Fallen (18 page)

‘It'd give you the collywobbles,' Nan said, knotting her hands.

‘The entire flaming door was ajar, in Flanders,' Hubie said. ‘Banging on its hinges, all year long. At night we'd see the Red Cross lanterns, as they gathered up their wounded. One morning we watched them carry out a stretcher, draped in a cloth. We held our fire and watched them busy themselves with men we thought were hurt.' A bitter laugh. ‘All that time, they were setting up a gun. We lost three men to it that morning.'

‘No!' Isabel said.

‘You've no notion.' He glared, as though we were to blame. ‘You think old rules still apply. I've heard it said out there' – he swung his cup towards the window, then to his mouth, swallowed – ‘ “No war's ever been fought in the streets of a European city.” ' He put on a false accent to say it. His face was flushed. ‘Those men out there think they're safe, surrounded by people like you, and buildings. I've seen whole villages wiped off the face of the earth, pulverized. Churches and farms destroyed. Why should you be immune, here?'

‘People think if they say it often enough, it will be true,' Dote said, careful.

He tugged the black leather glove from his damaged hand and slotted a cigarette between the clawed, livid finger that remained and his thumb. With his other hand he took out a lighter and flipped the wheel, lit the cigarette. He stared at me all the while, as though daring me to look away. He sucked in a deep breath, stabbed the glowing cigarette-tip in my direction. ‘This'll give you an idea … There was a private, not a young man, lost his head one morning. He keened like a woman, for no reason. Slack mouth, drooling, tears streaming down his face. I'd never seen it before.'

He was talking fast, running through the words. ‘I tried to shut his mouth for him with a slap to the cheek. Told the colour sergeant to put him in the funk hole, keep an eye on him. He crammed himself into it, face first. Like a child trying to
hide in its mother's skirts. As if he wanted the earth to open up and take him.' He glared at us, defiant. Daring us to judge him.

‘What happened?' I asked.

‘Not long after, a shell fell in on top of him and killed him.' He stood up, paced the length of the room, then back again. Across and back. Across and back. Across and – ‘What no one ever says is that one man's decision sets off a whole train of events that ends in the ruination of another. Someone fires the first shot. Someone decides where troops will go. Every little thing you do out there has consequences. One man's whim can be the end of another; a step this way or that can save or kill you. That was one of my own men, and I'm the one who did for him.'

Dote cleared her throat. ‘He was a liability. You weren't to blame.'

‘Poor soul.' Isabel was pale. ‘It's barbaric.'

Hubie's contempt appeared to settle on her. I was glad it wasn't me. ‘Don't ask, if you don't want to know. It's easy to have an opinion from a distance. I'd have liked that luxury, myself.' He leaned down and stubbed out his cigarette, chasing the sparks across the bowl of the ashtray and extinguishing each one. The china rattled. He went back to his pacing, hand clasping wrist at his back, shoulders square and lonely.

‘You'd want to have seen the rats.' There was a gleam in his eye – he was enjoying making us uncomfortable. He said he told his men not to kill them because they'd stink up the trench and squelch underfoot, in a way that'd sicken the strongest of stomachs. After he was injured, while he was lying on the ground outside the medical post, waiting for his turn, a rat ran past his head, near enough that he felt its feet disturb his hair. The rat had a human finger in its mouth. ‘I wondered was it mine.'

There was a queer silence. Dote and Nan began to clear
the dishes. I looked out of the window. ‘There's a car stopping.'

Isabel stood and looked out. ‘It's Stephenson. You should come back with me. All of you.'

‘There are too many of us,' I said.

‘You'd be welcome. There's a command post in the park, soldiers everywhere. And sentries. It might be the safest place in Dublin.'

‘There wouldn't be room for us all in the car.'

‘Stephenson could come back. If the troops are on their way –'

‘What do you think, May?' Dote asked.

‘Go if you want. I'm staying.'

‘I'll stay with you.' Hubie walked over to the window.

‘I will too,' Dote said.

‘Katie?'

Before I could answer, Hubie spoke. ‘There's no particular vantage point here, for either side. The end houses might be at risk, but I'd say we're safe enough.'

‘But the children –'

‘Should go,' he said. ‘It's liable to get – loud.'

‘Or, as you said, the gunmen might surrender. In which case, all's well.' I'd a whole string of reasons for not wanting to go to Isabel's. Percy Place was closer to Eva, for one. Besides, I had to admit that a stubborn flame of curiosity had lit on the floor of my mind, about what might happen here – I was no better than Eugene and those others who sat at the hotel window to watch, when it came to it. And I wanted to know what else Hubie Wilson might have to say, given time. I had questions I'd like to ask him, when no one else was around to hear.

I told them I wanted to be near Eva. May said of course I should stay in Percy Place. Nan and the girls could go to Herbert Park with Isabel, they wouldn't need me. Isabel looked
put out, but she didn't complain. She only said again that everyone was welcome, any time.

The front door stood open. The pavement smelled of fresh rain. Trees glistened over the replenished water of the canal, which threw up circles and darts of diminishing rain. Isabel's father's car waited at the kerb. Stephenson stood beside it, talking to Hubie about the car. A De Dion-Bouton, but made in Belfast by an outfit called Chambers, had Hubie heard of them? There was a waiting list. The Judge had had to wait two years for it, but it was worth every minute of the wait, it was a beauty.

Hubie was more interested in what De Dion were making now. Aircraft engines and gun parts. They'd devised an anti-aircraft gun, already in use by the French Army, did Stephenson know that? ‘I've seen them,' Hubie said. ‘A field gun mounted on a lorry-bed, firing into the sky. Loud as a train.'

On the canal, a pair of swans glided past in the direction of the humped bridge, their black faces turned towards each other, unperturbed by the fine rain.

‘Are you not worried that the gunmen will commandeer the car?' I asked Stephenson.

‘No, miss.' He lifted one edge of his jacket with a finger, showing the grip of a revolver, snug in a leather holster at his side.

There was a commotion on the stairs behind us. Alanna came down first, neat and serene. Behind her, Nan dragged Tishy by the hand, stair by stair. Tishy's other hand flailed for the banister, trying to hold on. ‘I won't go without him!'

Dote moved behind Tishy, pressing her forward. ‘We don't have time for this, Tishy.'

‘What's wrong?' I asked her.

‘The monkey's run away.'

‘But don't you worry, pet.' May spoke from the return, above them. ‘We'll find him. We'll look after him.'

‘He'll be safer here than if he's turned loose in a strange place.' Hubie's air of authority seemed to calm Tishy.

‘Let me stay too, then,' she pleaded. ‘I'll be good.'

Isabel gathered the child's fine hair in her hands and lifted it away from her neck. ‘It's not that, my lamb. There might be trouble. We want you to be safe.'

‘Please.'

‘I'm sorry.'

‘Come too!' She grabbed hold of my skirt.

Feeling like a brute, I pulled it free. ‘No, Tishy. I'll see you tomorrow. It's for the best.'

Isabel turned for the car. Tishy went with her, feet dragging, shoulders slumped in defeat. Isabel's arm went around her and pulled her in close to her side. In that moment I saw that she'd meet someone, marry, have children. But the children she would have would not be Liam's. It was as though she'd tugged a plug loose in my chest. Everything vital inside me drained away, as if Liam died all over again. This time I knew he wasn't coming back.

The car pulled away. I crossed the road to look at the water, and the swans. When I turned around, Hubie was still standing at the top of the steps. He was watching them too. ‘D'you know, they mate for life,' he said. Smoke curled from the cigarette he held between his thumb and the shortened little finger of his damaged hand. He'd dispensed with the glove altogether.

‘You were hard on Isabel,' I said.

‘No. You people are bog-soft.' He dropped his cigarette and ground it with his heel. ‘I suppose you agree with her?'

‘I think she's brave. Every time she speaks like that, she goes out under fire in her own way.'

He kicked the butt into the street and started down the steps. I felt a stab of panic, as though I'd never see him again. ‘Where are you going?'

‘The driver said a meeting was called, to organize ways to stop the looting.' He looked at the face of a watch strapped to his wrist with a leather strap. ‘I'm late, but I might catch the end of it. Do you know where Westmoreland Chambers is?'

‘I'll show you.' I ran in to tell Dote I was going, grabbed Liam's coat off the stand and ran out again, afraid he'd have gone without me. I hurried down the steps after him, shrugging myself into the coat.

He was waiting. He didn't move out of my way, but stood there, blocking the path, smelling of smoke and something else I couldn't put my finger on. We were so close, I felt a blast of heat and stepped back, uneasy. It was as though the street and the city beyond it had shrunk to the size of a dressing room, and I couldn't find the door. ‘What is it?'

‘That coat – do you need one? – it's too big for you. I'm sure Aunt May would lend you one, if you asked her.'

I shook my hair free from the collar and stalked past him, pulling the coat tight and belting it, pulling on my hat. ‘It's Liam's.'

‘It makes you look like a rebel.'

‘Good.'

For the second day running, a crowd had gathered on O'Connell Bridge to watch the dramatics on Sackville Street. A gigantic bonfire raged beyond Abbey Street. Even from the back of the crowd I could see items being flung out of the upper windows of a shop. Ambulances thundered up and down the quays, bells jangling. I didn't know if it was me or the world that shook.

I knew we were in a hurry, but I stood up on tiptoe, as if that would let me see through the crowds, beyond Nelson and the overhead cables, all the way north to our house. ‘We live up that way,' I said. ‘I should go and see if the house is all right.'

‘You'll never get through that crowd, Katie.' It was the first time I'd heard my name from his mouth. It felt like a touch, like his hand at my elbow, guiding me in through the door to the building. ‘Come on, we're late.'

Upstairs, a clerkish young man and his portly companion were discussing a battle that had been fought in Dame Street, how soldiers and insurgents alike had needed to shout at bystanders to get out of the way. The portly one was not unlike Florrie's Eugene, the way his plump fingers were tucked into the pockets of a straining waistcoat.

‘Where's Mr Sheehy-Skeffington?' I asked, when they'd finished talking. ‘Did he not call a meeting?'

I admired Mr Sheehy-Skeffington. He was a familiar figure around town, often to be seen taking notes at lectures for his newspaper, having lunch in the vegetarian restaurant on Foster Place or locked in earnest debate with someone on the street – he'd talk to anyone. He'd stroke a tangle of beard, head to one side, eyes on the ground, as though inspiration might be found in a gutter or emerge from a drain. He was a soft touch for guttersnipes. People mocked him, but they smiled when they caught sight of him. He was known as the Peace Man. Some wags called him the Ladies' Man, because of the Votes for Women button he wore on his lapel.

The clerk took a watch out of his pocket. ‘Twenty past six. We've been here ten minutes and there's no sign of him.'

‘We were later than I thought,' Hubie said to me. ‘The meeting was to start at half past five. Maybe we missed him.'

Footsteps on the stairs made us turn to the door expectantly, but it was a scarlet-cheeked woman who came in, breathing heavily. ‘Mercy,' she said when she got her breath back. ‘Those stairs'll be the death of me. Mr Thompson from downstairs sent me up to tell you, you missed the man.' She took another big breath and sighed it out, fanning her
face with her hands. ‘He waited a half-hour or so, and no one came. Then he left.'

‘Do you know where he went?' Hubie asked.

‘Home for his tea, if he'd any sense. Where we all should be. We'll be locking up the doors in a minute.'

‘We might as well go on, so,' the clerk said. ‘There's not much to be done with just the four of us.'

‘We'd best be going too,' Hubie said, when they'd left. ‘The streets are quieter, in any case.'

It was true. When we came out, the looters had retreated to the far end of Sackville Street. I stretched my neck to see as far up the street as I could.

Hubie took my arm. ‘Come on.' He steered me past the bank and across Dame Street. Further up, we crossed back again to walk in the shelter of Trinity's walls. He said the presence of the soldiers who'd taken over the college might be enough to bring the situation under control.

I found myself telling him everything: Matt's absence, Liam's guns. I tugged the gabardine tighter around me, folded my arms across my waist. Walked faster. Hubie said nothing.

We'd reached the corner of Merrion Square. He paused to read an anti-fraternization handbill posted to a telegraph pole.

‘Pay no attention,' I said, walking on. He came too, his face unreadable. I was mortified, and angry on his behalf. ‘Every time you turn around, someone's pushing a handbill at you, or dangling a leaflet, or haranguing you from a soapbox. There's always someone telling you what to think, trying to make up your mind for you.'