Blind Arrows

by Anthony Quinn

  Adventuresses, thought Kant. That was how the London press had labelled women like Moya, young, educated women who steeped themselves in political pamphlets, cut their hair and revoked their pampered upbringing for a revolutionary cause, and were ready to wallow in prison cells for their beliefs.

  ‘A few months ago, I set up several bank accounts for Mick when all this money started coming in.’ She sounded as though she was showing off her revolutionary credentials. ‘There was so much cash flooding in from the fat accounts of Irish Americans, the IRA didn’t know what to do with it. They’d have flushed it down the lavatory to keep Dublin Castle from getting their hands on it. As I’m the wife of a top British public official, Mick reckoned my accounts would be the last place they’d think of looking.’

  ‘Aren’t you concerned about what happens to the money you’re signing for, or where it’s going? Aren’t you afraid there might be a rotten apple in the IRA, squandering the funds?’

  ‘Well it’s kind of you to point that out to me. I’ll certainly be more discreet about what I sign in future.’ For a moment, her slightly inebriated air of superiority gave way to a look of schoolgirl adoration. ‘To tell you the truth, the only cheque I’m afraid of signing for Mick is the blank one to my heart. Do you know why Mick is so successful in his war against the British?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Because he has a modern vision of women’s place in society. We belong to the centre of Mick’s campaign, doing dangerous things, smuggling weapons, hiding bombs, stealing state secrets. This is why Dublin Castle has started hunting female rebels and murdering them. They feel threatened by us, by our burning convictions, our unwavering loyalty.’

  ‘What dangerous things have you done?’

  She eyed him carefully. ‘I’ve done nothing dangerous.’

  ‘Apart from signing letters and cheques you don’t read. Are you afraid of becoming a hunted woman?’

  ‘Is that what you’ve come here to talk about? I thought you wanted to find Lily Merrin.’

  ‘I want to hear about your involvement in Mick’s war. How he persuades women to do dangerous things. Women like you and Lily Merrin.’

  ‘That’s the crazy thing about the whole business with Lily,’ she said with a smile. ‘Mick didn’t contact her, she contacted him. She wanted to strike a deal with him. The spying at Dublin Castle was based on mutual interest.’

  What was she talking about, he thought. He felt an unpleasant tightening in his chest. The look of discomfort in his face made her hesitate from any further explanation. He knew he should have spent a few more days recuperating in London. He’d exhausted all his strength in getting to Furry Park, and now he no longer had the energy to interrogate the tipsy wife of a senior government official, whose favourite pastime involved filling her salon with dangerous revolutionaries.

  ‘Would you like a drink?’ she asked. ‘You look like you need a hot whiskey.’

  An elderly servant brought him a brimming glass. The sweetness of the whiskey-scented air made his eyelids droop.

  ‘Your letter and Merrin’s disappearance are connected in one important way,’ she told him. ‘They’re not about war or freedom. They’re about money. The darkest and most urgent anxiety of our time.’

  The music had stopped in the conservatory below, and the hallway echoed with the clicking of ladies’ heels deserting the dance floor.

  He tried to speak but another coughing fit took hold of him. He could smell the infection in his chest. He was ashamed to realise that everything about him reeked of sickness, his hoarse breathing, his pale face, the unsteadiness in his legs, his blurred vision. His fever was preventing him from seeing and hearing things clearly. He blinked to try to correct his vision. He got up to leave the room but stumbled. Everything went spinning and he fell back into his seat.

  She rose calmly, adjusted her tight-fitting frock, and walked towards him.

  ‘You smell like Mick,’ she said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I smell the whiff of a life on the run. The odour of back-street boarding houses, trains, and dank cellars. The aroma of a fugitive.’

  The heat of the room really was overpowering. A racking cough took hold of him, blunting his thinking, as though he were drunk. He stared at Moya, glassy-eyed, as she drew closer. His sudden weakness seemed to give her a more sympathetic face, her skin appearing softer, her eyes more penetrating. She muttered something and leaned towards him, looking deep into his burning eyes. Behind her elegant long eyelashes, there was no trace of fear or anger, just a cruel-looking amusement. His final thought before he slipped into unconsciousness was one of regret, that she had discovered his weakness before he could pinpoint hers.

  EIGHTEEN

  Collins had told Kant that the trick of a good spy was to hide in other people’s secrets. It was a trick his survival now depended upon, he realised, when he awoke in a bed in a room with green print wallpaper. Without even stirring from his pillow, he sensed that he was being observed from the half-opened door. He was aware of the dim figure of Moya, and another shape joining her. At first, he thought it might be a doctor, summoned in the middle of the night to see him, but then he realised it was a woman, younger, dressed in a man’s coat, her hair cropped and hidden under a broad-brimmed hat. She apologised for being late.

  The figures of the two women hovered in the corridor. They talked and nodded together, snatches of their conversation drifting into his consciousness. His brain worked slowly with their words, trying to find the connections between the sentences.

  ‘You should have set the dogs on him,’ said the visitor. ‘Or one of Mick’s gunmen.’

  ‘I had to let him in. It was a matter of courtesy.’

  ‘If he was a gentleman, he’d have sought an invitation.’

  ‘Make sure and barricade the door,’ said Moya.

  They stepped closer to his bed, whispering like conspirators. The presence of the other woman made him feel confused and suffocated. The gaslight dimmed. From the evidence of their shadows, he deduced they were conducting a thorough search of his clothes. Minutes passed, or perhaps much longer. He was not sure. A chill had supplanted his fever, making his teeth chatter, the infection burying itself deep in the roots of his lungs, making it painful to breathe.

  ‘What are we meant to do with him?’

  ‘It depends. Is he our patient or our prisoner?’

  ‘Whatever he is, he’s certainly not a detective.’

  ‘I fear that he has managed to hit upon the truth.’

  ‘I’ve never kept a man prisoner before.’

  The visitor moved towards him. Her hair was dark and cut short, her face pale and delicate. She eyed him with a cool disregard. Kant felt a different kind of heat, something in his chest opening to desire and loss. He recognised her face, even though it was no longer framed by long hair. It was Lily Merrin.

  He felt as though the bottom had dropped out of his bed. What sort of conspiracy had he stumbled upon, which juxtaposed an upper-class English hostess with a blackmailed secretary? He tried to fix his eyes on Merrin, but his gaze drifted. He wanted to hold onto the image of her face, in case she disappeared again, but the weight of his illness oppressed him. He knew she was about to vanish and he might forget that he had seen her. He was forgetting her already as she hovered over him. He fastened his gaze upon her eyes to stop himself slipping back into the torrent of his fever-ridden sleep. Why couldn’t he stay awake, now that he had found her at last? But his efforts were to no avail, he felt himself plunge into unconsciousness.

  He awoke with a hot, liquid headache. He tried to speak but every effort seemed countered by thick gravity. His lungs were not deep enough to summon up his next breath, and his eyes winced with the fever. He was relieved to find that the women were still there, whispering intently as if locked in an intimate dispute. They were studying a newspaper that
was laid out on a table along with the contents of his wallet and the pension document.

  ‘Whatever else Kant is, he’s the first reporter to mention the women who went missing from Dublin Castle,’ said Moya. ‘All the rest peddle the same propaganda from the British authorities.’

  ‘Then let him keep looking,’ said Merrin. ‘Maybe he’ll find something interesting. We still want to know who murdered Dilly and Agatha.’

  ‘He’s not fit to look anywhere. Look how wasted he is.’

  ‘You’re right. He’ll not learn anything in this state. Not for several days at least.’

  ‘We’ll have to put some meat on his bones.’

  ‘He’s dangerously ill.’

  ‘When you don’t worry about living you can see a lot more.’

  He tried to hold back a coughing fit but it was like pressing one’s fingers around a set grenade. When the fit came, it obliterated his thoughts completely.

  ‘One of us will have to nurse him.’

  ‘There is no end to these Englishmen.’ Moya’s voice sounded fainter, closer to the door. ‘Their evil desires are limitless. Why should we save this one?’

  ‘All men need a woman to chase. He’s been following me since the afternoon we met in the hansom cab.’

  ‘Someone was following Dilly and Agatha on the night they were murdered.’

  Merrin noticed that he was awake and conscious. She drew closer to him. He had never felt such attentive eyes.

  ‘What do you know about me, Mr Kant?’

  ‘Less than nothing,’ he whispered.

  ‘You’re not telling me the truth.’ She leaned closer. ‘Where is the file I gave you?’

  ‘I’ve kept it somewhere safe, like you said.’

  ‘You were supposed to tell no one about it.’

  ‘I kept my promise.’

  ‘Then where did this letter come from.’

  ‘A woman at Dublin Castle gave it to me.’

  ‘One of Mick’s women?’

  ‘No. The unsuspecting wife of an informer.’

  ‘Why have you held onto it? What is your motive?’

  ‘My motive?’ he asked. He wanted to say you are the motive, but his voice trailed away. He thought how unfair it would be if he died now, so close to finding out the secret of Merrin’s disappearance, but his illness worsened, shutting down his faculties one by one. The fever rose like a fiery angel from his chest, swelling and filling the room, consuming the figures of the two women, the walls and the bed, until there was nothing left. He held onto the angel’s ascending ankle, afraid of falling into the darkness forever.

  NINETEEN

  Lily Merrin’s face ruffled the light from the heavy curtains. His startled eyeball fixed on her. It was morning and she had returned, her face dark and taut as she folded a set of cold compresses next to his bed. She was wearing a loose-fitting shirt tied with a belt and labourer’s corduroy trousers, but he could sense the slender lines of her body beneath the sagging material. Why was she trying to fit into such an unwomanly disguise? And why was her hair cropped so short. Her outfit was a way of life, a uniform, he realised, nothing to do with convenience or her femininity; it announced a new vocation.

  ‘You’re fit enough to talk,’ she remarked.

  He’d been sweating heavily and his pillow was damp. He raised his head and tried to think, but he had no plots to set in motion, nothing else to consider but the look of wariness on her face, trying to read her, follow the flow of her thoughts.

  ‘Yes,’ he replied.

  ‘Are you a detective sent by my mother-in-law?’

  Her gaze was bleaker, her mouth harder than he remembered. Her expression reminded him of a predator’s tenacity locking onto its victim. He closed his eyes, like an animal letting itself be dragged. He realised she had been dragging him ever since that soundless afternoon in the hansom cab, her fingers touching his hair, her blind lips rushing towards his, finding their target, planting their seductive memories. She had dragged him the whole way across Dublin to this bedroom where the riddle of her disappearance now floated before him, coiling and shining, like a whip about to deliver its sting.

  ‘No,’ he answered eventually. ‘How long have I been here?’

  ‘Two days. Do you work for the Irish Constabulary?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I don’t believe you. You act like a detective, sniffing out clues. Who sent you?’

  ‘General Stapleton. He was concerned for you. He wanted to find out why you had disappeared.’

  ‘And what have you discovered?’

  He closed his eyes, breathing heavily, seeking the camouflage of his illness, but she was determined to ransack his hiding places. She repeated the question. He kept his eyes closed but he was aware of the heat of her breath, the force of her presence.

  ‘You have been playing a game,’ he said hoarsely.

  ‘Have you known my secret from the start?’ She squinted at him, searching for a sign, but he hid it carefully and stared back at her with clouded eyes.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you know it now?’

  ‘I have an inkling.’

  A reporter needed special experience and insight to work out the true meaning of everything he had encountered since arriving in Ireland. He recalled the dank cellars of the castle, and Merrin’s boarding house bedroom, the room full of billowing ashes, sooty flakes falling through the suffocating air. Revelations and understandings came to him at a speed he found difficult to contend with, like listening to an orchestra playing much too quickly. She had sealed herself up with her grief, he realised. Her entire story, as he knew it, was the invention of a mother coping with the worst form of separation imaginable. For a moment, she looked ready to unburden herself of her secret, to reveal the domestic crisis that had entangled her family life in a dangerous war.

  ‘You know where I am hiding?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Then I will wait for you to find me.’

  He closed his eyes, drowsed, slipped into a dream, woke again.

  She was sitting at the bottom of his bed, talking about her husband, who had died at the Somme when their son was only five years old. She didn’t seem to mind if he was awake or not.

  ‘When I got the letter from the Ministry of Defence my whole world fell apart. His life was over and so was mine. The war went on, and everyone expected me to keep going, look after my son, run the family home, but inside I couldn’t. I ignored my little boy, deserted my role as a mother. I became a shadow, all I wanted to do was disappear. They judged me, told me I was being selfish, that I should gather myself up and keep going. When I didn’t pick up, they offered to take Isaac on holiday, but it was a trap, a chance for them to take him away from me forever. Only then did I realise that my son was all I had left.’

  She rose from his bedside and pulled across the curtains.

  ‘If I cease to be a mother, I cease to exist. They must know that.’

  Light flooded the room, revealing her face in full detail, her skin, the movement of her lips.

  ‘I will not permit him to be placed in harm’s way,’ she said. ‘I am his mother and he is my son. I cannot abandon him now.’

  ‘You reveal too much to me,’ he said. ‘There are spies everywhere. You should go now and keep your secret safe.’

  She blushed slightly, and left the room, locking the door behind her. He heard her footsteps trail down a set of stairs and then disappear. With an enormous effort, he lifted his head , and then sank back onto the clammy pillow, resigning himself to sleep.

  TWENTY

  Kant’s fever lasted another two days. He was unconscious for most of it, but his compressed moments of lucidity were long enough for him to develop deeper feelings towards Lily Merrin, who seemed to have made his recovery her special charge. He did not understand how he had att
racted this mysterious bedside attendant. He felt her looming presence permanently in his subconscious, simultaneously easing his symptoms and interrogating him. And then abruptly, she disappeared, like the fever itself.

  He awoke one morning to an empty room and a chill sense of loss. His temperature had come down, and the pain in his chest had disappeared, to be replaced by something less tangible, an uneasiness. Physically, he had not been better in years, but he felt somehow impoverished by good health, with only a superficial sense of healing, his emotions frustrated and strained rather than soothed. He felt the end of something, the fleetingness of a relationship between a patient and a nurse. He had always believed that making love was the most intense form of intimacy between a man and a woman. Now he realised that wasn’t even the beginning. Illness was the culmination of intimacy, being looked after by someone as you hovered between life and death.

  For the rest of the next day, he barely moved from the bed. A maid came and brought him food at intervals, but of Lily Merrin and Moya, there was no sign. He drew a sense of comfort from the thought that he had battled his way through danger and illness to reach this temporary haven, a comfortable old bed in a room with a fire and a window with a view of manicured lawns leading down to the sea. However, it unsettled him to think that men like Collins and Isham were still going about their secret routines on the streets of Dublin.

  He listened carefully to the noises of the house, the creaking of floorboards, the air wafting in currents and tides under the door, the fastening of doors and windows, the crumbs of soot falling into the fireplace in front of his bed. Sometimes, he thought he heard the sound of a boy playing in a distant room, testing the depth of silence with his laughter. He kept hoping for the footsteps of the women on the stairs, anticipating the return of their tenderness and subterfuge, feeling less like a patient and more like a prisoner guarded by two wayward ghosts.