Herbie is still asleep at noon. Ward goes in to wake him, but Herbie isn’t in his bed. He’s chosen to sleep in Charlie’s and for a moment, Ward’s heart leaps because he thinks his elder son too has found his way home.
XIII
London
June 1916
This is what he knows. He knows that the Aud failed to rendezvous with the Volunteers and, scuttled, is now in a long sleep on the ocean floor along with her cargo. He knows that he was picked up by the constabulary as he dreamed in the long grass of McKenna’s Fort and was taken quickly to London. That the uprising went on without weapons, without him, and all the major players were starved out or hunted down. That these people, for the most part, are dead. Plunkett, executed by the English rather than his lungs, married in Kilmainham just hours before facing the firing squad. Pearse, shot dead against the prison wall, although the Proclamation still lives. James Connolly, Seán MacDermott, John MacBride, all dead—executed without trial. Should he go on?
Casement has been questioned and then placed back in his cell, then questioned again. How could he have learned anything since his last interview, when his only company has been mice, his only communication with a guard who kept him up-to-date on the fate of the uprising in harsh, uninflected whispers? Was this out of sympathy or in order to twist the knife? Casement does not know. When asked if he supported the uprising, he had responded honestly. No. He did not support it. Then how does he explain his presence in Ireland? He doesn’t. He can see all the individual events, but when he puts them together, they make an unviable whole. He doesn’t know how he got into this cell. He knows he will never be free.
Casement has tried to control his destiny. While held at the Tower, the poison still in his pocket as they had not seen fit to give him a change of clothes, he had managed to cut his thumb and rub in the curare, which ought to have ended his life. But he was caught at it and saved to this greater purpose. In poor health for years, how is it that now life persists?
Duffy, who is his lead council, shuffles through the papers.
“Have you been completely honest with me?”
“What are we talking about?”
“All right,” says Duffy. He writes something at the top of a sheet of paper, then leans back in his chair, swinging one leg over the other. He bites his lower lip and the way he does it lets Casement know that he’s hitting unpleasant material. “Adler Christensen. Can we talk about him?”
“He was my manservant in Germany.”
“Casement, I’m your council. You need to tell me everything.”
Casement would tell him, but he’s still figuring it out. Will he tell him that Adler Christensen broke his heart? “What would you like to know?”
“All right. I have testimonies here from hotel staff in Christiania: ‘The entire time Christensen was checked in at the hotel, his bed was never slept in. He always spent the night in Mister Landy’s room.’” Duffy switches the papers around, squinting at the print. “‘I opened the door to Mister Landy’s room and found the two men half-naked on the bed in a suggestive position.’”
Casement feels a cold wash of panic. He’s dizzy and is sure he looks ill. “Doesn’t say which half was naked.”
“Casement, is that a joke?” Duffy stacks his papers and lets out an almost passionate sigh. “Look, I am your solicitor. I represent you and I will do that to the best of my ability. I worry about you because you’re in fragile health, but I have to tell you that this Christensen has made numerous presentations to the authorities that your relationship was not of a wholesome nature. And the first of these dates back to October of 1914. It’s in a statement to a Mister Findlay”—he searches around his notes—“who was with the Foreign Office, that’s the English Foreign Office, in Christiania.”
“Findlay cannot be trusted,” says Casement.
“That may well be the case,” says Duffy, “but neither can your friend Christensen.”
Casement takes a moment to think things through, meditating on the painted tabletop where some other poor soul, in an equally unenviable position, has scratched FUK into its surface.
“Casement, the police are going through some boxes of yours that were stored at the apartment on Ebury Street. I want you to think carefully. Are they going find anything in there?”
The pictures for Ward.
The diaries.
Casement states with grave reserve, “I have kept a diary.”
“Lots of people keep diaries. What’s the nature of the information contained therein?”
“Mostly accounting.”
“Look, I’ll say it because you don’t want to and we don’t have time. I’m under the impression that you are a homosexual and the only reason you’re mentioning the diaries is that you must have recorded some of your actions in there. I don’t care who you choose for sexual relations. As long as it’s not me, I’m fine with it. All right? But if I am going to do my job as your solicitor, I need you to be more direct in stating your past actions, if only to get to a place where I know who my client is and what we’re facing.”
“It would seem you understand the nature of some of what is contained in the diaries.” Casement sits up straight. The world is suddenly strange. “Will this come up at trial?”
“To be honest, I’m not sure.” Duffy pushes the papers around the tabletop. He’s perspiring, sweat beading at his temples, although Casement feels cold. “The current sentiment seems to suggest that you are to be made an example of as a traitor. The charge is likely to be High Treason. Certain people of influence, Arthur Conan Doyle, for example, are hoping for an insanity plea. You were hospitalized several times in Germany for mental instability and homosexuality will help in this characterization. It would seem that at the moment, the authorities are committed to presenting you as an organizer, a man of reason, a man in full control of his actions. But there is already outrage at the executions of the other organizers, Pearse and Plunkett, who easily fill the role of martyrs to the cause of Irish Independence. Evidence that attests to your degeneracy becomes useful in that, should you find yourself cast as a martyr, this will serve to discredit you.”
Should he find himself cast as a martyr. He is as good as dead.
“There is a packet of things in the Ebury Street rooms that I have requested be sent to Herbert Ward on my death. Contained in that packet is a series of photographs that I purchased in Italy that I thought he would find inspiring, as he is an artist. I need the pictures to be destroyed. I would not want him to misunderstand the gift.”
Duffy is frustrated by this request. That much is clear. “Is this the Herbert Ward that has refused all contact with you?”
“He is my oldest friend.”
“That may be, but he has declared himself hostile and I don’t see the importance of a gift of pictures—”
“There is nothing more important. And as a man of few options, I would appreciate you following through in this matter, which might not be vital to my defense but is of unimaginable importance to me.”
“Casement, can we just—”
“I beg you to do this. Consider it one of my final requests.”
The trial proceeds.
Casement is charged with High Treason, as he has acted on behalf of Germany during a time of war.
A knight of the realm has not suffered such an accusation in several hundred years. And what is his defense? That he was not acting on behalf of Germany but of Ireland and—ostensibly—England is not at war with Ireland. There are several other pertinent points. He was against the uprising, tried to call it off, is on record for this, so to accuse him of being an instigator in this act is incorrect. But the prosecutor’s closing statement makes the opinion of the King—and therefore the hangman—clear. Any action undertaken that strengthens an enemy in a time of war qualifies the perpetrator as having committed an act of High Treason. Whether or no
t the uprising was successful and that Casement saw it as doomed is irrelevant. And there is the matter of the Irish Brigade. Evidence is presented stating that rations had been withheld from captured Irish troops to entice them into serving the Kaiser and that Casement had been paid to see it through. His life is the subject of legal banter—some abstract thing, a palimpsest—as if Casement the man is not bound to it. He has responded to the accusations with an articulate statement written with clarity and passion.
There’s his bit of paper.
He is dead and, as a true Irishman, has the document to bind to the body. He is not going to fail his people in the one moment when the world can be made aware of what it is to be Irish. He has asked to be tried before an Irish court, which is rhetoric, just a taste of a thought that ought to be a practice. Why is it noble to lay down one’s life for England, with its history of harm and oppression, yet not noble to lay down one’s life for Ireland, who never harmed anyone?
Perhaps it will be noble to sacrifice himself but he will not see the fruit of it.
He has grown used to the parade of people in this plain room, the seat that presents a roster of possibility in a place where none exists. Alice Green, who, absurdly, tells him to take care of himself. Canon Ring and Father Carey, whose advising timbre instructs that caring for one’s self is, at best, a sentimental occupation.
Gee takes the seat in her gray dress, her hair lopsided and eyes reddened, hopeful and despairing, swinging between each with mounting hysteria. There is a bare bulb on a wire. There is the whitewash of the wall flaking. There is a cough down the hall, the tread of official shoes, a cough again. A warm August sun paints the window yellow.
This is his last visit.
Petitions have been circulated. Powerful people, fashionable people, have written on his behalf. Powerful people, fashionable people, have derided him. His lawyer had listed off a few writers and artists who supported him, Lytton Strachey, Duncan Grant, others of that circle, and made the wry observation that they were freaks and weirdos, but at least they were on his side. Perhaps this was an attempt at humor, but with Duffy’s dry delivery, who could know? Writers and artists have influence on influential people, but Casement is already feeling the itch of the noose and finds these discussions of a decidedly academic nature. If Ottoline Morrell were to circulate a petition on behalf of a knight accused of treason, for example, Sir Roger Casement, and if it were signed by a healthy contingent of the powerful and interesting, would it suffice to warrant an appeal?
Apparently the answer is no.
He feels ill as he watches Gee’s frenetic gesturing, listens to the patter of names—Joseph Conrad, who has deserted him; Edward Morel, who cannot sign his name to this cause lest it damage his defense of the enslaved—his heart vibrating oddly like the hull of ship struck with a hammer. He cannot find an appropriate response.
“What of Herbert Ward?” he says.
She is stunned by the question. “What of him?”
He accepts the Catholic faith as he has accepted many things, being a man inclined to faith—the concept of faith, in strong belief that defies reason.
He believed in God once and as the contours of his life slowly took form, he felt God’s disapproval. Still, there was comfort in it, a comfort in being but a small player in the greater plan. And then he lost that faith, that belief, out of an accumulation of reason. He began to think that he was valid, not perfect, but just a man in a world of individuals and as such not remarkable. How could one believe in that and God? He chose himself.
That old faith seems but a dream, like a wine that you know was delicious without being able to recall the flavor. He can summon up the grief—the horror of solitude—that overcame him once his faith was gone. He is conscious that at one time he had felt the beauty of a clear path—the box-ticking approach to salvation—but as he disassembled his fears about his actions, that process had started an unraveling not only of the conventional but of convention itself. And what was religion if not convention?
But as each hour wastes itself, a small response to his loneliness stirs—a voice in answer to an inarticulate question.
His acceptance of Catholicism has forced him to abandon the earlier, impossible idea that Ireland could be a nation undivided. The use of religion by the leaders of the new Ireland will no doubt put the people under another yoke. But, as he has already begun his steps to the scaffold, he must create a martyr, and Catholics like martyrs and also like other Catholics, which must be acknowledged. And America likes religion, or at least the fear of God, so this is not a bad statement to make, not bad, for those who will live with its results. Confess. Confess. Confess. After a life in secret, confession is oddly exhilarating, and there is the Canon making his four-cornered gesture over Casement’s bowed head and his spirit is soaring somewhere. Or will be soon.
He should be afraid, but he is not.
His hands are bound and he’s glad for he would not know what to do with them otherwise. It is but a short distance to the scaffold. No tears come. No thoughts flood his mind. His is a strange perspective. He looks out at the small crowd of factory workers who have gathered to watch him die. From this vantage point, they seem small and he above them, as if he might deliver a speech or a benediction and perhaps this act is a variety of one of these. But no friends are with him now. No sympathizers are at his side. Who does he wish were watching? Who should be the custodian of these final moments? Nina is in America. He has made his peace with Gee. Mbatchi, whom he raised, has disappeared into his untranslatable existence. And Ward? Could love be so extinguished?
A warder pinions his legs. The hangman fits the hood over his head. He is aware of his breathing—a simple operation of the living body—and he hears a prayer end, a pressure on his shoulders, followed by a practiced manipulation of the rope.
God surprises, whispering in his ear. Not a word, but a breath. Has he always been there?
The prison bells are surely tolling now. Ward has some paper on the desk and a sheet, half-covered in his schoolboy scrawl, ready. The script is from an early and rejected draft, but he has not been able to produce any text in the last hour. He is pretending to write a speech that will be presented from New York to San Francisco. America is nearly in the war and just needs a little nudging.
Casement is dead.
Ward hears Sarita’s footsteps to his door. She pauses there. He has asked to be alone so that he can finish his speech, but she’s looking for him. He holds his breath and her footsteps pick up, continuing down the hall.
He doubts Casement intentionally deceived him. They never spoke in any deep way about Casement’s persistent bachelorhood. Had Casement confided his problems, Ward would have had to repudiate him, but this thing was always there, so how does knowing its particulars change who Casement was? Still, he feels betrayed, and, like a once-deceived wife who now sights down the length of her marriage and questions all of it, he wonders what he and Casement had actually shared.
Ward has thought a lot about the Congo in the past few days. He has gone through his things and dug up the old photograph taken in ’88 or ’89 with the other Company men. In the picture are him and Glave and Parminter and Casement. They had all been in Boma on leave and a photographer was in town. On the spur of the moment, they decided to sit. The photographer was not a regular fixture and made his money this way, traveling here and there. Ward remembers Casement suggesting that he contact a missionary friend, who was raising American money to help the natives and might want slides. There was no studio and the men had grouped together against a sheet hung over a wall in the company manager’s front office. They could not take the picture standing because of the height of the camera, so chairs were arranged, although only three could be found. Finally, a stool, normally occupied by a small boy who fanned the manager as he did his correspondence, was located. As Ward was the shortest of the group, it was decided that he would occupy i
t. Originally, Ward had been positioned between Glave and Parminter, but as they were not much taller than he, Ward found himself on a completely different visual plane. He looked like their father, or as if he were haunting them, or—Casement’s observation—as if he wasn’t invited to join and had insisted at the last second. Ward said he could bend his knees and that would bring him to the right height, but the photographer was not convinced that Ward could manage this and stay absolutely still, despite his having been an acrobat. He’d argued with the photographer—a remarkably small Belgian man with an epic beard—who had argued back, pointing out that acrobats were best known for leaping about. As the group had already had a few drinks, probably why they’d decided to get photographed in the first place, significant merriment followed. As they settled, it was decided that Ward would sit by Casement, as he was the tallest by several inches, although Ward would still have to sit behind the group as the camera didn’t accommodate all four men sitting side by side unless they squeezed together. And when arranged this way, Ward’s anomalous height was more obvious. So he positioned himself behind Casement and Parminter, several inches taller than them both, the three forming a sort of pyramid, with Glave off to the right. And they collected themselves.
And they were blinded by the flash.
In the photograph, Parminter looks almost morose. Ward’s recollection is that Parminter was laughing hardest and, in his effort to control this, had achieved a look of constipation. Glave has tamped his smile into a look of pleased acceptance. Ward is a bit hunched over the others and had been just about to compose an appealing look when the flash went off. Casement, with his full beard, looks at the camera at an angle, a smile playing at the corners of his eyes. Casement. Probably the most handsome man Ward has ever known.
Years ago, Casement had been visiting in Berkshire in that crazy old house with the ghost that they’d rented before moving to France. Ward had gone into Casement’s room to find him and, discovering the room empty, had absentmindedly picked up a book—some French novel—that Casement was reading. A photograph that was being used as a bookmark had fallen out. It was the Boma photo. Casement had folded it down the middle so that Glave and Parminter were on the one side, and he and Casement on the other. With just Casement and Ward in the photograph, the dynamic was significantly altered. It appeared that they had been photographed as a couple. Ward’s lack of composure, in this composition, seemed dynamic and Casement, his shoulder touching Ward’s jacket, his face angled with the ghost of a smile, looked pleased. Almost tender.
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