Valiant Gentlemen

by Sabina Murray

  Adler is sitting on the bed, naked, his knees wide, rolling a cigarette. He twists the cigarette paper to seal it and scratches the inside of his left thigh, casually rearranges his testicles. “Pass the matches, Sir Roger,” he says. He gives Casement an appraising look as Casement searches through his pockets and finds the matches, reaches from the desk chair across to Adler. “I don’t like it when you’re quiet like that. I don’t think the sight of me has the power to silence you as it once did.” Adler laughs to himself and fires up the cigarette.

  “I’ve been talking all day,” says Casement.

  “But that look.” Adler mimics him and it is the expression of a stunned goose.

  Casement is being quiet. He does not want a fight and doesn’t trust himself to discuss anything calmly. “I didn’t know you had a wife.”

  Adler’s eyebrows shoot up. What new ridiculousness is this? He’s momentarily distracted by the sound of furniture being dragged around in the next room but comes back to Casement. “She isn’t here.”

  “No. But she needs money.”

  “Only because I won’t abandon her.”

  Such kindness. “Why marry her at all?”

  “You are jealous?” Adler laughs. He points at Casement with his cigarette that is poking through two fingers of a fist. “You should see this woman. She’s half Indian, a Redskin, but more red-hearted. A wild thing. I could call the asylum to pick her up. She tried to kill me once in my sleep. I woke up and she was standing at the side of the bed with a knife, all that black hair pouring over her shoulders, down her back. She was like a thing from hell. I had to take the pillow and belt her from the side, knock her down. She would have murdered me there.”

  “And cut out your heart and eaten it?”

  “She would have sliced me open, and then found nothing inside.” Adler takes another drag. “I am only good to you, Sir Roger. For everyone else, I am a devil.”

  As predicted, England declares war on Germany. Casement and Devoy have made plans. Devoy’s eyes follow Casement as he moves about the room and when Casement meets Devoy’s gaze he catches the assessment: Devoy has no faith in him.

  “This is a plan I made with Patrick Pearse two months ago and I don’t want you to fuck it up.”

  “John,” says Casement, “I’m a diplomat. We’re not planning a prison break. We’re negotiating with Germans, creating allies, creating a future for Ireland that will hold in the new world order.”

  “Fancy talk.”

  “Which has its place.” Casement is standing by the window. The sky is a crackling, harsh, American blue. There, on the corner of Fifty-Second Street, is a beggar on a wheeled palette, the right age to have lost his legs in the American Civil War. He’s pulling himself up the pavement by making steps with his hands and there’s a sign around his neck, but Casement can’t make out what it says from here on the second floor. Devoy, at the table, his legs kicked out in front of him, has composed his whole self in disdain.

  “If anything seems off, we’re bringing you back to New York. And when you hear that call, you’d better heed it.”

  “If you don’t believe in this plan, who will?”

  Devoy nods to himself. He’s no idiot. He’s taking in Casement’s height, the posture, the elegant brow. Casement has shaved off his beard in preparation for the journey and does not feel himself, but looks quite the dandy. His movements are being followed at this point and the beard gives him away—the beard that makes him a conquistador, that makes him a Don Quixote. He has also been washing his face in buttermilk to try to lighten his complexion. Adler finds this hilarious, even volunteered to buy it once, saying some ludicrous thing about the need for Casement to stay pretty. But the $2,500 budgeted for his trip is nothing to laugh at. Neither are the tickets for both him and Adler to travel to Berlin, via Norway. And the letter of introduction from the ambassador Von Bernstroff, also no joking matter.

  Devoy is still looking at him, perhaps admiring his milky, youthful skin. “Thing is, Casement, you don’t seem to understand just how much needs to be worked out.”

  “John,” says Casement, “we can trust the Germans.”

  “Roddie, we can’t trust anyone. Look what’s happened to the Irish Volunteers.”

  Too true. As if it wasn’t enough that Ulster has faced off against the Nationalists, now the Irish Volunteers have faced off against each other. Redmond has pledged Irish troops to fight for the English on the Continent, against the Germans. The thinking seems to be that England, in gratitude for all those Irish lives, is going to be in a generous state of mind come the end of the war. But these are the English, and their treachery has been proven. So there is the cause of his sleeplessness of the last three nights and Devoy is looking less the old rebel, and just old. “I’m aware,” says Casement. “We’ve been split down the middle.”

  “Not down the middle,” says Devoy. “A hundred and seventy thousand Irish troops have gone with Redmond over to the English, and we’re left with little over ten thousand.”

  “I know the figures—”

  “And still nothing on paper from the Germans saying that they’ll back us once this bloody war is over.”

  “You’ve said this all before,” says Casement.

  “And I’ll keep saying it until I get a reasonable response from you that convinces me that you understand what’s at stake in Berlin.”

  Of course the Germans want unrest in Ireland. That’s fewer English troops on the Continent. Casement’s negotiating might be no more than that fly biting at the English flank, but he will strive to fulfill his two objectives. The first is to create an Irish Brigade from the Irish soldiers already in German prisons. The second is to secure the arms for the Irish to rise up, which—now that England is distracted by Germany—has found its moment. The Irish are playing at the same game as the Germans.

  A last dinner in New York brings out an interesting crowd of potential donors. Casement has held forth on a number of things that evening—­lectured on the benefits of the Prussian industrial model and the ascendency of Germany in the new world order as his soup grew cold, carefully navigated a conversation with a high-up in the Police Force where equal rights for the Irish had degenerated into a screed against “niggers” still pouring North from the crippled South.

  With relief, Casement had released this man to a like-minded fellow on the other side of the table. Adler, who had been seated at the far side of the room by the kitchen, had come over with his drink—his friendliness suggested it wasn’t his first, nor even his third—and pulled a chair to sit by Casement. Adler is now engaged chatting with the man seated at Casement’s right, an old Fenian born in County Clare, and now the owner of a shoe factory in Worcester, Massachusetts. The man is smoking a cigar and this activity has drawn attention to the fact that he’s missing the top digit of his right index finger.

  “This?” says the man, waggling the finger, which means that Adler must have asked after it. “Shot off at Antietam.”

  “By a Confederate?” asks Adler.

  “I certainly hope so,” he says, smiling. “I was, after all, fighting for the North.”

  “And then you settled in Worcester?” asks Casement, politely.

  “No. Then I went west to fight the Indians. We won that one too.” He rests the cigar in the ashtray and, with his shorn-off digit, taps the table three times. “And we’ll win this one. God wills it.”

  Later that night, bags packed, Casement and Adler sit in the still of the room. There is an inch of whiskey left in the bottle, and Casement knows that Adler is incapable of leaving a bottle in that state, even though his glass is full. Casement could sleep. Adler does not mind drinking alone, but the next day’s journey has Casement rattled, so he might as well stay up.

  “Who is Wolf Tone?” asks Adler.

  “He’s an Irish hero. Why?”

  “Someone was sayin
g at dinner that you’re like Wolf Tone.” Adler is smirking. “Maybe he liked boys?”

  “I don’t think so,” says Casement, enacting patience. “About a hundred years ago, Wolf Tone went to the French for help for Ireland.”

  “The French?”

  “They had just had a revolution and were feeling sympathetic. And also, France is a Catholic country.” There’s religion again and, of course, Wolf Tone was not a religious man and, if he had been, was from a Protestant family, but let’s not complicate things. “So Tone went to Paris and the French were quite taken with him, and pledged some ships.”

  “But it doesn’t work?”

  “So you know the story?”

  “I know the Irish are still in mud up to their knees hating the English.”

  “Wolf Tone was really conquered by the weather. There was a storm and ships couldn’t land, things were delayed. Yes, it didn’t work.”

  “And what happened to this Tone? Did they hang him?”

  “No,” says Casement. “They wanted to. It’s what they do to criminals, but Tone argued that he was a soldier and as such should face the firing squad.”

  “So they shot him?”

  “No,” says Casement. “They insisted he be hanged, but someone smuggled him a razor and he cut his own throat. It took him three days to die, but he won that one.”

  Adler wheels the bottom of his glass in a small orbit. He says, “I don’t understand this Irish winning.”

  Casement delivers the wry laugh. He’ll have to toast that little wisdom, so he tips a little more into Adler’s glass and stains the bottom of his with the dregs of the bottle. Their glasses clink. Cheers, cheers man, cheers to Irish victory.

  Cheers to Norway.

  Cheers to Germany.

  IV

  Rolleboise

  September 1914

  September is the time for harvesting the pears and, as all the able-bodied men have enlisted, Sarita herself has gone to the orchard with a basket. The air seems alive with its own good will and every leaf, every blade of grass, expresses itself in excruciating prettiness—each one a perfect exercise of light and shadow. Roddie is atop a ladder down the row. Herbie, ostensibly enthusiastic about pitching in, has shown up with a net just in case a swallowtail shows up, and one must have, because he’s disappeared. Herbie really has no idea how to work and going to Eton has validated this innocence by introducing him to an entire class of people who are likewise uninformed.

  Beatrice has taken over some of the garden work, which she prefers to polishing bannisters, and why not? Why not be in the sunshine in this glorious weather? She’s scything the lawn in front of the house, as the mower doesn’t work without a horse and all the horses have been taken, along with Charlie. The morning they’d all left, Sarita had seen the unhitched mower abandoned to its sorrow, but the horse’s leather lawn shoes, strewn comically about, communicated the loss most poignantly. Guess Blackbird won’t need them where he’s going, that’s what Herbie had said. The thought of poor little Blackbird towing a canon is almost enough to get Sarita’s mind off Charlie.

  Charlie, who is due to start training at Weston-Super-Mare in the next few weeks.

  The pears at this time of year are full, heavy in one’s hand, cool to the skin, and dripping with perfume. The branches almost drag, overloaded with fruit. Pears. Misshapen globes, swollen dugs. The sound of workers moving a piano from a house across the river carries on the wind. There’s an occasional jangle of the keys, which, at first, she’d thought was some modern piece, composed of banging and intellect. But perhaps moving a piano on such a gorgeous August day is modern and that’s her music—discordant keys, men shouting, and both from such a distance as to render anonymous. Or perhaps it’s not workers moving a piano. The sound registers so minimally that it could be anything.

  She pulls off two more pears. What’s to be done with them all? If the boys who show up to pick them are all heading to the front, then what are the chances that the men who organize their sale are still here? She picks another and, not that she’s hungry, takes a bite. Juice drips everywhere and she wipes her chin with the back of her hand. Roddie shouts in some sort of aggravated state and calls to her, “Mama, it’s a bee.”

  “Wave it off gently,” she says. “The bee won’t kill you, but falling off that ladder might.” School starts in another week and Roddie is on edge, a case of adolescent nerves.

  Everyone’s on edge. It would be nice to solve one problem—any problem. Maybe she can eat all the pears, just stay in the orchard, and move from tree to tree, until each one is unburdened. Blackbird has a fondness for pears. And also for apples. She closes her eyes against the thought and, when she opens them, is surprised to see a very dirty child, maybe six years old, standing in front of her. He’s been crying, she can see that. He has big cheeks, a bow mouth, and such a scowl on him that he looks like an old man.

  “Bonjour,” she says. “Do you like pears?” She puts the one she’s been eating in her apron and takes another. She extends the pear to the child, who snatches it, is about to take a bite, but thinks of better of it. “Take another,” she says, reaching towards him again. He puts the one he’s got in his right hand and reaches again with his left. So he’s left-handed. “You could say thank you,” she says, but the little boy has already started edging backward, not dropping his gaze. He backs all the way through the hedges—which must be where he came from. Once lost to view, she can hear him crashing through the branches, with quick little footsteps.

  “Mama,” says Roddie again, “I think you should see this.”

  “What?” Sarita says. She puts the basket down. Roddie is already coming backward down the ladder as fast as he can. He somehow looks pale, even though he’s sunburned. Sarita wipes her sticky hands on her apron and goes up the slippery rungs, placing the arch of her leather soles carefully, holding tight to the rails.

  “Look in the direction of the river,” Roddie says.

  Where the property slopes down to the river, there’s a bend in the road, just visible from where she’s standing. And now she can see what Roddie wanted her to look at. The road is packed, like morning traffic in Paris, cars and trucks and—is that a wagon?—moving very slowly.

  “Roddie, get Herbie,” she says. But Herbie is already there, standing with his net.

  “Mother,” says Herbie, “I think it’s time to head back to the house.”

  Herbert has his back to them as they trudge up the lawn, the long grass drunk with summer tangling round their ankles. At first she can’t see what he’s doing, but then the Union Jack makes it slow descent down the flagpole. They haven’t had an English newspaper in weeks, and the French accounts are careful with what they present. It would seem that things are bad. Herbert sees them and waves. It’s his cheerful wave, but as his face is in a rictus of affliction, he appears to be warding them off. Still, they collect by the naked flagpole. There is birdsong and response and the smell of blossoms.

  “How much time do we have?” she asks.

  “Twenty-four hours. Actually, less than that. We should be on the road first thing tomorrow morning.” Herbert takes the flag in his hands and seems to be entertaining some English mawkishness, but he catches himself and drapes the flag casually over his shoulder. “I used to know how to fold a flag,” he says.

  “I know how,” says Roddie solemnly.

  So that’s what Roddie has learned at Broadstairs. He doesn’t seem terribly well equipped for anything and he’s due to start Eton next week. And there’s Herbie, armed with his butterfly net. “Perhaps they’re exaggerating,” she says.

  “The Germans are fifty miles away. They’ll be in Paris by nightfall.” Herbert sights down the mantle of lawn polished to brilliance with sunlight. “We may never see Rolleboise again.”

  He’s going to scare the children. That’s the problem with Herbert. He can be completel
y sentimental, yet so lacking in sensitivity. “Surely—”

  “Sarita. Listen. The British base is moving to Le Mans. Colonel Burroughs was just here. The Germans are advancing rapidly and the roads are clogged—have been, all day. Père Fabrice left an hour ago to evacuate his family and Georges is gone too.”

  “He left us?” Sarita feels the first wash of panic. Georges was the only one remaining who could drive the car, the rest—including Charlie—all having enlisted. “What do we do now?”

  “I’m not sure.” Herbert’s voice falters. “I’ll have to find someone to drive us. There are five seats in the car. We’ll just fit. Villiers has voiced a desire to accompany us. She’s trying to get to her sister’s in Bordeaux, but perhaps that can’t be managed. If I can’t find anyone to drive, maybe I can get a horse and carriage. Although, given the situation, people aren’t much moved by money.”

  Sarita realizes that she has covered her mouth with her hands, as women do in melodramas. “You have to fetch Georges back.”

  “It’s too late, Sarita. Georges is not a possibility. He’s bringing his parents to his aunt’s house in Tours. He did leave me the names of some men in the village. Beatrice set off on her bicycle to find them, but she just got back.”

  “And?”

  “And she was barely down the drive before someone knocked her down and stole the bike.”

  “She’ll have to walk.”

  Herbert nods, clearly retracing a path of thought already wandered. “What are the chances that those men are still there?” He is strangely calm, thinking and thinking. “Maybe I can figure out the car.” Although he’s terrified of cars, doesn’t even like being a passenger. “Or maybe you?” This to Sarita, who he’s always thought has the better sense of mechanics than him, but her knowledge is limited to things like getting the radiator unstuck and organizing the purchase of gardening equipment.

  “Is there petrol?” asks Herbie.