Echobeat (21 page)

‘For farmers and the like,’ Reilly dismissed the idea.

‘I’d have thought a man like yourself would be able to get extra petrol for that.’ Gifford moved away from the heater and ran his hand along the bench at the side of the shed, looking at the jumble of items on it.

‘That’d be only for the big operators,’ Reilly watched him.

‘Essential supplies, though. You’re used to carrying them.’

‘In a small way. But you know how it is. It all depends on who you know. Pull.’

‘True for you. But you must know lots of people. People you’ve done favours for.’

‘I’ll apply anyway and see if anything comes of it.’ Reilly turned to look at Duggan, who was standing in the centre of the floor with his hands in his pockets. Duggan stared back at him.

‘You always have the horse and cart.’

‘Thank God for that.’ Reilly switched his attention back to Gifford.

‘We were out there this morning.’ Gifford stopped beside a weighing scales and took a small rusty weight off one side of the balance. The scales tipped slightly to one side. ‘Tut, tut,’ Gifford smiled at him and hefted the weight in the palm of his hand. ‘Yeah,’ he continued, ‘we were running short of petrol. The woman there said you’d be able to help us.’

Reilly shook his head in sadness. ‘God love her. She’s a bit simple. Doesn’t keep up with the news.’

‘Ah, well,’ Gifford took another weight off the bench and balanced it against the one in his other hand. ‘We made it back anyway. Just about.’

Reilly glanced at Duggan as if he might like to confirm their safe return. Duggan stared back at him. Gifford put down one of the weights and pulled open a drawer beneath them and took out a handful of unused paper bags, all folded flat. ‘So what are you hauling about these days?’

‘Anything people want me to,’ Reilly folded his arms, a gesture that said he could go on playing this game for as long as it took. ‘Furniture, stones, clay. Whatever people want me to bring from one place to another. There’s a lot of people moving around these days. You’d be surprised.’

Gifford touched a box under the counter with his foot and raised his eyebrows in surprise when it did not sound hollow. He bent down and pulled a tea chest part way out and looked into it. ‘Well I never,’ he said. ‘A tea chest with tea in it.’ He straightened up and looked at Duggan. ‘Have you ever seen a tea chest with tea in it?’

Duggan kept his face straight but Reilly didn’t bother looking at him. ‘Fill a bag there for your mother,’ Reilly said to Gifford.

‘I don’t have a mother,’ Gifford pushed the tea chest back with his foot.

‘She’s gone to her reward. Sorry to hear that.’

‘No.’ Gifford dropped the paper bags into the drawer and shoved it closed with his hip. ‘Never had one. I was found under a head of cabbage in the Castle garden.’

‘I know some of the lads there,’ Reilly said. ‘In the Castle.’

‘Really?’ Gifford sounded interested. ‘Who?’

‘What branch are you in?’

‘The Branch.’

‘Ah, no,’ Reilly said, relaxing. ‘I wouldn’t know any of you lads.’

Gifford hefted the weight in his hand. ‘You know any of the lads from weights and measures?’

‘I bought those weights from the fucker who sold me the van,’ Reilly flicked another glance at Duggan.

‘Him there,’ Gifford nodded at Duggan, picking up on Reilly’s thoughts. ‘He’s from another world altogether.’

‘Really?’ Reilly turned to Duggan, knowing that they had come to the point at last.

‘These are unusual times,’ Duggan said, taking his hands from his pockets. ‘Dangerous times. And we need all good patriotic Irishmen to keep their eyes open. Especially men who know a lot of people, who move around a lot. To alert us to anything we should know about. Anything out of the ordinary. Especially people out of the ordinary.’

Reilly nodded his head up and down as if this was all a revelation to him. ‘I know what you mean. We have to protect our position, neutrality.’

‘Exactly. So we’re asking people who know what goes on around town to keep us in the picture. About strangers, for instance. For everyone’s sake.’

‘Those bombs last week,’ Reilly bit his lip at the memory. ‘We don’t want any more of that here.’

‘And we don’t want anyone taking chances with our neutrality. We
want to keep out of this war. And we want to know of anything that threatens that. Anything at all.’ Duggan took a piece of paper with a phone number on it from his breast pocket and passed it to Reilly. ‘Would you call me if you come across anything? Ask for Robert.’

‘That’s you?’ Reilly took the page and mouthed the number.

Duggan nodded.

‘Just Robert?’

Duggan nodded again. ‘You can rest assured that anything you tell me will be kept totally confidential. If I’m not there you can leave a message.’

Reilly folded the note and slipped it into the top pocket of his jacket.

‘Okay,’ Gifford interjected, replacing the weight on one side of the balance and watching it fall to the counter with a thud. ‘We’re all clear here?’

‘Definitely,’ Reilly patted his top pocket. ‘Couldn’t be clearer.’

‘Right,’ Gifford nodded to Duggan.

Duggan put out his hand and shook Reilly’s, as if they were sealing a deal. ‘We’re counting on people like you in this emergency.’

Reilly shook his hand and his solemn face broadened into a grin. ‘I’m sure your mother would appreciate a little extra tea.’

‘Jaysus,’ Gifford interjected. ‘Fellows like him never have mothers.’

‘Another cabbage man?’

‘God, no,’ Gifford shuddered. ‘He’s one of those fellows you hear about from Russia. Make them in factories. Not an ounce of human feeling in them. Just mechanical parts. Chop up their own mother for spare parts without a moment’s hesitation. If they had one.’

‘Best of luck now,’ Reilly said with a laugh that contained little humour and maybe a touch of nervousness as he showed them out and closed the wicket behind them.

‘He’ll do it,’ Gifford said as they emerged from the lane onto Bachelors Walk.

‘You think so?’

‘We’ve threatened him three ways. At least.’

Duggan straightened his bicycle alongside the footpath, pointing back down the quays. ‘I better make sure that phone line is set up,’ he said.

‘It’ll take him a day or two,’ Gifford said. ‘To stumble across Goertz, accidentally like. An amazing coincidence.’

‘As long as he tells us where he is. Not where he was two days ago.’

‘He’ll give him up,’ Gifford nodded to himself with conviction. ‘Benny’s got to live here. And with us. Interesting, his reference to knowing lads in the Castle.’

‘What? He was just trying to figure out who you were.’

‘He was trying to figure out if I was one of the competition. Some lads in the detective branch are running their own black market operation. He wanted to know whether we were with them.’

‘Jesus,’ Duggan sighed. ‘How long’s that been going on?’

‘Since the shortages began to bite and the black market began to explode.’

‘And they’re getting away with it?’

‘Not for much longer. There’s an inquiry under way. All very hush hush as usual. Benny probably doesn’t know that. Did you notice how the fucker relaxed a little when he realised we weren’t there to put the squeeze on him over his supplies of oil or tea.’

Duggan shook his head. He was so immersed in his own world that it was almost a shock to hear about ordinary venality.

‘There’s always someone at it,’ Gifford pursed his lips and exhaled loudly. ‘In the land of saints and shysters.’

Gerda’s landlady tightened her lips in a sign of disapproval when she opened the hall door to Duggan. She said nothing, just turned and shouted ‘Gertie’ up the stairs. She waited until Gerda came down and said, ‘This is a respectable house. We don’t allow unannounced callers at this hour of the night.’

Gerda lifted her overcoat off the hall stand and walked around her. The landlady closed the door behind them without another word and Gerda mimicked her, ‘
This is a respectable house
’ in a low voice as they went down the path.

‘It’s not that late,’ he said as they sat into the car. It was nearly nine o’clock.

‘This better be important,’ she said.

‘Yes, it is.’

‘What?’ A shadow of concern crossed her face.

‘I wanted to see you.’ He leant across and kissed her on the lips. She kissed him back quickly and put her palm on his chest and pushed him away.

‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph,’ she said, exaggerating her Cork accent. ‘You want her to think I’m a right whore altogether.’

‘Is she watching?’ Duggan started the car.

‘Of course she’s watching.’

He drove down Iona Road. ‘Where’re we going?’ she asked.

‘You have the keys to your office?’ he asked back.

‘You should have phoned me.’

‘You don’t?’

She fished in her coat pocket, dangled a ring of keys before his eyes, and rested her head on his shoulder. He leaned his head over to rest on hers and they drove in silence to the city centre. He went down O’Connell Street and turned into Cathedral Street to park. O’Connell Street was busy with people hurrying for their last buses
and trams and they threaded their way through a long bus queue and skipped across the road in front of a tram.

In her office they dropped their coats on the floor and embraced, cold hands reaching under clothes. ‘Aah,’ she shuddered at the touch of his hand on her bare back. ‘Wait a minute. I have a present for us.’

She went behind her desk and opened a cupboard and took out a folded blanket as well as the rug and held it up in one hand like a trophy. She came back to him and rubbed the soft wool against the side of his face.

‘Only nineteen and eleven,’ she said. ‘On sale in Todd Burns’.’

‘A bargain.’

‘Reduced from two pounds ten.’

‘You couldn’t resist it.’

‘How could you resist that?’ she smiled and they both laughed at the ease in which they had slid into an old married couple routine.

The fire in Mr Montague’s office was dead, the few sparks dying almost as suddenly as they were exposed from the ash as he poked at it. She spread the rug on the floor and folded her overcoat into a pillow and they undressed quickly and lay beside each other on the rug and pulled the blanket over them. It was too narrow to cover them completely.

‘Won’t work,’ he whispered. ‘My turn to be on top.’

He shifted position and she tucked the blanket in at their sides and held him tight while they made love. They stayed like that until she said, ‘You’re getting heavier,’ and then they swapped positions, she half-lying on him, her head on his chest and a hand stretched out to his other hip. He dozed off and when he woke again she was still in the same position, breathing in a smooth rhythm. He tried not to move, not sure whether she was awake or asleep, and he listened to the night-time stretches and contractions of the building and smelled the polish of the linoleum, thinking idly that someone had cleaned the office recently. There were no sounds now from the street outside.

His shoulder bone under her head was beginning to ache and he tried to shift position without waking her but she raised her chin onto his chest and looked at him, her dark eyes dreamy. He kissed each eye and she smiled and lowered her head onto his chest again.

‘I can hear your heartbeat,’ she murmured.

‘Beating for you.’ He ran his fingers through her hair. ‘I hope it’s a nice tune.’

‘It sounds like men marching.’

‘No, no,’ he said sharply. ‘Forget about that.’

She raised her head to look at him. ‘How can I?’ she said in a hopeless voice.

He put a finger on her hips. ‘Let’s talk about afterwards. After the war. What we’ll do.’

‘You think the war will end?’

‘All wars end some time.’

‘In our lifetime?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘You’ve heard of the
dreißigjähriger Krieg
?’ The Thirty Years’ War.

He nodded. ‘That was different. Total war like this can’t go on that long. There’d be no one left alive.’

‘Maybe that’s how it’ll end.’

He shook his head at her, wishing the war away.

‘And who will win this short war?’ she continued.

He shifted his body and eased her onto him, trying to change the subject, but she held his gaze, her question demanding an answer.

‘It could be a stalemate,’ he sighed. ‘England won’t be beaten and there will be a peace treaty with Germany and we’ll be protected by it. It will be all right.’

‘That’s what your spy bosses think?’

‘I don’t know what they think,’ he said. ‘I think that’s one possibility.’ Maybe the best possibility we can hope for, he thought. Not
wanting to think now about all the uncertainties and the prospect of a new spring offensive by Germany against England, continuing where it had left off last year. And maybe against Ireland. If the British hadn’t come here first.

She closed her eyes for a moment and then said in a lighter voice, ‘And after the war? What will we do?’

‘You can be yourself again. And we can have children.’

‘And what will they speak?’ Her eyes brightened as if a shadow had passed.

‘They will speak German. And English. And Irish.’

‘So. This is not just sex?’

‘No,’ he shook his head.

She nodded, as if he had confirmed something. She bent forward to give him a slow and tender kiss and then raised her body to put her hand down between his legs and guide him into her.

He fell asleep afterwards and when he awoke she was looking at him, her dark eyes deep and dreamy again. ‘What time is it?’ he asked.

‘Late,’ she said.

He closed his eyes again. ‘What time does Mr Montague come in?’

She poked him in the ribs. ‘We have to get up. It’s half-eleven.’

‘Not that late.’

‘Do you want to make me homeless?’ She rolled away from him and shivered with the cold as she stood up. ‘That bitch will throw me out if I’m not back soon.’

‘Then we could live here.’

She gave him a loving laugh and began to dress herself.

‘We could even lie in late on Sundays. When Montague doesn’t come in.’