Saints and Sinners (7 page)

The journey hither takes three hours and thirty-five minutes, not allowing for mishaps. More than once, in our godforsaken part of the world, some wretch or beast has surrendered to the embraces of the rail track. Yes, the evening train winding and wending its way and all that fabled scenery and sky and skyline and torrents of rain.

Farewell, dear callous lady.

Madame! There has been a strange development for which you are indirectly responsible. Had you seen me, it could not have occurred, as I would have had to take the later train and not the six o'clock express.

I had found an empty carriage, and as the train gave its preliminary lurches a door behind me, which I presumed led to the driver's cabin, was unlocked and a passenger ushered in. Even before I turned to look I knew, by the quickening of my pulse. It was not the footfall and not yet the voice, because no one had spoken; you could almost say my hunch was ethereal, yes, plucked from the ether. There was my husband, with his squashed briefcase, wedged under his elbow, and a stack of papers in his arms, which he was holding awkwardly. He was flushed from having to race to catch the train.

"Millie," he said, incredulous. As the train started, his papers skived all about and he flopped onto the seat opposite and looked at me almost with wonder, as if he were seeing me in some way altered, his wife of twenty-two years leading a secret life, having a day up in Dublin, a rendezvous perhaps, and wearing a black cloche hat with a soft furry feather that tapered along the cheek.

"Where did we buy that hat?" he asked.

"We" I said, lingering on the word, "we bought it in Paris on the Rue du Dragon one Christmas Eve, as it began to snow."

"So we did," he said, and gazed into space as if he would have given anything to see falling snow.

The countryside, like our lives, is rolling by, stacks of chimney pots higgledy-piggledy, rooks and jackdaws whirling in the dusk of heaven.

In a while, he will lead me along to the dining car, a little agitation at the core of both our hearts, and we shall sit quietly, uncertain of what the future may hold.

'TIS A DUMP," Mona said.

"'Tis grand," Shane said, looking around.

For an hour or more they had driven, under the prow of a mountain, in search of a restaurant that would be quiet but also cheerful, and now they had landed themselves in this big, gaunt room that seemingly served as both ballroom and dining room. A microphone on a metal stand took pride of place, and a bit of orange curtain lay crumpled on the bandstand, as if someone had flung it down there in petulance. One end of a long refectory table was covered with a white lace cloth under which there had been put a strip of red crepe paper, and it was there they would most likely be seated.

Itwas late spring, and when from the roadway they had spotted the rusted iron gates and the long winding avenue, they thought how suitable and how enchanting it seemed. Moreover, the hotel had a lovely name— Glasheen. They drove up the long avenue, trees on either side, oak, sycamore, ash, all meshed together, fighting amiably as it were for ascendancy and birds in their evening sallies, noisier than the pigeons who cooed softly in their roomy roosts.

A battered jalopy with a for sale sign stood in the car park that was separated from a nearby meadow by a rope of green cable. A sign on a post read,
D
anger—
H
igh
V
oltage,
and from a metal box there came a burping that every few seconds rose to a growl.

Close to the entrance was a butcher's van with the owner's name printed in tasteful brown lettering, and on the step a child's tractor filled with toy soldiers and wooden blocks. In the hallway, a nest of candles glimmered on a high whatnot and a luxuriant flowering plant trailed and crept along the floor, amoebawise. The petals were a soft, velvety black, with tiny green eyes, pinpoints, and there was something both beautiful and sinister about it. She had never seen a black flower before. Since nobody answered, she went into an adjoining room, where a man had his face so close to the television screen he seemed to be conversing with it and took no notice of her. Two dogs dozed on a torn leather armchair. Presently a girl came, a strapping young girl who could not say for certain if they did or did not do dinners, as the season was not yet in full swing. Nevertheless, she led the way to the gaunt, cheerless dining room.

They had driven so many miles, first to a town with a lake and a round tower, where they had strolled, then sat on dampish rough-hewn picnic stools and noted to each other how strange that others who had driven there had simply sat in their motorcars and stared out at the lake. He liked being with her, she could feel that. She didn't know him very well. She had volunteered to give painting lessons in the prison in the Midlands, where he was serving a long sentence. Though many came for the first few classes, they eventually dropped away and by the end, Shane was the only one. Sitting with his back to her, finishing off a self-portrait, which was in viscous gold and mustard yellows, she had asked him if he had ever seen the paintings of van Gogh, to which he said he hadn't. She was reminded of van Gogh because of the upturned stump of a sneaker on which the dry paint bristled.

Walking in the graveyard beside the round tower, she had asked very quietly, "How do you find the world, Shane?" since he was only out of prison a few short weeks.

"Crowded," he had said, and half smiled.

While he was in prison, his wife had been shot, bathing their child, shot in lieu of him, and not long afterwards the child, who was being reared with relatives, had also died, of meningitis. On the evening that his wife had been shot, he had gone to sleep while it was still bright, and though the warders knocked and pounded on his cell door, to tell him of it, he did not hear them. He reckoned that in sleep he was postponing the news that he could not bear, but would have to learn to bear. How he managed never to crack up was a mystery to Mona.

A few days before Christmas, the governor of the prison had rung her to tell her that there was a parcel left for her in his office. It was the portrait, wrapped in assorted carrier bags, and on the greeting card he had written, "For Mona ... I'm sorry it's so crude." Something about the message seemed unfinished, as if he had wanted to say more, and it was this hesitancy that emboldened her to ask if he would like to meet in Dublin when he was let out. He was due out that spring, but it was kept a secret to avoid a media jamboree. She knew how reserved he was, he having mentioned that, though he ate in the refectory and played tennis three times a week, he kept to himself and the best times were at night in the cell, listening to tapes of Irish music and songs. She imagined that on those nights he would mull on the past and on the future, too, possibly envisaging how the world had changed in the fifteen years since he was captured. It was a hair-raising capture that attracted the attention of the nation and confirmed him as a dangerous outlaw.

It so happened that he was released three days earlier than he had expected and she could scarcely believe it when he telephoned her in her studio in Dublin and said somewhat bashfully, "It's me ... I'm free."

They had made an appointment to meet in a hotel, and standing on the steps on a crisp frosted morning, the winter boughs and branches in the park across the way jeweled in frost, she felt he was not coming, that something had prevented him. After almost an hour, a young boy in a braided outfit came and told her that she was wanted on the phone and brazenly repeated Shane's full name. He was in another hotel a mile away, and she told him, somewhat sternly, to wait there and not to budge.

Sitting with him in a booth of the second hotel, drinking tea, there was a tentativeness. It was strange to see him in a gaudy shirt and jeans, because in the prison portacabin where she had visited him, everything was muted. Moreover, a policeman had always stood behind them, listening in, except for the odd time when he took a stroll, maybe to smoke a cigarette. They had not shook hands when they met on the steps of the hotel, but she knew by his way of looking at her that he was glad to see her, and he remarked on her hair being much nicer, loose like that. For the painting class it had always been tied back and made her look more severe.

"So you're free," she said.

"I had only ten minutes' warning," he said.

"How come?"

"The governor came down to the sewing room and said, 'You have a car and a driver at your disposal for twenty-four hours, it'll take you anywhere you want.'"

As he spoke she recalled the shiver she had felt as the governor told her that there were many people who wished Shane dead.

"You mean the Brits?"

"Them and his own ... feuds ... feuds ... Put it this way, he'll always be a wanted man" and he raised his arms to fend off questions.

"What were you sewing?" she asked, in surprise.

"Oh, bits and pieces for the lads ...zips, darns, patches ... there was a long queue."

"Who taught you to sew?"

"We were ten children at home ... the mother had a lot of other things to do," he said shyly.

"So the lads will miss you?"

"They might," he said, but without any show of emotion, then looking straight ahead he began to roll a cigarette, thoughtfully. He seemed then to be the very incarnation of loneliness, of isolatedness.

Some friends had pooled together to get him a secondhand motorcar, and a few weeks later he suggested that they drive out into the country of an evening. It was agreed that she would travel by train and meet him in the town about eight miles north of Dublin, where he had found lodgings with a black woman, who chattered all day long to her humming birds, and as he said did not ask questions.

Now they were in the big dining room, famished and waiting for the owner to come and tell them what she could possibly give them to eat. When she met Shane as arranged at the railway station, he was sitting against the outside wall eating an ice cream, and she wondered why a wanted man would sit there, visible to all, in his new jeans and jazzy shirt.

His car was a little two-seater with a fawn coupe top. They had tried various restaurants along the way, to no avail. In one, a sullen owner pulled the door barely ajar and said there was no hope of teas as he was laid up. Several times she got out of the car and went in, only to discover that the restaurant was too rackety or too dismal. She joked about these places when she got back, described the tables, the lighting, the dried flowers and so on, giving each place marks ranging from one to ten. Shane didn't talk much, but he liked letting her talk. The years inside had made him taciturn. Judging by the newspaper photographs that had been taken on the day he was captured, he had changed beyond recognition. He had gone in young and cavalier, and had come out almost bald, with a thin rust mustache that somehow looked as ifit were spliced to his upper lip. He said once to her and only once that she herself could be the judge of his actions. He had fought for what he believed in, which was for his country to be one, one land, one people, and not have a shank of it cut off.

When they came to the gateway leading to Glasheen, she felt it was ideal, so sequestered and the building far below, smothered in a grove of trees. Holding open one half of the iron gate—she had put a stone to the other half—she saw to one side a public telephone kiosk that looked glaringly forlorn, the floor strewn with litter. The horse chestnut trees were in full bloom, pink-and-white tassels in a beautiful droop, and in the meadow lambs bleated ceaselessly. It was pandemonium, what with them bleating and racing around in fear of losing their mothers.

"It's like a maternity ward," Shane said, and she wondered if he had ever been in one, as he was already in prison when his wife had given birth. Only his wife truly knew him and she was dead.

Looking then at the stranded microphone, she said it was lucky they hadn't come on a dance night, as she was not a dancer. "Me neither," Shane said.

"Oh you'd dance if you were made to," the owner said as she hurried in, drying her hands on a tea cloth, and told them about the lovely hunt ball they had had in the winter, people from all around, gentry and farmers and cattle dealers and highwaymen and God knows what.

"Are we bothering you?" Shane said.

"Aren't ye what I have been hoping for," she said, and led them across to the long table that stretched almost to the window. When he sat down he smiled. It was the way he smiled that drew people to him, and the owner, quick to recognize it, introduced herself as Wynne and said proudly that theywere in luck because her good-for-nothing husband had caught a salmon and she would poach it, along with potatoes and cabbage. Meanwhile, she said, they should tuck into the drink and she would bring bread to mop it up. There was a slight hitch, as she was inexpert at opening the bottle of wine, which Mona had already ordered. The corkscrew buckled and bits of crumpled cork floated in the pale amber liquid.

"Just enjoy the view and the rolling countryside," Wynne said, and sallied off muttering what a nice man Shane was and what nice manners and how manners maketh the man.