The Convictions of John Delahunt

by Andrew Hughes

  I rolled over and sat up at the edge of the bed.

  Her voice came over my shoulder. ‘Why won’t you get it for me?’

  I said it was for her own good.

  She began to kick off the covers, and I thought she was having another hot flush, but instead she got up. ‘I’ll go to Boileau myself.’ In her nightgown she walked to the shelf behind the table and pulled down a round tin tucked back in the corner. She lifted the lid, saw that it was empty and looked at me.

  ‘Where’s the money?’

  It was in my pocket.

  ‘What are you doing with all of it?’

  I said it wasn’t very much. We only had two pounds left. She looked back into the empty tin. That brief physical exertion had left her drained, so she went to sit at the desk. ‘What happened to it?’

  ‘College fees, the midwife, I had to bring the rent to Mrs Travers a week ago.’ I said the truth was we couldn’t afford bottles of laudanum; soon we wouldn’t be able to afford much of anything.

  She folded her arms in her lap, and rocked slightly with her weight on the balls of her feet. She thought for a moment. ‘You don’t have anything to take to the Castle?’

  ‘No. Well …’ I waited for her to glance up at me. ‘Apart from Mrs Redmond.’

  She looked down at the floor. Her eyes had become glassy; her shoulders continued to move back and forth. ‘And how much would that bring?’

  I brought the information to Fownes Street in late July. When I asked how much it was worth, Farrell had to check the handbook. He pulled a ledger from his desk: an alphabetical register of crimes with a payment schedule attached to each. This particular crime was first on the list. It was five pounds for the initial report, ten if there was a conviction. But he doubted they’d arrest Mrs Redmond straight away. In cases like this the police would bide their time, wait for some troubled girl to go down the steps in Dominick Street, then swoop in and catch the midwife red-handed.

  It meant our coffers were full for the rest of the summer. Helen no longer felt any pain from her operation, but she continued to take laudanum. It got to the stage that she was lucid only for a few hours each day. After a dose she would lie in bed, or wander around the room in her nightgown. She’d stand by the window and I’d pull her away, saying people on the street below could see her. She’d look at me quizzically, as if wondering why that would matter.

  One evening she brought me the bottle while I sat at the dinner table. She said, ‘Why don’t you try it?’

  The taste was so bitter I had to resist spitting it out. I remained in my armchair for an hour looking into a candle flame. I didn’t notice any effect.

  The new college term began in the middle of September. On the day before classes started, I brought my armchair to the window to catch the afternoon light, and placed an opened book on my lap. My eyes scanned the pages for a few moments, before drifting to the passers-by on Grenville Street. As they crossed the road, their forms expanded and bent because of warps in the windowpane.

  Helen sat at the desk, working on her manuscript, some of the pages charred and blackened at the edges. She made notes and annotations; occasionally she would strike out a whole section, write a new paragraph on a fresh page, and insert it into the sheaf.

  She wore her fingerless gloves and held the pen awkwardly between stiff fingers. As she bent her head over the desk, a distinct line of scalp could be seen in the parting of her hair. Helen put aside the pen and reached for the small bottle at the side of the table. She leaned her head backwards, then held the tip of the glass over her protruding tongue. Two drops fell almost immediately, but she waited, as if parched with thirst, for a third.

  ‘That’s enough for today,’ I said. I brought the bottle to the shelf above the dining table. As I pushed it between the salt cellar and money tin, the canister scraped over the wood and the coins inside rattled. Helen finished the page she was working on before getting up. When she was halfway to the shelf I said, ‘Leave it, Helen, or I won’t buy you any more.’

  She paused, but only for a second. ‘This isn’t where it goes.’

  She carried the bottle to the cold fireplace. ‘It’s kept here,’ she said, placing it among some other items on the mantelpiece – her hairbrush, and a small music box with no key.

  It had been well over a year since I had set foot in the cobbled quadrangle of Parliament Square. The college was much as I remembered, though construction of a new building had commenced next to the Fellows’ Garden. The paths were busy on the first day of term. Youthful first-years with full satchels walked about, unsure of themselves. Older students were more comfortable, catching up with friends after the summer break, walking and laughing in groups. The route I took was a familiar one, to a demonstration room in the science building. A work-table and lectern stood at the front, and six concentric benches rose in tiers, split by a staircase going up a central aisle. I went to sit in the back row.

  At ten minutes to the hour, other students began to drift in while chatting together. A few cast glances in my direction, but I ignored them. They all took their seats close to the front. In my day, we scattered about the benches at random, but in this class about twenty were bunched together in the first three rows. I considered gathering my books and going to join them, but what did it matter?

  Professor Lloyd entered and the murmur of conversation quietened. He welcomed the class back, trusted we had an enjoyable summer. He noticed me sitting alone in the rear, but made no comment before starting his lecture.

  While Lloyd spoke, he kept his arms tightly folded in front of his chest. But he’d disengage his left arm to make expansive gestures, or turn the page of his notes, or stroke at his clean-shaven chin. When he did so, he always kept his right arm pressed against his ribs, as if nursing an injury. Once the left hand had completed its motion, it would burrow back into the crook of his elbow.

  I realized that a student in the second row on the far left was looking at me over his shoulder. He had wavy brown hair oddly parted just off-centre, and straight eyebrows that met at the bridge of his nose. I didn’t recognize him, but when I held his gaze he dipped his head once, then returned his attention to Lloyd.

  The Professor was casually referring to physical laws and mathematical equations I had never heard of, but my classmates weren’t perplexed; one fellow was nodding his head along to the lecture, as if his own findings were being confirmed.

  I shifted in my bench and leaned forward. I wasn’t paying close enough attention. It would take a while to regain the concentration necessary to follow such advanced teaching. Lloyd spoke of optical axes and the propagation of light along crystal lattices; he spoke of rays incidental and rays tangential. He unfolded his left arm again and held up one finger. ‘And then, of course, we shall encounter conical refraction.’ He smiled and said, ‘The radiant stranger.’

  Several in the class laughed, apparently familiar with the reference. I was at a loss. I looked to see if the man who had peered back at me was amused, but he was busy writing in his notebook.

  Over the next several minutes my interest wavered. I scraped my dry nib over the tabletop. It was quite easy to leave a mark, so I inscribed a J into the wood. The curve of the D was more difficult, so I left my initials unfinished as ‘JI’, placed the pen in my satchel and got up to leave. The aisle descended through the middle of the lecture hall, and all the students turned at the sound of my footsteps. Professor Lloyd’s voice trailed off for a moment. When he saw me move towards the door he said, ‘Usually, gentlemen manage to make it to lunch hour.’

  Rain fell in a fine mist as I picked my way over slippery cobbles in Library Square. The grey buildings provided scant protection from a crosswind that caused the Union flag above Regent House to snap. I waited beneath the arched portico at the front entrance of the college for the rain to ease, looking out at the traffic on College Green, and down the length of Dame Street towards the Castle, which was hidden from view.

  ‘John Delahunt.
’

  The student who had been observing me in class stood by my side. One of his straight eyebrows lifted at an angle. ‘Do you remember me?’

  I searched his face. His features weren’t familiar.

  ‘Because I remember you. You were a friend of James O’Neill.’

  He smiled at my reaction to the name.

  ‘And you refused to testify against him when he was tried for assaulting that policeman. He thought highly of you.’

  ‘That was a year and a half ago.’

  ‘I know, I was just a junior freshman, but I saw you once or twice in the Eagle with James and Arthur Stokes. I’m Michael Corcoran.’

  ‘Is O’Neill still in Trinity?’

  Corcoran shook his head. ‘He was expelled when convicted, which meant he couldn’t go to King’s Inns either. But his father has connections in America, and he’s going to complete his degree in Philadelphia. He’ll be leaving Ireland soon.’

  ‘That’s a shame.’

  ‘I was surprised to see you this morning. I’d no idea you were to repeat your final year. The rumour was you had married the Stokes daughter.’

  ‘I did marry Helen.’

  ‘Oh.’ He apologized and enquired after her health.

  ‘She’s convalescing at present.’ I could have left it at that. ‘A miscarriage.’

  He frowned, looked down at the ground and said he was sorry for my loss.

  ‘It couldn’t be helped.’

  He hadn’t meant to pry.

  I allowed the silence between us to grow uncomfortable as he fixed a button on the cuff of his coat.

  How did he know what O’Neill thought of me?

  ‘Well, James was a founder member of the Repeal Society in the college. I attended its early meetings.’

  ‘There’s a Repeal Society in Trinity?’ I was surprised to learn this. It had been my belief that the university didn’t allow the expression of radical opinion in the debating clubs.

  Corcoran said there was, and that he was now the secretary. ‘We have a room overlooking Botany Bay. Perhaps you’d like to come up?’

  I allowed my gaze to drift down Dame Street once more. Corcoran seemed to think I needed more convincing.

  ‘The fire will be lit, and there may be some wine.’

  I pretended that settled it. ‘In that case,’ I said, ‘lead on.’

  Helen didn’t lift her head from the pillow when I came in. I threw my satchel in the corner and placed my jacket on the bare hook. She was wearing her coat beneath the covers again. I leaned over the bed and looked into her face. She was awake, and I waited for her eye to meet mine. Her pupils suddenly narrowed as if a flaring match was held against them. After another moment her eyelids widened, and I wondered if she was aware of me at all.

  I spoke her name.

  She gave two languid blinks, and the ghost of a smile appeared. ‘How did it go?’

  I continued to look at her in silence to see if she would drift away again, but she remained focused, and her brow creased.

  ‘The classes were difficult to follow, I’ll need to do some more reading. But I met someone who used to know your brother.’ Her lips tightened. ‘He invited me to join a society for the radicals, which I did. I’m sure the Department will want to know about them. It could be a nice source of money.’

  ‘That’s good.’ She reached out and brushed my cheek.

  What had she done during the day?

  ‘Not much. A bit of writing.’

  How much laudanum did she take?

  She took her hand away from my face. ‘I didn’t take any.’

  I looked over at the cold hearth. ‘I’ll start a fire to make dinner.’

  She pulled the blankets up to her chin and said she wasn’t hungry.

  The bottle of laudanum remained on the mantelpiece, its label turned against the wall, just as it was the day before. Had she carefully positioned it so it would appear untouched? It was about a third full. With my thumbnail, I made a small mark in the label, just at the level of the liquid.

  The first few weeks of the term drifted by. Helen was at her most coherent in the morning, though more often than not she remained in bed while I got ready for college. I would pause at the threshold and wish her a good day, closing the door over in the ensuing silence. I stopped attending lectures so spent most of my day in the common room of the Repeal Society. By all appearances, I was its most ardent member, though I never took part in the few conversations relating to politics, or volunteered for any of their weekly debates.

  There were always books and newspapers strewn about the neglected billiard table, and I would take one and read in the corner, with a bearing that indicated I didn’t wish to be disturbed. The other members seemed to tolerate my brooding, dishevelled presence. They would nod to me or greet me by name as I entered, and enquire if I wished for coffee whenever it was brewed. They believed that I had been a close confidant of the club’s founder, James O’Neill, and that I had sought to protect his liberty by remaining stony-faced during his trial. Furthermore, there was a certain cachet to the fact that I’d eloped with a sought-after debutante, and that we lived together shamelessly in a one-roomed garret near the city’s northern limit.

  But Helen remained in a state of lethargy throughout October. One afternoon, I decided to sort out the mess on her writing desk, which was cluttered with strewn papers, stained pens and one dried inkpot with its lid removed. I had never been curious about Helen’s novel before, but that day I picked it up to have a look. Her handwriting had become very spidery and smudged. The paragraphs were numbered, but not sequentially, and some of them were struck through with a line from the bottom left corner to the top right.

  It had been my belief that Helen was writing a novel set during the Congress of Vienna, which took place after the Napoleonic Wars, a tale full of intrigue and romance.

  From what I could piece together from stray paragraphs and fragments of chapters, her newest text was about a character named Gideon, who had been committed to an asylum on a desolate island off the Scottish coast. His main interaction was with the institution’s governor, a man called Dr Lucian. Helen seemed to make no delineation between Gideon’s speech and the jumble of thoughts spoken only in his own fervid mind. The asylum was populated with a cast of grotesques, and Helen described each of them and their low habits in disturbing detail. Other long passages seemed to recount bizarre nightmares and hallucinations witnessed by Gideon: bedclothes that became swarms of insects; faces of children ageing and decaying in a matter of seconds; buboes in his armpits and groin with gaping, grinning mouths. Was this what she saw when she stared about with vacant eyes, or when she whimpered in her sleep? She shifted under the covers, and I hurriedly replaced the sheaf on the table, as if I had been caught reading her diary.

  I was convinced she was taking extra doses of laudanum, so I checked the amount against the mark I had scratched in the bottle’s label a few weeks before. The level of liquid was still as high as the notch.

  I was perplexed. If she wasn’t misusing the tonic then she had to be suffering from some other illness. I went to sit on the bed and pulled the blanket down from her face. My knuckles rested against her chin, and her uneven breath tickled the top of my hand.

  She hadn’t been eating properly for weeks; her sleep was erratic. For several hours a day she was left on her own in the tenement, and she hardly ever took fresh air. She began to shiver so I took off my coat and laid it on top of the bedclothes. I brushed a lock of hair over her ear. A strand caught in my fingernail and came away.

  I recalled how she had looked at her coming-out ball: the gown she wore, pearl-white in the warm drawing-room light, the topaz crystals in her hair, the flash in her eye. When I sat beside her that night, our knees had touched, and we both pretended not to notice. When she spoke into my ear, I had felt her breath brush against my cheek.

  She stirred in the bed, slowly blinked and studied me for a moment. Then she rose into a sitting positi
on, placed a hand on her forehead and spoke in a mumble. ‘I must write to Arthur.’ She began to push the bedclothes down. ‘I promised him I’d write.’

  I hushed her and said she was only dreaming. With a small amount of pressure, I eased her back on to the pillow.

  Throughout our time in Grenville Street, no matter our circumstances, Helen always maintained certain standards. She never allowed unwashed dishes to build up on the sideboard. She swept the room and cleared the cinders from the hearth each morning. Though washing clothes was a nuisance – for once immersed they tended to remain damp for days – she always insisted we change our attire each week.

  Fetching and heating enough water for the bath-tub was laborious and we only made the effort once a month. But each Saturday, Helen washed her hair over the basin, dragging it in front of the fire during cold weather. She would kneel and gather her hair forward, soak and lather the tresses with a bar of soap, and squeeze suds through her fingers. Then she’d rinse, by pouring water over her head from a bowl that she dipped in the larger basin. Her neck bent forward so the knoll at the top of her spine protruded. Slim, bare arms emerged from her white sleeveless shift. She was all elbows throughout, but in a way strangely graceful. The water would cascade down and burble into the washbasin, the ends of her hair floating on the frothy surface.

  She was no longer able to do that, so I took it upon myself to clean her clothes. A small amount of washing soda remained in a burlap pouch on the shelf. I wasn’t sure how much was needed so I tipped in all of it. I swirled my hand in the basin to distribute the salts, then went to open Helen’s trunk. An array of soiled clothes were bundled beneath the lid. I held my breath, gathered two armfuls and brought them to the basin. I washed the garments in batches, vigorously scrubbing folds of stockings, petticoats and dresses against each other, as if rubbing sticks to start a fire. I wrung them out as best I could, and draped them from the clothes line that spanned the room. Helen remained asleep throughout.

  The water in the basin had become cloudy. I frowned at red blotches that appeared on my palms and admired the gleaming whites of my fingernails. Helen’s trunk was almost empty. The dresses that remained were of high-quality velvet and muslin, which she hadn’t worn in over a year. There was also another nightdress folded up which smelled clean, so I took it over to Helen and gently shook her awake. She squinted up at me.