Shamrock Green (54 page)

The new leather, dampened by sea air, gave off a faint smell of cat's pee, but at least the black dye hadn't started to seep out of it yet. He held the cardboard packet lightly, clicked his right hand over his left and felt the clever little hinges slide and the joint close in on his palm. Lo and behold, he was holding the packet securely. He removed a cigarette and, glancing up, noticed that the chap behind the bar was watching him. He gave the chap a wink. There was nothing jolly in the wink, nothing spontaneous. He put the cigarette into his mouth but didn't light it.

The publican shifted along the counter, absently polishing a glass. His expression indicated that he was about to ask questions and, depending on the answers, offer sympathy, for not even a Dublin publican could tell a brave Irish rebel from a brave Irish soldier in the gelid light of a November afternoon. Provided he kept his mouth shut, he, Gowry McCulloch, could be anything he wanted to be: a traveller, a docker, an emigrant returning home, a seller of holy trifles or ladies' undergarments, a liar or a lout or a leader of men. He was none of these things, of course. He was merely a nonentity, a man without soul or identity, nursing the memory of what he had left behind.

When he brought up the haversack and dumped it on the polished counter, the publican's curiosity became tinged with alarm.

‘An' what's that you have there?' he asked.

‘What does it look like?' Gowry said.

‘A bag, a haversack. Have you been far then?'

‘Far enough,' said Gowry. ‘An' this, what does this look like?'

He linked his right hand with his left, pressed down on the hinges hidden in the oak and then, stiffening his elbow, held it up.

‘A fist,' the publican said.

‘There you are then,' Gowry said and sweeping up the glass finished his stout in a swallow, plucked the haversack from the counter and went striding out into the rain, heading not for Sperryhead Road but for Endicott Street and all that was left of the life he had lost on the plains between Albert and Baupaume.

*   *   *

The rain had eased by the time he reached Parnell Street but he could see nothing of the hills. It felt clumsy to be moving on pavements again without a rifle and a pack. Buying a haversack had been a stupid idea; it made him look like a postman. He came up into unfamiliar territory at the mouth of Endicott Street and saw the four tenements rearing up in the gloom ahead of him. Then he caught the inimitable sound of a school bell and the sudden starling-chatter of children exploding from the gates of a schoolyard. They flooded out of a side street and were suddenly all around him.

Behind the youngsters older boys and girls strolled more sedately, feigning self-assurance. They were all just children, of course, stained by the classroom, ragged, rumpled and untidy. The girls walked in twos, the boys in packs; Gowry, in the midst of them, so adult and uninteresting as to be almost invisible. He had fought for them, though, had plunged his bayonet into German bellies just to give them a future – or so he had been led to believe. He questioned that noble ideal now, for he had come around to the view that he had been gulled into fighting for nothing more worthy than the vanity of nations.

Then there she was – Maeve. He hardly recognised her in her shabby black overcoat, short and tight about her long frame, her beret at a jaunty angle, swinging her satchel as if it were filled with feathers. She walked with another girl, trailed by four scruffy boys whose sly comments the girls casually ignored.

Gowry had a quite unreasonable urge to knock the lads' heads together and tell them to leave his daughter alone or to learn a few manners and a bit of respect. He sucked in a deep breath, and another. He could hardly breathe – the gas again, the wave of sticky green fog – and his eyes were wet. He tucked his chin into his collar for fear that she would see him weakened or, worse, that she wouldn't recognise him at all. He loitered by the corner lamppost. He couldn't move, couldn't advance or retreat.

Maeve glanced up. She was smiling at something; he didn't know what. The girl beside her was smaller and less robust than Maeve and she was laughing and when Gowry heard the girls' laughter he felt a catch in his throat and his eyes fill. He lifted his arm and wiped his nose on his sleeve. The movement drew Maeve's attention to him. She frowned. When she frowned she looked like her mother, prettier than ever with that soft crease in the middle of her brow and her lips parted. If he had been a young man he would have walked behind her too and felt the awkward pitter-patter in his chest that he couldn't put a name to yet or do much about.

The satchel checked in mid-air. She caught it and pressed it against her breast, the beret cocked over one bright, startled eye. He heard her say, ‘My God! My God!' and then she was running towards him and, a moment later, flung herself into his arms.

‘Daddy!' she cried. ‘Oh, Daddy!'

And at that precise moment Gowry knew why he had returned to Dublin and what had brought him home.

PART SEVEN

Maeve

Chapter Twenty-six

By Christmas the gilt had gone off the gingerbread. On the surface all was as well as could be expected and her daddy, though changed, was less moody than she remembered him to be. The fact that he didn't look like her daddy might have had something to do with it. She soon became used to his altered appearance, though, and wasn't daunted by the detachable wooden hand or the crumpled, pink-skin stump at the base of his thumb.

When she first caught him with the hand unstrapped he'd tried to hide the injury from her but she had said, ‘Let me see,' and he had obediently held out his hand like a schoolboy awaiting a stroke from the pandy-bat.

‘Does it hurt?'

‘Yes.'

‘Does it hurt more when you wear the strap?'

‘Yes.'

‘It's not infected, is it?'

‘No.'

He had peered down at the thing as if he too were seeing it for the first time. He bent the thumb experimentally and released a puff of breath as the tendons tightened, wrist and forearm rubbed hairless by the broad, buckled straps that held the hand in place. It was, Maeve had to admit, ugly, almost as ugly as the dental wedge that pushed out his lips. There was something distinctive about his ugliness, though, a battered quality that made him seem more of an individual. When she asked her mother what she thought of Dad, however, Mam answered only with a shrug and Maeve wondered if that was why Dad slept upstairs and she still slept with Mam.

She had offered to swap, to sleep in Fran's room on the fourth floor, though she didn't fancy the climb up the spiral staircase in the dark, but her mother would have none of it. So Dad occupied Fran's old room and the man who had lodged there – Mr Dunnigan – was found lodgings in another Catholic house and lurched away with two bottles of Powers in his cardboard suitcase to compensate him for the inconvenience.

Because she had never been in the room when Fran was alive, Maeve didn't think it odd that her father should be sleeping in a bed that her mother and Fran had shared. It was such a neat little room and the coal fire made it cheerful on cold November evenings and if Dad felt uncomfortable there then he didn't complain. In fact he didn't complain about anything.

When she clumped upstairs to see how he was faring she would find him seated in the chair by the window staring out at the chimneypots with a far-away look in his eyes. When she asked if she was interrupting him he would shake his head, not irritably but as if he were bringing himself back from some colourful land that only existed inside his head, like a jigsaw with jumbled pieces that needed sorting out.

For two or three weeks he kept himself to himself. Mam told Maeve to leave him alone, for he needed time to adjust. Then one very cold afternoon he went out and didn't come back for supper and Mam became very tense and when she heard the outside door rattle handed Sean to Maeve and ran out into the hallway.

‘Are you all right, Gowry?

‘I am. I am.'

‘Would you like a bite of supper?'

‘Aye, that would be fine.'

He came into the room, grey with cold, chafing the wooden hand with his good hand as if the frost had made the artificial joints ache. He sat down in front of the fire, slumped, then glanced over at Maeve and gave her a wink.

‘I've found work,' he said.

‘Where?' Mam asked.

‘Watton's.'

‘Watton's!' Maeve heard herself exclaim. ‘Not drivin'?'

‘Storeman.'

‘Can you – I mean, with the hand?' said Sylvie.

‘They put me to the test.'

‘What sort o' test?' said Maeve.

‘Dexterity. I'm to be employed as a checker. I'll keep tally of what comes in an' what goes out. I've a board an' a pencil, an' my own tally book. It's countin' mostly, so I can manage it well enough. The pay's miserly, but beggars can't be choosers.'

‘You're no beggar,' Sylvie said. ‘They're lucky to have you.'

He nodded, looked into the fire for a moment. ‘Know why I got the job? I got the job because I fought in France,' he said. ‘First question the boss asked me. An' when I said I'd served with the Sperryhead Rifles the post was as good as mine. They have a policy there: no republicans. They don't care for republicans.'

‘Huh!' said Maeve, scornfully. ‘Tell that to Turk.'

‘I don't have to tell it to anybody,' her father said.

‘Turk fought for—'

‘Maeve, that's enough,' her mother said.

She put her half-brother down on the floor. He was crawling now like a little tank and would be walking before he was much older. He went off across the floor like a rocket, heading straight for the hearth and the firelight. Her daddy reached down and scooped him up, held him one-handed and let him swim in the air, plump legs and arms flailing, then stood him on his knee, upright with an arm about his middle.

‘I start on Monday on the back shift. Four o'clock until midnight. Saturday too. I'll be on the docks when the cargoes come in for unloading. If the boats are late, then I'll be late.'

‘What does it pay?' said Sylvie.

‘Enough,' he said.

‘Enough for two rents?' Sylvie said.

‘I wondered when we'd get around to that.'

Sean was dancing on her father's knee. His front was bathed in firelight, his plump little face ruddy. He seemed oblivious to the tensions in the room. The tension stemmed from her mother, for her father was still calm and patient, and pleased with himself.

‘It's not right,' Sylvie said. ‘That's all I'm saying.'

‘One room isn't big enough,' Gowry said.

‘One bed you mean.'

Maeve flushed. Talk in the schoolyard in Endicott Street was a lot more informative than it had ever been in Mr Whiteside's class. She had learned more than was good for her, she supposed, and the knowledge had thrown her mother's affair with Fran into a different light. She had spoken tentatively to Pauline about it but Pauline had not been very helpful; no more had Breen. She had thought of asking Father Macken for advice but he was a priest and would hardly know what she was talking about.

She opened her mouth to say, ‘I'll sleep upstairs if you like,' then thought better of it and looked down at her darned stockings and worn shoes.

She couldn't help but listen, though, for she was appalled by the thought that her mother might chase her father away again, or that his quietness was really indifference and that he was only putting on an act to get himself a clean bed, a couple of hot meals a day and his washing done free of charge. She had always been led to believe that the important thing for a husband and wife was to sleep together in the same bed, but her mother had disabused her of that idea by sleeping with Fran Hagarty.

Why Mam didn't share a bed with her father now was something Maeve couldn't quite understand. She wondered if it had to do with the artificial teeth and detachable hand, if he was embarrassed by the dismantling process that went on every night before he slid under the sheets. It appeared that Mam wanted him back in her arms and Daddy would have none of it. Perhaps it was the baby; perhaps it was the wound; perhaps it was something that even the older boys and girls in the playground didn't discuss. Perhaps it was all just money after all; three and sixpence a week rent on Fran's old room, though cheap even for Endicott Street, might soon become a luxury they could ill afford. Ears pricked, eyes averted, Maeve listened in the hope of finding an answer.

Gowry was quiet for a while, staring into the fire, while the baby danced and pranced on his knee.

At length, he said, ‘I see they've demolished the Shamrock.'

‘What does that have to do with it?' Sylvie said.

‘There's nothing there,' Gowry said, ‘just a gap.'

‘If you're thinking we'll get compensation…'

‘No,' Gowry said. ‘There's no possibility of compensation. I'm just wondering what they'll put there now the old place has gone.'

‘Whatever it is, it'll be more than we can afford.'

‘I can do it. I can handle the job. We'll be all right.'

‘How long are you going to keep up this charade?' Sylvie said.

‘Hmm?' he asked, mildly puzzled. ‘What charade?'

‘I don't know why you bothered coming back. Did you do it just to punish me?'

‘Punish you? No,' he said. ‘Oh, no.'

‘Well, you are, Gowry,' Sylvie said. ‘You are punishing me.'

She began to cry, elbow on the table, cheek resting on her palm, her hair spilling in little wisps across her brow.

She looked, Maeve thought, like Pauline, innocent and knowing at one and the same time, blue eyes wet with tears, tears splashing on to the dinner plates. Her father moved stiffly, like the hinges of the wooden hand in frosty weather. He turned towards Maeve, then towards the door, then, finally, towards Sylvie. He let her cry, head on hand, for almost half a minute before he swung Sean from his knee, lowered the little boy on to Maeve's lap, turned to the table and put an arm about his wife's shoulders. He leaned against her, his cheek brushing hers, almost sharing her tears.