by Ian McDonald
“Well, now we know why she’s gone,” Caldwell said. “If only we knew where. If only we could find her, bring her to her senses.”
“She could be any bloody place by now,” Mrs. Caldwell said curtly. “And if she’s gone with that IRA thug, my God, they could be dragging her from a lake, or she could be lying dead in a ditch with a bullet in the back of her head. At the very least, at this very moment, my God, he could be … with her …” The vamp composure broke. Sobbing uncontrollably, Mrs. Caldwell also left the room. Jocasta Caldwell now spoke.
“I think I know where he might have gone.” No premass hush beneath the dome of St. Peter’s was ever so profound as the silence that awaited her words: “She said that Damian, that’s her boyfriend, had been on at her to go away with him to his country, his own people, to Sligo …”
Caldwell did not even stop to ask if he might accompany me; I certainly would not have refused him. He scooped up coat, hat, and wallet, and we piled into my car. He did hesitate for a moment on seeing Tiresias and Gonzaga.
“Who are they?” he asked, not unreasonably. Tiresias quizzed him with his spectacles.
“It’s rather a long story. Suffice it to say that there are aspects to this case that I felt I could not reveal in front of your wife and children.” (I did explain them as we drove to our first port of call, Hannah’s Sweet Shop, which, according to Jocasta, the lovers had used as a kind of jungle telegraph. The aged Miss Hannah was pulling down her blinds for the night but, sensing our urgency, she was only too happy to oblige, provided the two tramps did not come into the shop.)
As we drove to Pearse Station and Caldwell tried to digest the unpalatable hypotheses I had served him, I recounted all I had been told to Tiresias and Gonzaga. The presence of the hurdy-gurdy man caused them considerable agitation. Gonzaga said, tersely, words that sounded like,
“Sugayff erprahh dnaillb uht eeeb tssum tt’y.”
Tiresias announced gravely: “Gentlemen, the situation is worse than we had feared, Jessica is being harried by forces that are inimical to her, though for the moment, she is ignorant of the exact power and threat of these forces.”
“You mean, her mother—Emily.”
“Precisely, Dr. Rooke.”
“What are you talking about?” Caldwell demanded.
At this hour, Pearse Station was the province of drunks and topers waiting on the last train home. Caldwell and I checked every bench, every kiosk, but none of the passengers could—indeed, were able to—remember seeing the girl in the photograph Caldwell kept in his wallet. One porter recalled having seen a girl eating sandwiches on a bench by the gents’ toilet during the seven o’clock lull, but had no memory of a tall, dark-haired, pale-skinned young man in a British Army greatcoat, which was all the description of Damian that Jocasta had given us.
In Westland Row, where we had had to leave Tiresias and Gonzaga because the station staff would not allow them on the premises, a policeman was about to arrest them on a charge of sitting in the back of an expensive motor car.
“They’re with us, Officer,” I said. The policeman nonetheless took a note of our number as we drove off. As we passed the entrance to Phoenix Park on Parkgate Street, thunder growled somewhere behind us in the east and fat drops of rain burst on the windshield. By the time we reached Maynooth, the wipers could hardly keep up with the deluge. The car, a Morgan tourer, was never designed for four passengers, least of all with the hood up. What with Tiresias and Gonzaga virtually perched on our shoulders like Long John Silver’s parrot, the thick stench rising from their damp clothing, and Caldwell starting for the handbrake at every bush and shrub and muttering, “Surely we should have passed them by now,” I may have had less pleasant driving experiences, but I am hard pressed to think of them. The tension in that car matched the grand electrical mayhem breaking behind us over Dublin. By the time we reached Kinnegad crossroads it had almost smouldered into flame. Caldwell and I exchanged heated words, burning looks, and the suggestion of blows to come in our disagreement over which road the fugitives might have chosen. It might well have come to fisticufffs, but for the intervention of our ill-smelling companions. Gonzaga thrust himself between us to keep us apart while Tiresias once more unfolded those arcane spectacles of his from their vellum wrapping, patiently cleaned off any trace of grease, put them on, and gestured for me to let him out of the car. He stood beneath the signpost, coattails flapping in the warm, wet wind, slowly describing one complete revolution before removing the glasses, polishing away the raindrops, and consigning them to the care of his waistcoat pocket. He pointed up the rain-swept Mullingar Road.
When he was wedged once more into the backseat and we were on our way toward Mullingar, Caldwell asked, seemingly innocently, “How do you know they went that way?”
“Disturbances in the mythlines, sir. As a gifted one herself, the young lady cannot cross mythlines without creating a flux—like the wake of a ship, you might say. The closer we come to her, the greater the disturbance of her passage.”
“And are we close to her? To them?”
“I would say, sir, that we are about an hour, an hour and a half behind her.”
“This wake, how do you see it? With those glasses?”
“Indeed, sir. My spectacles make the network of the mythlines that covers this country visible to the eye.”
“To any eye?”
“To any eye, though there is a certain knack to the interpretation of what one sees.”
“Would I, for example, be capable of using them? Could I use them to see where my daughter is?”
“I can see no intrinsic objection, but I would be loath for you …”
“Would you look again, just to be certain she hasn’t set off cross-country?”
“I am fairly confident, sir, that she has followed the road.”
“It would bring me great peace of mind if you were to just check …”
“Very well, sir.” Caldwell turned around in his seat to watch Tiresias unfold the spectacles. The old man breathed on the lenses, burnished them with the soft vellum wrapping. Glancing into my rearview mirror I glimpsed ribbons and streamers of light shining deep within the glass.
And Caldwell struck. Quick as a snake! He had the glasses out of Tiresias’s hand and onto his face before the old tramp could react.
With a wordless roar, Gonzaga lunged across the back of the seat and seized. Caldwell by the lapels of his coat. Caldwell emitted a long, peculiar wail and fell forward, head hitting the wooden trim of the glove compartment with a fearsome knock. As he fell forward, Gonzaga was pulled in almost on top of me. The steering wheel spun out of my hands. I groped for the wheel, the hand brake, anything, as the car slewed across the road. I saw hedgerows loom before me in the twin beams of the headlights, and then somehow, the car was at a standstill across the middle of the road, front wheels mere inches from the ditch.
All this happened more or less simultaneously.
Tiresias ripped the glasses from Caldwell and replaced them, muttering furiously, “He shouldn’t have, he shouldn’t have—stupid, foolish human. He wasn’t trained, didn’t know, didn’t have the gift …”
I keep a small bottle of brandy in the glove compartment. Thinking it might be of some help, I rolled Caldwell back; even in the dark I could see the bruise purpling on his forehead. His mouth and eyes were ominously open. When I shone the map-reading torch in his face he gave ululating cry that froze me to the pith of my being.
“Too bright! Too bright!” he moaned. “The light, the light!”
Gonzaga spoke hurriedly, hushedly, with Tiresias.
“We must get him to a safe place, quickly,” Tiresias translated. I ventured a hospital. “No, not a hospital. They cannot treat his affliction.”
“What is his affliction?”
“Seeing too much.”
“Of what?”
“The mythlines, sir. He saw them all, all at once, and it was too much for him to comprehend. He should be taken to a safe plac
e at once.”
Caldwell was moved to the backseat where Tiresias bandaged his eyes with a questionable handkerchief, in the front seat, Gonzaga passed untranslatable comments on my driving.
“When will he recover? Will he recover?”
“I cannot say, sir. This is unprecedented. In theory, he should readjust to the vision of this world, but I am at a loss to say how long it might take.”
“Hours? Days?”
“As I said, sir, I am at a loss.”
We arrived in Mullingar and beat on the door of the County Hotel until an understandably ill-tempered manager came down to admit us. He was not at all happy at the presence of two ostensible tramps sullying the period decor of his establishment, but after monetary inducement of a proportion that even the piratical proprietor of the Munster Arms Hotel would have baulked at, he conceded us a room on the front overlooking the street. I ordered tea, and while we waited rebandaged Caldwell’s eyes with more appropriate material from the car first-aid kit. Even the slightest leak of light through his tightly closed eyes seemed to cause him agony. When the tea came, Gonzaga tasted it, squawked in disgust, and emptied the lot down the wash-hand basin. Producing a small canister from the military-style bandolier slung around his shoulders, he proceeded to prepare a new batch from the hot water the hotel had provided.
Lapsang souchong. Like drinking a cup of liquid smoke. Never tasted finer.
17
AN ALMOST OPERATICALLY FLAMBOYANT sunset was drawing toward its finale over the Atlantic Ocean as they reached the top of the long glide down into Sligo. They had stolen the two black sit-up-and-beg bicycles from outside a pub in County Roscommon that morning; now, beneath swathes of crimson, ochre, and Imperial purple, they freewheeled down into the darkening town. The day’s exertions had left Jessica exhausted but exultant. They pedalled through the street as one by one the lights came on. From the bars came the yellow shine of the fellowship of pint and voices joined in amiable argument; the more restrained, intimate glow of fire and wireless came from the houses. Above them, flocks of small birds—starlings, sparrows, finches—stormed and swooped. Jessica felt no guiding intelligence from them—they merely obeyed the laws of the masses. That other flock she had not seen or sensed since it had risen up before them when they had left the hay barn.
Damian announced it would be pointless to press on any farther that day. He would find them a place to spend the night in the town, and in the morning they would go up into the hills to join his friends. He forced the lock of a small Church of Ireland chapel skulking in the shadow of the grandiose Catholic basilica. The rusted metal gave easily, and they were inside. Jessica was still breathless from the blasphemy of it.
“Can you think of a safer place to kip?” Damian asked.
They walked up the aisle between the rows of pews. The streetlights shining through the stained glass windows cast a hue that might have been mistaken for divine blessing over them. Damian opened a box pew, lifted carpet seating and hassock.
“You Prods like your creature comforts.” He made Jessica a bed from kneelers scavenged from before the altar rails.
“You have a sleep here and I’ll go out and see what I can find to eat.”
“You think I’m going to sleep on my own in this place? Damian? Damian?” He had already slipped away through the vestry door. Jessica squatted on her heels and pulled her knees close to her chest. A stray draft of wind stirred the dried petals of last year’s poppy wreath beneath the war memorial. She counted the names of the war dead, the number of organ pipes, the number of tiles in the chancel, the number of cherubs on the stained glass windows. Changeless and incorruptible in their wall tombs, the Anglican dead of Sligo slept profoundly encased within Connemara marble while Jessica Caldwell made up rebuses and magic squares from the numbers on the hymn boards.
Damian returned with a pile of sandwiches wrapped in grease-proof paper and a bottle of communion wine.
“‘Alto Vino.’” He peered at the label under the wan streetlight. “‘Prinknash 1932.’” He took a slug from the bottle. “Rough, but it does the job.”
“That’s blasphemy. That’s communion wine you’re swigging.”
“It’s not the blood of Christ until it’s consecrated. Even then, it isn’t—not Prod communion wine. It’s just fermented grape juice.” Jessica peeled back the bread from her sandwiches and grimaced.
“Cucumber. God, I hate cucumber.” Damian passed the Alto Vino Prinknash 1932. When they had finished, she lay on her impromptu bed under the Army greatcoat smoking a Woodbine and watching the occasional swing and play of car headlights through the north transept window.
“Damian, why do you never tell me about yourself?”
“It wouldn’t be safe for you to know.”
A silence.
“Frig you, Damian Gorman.”
A silence. When Damian spoke, his voice was as hushed and intimate as a devotion.
“I was fourteen when my brother Michael was captured by the Free Staters. He had been set up, no doubt about it; someone had informed on him. They were waiting for him as he came out of the Beaten Docket Bar on D’Olier Street. February 1923. In one pocket he had a German automatic and three clips of ammunition; in the other, a British Mills bomb. Unlawful possession of a firearm was enough to get you hanged, in those days. Cosgrave and his Clann na Poblacht bully boys had no mercy. Under the British, we expected no better, but these were our own countrymen—men who had fought side by side with us in the G.P.O. and Stephen’s Green and in the roads and lanes of West Cork and Tipperary. There was a trial, if you could call it that—the judge had the rope weighed and measured the moment Michael came into the dock. We appealed. It dragged on for two years; two years waiting to hear if the Justice Minister had granted clemency.
“Then we got a note in the post one morning, just a postcard, saying that Michael had been hanged by the neck until dead at dawn that morning in Mountjoy Prison. Just a postcard. ‘The Ministry of Justice informs you…’ Jesus!
“The same day, I joined up. I knew all the contacts through Michael. The Brigade Commander said I was young, but motivated. My mother disowned me; my father, I knew, was proud—proud that I was continuing the fight, that Michael had not died in vain. But he couldn’t say anything, not against my mother.
“They gave me a gun—this same gun I still carry with me.” Metal clicked where he tapped the black Webley. “It wasn’t long before I was assigned to an Active Service Unit. I was thrilled. It was a chance for me to strike back at the traitors who had sold the martyrs of 1916 short.” He broke into song, voice high and uncertain, to the tune of “The Red River Valley”:
Take it down from the mast, Irish traitors,
The flag of Republicans claim,
It can never belong to Free Staters,
You’ve brought on it nothing but shame.
“You know that song?”
Jessica shook her head, then remembered Damian could not see her. But the no was communicated. The red coal of his Woodbine weaved in the dark.
“My mission was Statues and Symbols. We couldn’t carry the fight to the British, but we could carry it to the symbols of British Imperialism—crowns, lions, and unicorns. Queen Victorias, Good King Billys. My first assignment was painting out the initials of the British monarchs on the Free State postboxes. E VII R, G V R. We covered every post box in Dublin with good green paint. Because the unit commander was pleased with the way I did that, he graduated me to statues. Two pounds of dynamite up Queen Victoria’s ass sure made the old bitch come like she’d never done with Prince Albert. She certainly was not amused at that. Remember when Good King Billy outside Trinity College got blown up? It was me did that.”
“Now I do know a song about that,” Jessica said.
Good King Billy had a ten-foot willy,
And he showed it to the lady next door.
She thought it was a snake and hit it with a rake,
And now it’s only five foot four.
“At seventeen I was promoted to the Enforcement Division—the youngest ever. The Republican movement’s greatest enemy has always been the whispered word and the tinkling purse. That they trained me to deal with—a bomb through the window, a barn burning, a body left by the side of the road with a note pinned to the chest, Informers Beware. But then the IRA started to become its own worst enemy, and all the things I had grown up believing were as true as the Earth was round and there was a God in heaven were all thrown up into the air. Instead of Irish Republic One Two Three, suddenly there’s one lot wanting to carry the war into England and fight the ancestral enemy on its own soil, and another wants to force the Free State into invading the six counties of British Occupied Ireland and there’s a third lot want to reorganise the whole shebang into some Socialist Communist fifth column and turn Ireland into a revolutionary Bolshevist State. What happened, says I, to Mother Ireland, Sweet Caitlin Ni Houlihan and her Four Green Fields, what about the old-fashioned, pure-and-simple Republicanism they died for in 1916?
“Then, in the midst of the confusion, it was as if I had seen a great light, like the Apostle Paul on the Damascus Road, and I knew that I had been called to keep republicanism pure and holy, without taint or alloy. Me and those few flame-keepers, grail-searchers—a holy few.
“We used the old ways because the old ways have always been the best ways—the ways that drive terror like a spike into the heart of a man. You hear a knock on your door in the wee, wee hours. You come downstairs to find your baby daughter’s dress nailed to the gate. You find a pot of stew simmering on the stove and when you peek inside, you see your dog’s head. Terror. Terror. The holy fear of God. The only way to keep a man pure and right.”
