He said, ‘Would you like to come for a drink with us?’
‘I can’t.’
He nodded. ‘You’re right. I’ve hardly touched the stuff myself. Not since …’ He absentmindedly rubbed the ribbon that looped through his buttonhole. ‘I never had you marked as a Repealer, John.’
Perhaps this was a moment to be candid. ‘The truth is …’ I waited for him to glance at me. ‘I just like having a warm room to escape the weather.’
Another gust shook the window and O’Neill smiled at me. The ribbon came loose in his hand. He regarded it for a moment, then checked to ensure those in the room were out of earshot. ‘I’ll be glad when I don’t have to wear this thing any more.’ He slipped the emblem into his pocket. ‘My time in prison rather … altered my perceptions of my countrymen.’
‘What was it like?’
His eyes lost some focus. It was more difficult than he had imagined. That summer had been particularly hot. The inmates baked in the stone cells, and there was an outbreak of typhoid. The sound of the retching kept him awake at night; he could still recall the smells of the sickness, and the images of sunburnt men being carried from their bunks, not to return. In the overcrowding and degradation, fighting between prisoners was a daily occurrence, and he couldn’t believe their treachery and heartlessness.
I’d spent that time with Helen in Merrion Park. It had been quite warm, now that he mentioned it.
‘But the worst thing’, he said, ‘was being punished for something I couldn’t remember doing.’
I kept my eyes lowered, and scraped my fingers over the cushioned armrest leaving raised furrows in the nap of the cloth, which I then brushed down again. ‘You don’t remember any of it?’
‘Just a few things. Us leaving the pub. I can still picture the policeman arriving with the whistle in his mouth. Then him lying face down in the puddle.’ He pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘I remember casting about to see where his helmet had rolled.’
He remained still for a moment, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. The few students in the room paid more attention to our conversation, probably wondering why it had become so hushed, so solemn.
O’Neill said, ‘You were never much of a drinker, Delahunt.’ When I didn’t say anything he leaned closer to me. ‘You must have seen something that night.’
I continued to worry the fabric of the cushion. ‘As I said at the time, I’d already walked away—’
‘No,’ he said, and I detected a note of anger in his voice. But when I looked up at him, his eyes were not accusing, but rather anxious, almost pleading. ‘You don’t understand.’ The way they described the incident in court had kept him awake at night. He couldn’t accept the claims that he had been so brutal, and yet the witnesses, the Castle, the prosecutors, they all seemed so sure. He furtively checked the room, as if embarrassed to admit such things aloud, then reached over and held my sleeve. ‘What if it was to happen again, John? Could I stop myself? Would I even know I was doing it?’ His voice trailed off and he bowed his head.
Another student entered the common room. When he saw O’Neill in the corner he began walking towards him, but seeing the club founder apparently so dejected, the young man paused and joined some others by the hearth.
I pulled my arm away. ‘I did see what happened that night.’
O’Neill’s head tilted up.
‘And I’m afraid you did hit that policeman.’ He allowed his eyes to close briefly. ‘But it wasn’t as they described in court. You just swung your arms in the melee, and struck him … more by accident.’ Something occurred to me. ‘I couldn’t say that at the time, though. If I’d said you punched the policeman, even by mishap, you wouldn’t have stood a chance.’
He nodded his head. ‘Yes, yes. I understand.’
‘But you asked if you could have acted as brutally as the prosecutors alleged. Well, I can tell you, James, in all sincerity, that you were not capable of such a thing. Not that night.’
O’Neill’s eyes squeezed shut and he exhaled through his nose. ‘Thank you, John.’ He noted the clock above the mantel. ‘I’d better go and join the others. Are you sure you won’t come?’
‘I’m sure,’ I said and wished him well. We shook hands again.
‘If you ever find yourself in America …’ he said, and I nodded. With that, he turned and left the common room, pausing only to bid farewell to the few students who remained.
I stayed in my seat and looked out of the window. Rain still fell outside, with the occasional squall rattling against the panes. I felt a sudden pang of jealousy for O’Neill and his departure. I imagined sailing across the slate-grey ocean, standing at the prow of a barque, all my knotted entanglements and problems and pressures left behind, dissipating with each passing league. I wondered if it rained as much in America.
By midday the weather improved, and most of the students left to attend lectures or go home for the afternoon. Only Crawley remained, dozing with his head bent back over the top of the couch. His heavy breathing was the only noise in the room except for an odd spark that burst from the coals.
I got up and stood behind him. His mouth was slack and the bottom of his teeth visible. He hadn’t shaved, so a distinct line went across his throat and over a prominent Adam’s apple. I stood closer. My impulse was to trace a delicate finger along the neckline of his beard. I considered what would happen if he was found here in the radicals’ common room with a cut neck. The papers would love the mystery, the setting, and the politics, but there could only be one suspect. Still, the thought of the consternation made me smile.
The coals in the fire shifted and Crawley opened his eyes. He remained still, staring up at me for a second. Then he closed his mouth, leaned forward and cleared his throat.
‘I was just leaving,’ I said. ‘And thought I should wake you lest you sleep the entire afternoon.’
He fumbled at a chain in his waistcoat and removed a pocket watch, but didn’t open it. He said that was very kind of me.
I said, ‘Good day, Crawley,’ and left the room.
While climbing the stairs in Grenville Street, I passed Mrs Lynch and two of her children. She looked at me as I squeezed by and said, ‘So you’re leaving us?’
I paused on the landing. ‘Pardon me?’
But then one child struck the other, and their mother began to yell at them.
The door to our room was unlocked. When I entered, I saw Arthur sitting in my armchair. He watched me as I came in. Helen’s writing desk was bare. Her trunk was also missing, leaving a large dirt-free rectangle on the floorboards. The dishes from the meal last evening had been washed and cleared on to the dresser.
I closed the door behind me. ‘Where is she?’
He didn’t answer. I went towards him and stood in the middle of the room, suddenly conscious of the shabby appearance of my clothes. There was a seat at the writing desk, but that was Helen’s chair, so I perched on the end of the bed. I saw Arthur’s gaze sweep over the dishevelled covers.
‘I’ve taken her home,’ he said, and then withdrew Helen’s key from an inside coat pocket. It had a lilac ribbon tied to the bow so we could tell them apart – she said mine always jammed. He placed it on a side table. ‘She’ll no longer have any need for this.’
Since his youth, Arthur had been soft-spoken despite his background and education. Now his speech seemed to have an additional assurance. It was clipped and without inflection.
‘Why are you here now?’
‘Helen was only going to leave you a note. I said the least you deserved was to be told of her decision in person.’
I unbuttoned my coat, but kept it on for there was a nip in the air. ‘The decision wasn’t hers to make, Arthur. You’ll have to bring her back.’
An irritated look briefly came over his face, as if he’d hoped the conversation wouldn’t take this turn. He pinched his fingers beneath his nose and smoothed his moustache by expanding his thumb and forefinger.
Before
he could speak again I said, ‘I thought you’d disowned her anyway.’
‘Our family will put all that behind us. Mother and Father have gone to Edinburgh for the winter, so Helen can remain in Merrion Square at least until she’s recovered. We’ll arrange a reconciliation in the meantime.’
‘You’ve no idea how that abandonment affected her. The amount of times I had to comfort her during the night while she wept.’ I looked down at the bed and shook my head. ‘Now you come here and claim her, as if your own family wasn’t the root of her unhappiness.’
Arthur remained silent so I pressed on. ‘All I have to do is report this to the authorities and Helen will be delivered back here in the morning.’
‘The authorities won’t care.’
‘Helen may have told you that I have friends in the Castle.’
‘She told me you live in fear of running into them.’
I forgot that Arthur had had his own dealings with Sibthorpe’s department. He knew what they were like. I was about to say that I’d just run into O’Neill, but Arthur cut me off. ‘Besides,’ he said, ‘Helen has no obligation to stay when you treat her with such cruelty.’
‘I’ve done everything possible to look after her.’
Something caught his attention. He went over to the mantelpiece and stood with his back towards me. ‘You forget that I’ve seen her, John.’ He picked up the music box that rested on the corner, and held it up over his shoulder. ‘This is hers.’ It went into the pocket of his greatcoat with small tinny chimes. ‘We met in Morrison’s yesterday. She looked halfstarved, wearing a ragged dress, like some …’ He shook his head, unwilling to say it. ‘But for the fact she had come to see me, the manager wouldn’t have let her in.’
I said that was just the effects of the laudanum.
He twisted around, his left sole scraping on the hearthstone. ‘That’s just the point. How could you let her become so addicted?’
‘She was almost weaned a month ago. Then you started sending her money. After that she could get as much as she wanted and use it in secret.’
‘I sent that money so she could buy food. Money that you stole.’
I allowed a pause. ‘Then how did Helen buy the drug?’
There was no answer. He returned to my seat and leaned forward on his knees. ‘You must have—’
‘Helen is in this condition because of her own nature, Arthur. She’s manipulated you. She’s become so adept at lying.’
‘Don’t speak of her like that.’
I asked why not? If anyone had the right to speak the truth about Helen, it was I. This situation was entirely of her own making. She was the one who had pursued me in Merrion Square and convinced me to elope. When our circumstances changed and we moved to Grenville Street, I had gone out to earn a living, while she remained here scratching out a novel that every publishing house told her was unprintable. There wasn’t a member of the Stokes family who hadn’t spurned us. It was only when I returned to college to improve our prospects that she was free to indulge her habits, all funded by her foolish brother.
I may have misjudged my tone. Arthur left his seat, crossed the room and lifted me up from the bed by my lapels. His knuckles dug into the bottom of my chin. I had to cock my head backwards and cling to his forearms for balance.
‘Don’t blame me for your own—’
‘Did she tell you she became ill because she insisted on having an abortion?’
His grip didn’t loosen, but he paused and searched my face. The pomade on his moustache smelled of lavender.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I didn’t think so.’
Arthur looked down at his fists holding my jacket askew. He let go and walked towards the window.
‘The laudanum was prescribed by the midwife.’ I straightened a collar that had been left upturned. ‘I did my best to keep it from her. But it didn’t take her long to find other sources.’
‘Stop.’ Arthur looked down at the traffic on Grenville Street for several seconds. The sound of carriages trundling on the rutted roadway drifted up. He felt along the outside of his coat pocket, where the music box was hidden. I thought for a moment that he would take it out and replace it on the mantel.
Finally he said, ‘No,’ and moved his hand away. His voice had become monotone. ‘It doesn’t matter what Helen has said or done. I remember what she was like before you came into her life.’
One of the shutters was slightly folded out. He pushed it flush into the shutter box. ‘I’ll tell you what brought me here in the first place. I’m willing to pay the legal expenses required to petition the Court of Conscience to have your marriage annulled.’ He turned around to face me. ‘I’ll also give you two hundred pounds if you agree to cooperate.’
Watery sunlight slanted through the window, casting his frame in silhouette. Two hundred pounds was enough to live comfortably for a few years. I could move to a nicer room, closer to the college. There would still be time to focus on my studies and attain my degree. I couldn’t deny that Helen and I had struggled in the tenement over the last few months. If a stranger had knocked on the door and offered to dissolve the marriage, return Helen to her family and give me such a large sum, I’d have agreed without hesitation. It was like wiping the slate clean. We could both start again.
Well, I could at least.
‘You don’t have to answer now.’ He opened the door and paused at the threshold. ‘But the offer stands. If you see sense, send me word.’
When the door clicked shut I was left alone.
10
I’ve had a cellmate for the past two nights. He only comes in after dark, usually when I’m in my bunk and the candle is extinguished. I hear movement in the corners and scratching beneath my bed. Once I saw him dash across the floor, his slight black form flitting beneath the desk. Some prisoners trap and keep them as pets; I don’t have the time to form an attachment. I searched the cell for where he was gaining entrance in order to close it off, but I couldn’t find anything. The bottom of the door is snug against the ground; there are no gaps between the masonry or holes in the window. I was going to ask Turner if the gaol had a good mouser. But after consideration, sharing the cell with a cat would be even worse.
So yesterday I fashioned a snare of my own design. I put the water basin on the floor, pulled a thin strip of veneer from the flimsy writing desk and leaned that against the rim like a ramp. I had a deck of playing cards, given to me by Turner when I first arrived. I wedged a card – the knave of spades – between the strip of wood and the lip, just enough that it caught and remained horizontal, extending out over the water. Then I laid some bait: a few crumbs of bread sprinkled along the sloping length of wood; and a morsel of hard yellow cheese on the edge of the playing card.
Late that evening, I was disturbed in my writing by soft sounds on the cell floor behind my chair. The mouse was near the bottom of the ramp, sitting on his hindquarters testing the air. After a moment, he began to ascend towards the rim, stopping a few times to eat the crumbs. He got to the top, placed one foot on the delicate platform, and then the other. It didn’t budge. He stepped out fully on to the card and went to the edge, picked up the cheese with his front paws, and remained hunched while he ate, looking out over the pool of water.
The card dropped, and he disappeared beneath the rim of the basin, causing the water on the far side to ripple. I placed my pen flat on the table and went to observe. The mouse scrabbled at the edge of the bowl, his front paws finding no grip on the slippery surface. When I stood above him he went still, as if playing dead, and drifted for a moment. But when he began to sink, his legs kicked again. The playing card still floated in the centre of the basin like a raft, and the mouse went towards it, though as he tried to clamber aboard, it was pushed below. He continued to swim in a circle; the water swelled gently in his wake; his long tail slid wetly along the ceramic like a dark strand of hair.
It would be more humane to push him under, so I picked up the strip of wood that still lay against
the basin and placed one end above the mouse, following his slow progress, letting its edge caress the top of his head. I dunked him by an inch, but he floated back up and continued swimming.
His hopeless persistence touched something in me and I changed my mind, dipped the wood beneath the surface and scooped him out. A filament of water splashed upon the stones; the mouse landed, rolled and lay in a drenched heap, completely still. I went back to my desk to resume my work. When I looked over my shoulder a few minutes later, he was gone.
I spent the day following Arthur’s visit cleaning the room. I brushed dust from every surface on to the floor, swept up small peaks of lint and grime and long hair, then used the dustpan to shake it all out of the window. I bought a carbolic soap and scrubbed the tabletop, dresser and mantelpiece, throwing blackened cloths into a wet mound in the corner. There was no mop, so I dragged a soaked towel over the floorboards beneath my foot, scraping it behind me with each stride as if I’d been struck lame.
The remnants of the stew remained in the bastible pot. Helen had usually been the arbiter of a food’s freshness, but to my nose the meat hadn’t begun to turn. I kept it aside for later. I cleared the cold cinders and began to wash the hearthstone, bringing out the colours of the inlaid ceramic. There was a large black smudge near the front of the grate where I’d pulled Helen’s manuscript out of the fire. I removed the stain with a few swipes of the cloth. Kind deeds rarely leave a lasting mark.
I went out to buy a bottle of wine and reheated the stew. It tasted better for its few days in the pot; the meat was even more tender. I sat at the table facing towards the fire. After each mouthful I’d put the fork down, take a sip of wine and stare into the embers. The evening passed pleasantly.
In bed, I lay awake for an hour, looking up at the filigrees of plasterwork in the fire’s last glimmer. I pondered Arthur’s offer. It occurred to me that the figure of two hundred pounds was in effect an opening gambit. What was to stop me demanding four or five hundred? The more I thought of it, the more it seemed an ideal solution for everyone. I did want Helen to regain her health, and she’d have a much better chance of that in Merrion Square.
The Convictions of John Delahunt Page 24
