Fallen Page 15

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘She’s exhausted. You weren’t to know.’ He rubbed his face with his hand.

  ‘Why is her stomach like that, have you seen it?’

  ‘Ascites. An accumulation of fluid –’

  ‘What fluid? Why?’

  ‘It could be any number of –’

  ‘Please, Bartley. This is Eva.’

  His pupils were pinpricks in the blue of his eyes. ‘Guy Fitzmaurice is on his way over to have a look at her.’

  ‘Tell me the truth, Bartley. What do you think it is?’

  ‘We don’t know for sure. What did she say about it?’

  I’d the sense that he was keeping something from me. ‘She wishes it was a baby.’

  ‘There won’t be any more babies.’ He went to the window and stood with his back to me. ‘You must know that she’s not at all well, Katie. These recurring infections over the years – each one weakens her a little more than the last. She doesn’t have much strength.’

  ‘How serious is it? Is she in danger?’

  He turned around. ‘Danger?’ The word hung, almost visible, in the air. ‘Katie, Eva is as safe as she can be. I’m not sure I can say the same about Alanna. We’re too close to the trouble, in Ely Place. I shouldn’t really tell you this but – we were briefed, by an army officer, not long ago.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘They think there are hundreds, possibly thousands, of rebels in positions around the Green. They’re marshalling a massive force to counter them. They’re on the move.’

  Everything in me went cold. Thousands of rebels, and a massive force against them. ‘Here? That’s official? When will they get here?’

  ‘They’d hardly tell us that. But the fighting could be intense, when they arrive.’

  ‘Don’t you think the rebels will back down, when it comes to it?’

  ‘Possibly. It depends how many there are. How well armed they are. I suppose – I know nothing about it. Whatever happens, I want Alanna out of the way. I know it’s a lot to ask, but I’m needed in the hospital. Nan would be a help to you.’

  ‘I’ll bring them to Dote and May in Percy Place,’ I said, making up my mind. ‘Their house is near enough to walk to, and quiet. If that doesn’t suit, we’ll go on to Isabel’s, in Herbert Park. I’ll get word to you somehow, at the hospital.’

  A fine drizzle had started when I came out of the nursing home and walked up Baggot Street in the direction of the Green. Starting around Pembroke Street, soldiers lined the side of the road. A single file of soldiers lined Ely Place, and the atmosphere was horribly tense, but they made no attempt to stop me. It was as if they didn’t even see me pass. Their faces were hidden by their caps. Rain beaded the shoulders of their uniforms.

  I knocked on Eva’s door. Nan opened it a crack and then pulled me inside. I told her what Bartley had said. Quickly, she packed two small holdalls.

  We were barely on the pavement before we were stopped by an officer. ‘Excuse me, ladies. Would you mind opening those bags?’

  Nan turned scarlet as a pair of knickers was lifted out, shaken, and tossed back into the bag. The bag I carried had food in it.

  ‘Where are you going?’ the officer asked.

  ‘We’re taking the child to a safer place.’

  He laughed, with no trace of humour, but let us go.

  Nan looked daggers at him as we turned into a side lane leading back to Baggot Street. ‘Our fellas are brave, all the same. Good luck to them. I’d have half a mind to join them, only who’d look after her nibs?’

  We walked as fast as Alanna’s short legs and Nan’s odd limp allowed. I looked sideways at her feet, in a man’s large shoes that slapped the pavement like boats expecting water, finding stone instead. Despite what she’d said, she was jumpy. Every bang set her looking around. ‘Is it far? Only, it’s horrible hot out. My clothes are sticking to me.’

  ‘You could take your shawl off.’ From the look she gave me, I might as well have suggested she go naked through the streets.

  Alanna had a grip on the shawl in any case, and was looking at the ground, watching where she put her feet. I saw what she was doing – avoiding the cracks.

  ‘We’ll be all right once we’re over the bridge,’ I told them.

  Dote answered my knock on the basement door. Before I could explain, she opened the door wider. ‘Isabel and Tishy are already here! They said you’d be along. We’re glad of the company, to tell the truth. Safety in numbers.’

  ‘We won’t stay,’ Isabel said, from inside the kitchen. We went in to her. Tishy sat at the table beside her. ‘My father’s car will come for us later. You’re all welcome to come back with me to Herbert Park to spend the night. We have plenty of room.’

  ‘You got here quickly,’ I said.

  ‘I changed my mind. We came straight here. I sent a note to Herbert Park, to send the car for us later.’

  I decided not to ask her why. She was probably afraid her father wouldn’t let her leave Herbert Park again, once she was safely home. She’d been dismissive of Hubie, but perhaps she was as anxious as I was for another chance to talk to him about Liam.

  Paschal clung to Tishy’s front like the bib of an apron. He looked at me with those sad black eyes of his. I held out my arms and he climbed into them. ‘Where’s May?’

  ‘Having a rest,’ Dote said. ‘She got no sleep last night.’

  Alanna squinted at Tishy, wrinkled her nose at the monkey and slid her hand into Nan’s. ‘Are they from the circus?’

  I put my free hand on Tishy’s curled head. ‘The whole town’s turned into one big circus, if you ask me. The biggest circus there ever was. Hello, May!’

  ‘Who’s this fellow?’ May came in, wearing a loose housedress and slippers. She didn’t have to bend far to bring her face level with Tishy’s. ‘Is he your friend?’

  ‘He’s my mam’s.’

  ‘I wonder do we have nuts. Let’s have a look. Come here to me, child.’

  Tishy took Paschal from me and went with May into the pantry. After a while they re-emerged, triumphant, with a bag of walnuts and a nutcracker and set us to work prising the meat free from the shells. Paschal clapped his hands and bobbed his head in thanks for every nut we gave him.

  ‘Does he have other tricks?’ I asked, remembering Lockie.

  ‘He dances,’ Tishy said. ‘He was in a show. And when people shout he breaks things. They taught him to do it, then sold him because of it.’

  Alanna opened her mouth to yell, but Nan clapped a hand on her shoulder. ‘Don’t you dare.’ Alanna made a face at Tishy instead.

  When the fun of feeding nuts to Paschal had subsided, Dote said, ‘Nan, the girls should wash their hands, after all that. There’s a cloakroom on the return. May will show you.’ She held my elbow to stop me going with them. I took Paschal from Tishy as she passed. When they’d gone, Dote told us some men had been killed nearby, soon after we’d left the day before.

  ‘Then there was shooting through the night, we couldn’t tell where. We didn’t sleep a wink. Have you any word as to what’s happening?’

  I told them what Bartley had said to me.

  ‘Never!’ Dote said. ‘Thousands in the Green?’

  ‘We only saw a handful yesterday,’ I reminded them.

  Isabel got up and went to the window. ‘They’ve had time to gather, though. I wonder how many there are.’

  ‘And where.’ Dote was grim. ‘Not to mention how long this state of affairs will last.’

  ‘Nan brought food,’ I said, changing the subject as the others came back in. The holdall contained a ham wrapped in muslin, a dozen apples, two loaves of day-old bread and a ginger cake. ‘A feast,’ Dote said. ‘Nan, you are a miracle. We’ll have ham sandwiches later.’

  ‘Fresh air first,’ May said. She picked up a short-handled rake from the kitchen windowsill to show the girls. ‘A thing Hubie made. Did I ever show it to you, Katie?’ She twisted the handle and it lengthened; turned it the othe
r way and it retracted, like a telescope. ‘Ingenious, for hard to reach places. Come with me, girls, and I’ll show you.’

  But they soon tired of combing the earth in May’s flowerbeds and left her at it. Nan laid out a game of hopscotch on the flags near the back door. The air was sweet with honeysuckle and jasmine, the hum of bees. Spring continuing, no matter what. Dote watched from the garden bench, a straw hat shading her face. Tits swooped and darted around the bird feeder hanging from the plum tree, unalarmed by occasional shots in the distance.

  Paschal darted in and stole the stone. Alanna shrieked in rage. The monkey screeched back at her and bared his teeth before shinning up the tree, scattering the birds.

  ‘But it doesn’t matter!’ Tishy explained. ‘Once it’s landed, you know where not to hop.’

  ‘I don’t want to play any more.’ Alanna folded her arms across her narrow chest.

  Dote laughed. ‘She’s the image of you,’ she told me.

  I couldn’t see it, myself. Tishy coaxed Paschal down from the tree. He got busy tangling her hair and scolding. His teeth showed like the yellowed keys of an old piano in the pinkish-grey skin of his face. I rescued Tishy’s curls from his fingers.

  May looked up from the flowerbed, where she was pulling weeds. ‘This’ll never do.’ She got to her feet, groaning at her creaky knees. ‘Come here to me, girls. Birds in a nest –’ Next thing she had them, monkey and all, inside in the wheelbarrow and was pushing them around the garden in search of frogs. After a while she wheeled them to the back door and tipped them out and they all went inside in search of drinks of water. Dote went after them. I said we’d be in in a minute. I wanted to get Isabel on her own.

  ‘I thought you were in a mad hurry to get home?’

  ‘Not home, specifically.’

  ‘What happened, back at our house? Did my mother say something that upset you?’

  ‘She said she wants her ring back.’

  So that’s what caused the atmosphere in the breakfast room earlier. ‘It’s not hers.’

  ‘She says it is.’

  ‘Well, it’s not. It belonged to our grandmother. Dad’s mother. And Dad gave it to Liam, for you.’

  ‘And I intend to keep it.’ She was fierce, as if she thought I was after it too.

  ‘Mother isn’t herself, about Liam. I think seeing you, looking at the book – it upset her. Also, Eva’s not well, and Matt’s – being difficult. We’re moving house soon. She has a lot to be dealing with.’

  I sat on a garden bench that could have done with repainting. A song-thrush was singing its heart out from the plum tree. Everything here was ordinary, but for the stone Buddha that faced us, cross-legged, with its jewelled wrists, blind eyes and bare, blunt toes. Water for the birds was caught in its lap. The trees were sturdy, the grass perfectly at home in its everyday greens. You could nearly hear things stirring back to life, down in the black soil of the flowerbeds, at the roots of the plum tree. Before Isabel could say anything, we heard the long mellow note of May’s dinner gong and Dote was at the door calling us inside. ‘Hubie’s back, and Nan’s made sandwiches.’

  Nan had the children settled at one end of the table. Paschal appeared to be dozing, on top of a standard lamp in the corner of the room, his tail curled around him like a cat’s. A slender edition of the Irish Times was on a chair, folded around an item describing what it called an attempt to overthrow the government.

  ‘It was the only newspaper I could find,’ Hubie said, coming in to join us. ‘There’s not much in it. Nothing about Verdun.’

  I picked it up, knocking a sketchpad I hadn’t seen underneath it to the floor. I thought it was Dote’s, but the style of the drawings was different. These were of struts and angles, and one was a contraption like the control bar of a marionette, with strings coming out of it. I bent to pick it up, but Hubie got there first, holding it in his good hand and smoothing the crumpled page with his forearm before closing it over. I apologized.

  ‘It’s nothing, only rough work and scribbles,’ he said, putting the pad aside.

  I scanned the newspaper. It gave a long list of places that had been taken by the rebels, but said many had been taken back already, and that the authorities had come out quickly.

  The paper asked us to ‘trust firmly in the speedy triumph of the forces of law and order. Those loyal citizens of Dublin who cannot actively help their country’s cause at this moment may help it indirectly by refusing to give way to panic, and by maintaining in their households a healthy spirit of hope. The ordeal is severe but it will be short.’

  Hubie had been to Clanwilliam House, on the corner at Mount Street Bridge, on the town side of the canal. A large, end-of-terrace house, its windows were barricaded with furniture, but he’d managed a word with the gunmen inside. ‘They said no harm will come to anyone who stays indoors and minds their own business.’

  ‘But what will they do?’ May asked.

  Hubie glanced at the girls, who were busy dipping soldiers of toast into soft-boiled eggs.

  ‘Another time, May. Little pitchers!’ Dote passed around ham sandwiches, and egg-and-parsley salad for the adults. She said it was the last of the eggs, but we may as well enjoy them, they wouldn’t keep in the heat.

  After lunch, May showed the children her music table. When the inlaid surface was lifted open, a Viennese waltz began to play. Paschal swayed to the music. He rolled his shoulders and played the air with his hands. May clapped her hands and the girls joined in. Tishy danced in circles and quarter-turns, her arms held up to an imaginary partner.

  Hubie fiddled with marbles cupped in his left hand. I asked Dote about it when he went out of the room to get more cigarettes.

  ‘He’s practising,’ she said. ‘He wants to be as able with his left hand as he once was with his right. You watch. He’s always using it. He even writes and draws with it, now, almost as well as he used to.’

  Nan suggested a nap and took the girls upstairs. At last, the real talk could begin. I sat on the floor, my back against Isabel’s chair. I was facing the window, with its orange curtains. We described the morning’s journey across town. I couldn’t resist talking up the danger, how exposed we’d been on the bridge, the watching crowd.

  ‘They’d have liked it better if you were shot to ribbons,’ Hubie said.

  ‘Ah, now, Hubie,’ Dote said.

  I wondered was he right. The tension and uncertainty of waiting was giving way to a kind of impatience in me. I’d sensed it on the street as well. If something was going to happen, let it happen, and let it happen soon. Liam had written something similar, about wanting to get out to the Front so that he would know what he was facing and how he’d face it. I said as much. ‘But then, it seems, being at the Front was more of the same. Waiting. Strain. Boredom, even?’

  Hubie dipped his head, but I couldn’t tell if he was agreeing with me or simply changing position to ease out a strain in his neck.

  Isabel leaned forward. ‘Tell us.’

  ‘Tell you what, exactly?’

  ‘What it was like,’ I said.

  He tilted his teacup and considered its contents. ‘Everyone asks. I’m not sure anyone wants to know.’

  ‘I do.’

  He looked straight at me. ‘Do you? Because I’ll tell you.’ He drained his cup in one quick swallow, set it on its saucer on the low table in front of him and leaned forward to pitch his voice into the space between us.

  Hubie’s people were Westmeath farmers, but there were ancestors on his mother’s side who’d left with the Wild Geese, made their fortune in France. His paternal uncles were in the Dublins, so he thought why not? He was the second son, there wasn’t much for him at home. He wanted to see a bit of the world, took his commission in 1912. Shipped out at the beginning of the war, he fought in the early battles in France, at the Marne, the Aisne, Armentières, the last under the brightest moon he’d ever seen in his life. A killing moon.

  When they arrived in Dover, thousands of men were milling ar
ound the docks and laying about in the sheds. It would take days to get them all across the water. But Hubie’s battalion were leaving on the next tide and he was kept busy, giving out rations and checking kit.

  The crossing was smooth. There was little sign of war when they docked, apart from the roads, busy with military vehicles. They passed a group of prisoners sitting on the ground, the first Germans he’d seen, a misfortunate-looking lot in dusty uniforms. He could hear guns popping and booming in the distance. They were about nine miles behind the lines.

  They moved up the next day. The sun shone, the fields were green and gold, harvest-ready. It was all fine and good, marching down country lanes, past orchards bursting with fruit, red-roofed houses. Like a painting. The men singing, of all things, ‘One Man Went to Mow’. Nights when he couldn’t sleep, that bloody song still drilled its heavy boots on his brain: three men, two men, one man and his dog … No meadows now, only a new and terrible Dead Sea.

  That first day, they stopped in a town square. People brought them coffee. Apples were pressed into their hands, and bread. Children waved and women kissed them. At night he was dog-tired but couldn’t sleep, his nerves strung taut as wire. He was on the brink of something huge. The immensity of the Continent stretched ahead, other continents beyond that. He’d had no notion how small Ireland was ’til he left. In France, even the sky seemed wider and higher than at home. And the sky that first night was spectacularly thick and lush, littered with stars, closer than he’d ever seen them. The ground hard as bone. There was a stillness, as though time itself had stopped. He wished it would. He wished the world itself would stop turning and hold them fast, right there, all that was to come held off and made harmless.

  The next morning they moved up towards the Front. They passed a stream of people going the other way, the way they’d come. Leaving their homes, all they could carry bundled in carts or strapped to their backs, hanging in baskets from their shoulders. He wondered how long it would be before those people came back, what they’d find when they did. He pitied them.

  What was left of their battalion passed through that place again, weeks later, after they’d been well and truly blooded. It was a waste land. Where there had been columns of marching men, now there were lines of dead. The next time Hubie saw people abandon their homes, he felt nothing. Why squander pity on people who were on their way to safety, while soldiers marched up the line to face death on their behalf?