The Abstainer

by Ian McGuire

  “My orders are to take you to the cells.”

  “I won’t go down there. I already told you that.”

  He senses Sanders’ agitation, his fretful eagerness to do whatever is planned and his fear that he will lose the opportunity, through some complication or trickery, that the moment will be stolen from him.

  “We all know what you are,” Sanders says. “You had Maybury fooled, but Maybury’s gone now, and the new fellows are a sight cleverer than he was. They can see through your lies well enough.”

  “The stories aren’t true. I’m no more a traitor than you are.”

  Sanders’ face suddenly reddens.

  “Frank Malone was a friend of mine,” he says. “And my good friend was murdered by you filthy Irish bastards. Shot dead, in cold blood. An innocent, unarmed man. So don’t you dare accuse me of being a traitor.”

  The door is pushed open again, and the two men who were waiting outside step into the room. O’Connor recognizes one of them but not the other. The one he recognizes, Payne, another detective, asks Sanders if he needs any help.

  “He says he won’t go to the cells. Says he wants to see Thompson first.”

  “We’ll put the snaps on him, then,” Payne says easily. “Ankles and wrists. Carry him down arse first, if need be. Is that really what you want, though?”

  He turns to O’Connor and shows him the handcuffs. Payne is tall and thin, with a crooked nose and narrow eyes. He has a reputation, O’Connor recalls, for laziness and for losing at cards.

  “You don’t need to use the cuffs,” he says. “I’ll come willingly.”

  He puts his pipe in his pocket and stands up from the chair. Thompson must be running out of ideas, he thinks. He’s trying to scare me, that’s all. It’s a joke, a game, which it’s wiser to play along with than resist.

  The four men leave the room and walk together along the narrow corridor, then turn right through an open doorway onto a metal staircase painted gray. O’Connor doesn’t recognize where they are but guesses they must be in the rear part of the building. They descend into the basement and go through a succession of dim-lit corridors before they reach the cells, then they wait while Sanders goes looking for someone to the unlock the door. There is shouting coming from another room and a strong smell of piss and carbolic. The red brick floor is damp and there are specks of dried-up blood on the green paint below the wainscot.

  “Here’s the place where a man like you belongs,” Payne says, “locked up with all his Fenian friends.”

  The other man, the one O’Connor doesn’t recognize, nods and smiles at Payne’s remark, then tells O’Connor that if there is any truth or justice in this world, they will hang him for what he’s done.

  “Who are you?” O’Connor asks him. “What do you know about me?”

  “My name’s Grayling. I know what I’ve heard,” he says. “And that’s all I need to know.”

  Sanders comes back with a key, and they unlock the door of the empty cell and point him inside. There is a slatted wooden bed to the left and a galvanized pail in the far corner. The gray stucco walls are smeared with filth and gouged with the gnostic mottoes of the recently interred. O’Connor wonders for a moment how it has come to this, then reminds himself that his imprisonment can’t last, that Thompson holds no evidence against him, and Fazackerley will be back by morning. Before they close the door, the three men pause to curse at him again and tell him that he is a bastard traitor who will get what he deserves. After they have gone, he curls up on the wooden bed and tries to sleep, but the cold makes him shudder and every now and then a shriek or bellow from the cells nearby jolts him back awake.

  The next day, he is given bread and tea at dawn and a bowl of barley soup at noon. The soup is watery and has a urinous tang to it that he tries to ignore but can’t. When he complains about the cold, they bring him a brown blanket that is damp. He waits patiently all that afternoon for Fazackerley and when Fazackerley doesn’t come, he begins to feel afraid again. He wonders if they are really searching for new evidence against him, as Thompson claimed they would, or if he is being held here out of spite and malice only, as a revenge for his imagined crimes. Who else, besides Sanders, Payne, and Grayling, even knows where he is? And who will look for him if he doesn’t reappear? He urges himself to stay calm, to remember that reason and the law still exist somewhere even if he cannot see or sense them. But, compared to the crude truth of his present conditions, such promises feel airy and false, like the vague and threadbare categories of a superseded faith.

  There is no candle or lamp in the cell, and the only light creeps in through a narrow pane of glass above the iron door. In the late afternoon of the first day, as he sits on the bed in the three-quarter darkness, holding his knees up to his chest and trying to ignore the stench of the slop pail and the growing aches in his hips, neck, and spine, the door opens and Sanders comes in.

  “This is too much,” O’Connor tells him. “The joke has gone too far now. You know very well there is no evidence against me, and no good reason to keep me here any longer. I’ve not even been arrested. You must release me now, immediately.”

  “Release you?” Sanders laughs as if he has just been told an amusing story. O’Connor notices he is carrying a truncheon in his right hand. There are cake crumbs in his beard and he smells of ale and onions.

  “Thompson has all the evidence he needs against you,” Sanders tells him cheerfully. “More than enough to see you hanged. They’ll be moving you to Belle Vue Prison soon enough.”

  “You’re lying,” O’Connor says. “I know you are. I doubt Thompson even knows I’m down here.”

  “How could he not know? He’s the one who ordered it.”

  “Where’s Fazackerley got to? Why has he not come to see me yet?”

  “Fazackerley? Fazackerley is under suspicion himself now. He’s a good friend of yours, so it’s probable he knew what you were doing. There may be others involved also. Maybury? Palin even? We don’t know how deep it goes.”

  O’Connor shakes his head. Such wild inventions are far beyond the nous of a man like Sanders, he knows that, but does that mean Sanders is actually telling the truth or only that someone much cleverer has taught him how to lie?

  “I need to talk to Thompson now,” he says. “We need to stop this before it goes any further.”

  “Are you ready to make a confession of your crimes? If you are, I’ll take you up there now.”

  “I have nothing to confess to,” O’Connor says. “I’m an innocent man.”

  Sanders steps forward quickly and, holding the truncheon horizontally with both hands, thrusts it hard up into O’Connor’s windpipe. The back of O’Connor’s head thuds onto the cell wall, and his eyes begin to bulge. Sanders presses long enough for the first signs of panic to appear on O’Connor’s face. Then he steps away again.

  “I could break your innocent neck for you,” Sanders tells him. “Easy as that. Don’t you forget it.”

  It takes a minute for O’Connor’s breathing to settle again. He rubs the feeling back into his throat and jaw and glares at Sanders.

  “Why have you come down here?” he says. “What do you want with me?”

  Sanders nods once, as if glad of the reminder.

  “I need your wallet, your braces, and your boots,” he says. “You’re a prisoner now, so that’s the rule.”

  O’Connor knows very well that there is no such rule and there never was one but thinks he will not help himself much by arguing the point. There are guards outside, and if he refuses, Sanders will likely take the items from him by force.

  “When will I be moved to Belle Vue?” O’Connor asks.

  “Whenever it suits us.”

  If they want to move him, they will have to put him before the magistrate first, he knows, and if they do that, then they will have to let him see a lawyer. He wil
l be out of this limbo, back in the real world.

  “Tomorrow?” he suggests.

  “Whenever it suits us,” Sanders repeats.

  He picks up O’Connor’s boots, sneers at them for a moment, then holds his hand out for the wallet and braces.

  After Sanders leaves, O’Connor lies back down on the slatted bed and closes his eyes. When he wakes again, his ears and throat are burning, and he feels a soreness and swelling deep in his gut. He stands up, unbuttons his britches, and squats over the pail in the corner of the cell. With both knees bent, and his back pressed against the wall for support, he strains, then empties himself. There is a moment of relief, of almost-joy, then another wave comes, louder and more abundant than the first, and then a third. When it’s over, he climbs back onto the bed and covers himself with the brown blanket. Although the air is cold, he is sweating now. The pain in his gut is gone, but he feels weakened and queasy, and his legs and back are stiff and aching. After a few more minutes, he rolls over and vomits onto the stone floor. He wipes his mouth with his sleeve, spits out the remnants, and calls for water, but no one answers. He guesses it is after midnight. There are no sounds coming from the corridor, just the yellow glow of the gas lamps through the crude fanlight. He closes his eyes again, brings his knees up to his chest, and hugs himself for warmth.

  The sickness lasts two days. He is dizzied by fever, sweating and shuddering, dropping in and out of a fractured and restless sleep. At times, in his confusion, he believes he is back in Armagh or in the rooms on Kennedy’s Lane. When he hears voices from the corridor, he thinks it is Catherine singing to the baby, or his parents arguing. He tries to call out to them, to ask for help, but it is as if he has forgotten how to speak. Instead of words, he makes hoarse guttural noises only, shrieks and yelps like the crude agitations of an imbecile or a frightened ape. Although he knows what he wants to say, he cannot say it however hard he tries. His throat closes and his tongue becomes thick and useless. Listening outside, the guards shake their heads and laugh at his clownish gobbledygook. “It’s that Fenian cunt O’Connor chanting his Latin again,” they say.

  When the fever recedes and his mind begins to clear, he asks for soap and water and a cloth to clean himself. He washes his face first, then his arms, then his chest and belly. His body feels like a house he has returned to after a long time away, like a friend whose name he has forgotten. He wrings out the cloth, then pulls down his trousers and continues cleaning. He has soiled himself while sleeping and his arse is caked and raw. Slowly, feeling the way with his fingertips, he picks away the dried-on excrement, then wipes and rinses. Next, he cleans his thighs and genitals, then his feet. The gray water is cold against his skin, and the effort of standing and bending makes him breathless. When he is finished, he wraps himself in the brown blanket and lies back down on the wooden bed. His dirty clothes lie scattered across the floor, but he is too weary to reach for them.

  An hour later, when Thompson opens the cell door, he sniffs once, then steps back into the corridor and calls for the guards. While he waits outside, they remove the slop pail and scrub and mop the floor. Pale and naked under the verminous blanket, unshaven and hollow-eyed, O’Connor watches on in silence. When Thompson comes back in, he is smoking a small cigar against the smell.

  “I heard you’d taken ill,” he says. “Are you recovered now?”

  O’Connor hesitates a moment. He remembers the dreams, the mangled words clogging his throat. Thompson tilts forward an inch and looks at him more closely.

  “Do you hear me, O’Connor?”

  “I’m well enough,” he answers. “Weak, that’s all.”

  “When you eat you’ll feel better, I’m sure. Soup and bread. Your strength will soon return.”

  “I’ve been here for four days already and I’ve not been arrested or charged with any crime. You have no right to keep me against my will. No right at all.”

  Thompson nods.

  “Four days is longer than I’d hoped for, but a peculiar case like yours takes time to fathom out. The complications are unusual. I know you’re most likely a traitor, but I don’t have enough evidence to prove it yet, and if I let you go free you’ll disappear forever. So what am I to do? Yesterday, I wrote to Colonel Feilding about my dilemma, and I received his reply just this morning. He’s a clever fellow, the colonel, and he gave me some good advice. He told me to think about the gun. He said the gun was the answer to my problem. It took me a moment realize what he meant, but once I realized, I could see the way forward as clear as day.”

  “Which gun?” O’Connor asks.

  “Barton’s gun. The one you stole from him. It wasn’t yours and you had no right to take it, but you took it anyway. You lied to get it. That’s stealing and a loaded gun is no small thing to steal.”

  “I returned it the next day. I put it back in the safe.”

  Thompson nods.

  “The records show it was put back in the gun safe at half past twelve in the afternoon. Barton estimates you took it from him around eight the previous evening, so you had it for sixteen hours or more. A man can do a lot of mischief with a loaded gun in sixteen hours.”

  “I was drunk. It was in my pocket all night, but I forgot it was there.”

  “You think your drunkenness lessens the crime? I’d say it only makes it worse.”

  Thompson’s manner is the same as before: self-satisfied, insidious, unstoppable. He swallows a mouthful of smoke, then lets it seep back out through his broad nostrils.

  “You’ll go to the police court in the morning to be charged with the theft of a firearm,” he says. “We have witnesses, of course—Barton himself, the fellow who owns the chemist shop, Fazackerley—it won’t be a difficult case to decide.”

  “I intended to kill Stephen Doyle if I could. That’s why I took Barton’s gun. I was in a wild rage.”

  “Barton says you were calm and seemed sober, at least so far as he could tell. He says he argued with you about the gun, but you forced him to give it up.”

  “He didn’t argue. He gave it willingly.”

  “Barton’s a respectable lad, clean and honest-looking. When he stands up in the court I expect he’ll be believed.”

  “What’s the purpose of all this?”

  “To keep you where we want you. You’re a dangerous man, an enemy of the crown, and a risk to the public. If we can’t try you now, at least we can keep you safely locked up.”

  O’Connor shudders and pulls the blanket tighter around his shoulders. He feels a wave of nausea breaking over him. A dangerous man? He wonders if Thompson can mean what he is saying, or if it is all part of the same preposterous stratagem.

  “I’m not a danger to anyone,” he says. “I’m an ordinary man, loyal and decent.”

  “We know now that you disgraced yourself in Dublin, and they sent you over here to give you a second chance. That was their mistake, of course. Once a man has lost his way like you did, he can’t get back again. It’s impossible. Once the weakness has revealed itself, there’s only one direction he can go. Maybury should have seen it much earlier. He should never have trusted you. That was his mistake. But now everything is revealed. Now we know what you are.”

  “Nothing is revealed,” O’Connor insists. His breath is short and the words come out in bursts. “Nothing is revealed at all. You accuse me of betrayal, but I’m the one who is being betrayed. This is the true betrayal: this false accusation, these ridiculous lies.”

  “You’re a common drunkard. Let’s agree on that at least.”

  “I suffered a loss,” O’Connor says. “My wife.”

  Thompson nods complacently.

  “Catherine,” he says. “We know about her, but if you’re looking around for pity, you’ll have to look elsewhere. I’ll save my tears for the men who were murdered by your Fenian friends.”

  O’Connor shakes his head a
nd turns away. The fever has left him confused and weakened. He doesn’t trust himself enough to make an answer. Thompson waits a minute longer, then crushes the cigar butt underfoot and pushes open the cell door. There is a quick spill of yellow light and the bright sound of a man whistling in the corridor, then the door bangs shut again and the world goes back to darkness and silence.

  CHAPTER 25

  She wants to be happy and safe, to have children and a home, but what does he want? Comfort, she supposes, and love of some kind, a way out of all the trouble and the sadness he has known. She needs his help and he needs hers, so they will help each other. It won’t be pure or perfect like in the songs, but everything in this life is a risk, and when the thinking and talking are over, all you can do is offer up a prayer and hope for the best. So that’s what she will do. When he comes to her, whenever he comes to her, she will tell him she accepts his offer. She will smile and say yes, and it will be, for that one moment at least, as if the past has disappeared completely, as if the world has begun again from nothing.

  * * *

  —

  It is past nine o’clock on Sunday and Rose Flanagan has just settled her mother down for the night when she hears the knocking. At long last, she thinks. He has taken his time about it, but finally. When she opens the door she expects to see James O’Connor standing on the step looking nervous or expectant, or some mixed-up combination of the two, but it is someone else entirely: an old fellow dressed all in black, with a shabby gray mustache and cloudy, oysterish eyes. He says his name is Harold Newly and he is an attorney-at-law. He offers her his card and she takes it. She tells him that she has no need for any attorney-at-law, and he smiles back and explains he is currently in the employ of Mr. James O’Connor, and Mr. James O’Connor has asked him to convey a message to Miss Rose Flanagan.

  “Would you be Miss Flanagan?” he asks.

  She nods.

  “Then may I come inside for a moment?”

  Rose doesn’t answer straightaway. She looks at the card again and wonders what it all could mean.