Transgressions

by Ed McBain

  “Ally myself with traitors?” Connor said witheringly. “Endorse what has happened, as if I’d lost my own morality? Never.”

  “Then maybe you could just retire, on grounds of health?” Paddy suggested. He was leaning against the kitchen bench, his long legs crossed at the ankle, the light from the window shining on his hair. The lines on his face marked his tiredness. He had seemed younger at the beginning, now it was clear he was over forty. “Give it some thought.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with my health!” Connor said between his teeth.

  Dermot twisted his gun around. “We could always do something about that,” he said with a curl to the corners of his mouth that lacked even the suggestion of humour.

  “And explain it as what?” Paddy rounded on him. “A hunting accident? Don’t be stupid.” He turned back to Connor before he saw the moment of bleak, unadulterated hatred pass over Dermot’s face, making it dead, like a mask. Then he controlled it again, and was merely flat, watchful. It touched Bridget with a quite different, new fear, not just for herself but for Paddy.

  “You’re wasting your time,” Connor answered, exactly as Bridget had known he would. He was not even considering it, not acknowledging change, he never had. Now he did not even know how to. He had made his own prison long before Paddy and his men came here with guns.

  “Are you sure about that?” Paddy said softly.

  “Of course he is!” Dermot cut across him. “He was never going to agree to anything. I could have told you that the day you set out.” He jerked his head towards Sean, standing at the far door and the way out to the beach. Sean straightened up, holding his gun steady in front of him.

  Paddy was still staring at Connor, as if he believed that he might yet change his mind. He did not see Dermot move behind him, raise his arm and bring it across sharply on the side of his jaw. Paddy crumpled to his knees, and then forward onto the floor.

  “Don’t!” Sean warned as Connor gasped, and Roisin made a sharp move towards Paddy. “He’ll be alright.”

  Dermot was taking the gun out of Paddy’s waistband. He stood up again, watching Bridget rather than Connor or Liam. “Just don’t do anything heroic, and you’ll be alright.”

  “Alright?” Connor was stupefied. “What the hell’s the matter with you? He’s your own man!”

  Roisin ignored him and bent to Paddy who was already stirring. She held out her arms and helped him to climb up, slowly, his head obviously paining him. He looked confused and dizzy. He was gentle with Roisin, but did not speak to her. Awkwardly he turned to Dermot, who was careful to keep far enough away from him he was beyond Paddy’s arm’s length. He held the gun high and steady.

  Sean was watching the rest of them. “The first one to move gets shot,” he said in a high-pitched voice, rasping with tension. “None of you’d want that, now would you?”

  “Dermot?” Paddy said icily.

  “Don’t be losing your temper, now,” Dermot answered. “We did it your way, and it didn’t work. Not that I thought it would, mind. O’Malley wasn’t even going to change. He can’t. Hasn’t left himself room. But you wouldn’t be told that, you and your kind. Now we’ll do it our way, and you’ll take the orders.”

  “You fool!” Paddy’s voice was bitter and dangerous. “You’ll make a hero out of him! Twice as many will follow him now!”

  “Not the way we’ll do it,” Dermot answered him. “And stop giving me orders, Paddy. You’re the one that’ll do as you’re told now.”

  “I’m not with you. This is the wrong way. We already decided . . .”

  “You did! Now I’m in charge . . .”

  “Not of me. I told you, I’m not with you,” Paddy repeated.

  Dermot’s smile was thin as arctic sunshine. “Yes, you are, Paddy, my boy. You can’t leave us. For that matter, you never could—at least not since we shot those two lads up the hill, and buried them. Markers are left, just so we could direct anyone to find them, if it were ever in our interest.” He raised his black eyebrows in question.

  The blood drained out of Paddy’s skin, leaving him oddly grey. He was not old, yet Bridget, looking at him, could see the image of when he would be.

  “That’s why you killed them . . .” he said with understanding at last.

  “We killed them, Paddy,” Dermot corrected. “You were part of it, just like us. Law makes no difference who pulls the trigger. Isn’t that right, Mr. O’Malley?” He glanced at Connor, who was still standing motionless. Then the ease in Dermot’s face vanished and his voice was savage. “Yes of course that’s why we did it! You’re one of us, whether you like it or not. No way out, boy, none at all. Now are you going to take your gun and behave properly? Help us to keep all these people good and obedient, until we decide exactly what’s to be done with them. Now we’ve got the pretty Roisin as well, perhaps Mr. O’Malley will be a bit more amenable, not to mention her husband. Though to tell the truth, maybe we’d be better not to mention him for yet a while, don’t you think?”

  Paddy hesitated. Again there was silence in the kitchen, except for the wind and the sound of the gulls along the shore.

  Liam stared at his father, waiting.

  At last Paddy held out his hand.

  “For the gun?” Dermot enquired. “In a little while, when I’m satisfied you’ve really grasped your situation. Now, Mrs. O’Malley.” He turned to Bridget. “We’ve one extra to feed. You’d best take a good look at your rations, because there’ll be no more for a while. I’m not entirely for trusting Paddy here, you see. Not enough to send him off into the village, that is. So be sparing, eh? No seconds for anyone, in fact you’d best be cutting down a bit on firsts as well. D’you understand me?”

  “Of course I understand you,” she replied. “We’ve got a whole sack of potatoes. We’ll live on those if we have to. We haven’t much to season them with, but I suppose that doesn’t matter a lot. Connor, you’d better move in with Liam, and Roisin can come in with me. I’ll wash the sheets. It’s a good day for drying.”

  “That’s a good girl, now,” Dermot approved. “Always do what you’re told, don’t you! I’d like a woman like you for myself, one day. Or maybe with a bit more fire. You can’t be much fun. But then I don’t suppose Mr. O’Malley is much of a man for fun, is he? Got a face like he bit on a lemon, that one. What do you see in him, eh?”

  She stopped at the doorway into the hall and looked directly at him. “Courage to fight for what he believes, without violence,” she answered. “Honour to keep his word, whatever it cost him. He never betrayed anyone in his life.” And without waiting to see his reaction, or Connor’s, she went out across the hall and into first Liam’s bedroom, taking the sheets off the bed, then her own. They could watch her launder them if they wanted to. She wouldn’t have gone anywhere before, but with Roisin here as well, she was even more of a prisoner.

  There was a separate laundry room with a big tub, a washboard, plenty of soap, a mangle to squeeze out the surplus water, and a laundry basket to carry them out to the line where the sea wind would blow them dry long before tonight.

  She began to work, because it was so much easier than simply standing or sitting, as Connor and Liam were obliged to do.

  She had filled the tub with water and was scrubbing the sheets rhythmically against the board, feeling the ridges through the cotton, when she heard the footsteps behind her. She knew it was Roisin.

  “Can I help, Mum?” she asked.

  “It doesn’t take two of us,” Bridget replied. “But stay if you want to.”

  “I can put them through the mangle,” Roisin offered.

  They worked without speaking for several minutes. Bridget didn’t want to think about why Roisin was here, who had sent her with the message, but the thoughts crowded into her mind like a bad dream returning, even when her eyes were open. She was the only one they had told where they were going, not even Adair knew. Roisin had tried so hard to persuade Connor to moderate his position on education before they l
eft. Bridget had never seen her argue with such emotion before. When he had refused, she had looked defeated, not just on a point of principle, but as if it hurt her profoundly, emotionally. The loss was somehow permanent.

  “You’re pregnant, aren’t you?” she said aloud.

  Roisin stopped, her hands holding the rinsed sheets above the mangle. The silence was heavy in the room. “Yes,” she said at last. “I was going to tell you, but it’s only a few weeks. It’s too soon.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Bridget said quietly. “You know, that’s all that matters.” She wanted to be happy for her, congratulate her on the joy to come, but the words stuck in her throat. It was why Roisin had betrayed her father to the moderates, and for Eamonn. She not only wanted peace, she needed it, for her child. Everything in her now was bent on protecting it. It was part of her, tiny and vulnerable, needing her strength, her passion to feed it, keep it warm, safe, loved, defended from the violence of men who cared for ideas, not people. Perhaps Bridget would have done the same. She remembered Roisin when she was newborn. Yes, she would have done whatever was necessary to protect her, or Liam, or any child.

  Roisin started the mangle again, keeping her face turned away; she did not yet realize that Bridget knew. She would have done it for Eamonn as well. He was another idealist, like Connor. Roisin was vulnerable herself. It was her first child. She might be ill with it. She would certainly be heavy, awkward, needing his love and his protection, his emotional support. She might even be afraid. Childbirth was lonely and painful, full of doubts that the baby would be well, that she would be able to look after it properly, do all the things she should to see nothing went wrong, that the tiny, demanding, infinitely precious life was cherished. She would be desperately tired at times. She would need Eamonn. Perhaps she had no choice either.

  “Your father doesn’t know,” she said aloud.

  Roisin pulled the wrung sheet out from between the rollers and put it into the basket, ready for the line. “I’ll tell him in a couple of months.”

  “Not about the child.” Bridget passed her the next sheet. “He doesn’t know that you told the I.R.A., or whoever Paddy is, where we are.”

  Roisin froze, hands in the air. There was no sound but the dripping water.

  “I know why you did it,” Bridget went on. “I might have done the same, to protect you, before you were born. But don’t expect him to understand. I don’t think he will. Or Liam.”

  Roisin’s face pinched, looking bruised as if some deep internal injury were finally showing. Roisin realized she had always expected her father to reject her, but she had not thought about Liam before. It was a new pain, and the reality of it might be far worse than the idea, even now.

  “I thought when he realized how many of us want peace, he might change, even a little,” she said. “Someone has to! We can’t go on like this, year after year, hating and mourning, then starting all over again. I won’t!” She bit her lips. “I want something better.”

  “We all do,” Bridget said quietly. “The difference is in how much we are prepared to pay for it.”

  Roisin turned away, blinking, and bent her attention to the sheets.

  When they were finished Bridget took them out and hung them on the line, propping up the middle of it with the long pole, notched at the end to hold the rope taut so the sheets did not touch the ground.

  How could she protect Connor from the disillusion he would feel when he knew that it was Roisin who had betrayed him? All the reasoning in the world would not make any difference to the pain. Even if his mind understood, his emotions would not. First Adair, now his own daughter.

  And what would Liam make of it? He was confused, all his previous certainties were slipping away. His father, whom he had believed to be so strong he wavered in nothing, was losing control of his temper, being ordered around by men he despised, and he did nothing about it. Now his sister was the cause of it all, and for an emotion and a loyalty he could only guess at.

  She yanked up the heavy pole, awkward, tipping in her hands from the weight of the wet sheets with the wind behind them. Suddenly it eased and she lurched forward, straight into Paddy.

  “Sorry,” he apologized, propping the pole up for her.

  “Thank you,” she said abruptly, realizing he had done it to help. The wind filled the sheets, bellying them high and wide, temporarily shielding them from view of the house.

  “Your husband’ll work it out that it was her,” he said quietly. “You can’t stop it.”

  “I know.” She was not sure if she resented his understanding, or in an obscure way it was a comfort not to face it alone. No, that was absurd. Of course she was alone. Paddy was the enemy. Except that he too had been betrayed by someone he had trusted, and it had been very neatly done, using his own plan against him, enmeshing him in a double murder so he had no retreat. He must feel like a complete fool.

  “It doesn’t seem as if either of us can stop much, does it?” she said drily.

  He looked at her with a black laughter in his eyes, self-mocking. He was trying to hide the hurt, and she knew in that instant that it was deep, and there were probably years of long and tangled debt behind it, and perhaps love of one sort or another. She was not sure if she wanted to know the story or not. She might understand it more than she could afford to.

  She glanced at him again. He was staring out towards the horizon, his eyes narrowed against the light off the water, even though the sun was behind them.

  “It didn’t go where you expected, did it?” she said aloud.

  “No,” he admitted. “I never thought Connor would yield easily, but I thought he would, when he realized Adair had crossed over. I misjudged him. I guess the ransom for freeing him from old promises was too high. Too high for him, I mean.”

  “I know what you mean,” she answered. “I’m not sure he knows how to escape now. He’s more hostage to the past than he is to you. You’re just more physically apparent, that’s all. It’s . . .” She thought how she was going to phrase what she wanted to say. She was thinking aloud, but if she spoke to anyone at all, it would be to Paddy.

  “It’s a matter of admitting it,” he said for her, watching to see if she understood. “We’ve invested so much of ourselves, our reason for living, whatever it is that makes us think we matter, into a set of ideals. It takes a hell of a lot of courage to say that we didn’t get it right—even in the silence of the small hours, staring up at the bedroom ceiling, let alone to all the angry men who’ve invested the same, and can’t face it either. Some of us will die of pride, I think. If you don’t believe in yourself, what have you got left?”

  “Not much,” she replied. “At least—not here. Ireland doesn’t forgive—not politically. We’re too good at remembering all the wrong things. We don’t learn to forget and start again.”

  He smiled, turning to look at the water again. “Could we, do you think, then? There’d be a lot of things I’d do differently and dear God, but wouldn’t I!” He swivelled suddenly to stare very directly at her. “What would you do differently, Bridget?”

  She felt the colour rise up her face. His eyes were too frank, far too gentle, intruding into her thoughts, the hopes and sorrows she needed to keep locked inside herself. And yet she allowed him to go on looking at her, the wind streaming past them, the sun bright, the gulls wheeling and crying above.

  “You won’t tell me, will you?” he said at last, his voice urgent.

  She lowered her gaze. “No, of course I won’t. None of it matters anyway, because we can’t.”

  “But I would like to have known,” he said, as she started to walk back in again, forgetting the laundry basket half hidden by the blowing sheets.

  She did not answer. He did know. He had seen it in her face.

  Inside the house the tension was almost unbearable. Everyone was in the kitchen, so Dermot and Sean could watch them. Liam was sitting at the table swinging his legs and alternately kicking and missing the opposite chair. Dermot was gla
ring at him, obviously irritated. Now and then Liam looked up at him, sullen and miserable, almost daring to defy him, then backing off again.

  Sean was standing in his usual place against the door frame to the hall and the bedrooms and bathroom. Connor stood by the sink and the window to the side, and the long view of the path winding up over the hill, where he and Liam had gone fishing on the first day.

  Roisin was looking through the store cupboards putting things in and out, as if it made any difference.

  “Stop doing that,” Connor told her. “Your mother knows what we’ve got. We’ll have to live on potatoes, until Dermot here gets tired of them.”

  Roisin kept her back to him, and replaced the tins and packets, such as they were, exactly where she had found them. She was stiff, her fingers fumbling. Twice she lost her grip on a tin and knocked one over. Bridget realized she was waiting for Connor to piece the facts together and realize it was she who had betrayed them.

  It was still early, but she wanted to break the prickling, near silence, the tiny, meaningless remarks.

  “I’ll make lunch,” she said to no one in particular.

  “Too soon,” Dermot told her. “It’s only half past eleven. Wait an hour.”

  “I’ll make a fish pie,” she answered. “It takes a while. And I could bake something at the same time. There’s flour.”

  “Don’t bake for them!” Connor ordered.

  “Good idea,” Dermot responded instantly. “You do that, Mrs. O’Malley. Bake us something. Can you do a cake?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous!” Connor moved forward as if he would stop her physically. “For God’s sake, Bridget! Adair’s betrayed us, told these terrorists where we are, so he can take my place and sell out the party! We’re prisoners until God knows when, and you’re going to bake a cake! Haven’t you the faintest understanding of what’s happening?”