professional forger and I need you to find one. I want the correct German postage stamp put on it, a perfect facsimile of a German franking mark. Can that be done?’

  Sir Jonathan had only hesitated for a moment. ‘Yes, I think so. There’s a fellow called Smythe in the Castle who’s obsessed with that kind of thing. He’d make a perfect job, I’m sure.’

  ‘Good. Only for heaven’s sake make sure he keeps his mouth shut. I don’t want anyone to know about this unless they need to. Neither do you, I suppose.’

  ‘No,’ Sir Jonathan had agreed. ‘And the other reason?’

  ‘I want the letter inserted into the incoming international mail. Can that be arranged?’

  Sir Jonathan tapped the letter against his palm. ‘I don’t see why not,’ he said. It was addressed to Mr Michael Collins, c/o Dail Eireann, The Mansion House, Dublin. The Sinn Fein postal workers would abstract it, and pass it on to an address which neither of them knew. ‘When do you want it posted?’

  That was the hard part. ‘I think about two weeks from now,’ Andrew said. ‘That should give Hessel time to get back to Germany and return. Can I stay down at Killrath until then?’

  ‘Of course. My dear chap, the place is yours.’

  A car met him at the station in Galway. The chauffeur, a slim young man of about eighteen, took Andrew’s only suitcase and threw it carelessly in the boot of the large bull-nosed Morris.

  ‘My name’s David Ferguson,’ he said, without being asked. ‘My father’s the agent here. I expect Sir Jonathan told you. We more or less run the place for him while he’s away.’

  ‘No, he didn’t say.’

  ‘Did he not? That’s strange.’ The young man steered the car carefully through the crowded streets. ‘I’m sorry about all this. It’s market day today. We’ll get out on the open road eventually.’ He waited while a jam of horse-drawn carts, cars, and two large motor lorries sorted itself out. ‘Sir Jonathan said you were in the Guards with him in France.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Jolly good show. I’d have gone too, if I’d been old enough. Though it can’t have been much of a picnic, especially the last year, I suppose. Did you get the face wound there?’

  ‘Yes.’ Andrew did not want to make conversation, especially about the war. But he could see some response was necessary. As the traffic eased, and they drew out of the town, he said: ‘Tell me about Killrath, then. What should Sir Jonathan have told me?’

  It was a fortunate question. The young man, clearly hurt by Andrew’s initial monosyllabic response, brightened instantly.

  ‘Ah, well, it’s one of the great houses of the district, no question. The first part of it was built in 1656, by Sebastian Gort - one of Cromwell’s men, a colonel, I think. He took the land from the O’Flahertys - there was a great tribe of them round here then. They were mostly killed or pushed out to the islands in the far west. But the house itself was all extended in the 1720s. That’s the part you can see today. They had a German-born architect, I think. Has Sir Jonathan not told you any of this?’

  ‘No, no. He didn’t mention it. How big is the place?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Thirty-odd bedrooms, I suppose.’ Much bigger than Ardmore, then, Andrew thought. He hadn’t considered this. ‘And the estate?’

  ‘Well, it’s quite large. About 80,000 acres, though half of that’s bog and mountain. There are thirty moderate-sized tenant farms, a hundred or so crofters, and we run the rest. That’s what my father spends most of his time doing. It’s a lot of work.’

  ‘I imagine so.’ Andrew remembered the wide-eyed, insolent young woman and her silly shooting match. ‘And - forgive me - is Miss Catherine the heir to all this?’

  The young man glanced at Andrew speculatively, then returned his eyes to the road as they negotiated a series of steep bends. ‘Unfortunately, yes. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’ve got nothing against her, of course, but she had two brothers who were both killed in the war. The elder one, Richard, he was always expected to succeed Sir Jonathan. A lovely chap, he was. Taught me to ride when I was eight. I felt really sick when I heard.’

  The car had been climbing for some time, winding through a series of small lakes and little rocky mountains. As they came to the top of a rise they could see the broad Atlantic on their left, blue and grey under high cumulus clouds. There was a rocky coast, dotted here and there with little islands. Inland, there was a mixture of poor farmland and bright-green bog.

  ‘Another three miles or so yet. The estate proper begins at the side of the mountain there.’ David Ferguson pointed some distance ahead. ‘That’s the O’Connell part of it, anyway.’

  ‘The O’Connell part?’

  ‘Yes. The O’Connells have always been the other main family round here, apart from the Gorts. They’re Roman Catholics, you see, native Irish. God knows how th
ey managed to hold on to their land all that time, through the penal laws and everything, but they did. Clever lawyers, letting one of the family pretend to convert, sheer tenacity - I don’t know how, but they did. Then about forty years ago the last couple of O’Connells had only one child - a daughter, Maeve - and Sir Jonathan married her. That’s why it’s called the O’Connell-Gort estate. There was a terrible fuss at the time, I think: the O’Connell grandparents wanted the children brought up as Catholics, but they weren’t - not the boys, anyway. I think Miss Catherine still is, of a sort. It upset their mother. I wonder sometimes if that’s why she went mad, you know, in the end.’ The young man shrugged. ‘I don’t suppose Sir Jonathan would want me to talk about that.’

  ‘Probably not.’ It’s a whole world of its own, Andrew thought. They were passing through a rocky area of little fields, laboriously enclosed by stone walls, with small one- or two-roomed farm cottages dotted here and there amongst them. Paddy Daly would have trouble tracing me here, he thought. Nonetheless, there might easily be sympathies for Sinn Fein.

  ‘Have you had any troubles out here?’ he asked.

  The young man shook his head. ‘Nothing serious. A few of the smaller farmers have had their cattle maimed, that’s all. But the RIC are still pretty much in control, thank God.’

  He looked as though he would have asked about the situation in Dublin, but at that moment they swung over another ridge of small hills, and there was Killrath in front of them. It was a long, square, three-storey building on a low headland, facing southwest over the Atlantic. The sun was low in the west, far out to sea, and the red light was reflected off the windows like flame. For a second Andrew caught his breath, as he remembered the fire at Ardmore; but this was beauty, not destruction. A stepped garden led down towards the cliff in front of the house, with a sort of ornamental pond, and rows of low, windswept trees planted to give protection from the gales. At the foot of the headland was a long, wide, sandy beach stretching for miles. It was low tide, and there was no wind. The hard wet sand gleamed in the reflected sunlight, and little sparkling breakers curled and broke into floods of orange and gold. In the distance, the minuscule figure of a fisherman was pulling his tiny coracle ashore.