by W. C. Ryan
‘No. I’m fairly sure he knows nothing about the guns.’
‘But what if she told him about them? If they were lovers, she might have.’ Bourke scowls, as though thinking over a particularly complex problem. ‘What if he’s a British informer? What if he’s playing a double game?’
Harkin considers this, then shrugs.
‘You’ve met Driscoll, Vincent. What did you make of him?’
Bourke considers the question for a moment, his scowl twisting his mouth still further.
‘Smart enough. A bit arrogant with it, which is no bad thing. Tough, I’d say, if he went through the war. I didn’t much take to him, but then I’m very particular in my choice of friends.’ He nods cordially to Harkin. ‘All in all, he seemed straight and if he is a spy, he’s not having any effect on Egan’s activities. I’ve one thought, though.’
‘Go on.’
‘We’d know better what was what if we knew who tipped off the column about Abercrombie. If Driscoll had nothing to do with it, that might let him off the hook and give us a name to talk to. If he did, it might be a different story.’
‘A trip to Father Dillon?’
Bourke smiles, but there isn’t much humour in it.
‘As it happens, I’m in need of confession. Two birds with one stone.’
‘Three birds,’ Harkin says. ‘You can take a letter to Sir John for me. He’s not far out of your way and I need to tell him what I’ve uncovered so far.’
Later, when Bourke is leaving, Harkin wonders, absent-mindedly, if the boss has told Bourke to shoot Harkin if it looks likely he’ll be arrested.
It’s a possibility, he decides.
CHAPTER 27
H
arkin sits in the unlit room, watching the last of the light wash out of the already dark sky and listening to the sound of Bourke’s car disappearing in the direction of Sir John’s house. He finds himself to be in a sombre mood, although it lifts when Moira Wilson enters.
‘Where are your memsahibs this evening?’ he asks, gathering together a smile.
‘They’re playing cards with the Eustaces.’ Moira’s monocle glints as she lights a candle. ‘They won’t be back until the morning. I’m all alone.’
‘What about Mary?’
‘Her evening off. There’s a dance in town and I believe Mr Bourke has just been kind enough to provide her with a lift in. Her intention is, I believe, to stay with her mother and be back in the morning.’
Harkin remembers the burst of feminine laughter just before the departure of the car. He smiles. The chances of Bourke accompanying Mary to the dance would seem to be high. He wonders how he will get back to Kilcolgan.
‘Mr Bourke asked for the key to the front door. Just so you know.’
He looks up to find that there is suppressed amusement in Moira’s expression. It seems as though the conversation is heading in an unexpected direction, one that Moira has control of.
‘That is disappointing. He was supposed to drive me back to Kilcolgan later on.’
‘So I believe. However, I have solved that problem. You are to stay the night here.’
His surprise must show.
‘It is perfectly respectable. You are feeling unwell and I am the daughter of a doctor of medicine, so practically a medical professional myself.’
‘Do I have any say in this?’
‘No. It’s all arranged. I informed your Mr Bourke of my decision, so that he felt under no obligation to return too early, and called Kilcolgan and spoke to Mrs Driscoll.’ She leans towards him, as though worried she might be overheard. ‘I don’t like to mention this, but she did not sound disappointed in the slightest.’
‘Well, I must hope for my speedy recovery.’
‘Quite so. Mrs Driscoll hopes for it, too, in that it will lead to your return to Dublin. Anyway, I hope you like stew.’
‘I’m very fond of it.’
‘That’s just as well, because the alternatives are very limited. An omelette at best.’ She walks over to sit in the chair that Bourke recently vacated. Her face is orange in the firelight, her hair touched with gold. ‘My father tells me you intend to stay at Kilcolgan for a little while. Is that true?’
‘It would seem so.’
Moira nods. Her face is half-obscured but in the flickering flame of the candle her lips seem fuller than usual. A mouth that curves upwards.
‘I’m pleased. It is good to have you around after all these years.’
Harkin remembers snatches from the story she told him the night before – about a young woman who loved a man, only he had loved another – and finds that his chest is suddenly empty of breath. If Moira notices his state of mind, which he suspects plays across his features like a newspaper headline, she covers it with a breezy demeanour.
‘Now we have to decide where to eat. I will give you the alternatives. There is the kitchen, which is warm, well lit and convenient, but perhaps a little domestic. Or there is the dining room, which would mean I should be traipsing up and down the corridor most of the night, seeing as you are an invalid and incapable of movement. On balance, I think we should be more comfortable in the kitchen, but the decision is yours.’
He wonders what she means by ‘comfortable’ and can’t help but allow his imagination to speculate. This she somehow notices and taps his knee in reproof.
‘I am not sure what is going through your mind, Mr Harkin. But it should get out of your mind and behave itself.’
‘I didn’t mean—’ he begins but she interrupts him.
‘The kitchen, then?’
Her smile seems to indicate she is not offended, and Harkin knows better than most when to stop digging himself into a hole.
‘The kitchen it is.’
He follows her and the candle through the house, its reflection glittering from the glass and polished wood and, for an instant, the black and white photograph of Robert Wilson. As they walk, Harkin has the sense of the shadows gathering in behind them, but this house is not like Kilcolgan. There is no sense that the very walls are listening and watching.
The kitchen is a square room, which must once have kept several people employed. A long table with eight chairs stands in front of a large cream-coloured oven; a tendril of steam leaks from a covered pot. Around the walls there are dressers loaded down with plates, pots and the other necessities of a large kitchen.
The oven gives off a warmth that is almost solid, and Harkin finds himself making his way towards it to sit on the rail that runs along its front. The table, he sees, is set for two, the silver cutlery gilded by the light of two candles.
‘I anticipated your decision,’ she says, lifting the lid of a pot with a towelled hand and staring into it intently. ‘Not long now. Will you have some soup to start with?’
‘What kind of soup?’ he says. She shakes her head reprovingly.
‘You’ll be getting no clues from me. You’ll have to make up your own mind as to what breed of soup it is. Anyway, it’s very early yet. I expect a man of your refinement won’t want to be eating until eight o’clock at the earliest.’
His spirits sink at the prospect of sitting in the kitchen, making small talk, with the smell of the stew in his nostrils, for another three hours.
‘Unless, of course, you are half-starved after your sleep-enforced fast.’
‘I could be tempted to stray from my years of refined late evening dining.’
She considers him with a quizzical expression.
‘Sit down before you fall down, then.’
‘You’re very good to me,’ he says, and means it. He wonders at his sudden emotion. Perhaps she sees how affected he is, because her smile returns.
‘You were with me last night,’ he says, to break the silence.
‘I was.’
‘And you told me a story.’
‘You were asleep. How would you know what story I told or didn’t tell?’
‘Perhaps I am mistaken.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Thank you for l
ooking after me, anyway.’
‘I like to have someone to look after, but really I’m a selfish woman. I am starved for intelligent conversation, particularly with an attractive man, so I mean to feed you up, let you drink a little wine and then hope you will entertain me.’ She points to the chair. ‘Don’t look so alarmed, only sit down and rest and let me see to the feeding and watering. I expect no entertainment until you feel yourself once again.’
He obeys her, walking around the table to sit down. He watches her move around the oven, retrieving a round soda bread loaf and placing it on the table between them. She glances at him sharply as she does so.
‘I expect this kind of informality is deeply shocking to you, Mr Harkin, with your high society Dublin ways, but I won’t have you sit in judgement on me, do you hear?’
‘You’ll hear no complaints from me, Mrs Wilson.’
She sighs, squinting at him through her monocle.
‘I think you need a glass of wine. I’m not sure I can bear being called Mrs Wilson all evening.’ She fetches an open bottle with a faded label from the china-laden dresser and splashes the bottom of his glass before pausing. ‘Unless you’d prefer beer. Perhaps beer is the fashion now? In Dublin? In high society.’
‘Are you going to tease me all evening?’
She seems to make a half-hearted attempt to appear offended.
‘I might. Anyway, we don’t have any beer. Really you’re doing me a favour – we haven’t had many guests since the start of the Troubles and the memsahibs don’t drink as much as I’d like them to. It’s a real shame as they are much more agreeable when they are slightly sozzled. Anyway, I don’t know how long wine keeps and for all I know this may have gone off.’
He tastes the wine. He can feel its glow sliding down his throat to his empty stomach. He places his glass back on the table, wary of his almost instantaneous light-headedness.
‘It’s very good,’ he says, then, after a pause, ‘Moira.’
Her eyes twinkle in the candlelight. It seems she has removed her monocle while he wasn’t looking. He decides he doesn’t miss it.
‘I thought you’d like it, Thomas.’
She stands behind him and he feels the touch of her hand on his shoulder, tracking the scars of old wounds through his clothes. He finds that his breath is coming more quickly than usual.
‘I helped my father when we brought you back to Kilcolgan,’ she says in a quiet voice. ‘He said your injuries were mostly shrapnel but they made me sad to see.’
Harkin thinks about his body when he looks at it in the mirror. The bone-white shapes and swirls that hot metal carved into his pale flesh, the curls of hair around his breastbone. Moira will have seen the dark pink scars where a bullet entered and exited his thigh. To his surprise, he finds he does not mind that Moira Wilson has seen him naked.
‘Thank you,’ he says, reaching up to take her hand. ‘Once again. For looking after me.’
She exerts the smallest of pressure on his fingers.
‘Later I watched you sleeping. You looked very peaceful, but then I thought about the war and what you must have seen. I held your hand sometimes. It was heavier than I expected.’
‘I remember that.’
‘I didn’t mind, Thomas,’ she says, shaking her head as though he has said something silly. ‘I wanted to look after you or I wouldn’t have bothered.’ She hesitates. ‘My father says you should make a full recovery. So long as you keep yourself out of trouble. I wonder will you be able to, though?’
He wonders what she knows about him, or suspects, but he is not worried that she will betray him.
‘It may be difficult,’ he says.
Part of him wishes that Hegarty had told her nothing about his condition, but now that he is sitting across from her, her hands holding his, it seems to him she has a right to know.
She squeezes his fingers. Part of him wants to pull back his hand but he forces himself to leave it there, to submit to the stroking of her thumb. He looks down, fascinated by the movement.
‘Shall we eat our soup?’ she asks in a low voice and he nods.
*
When they’ve finished the meal, she takes him by the hand and leads him upstairs.
CHAPTER 28
A
fterwards they lie on their backs, looking up at the shifting glow that the single candle’s flame casts on the ceiling, their fingers entwined. Harkin’s breathing is laboured and, despite the chill in the room, he finds that he is covered in a sheen of sweat. He savours the feel of Moira’s skin against his; the warmth of her alongside him.
‘There are some things I think you need to know,’ he says.
After a pause to organise his thoughts, he tells Moira about his involvement with the IRA, and something of his activities. Even now, lying here with her like this, he holds back anything specific. It is not that he doesn’t trust her. It is that the information might place her in harm’s way. He also does not tell her about the visions and the apparitions. He thinks there is enough for her to digest already, without adding them. When he finishes, Moira says nothing at first but pulls the blankets over them and nestles into his side.
‘And Maud’s murder?’ she asks. ‘Will you carry on with that?’
‘I feel I have to.’ He can hear the apology in his words.
In response she places her hand on his chest.
‘Well, I’m not sure it is what my father had in mind when he wanted you to stay out of trouble.’
He takes a deep breath.
‘Did he tell you about Maud’s condition?’
He can feel the shake of her head.
‘About her being pregnant? He didn’t.’ Moira pauses. ‘Maud told me herself. Once I knew he was to do the post mortem, I spoke to him. I asked him to keep it out of the report, which he agreed to do. After all, at that time, it didn’t seem her being pregnant had anything to do with her death. I know he told you, though. He came by this afternoon.’
‘If I said to you the father might have been Sean Driscoll, what would you say to that?’
She considers the question carefully.
‘Do you have any reason to think that?’
‘I might do. But at the moment it doesn’t quite hang together. I’ll know more tomorrow but I wanted to get your opinion before that.’
She doesn’t speak for some time.
‘You need to understand what it is like down here, for women like Maud and me. We aren’t young girls anymore and we have had some experience of the world. If we lived in Dublin or London, we might have some more freedom, but here engaging with a man outside of marriage is very difficult, and marrying even more so. She obviously slept with someone, and I suppose in theory it could have been Driscoll. He’s a good-looking man. He is a rebel, which would have appealed to her. On the other hand, he isn’t from her class, or her religion, he works for her family, and I am not sure there was . . . how shall I put it? . . . an attraction. It’s unlikely, I think.’
‘He’s a rebel?’ Harkin asks, attempting to sound perplexed. She sighs in response.
‘The reason I know he is a rebel and don’t much care for Sean Driscoll is that my husband’s guns were taken from this house and he led the men that did it. He wore a mask but I knew him all the same. Anyway, you’re not fooling me, Thomas Harkin. I watched you talking to him and I watched him talking to you. You know very well he is one of yours.’
He leans down to kiss her forehead.
‘I’m sorry. Old habits die hard. But it’s as well if you know as little as possible about my business.’
‘You don’t want me to join you storming the battlements, my breasts bound in a tricolour?’ she says, amused.
‘I like them unbound.’
Moira smiles across at him.
‘I don’t want you to be hurt because of me, that’s all,’ he says.
‘There is that,’ she agrees, her voice languid. ‘It’s not myself, of course, that I’m worried about. It’s the poor memsa
hibs. They wouldn’t last a week on their own.’
He is conscious that she hasn’t asked him about his intentions or affections. He runs a finger along her arm.
‘And what of us, Moira Wilson?’
‘What indeed?’ Her voice is dismissive, but not unkind. ‘You’re a good-looking man and I’m a desperate woman tied to a house on the edge of the world. I’m sorry but I’ve taken advantage of you. Your chaste reputation is all torn asunder.’
‘My reputation is as a renowned ladies’ man.’
She snorts into his armpit.
‘If you’d like me to throw you a crumb of reassurance, then I will tell you that I like you, Tom Harkin. I always have. More than I should have and I shed a tear or two when Maud swept in and took you for her own. I think you’re brave and honest and kind and true. They say these Troubles will pass over soon, that things can’t go on the way they are, that the Americans won’t stand for it. Well, all I’ll say to you, Tom, is that you will always have a warm welcome in this house. When that comes to pass.’
‘Not until then?’
He hears her sigh.
‘I’m not suited to waiting around for soldiers to return from war. I tried it once and the poor man didn’t come home at all. Anyway, I know your sort – I’d only be an impediment. I wasn’t born to be an impediment. So, for now, you had better leave my room before your Mr Bourke returns. There’s one towards the front I’ve made ready for you.’
She pats him on the chest, kisses him and stands. He watches her walk around the room, gathering his clothing, her skin golden in the candlelight. She hands the clothes to him, then pulls a dressing gown from a hook behind the door and puts it on. She smiles and there is no shame or sadness in it.
‘I’m going to go and wash but first I’ll show you to your room.’
‘Thank you,’ he says, putting an arm through his shirtsleeve.
She takes a candle from a drawer in her bedside table and places it into a small round holder. She lights the candle and hands it to him. Then she leans forwards and kisses him on the cheek. As a gesture it feels chaste, almost sisterly.
‘Come on, then, Tom Harkin. You need a good night’s sleep.’
