Fallen (13 page)

‘She asked me for a letter to add to it. I couldn't.'

‘Of course not. No one expected you to part with them.'

‘Then why did she ask?'

‘She has her moments.'

I had to walk faster to keep up with her. When I drew level again, I saw her cheeks were wet.

‘I loved Liam.' She turned on me, the very image of misery.

‘I know.'

‘I mean, really loved him. You don't know – you act as if you owned him, all of you.' She was furious, suddenly. ‘I'm sorry, but I felt – I feel – you took him back when he died.'

After Liam was killed, Isabel had stayed in Cork nearly five months. In all that time we saw her just once, when she came up by train for the memorial Mass. Mother might have resented her less if she'd been here to share our grief that summer. But it was true that Mother had done nothing to
encourage her tentative overtures when she came back, in September. I could hardly tell her that Mother thought she was unfeeling, that she had wounded Liam somehow, weakened him. Dad said Mother had got over all that, but I wasn't so sure.

I drew her down on to a wayside bench where we were shielded by trees – not that there was anyone to see us. The path was quiet. The dark mass of the mill brooded over the water, and I could see people walking along Great Brunswick Street, maybe twenty yards ahead, but there was no one to disturb us here. She was crying now, and I gave her a handkerchief.

She pulled off her gloves, turning the ring on her finger so that it caught and returned a flash of sunlight. ‘We were all but married as it was. Can I tell you something, in absolute confidence?' She wasn't crying now, but her voice still shook.

‘Of course.'

‘That last time he was home, we lay together.'

Something happened to my ears, something thunderous, getting in the way of hearing. It made no difference whether I listened or not, she was talking to herself. ‘In Glendalough. I'd a blanket, from the car. To sit on.' She twisted the ring on her finger, over and back, as though trying to work her finger loose from the bone. ‘To lie on. He wore his own clothes that day. I'd asked him to.' She darted a quick look at me, but kept talking. ‘I hated that khaki. I hated the smell off the belt.'

I knew exactly what she meant.

‘He was all mine that day. He was a husband to me.' She put the gloves away into her bag. ‘Well. Shall we go on?' She stood up, smoothed her skirt.

Liam rose in my mind, watching her. I felt a kind of vertigo, as though I stood in a high place, looking down at this
path, myself on this bench, the ground giving way beneath me, pitching me back to the last time he was home.

It was a crisp night, All Saints'. Liam was tense. He was leaving the next day, and soon he'd be going to the Front. He'd been different, the three days of his leave; there had been something unreachable in him. He even sounded different, using a new vocabulary of rank and equipment, sappers, the chaps. He'd a way of biting off the ends of his sentences, as if to control what might escape them. He smoked one cigarette after another, laughed too often and a little too loud.

Everyone else had gone up to bed. The sky was clean, peppered with stars. The moon, just off full, poured its light over the garden. We were in the back parlour with the curtains open, beside a low fire of turf and wood. We sat without speaking, listened to the fire crackle and spark, watched shadows leap along the walls. It reminded me of when we were children and used to hide, from Lockie or Mother, inside a wardrobe smelling of moth powder or under a bed, holding on to each other, trying to stifle our giggles, not daring to speak. But we weren't children now, and this, whatever it was that bothered him, was no laughing matter. I wondered, had he had a row with Isabel, or did he dread leaving and all that lay ahead? He glared at the fire, had a go at the embers with the poker, sending up showers of sparks. A cinder fell out on to the rug. He picked it up and tossed it back in one sure movement. Didn't flinch.

Time was when there were no barriers between our two minds, but now I couldn't reach him unless he chose to allow it. At last he began to talk. He'd walked past Trinity on his way home from Isabel's that evening, he said, when two girls came up to him, giggling and nudging each other, their hands hidden in fur muffs. He stood off the pavement to let them pass, raised his hat to them.

‘I was grinning like any old eejit,' he said, mocking himself. ‘They were pretty girls. I thought they liked the look of me.'

‘And?'

‘They gave me this.' He reached into his pocket and drew out a fat white feather, broken in two. ‘They called me coward. They wanted to know, am I not man enough to fight?' He slid the broken quill between his fingers and plucked at the fibres, to smooth them. ‘The coward's feather. Don't tell Isabel. Would you say it's from a goose or a gull?'

‘Stop it!' I snatched the feather from his hands and flung it into the fire, where it twisted and snapped on the coals. A sour blue coil of smoke rose as the quill crackled and split. ‘Witches! If I'd been there, I'd have pushed them under a tram.'

He laughed a little. ‘Dear Katie, I think you would. You're the one should be the soldier.'

I tried to make light of it. ‘Sure, you wouldn't know who to listen to. If you paid attention to them all, you'd be wearing ten different uniforms at once.'

‘Or none.'

‘Or none.' I risked another look at him. ‘I know you're only doing this because you think it's right. I admire you for it. But I'm afraid for you too.'

‘Don't be,' he said. ‘I'm not. I'm more afraid of what the world would be if we don't put up a fight, what it will be if we don't win. And there are so many Irishmen in the thick of it, we'll have a place at the peace conference, for sure, when it ends. They'll all see it differently then.'

He must have had so much on his mind that night. He was the person I was closest to in all the world, and yet I'd barely known him at all. He'd enlisted without telling me, got engaged without warning – and now this. I couldn't take it in. Even lovely, sad Isabel was not the person I'd thought she was.

When we turned on to D'Olier Street, we saw a crowd on O'Connell Bridge. Boys sat on the parapets and clung to lamp-posts. People jostled for a view up Sackville Street.

As we crossed the bridge, the crowd swelled around us. It was like entering a fairground. My heart beat faster. Isabel gripped my hand. People thronged in all directions, pushing carts, wheelbarrows, prams piled high with goods. Children staggered past, their mouths stained with confectioners' sugar. A boy had become a jewellery tree, hats stacked on his head like upside-down nests, watches on the branches of his arms. Girls whose shins were mottled and bruised crammed their grubby feet into high heels and jewelled sandals. Feather boas were wound around their bony shoulders. They swaggered and laughed
Lookit me! Giveit here!
My steps quickened. A wrecked tram was skewed across the tracks, where the remnants of a fire smouldered. People slipped through the crowd carrying bundles and bags, looking neither left nor right.

Feathered women sat astride a dead horse, drinking whiskey by the neck and jeering. They swung their bare legs, skirts hoicked around their thighs. The wrecked tram was being used as a changing room for girls trying on camisoles and lacy knickers. A gathering of men at the windows roared approval.

We found anchor in a broad doorway, breathing hard, as though we'd been running. A man's voice spoke from the shadows. ‘They've smashed their way into every shop around. See the shoes? They got into Saxone's a while back.'

I looked at my feet. I had bought my boots in Saxone's a fortnight ago, the day Florrie bought her wedding shoes. The manager was a thin, kindly man we'd known since childhood.

‘Noblett's is destroyed. There's no stopping them.'

‘Has anyone tried?' Isabel sounded as if she were considering it.

‘That shower in the GPO. They fired over their heads. It worked for all of five minutes. There were priests here earlier – but the crowd ran them.'

‘Where are the police?' Isabel asked.

He spat. ‘Vanished, at the first sign of trouble. Useless bowsies.' He stepped out, turned up his coat collar and was swallowed by a heaving sea of people.

‘Look.' Isabel tugged my arm. I looked where she was pointing. Upstairs in Wynn's Hotel, people sat in rows at the large plate-glass window, like an audience at a play.

‘We can't stay here,' I said. We edged out into the crowd and jostled our way along the street, towards home.

Behind us, someone screamed. ‘Fire! The stables!'

The yelling intensified as people realized the horses were trapped, neighing their panic. In front of the Rotunda we fought free, breathed easier.

Suddenly I remembered Frieda, saying her parents were off to the races, leaving her younger sister Maria in charge, her scorn at their lapse of judgement. With the trams out of action, they wouldn't be back yet. Their shop was a couple of hundred yards away, the distance thick with people. The children must be terrified with all the commotion. With fire so close, there was no knowing what might happen. Frieda might still be at the hospital.

Isabel didn't resist when I turned down a side street that led away from the crowds, the noise and the fires, into a labyrinth of shadowed back-alleys and markets, the reek of the slaughterhouse.

There was no one about. The air, fogged and close, smelled of autumn's loamy fires and of beasts.

I found the door I wanted and knocked. No answer. I tried the latch. It lifted, smooth as cream.

‘They'd have been wiser to lock it,' Isabel whispered.

‘Well for us they didn't.' I nudged her in ahead of me. ‘Hello? Is anyone here?'

Inside was dark, all the windows shuttered. A muffled squeal was followed by a clang, then another squeal.

‘It's Katie!' I called, into the ringing darkness. ‘Katie Crilly. Maria? Are you here?'

Isabel let me go ahead of her. I walked into something dense and dusty, the heavy curtain that separated the shop from the back entry. I felt for an opening with my hands. Isabel sneezed. Upstairs, something fell.

I parted the curtains and stepped into the thinner dark of the shop itself. My heart skipped in fright when I saw the outlines of a crowd. Then I realized the shapes were bolts of cloth. As my eyes adjusted and my pulse slowed, the gloom resolved into shelves, counter, till, the vault of the stairs. I stood on the bottom step and called up, ‘Where are you all?'

A small form came barrelling down and bumped into me with a sob of relief.

‘Tishy, is that you? Are you on your own? Where is everyone?'

‘Mammie and Da went to the Fairyhouse. Frieda left Maria in charge but she went out with John Joe, ages ago. She said not to budge and not let anyone in.'

Isabel sneezed again. The child pulled back. ‘Who's that?'

‘It's only Isabel.' A silence lengthened, where once I'd have said
Liam's fiancée
. ‘Do you have any lamps, Tishy?'

‘Maria said not to light 'em.'

‘You can't sit in the dark all on your own.' I followed her back through the curtain to the storeroom. She moved with confidence, but we went more cautiously, testing the ground with our feet.

She handed me a box of matches. I struck one. Light bloomed around us and shadows ran up the walls. Tishy was
misshapen. Something bulged under her pinafore. I dropped the match and we were in the dark again.

‘What on earth –' I struck another match to a candle on the shelf. A small shape separated from Tishy and scampered across the room.

Isabel shrieked. ‘What was that?'

Just then the shop door rattled, splintered, crashed open. The candlelight wavered, showing Isabel's distorted face. I caught the handle of the storeroom door and jerked it shut. The sudden draught extinguished the light. I felt for the key I'd seen on its hook, fumbled to get it into the lock and turned it. Out in the shop, it sounded as if hundreds of hobnailed boots were stamping on the counter. My skin crawled, as though insects were making their way along my arms and in under my hair, down my spine. My heart knocked at my ribs, wanting out. I pushed a fist against it, holding it in place. I didn't understand what had happened. How had the seams of the world come undone so fast? What was this hellish place we'd stumbled into?

Tishy wailed. I put a hand over her face, found her mouth and held it, to quiet her. ‘Ssh!'

She pushed my hand away. ‘It wasn't me.'

The eerie wail was repeated, followed by chatter, from a high shelf.

‘What
is
it?' Isabel whispered.

‘He's a monkey.' Tishy coaxed the thing off its shelf and folded herself to the floor against the wall, crooning and rocking.

The door was shaken and kicked. I pressed my back to the cold, powdery plaster of the wall. I'd a strange sensation, as though my damp skin were thickening, squeezing me out of myself.

Another vicious kick. Then nothing.

When it had been quiet for a while, we unlocked the door,
pushed it open a crack, waited, then opened it all the way. Tishy turned on the main electric light. The shop was a mess of tumbled rolls of fabric, spills of colour.

My heart was still racing as we tried to restore some kind of order to what was left of the rolls of cloth. The monkey watched, his large black eyes peering out from a greyish-pink face framed by long black hair. Tishy picked him up and hid her face in his fur.

‘Where did he come from?' I asked.

‘Da gave him to Mammie for Easter.'

‘What's his name?'

‘Paschal.'

It wasn't really funny, but we laughed.

‘Where did he come from?' Isabel asked.

‘He was a barrel monkey, but the man was mean. Dada saved him and brought him home.' Tishy set the monkey free and he scurried along the shelves to sit on a high ledge, scratching his head.