Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears (Exit Unicorns Series) (82 page)

He shifted his shoulders carefully against the bunk. The skin was freshly grown and still tender. He turned his attention back to the letter he was in the act of composing, re-reading what he’d written thus far.

Dear Pamela,

I imagine you all sitting snug about the tree. The first one we were to have in our new home. I’m sorry that I cannot be there to share the day. If I close my eyes, though, I’m almost there, I can smell the tree, feel you sitting beside me on that disreputable couch. Ah, what’s that—the smell of goose burning, wafting in from the kitchen...sorry Jewel, but a man must have his wee bit of fun.

He paused in his writing for a moment, there was so much he couldn’t tell her. For instance how the hold, for weeks, had reeked of fermenting apples. Matty had somehow gotten hold of enough apples, sugar and yeast to make
poitin
, and from the smell of it, were any man bold enough to imbibe it, it’d be likely to knock him permanently on his arse. Were the man to step up production, Jamie would have serious competition. How they’d all gone off their head with joy when Shane managed to tune in the BBC World for a half hour the previous night. Because there were moments, especially in the night, when it felt like this damned ship was all of the world that still existed.

We’d a bit of an adventure here last night, as Roland, normally a teatotaler as I’ve mentioned before, decided to indulge in a wee nip. No one thought much of it until Declan said he was up the main mast of the ship screaming obscenities down at the soldiers. Needless to say they weren’t impressed with him, nor were we. We puzzled about for a bit, had a smoke, puzzled some more and tried to come to a consensus on how to get the bugger down. At last, having reviewed several scenarios and rejecting them for one reason and another, we sent Declan up to get him. By this point the soldiers were threatening to shoot him down and be done with his foul tongue.

Declan, being at present, the most nimble among us, was up like a shot and brought Roland down none too gently. While I don’t think Roland enjoyed the method employed, Declan came down filled with holiday cheer.

He knew the portrait he’d painted was one of hilarity, and yet standing there with the sleet stinging their faces, watching Roland teeter out into the void, had been anything but funny. They were all on the brink of hysteria, thus the fights, the barbed teasing, the short tempers, and for himself, the silence he’d maintained since the whipping. He still felt the separation from the other men, and knew they felt it too. There was no point in sharing all this with Pamela, though, he didn’t want her to worry anymore than she already did.

He lay the letter aside momentarily, and returned to the note Jamie had sent. It simply wished him best tidings of the season and ended with a quote from Robbie Burns.

Freedom and whiskey gang tegeither
Tak aff your dram.

Casey frowned down at it. He’d expected expertly coded notes done in iambic pentameter—something the bastard had actually done in his last missive. Was this simple sentiment merely that, or was it the clue he’d hoped for?

Then the light broke as though a bulb had been smashed over his head. He had to contain himself from slapping his forehead and shouting
Eureka
! He glanced about quickly at the other men. All were still absorbed in their various amusements, Roland now snoring loudly.

He picked up the whiskey. It was a bottle of the house reserve. This particular blend never left Ireland, unless it went in a suitcase. Never aged less than twelve years, its rich, peaty flavor was deservedly famous. He’d a different bottle than the other men, though he wasn’t certain what the significance of that could be. Other than...the label. He examined the edges of it closely, but it appeared to be tightly sealed to the bottle. The lettering the same, Celtic weave in scarlet and black, and the border...he examined it minutely, running his fingers along the raised interlocking weave. Christ, the man must have had hours of amusement devising this. Nothing seemed abnormal here either, until his fingers felt a slight bump, more of an oddness to the texture really. He held it as close to his face as he dared, and saw the tiny frayed end of a golden thread. He slid his thumbnail under it, then began to pull and felt its length running around the entire label.

The label peeled back easily, revealing three tiny squares of onionskin paper covered in spider-fine writing. Casey smiled and palmed the papers. The last piece was in place.

Three weeks earlier he’d stood by the rail, listening to Mattie outline his plan for escape. Had listened with mounting horror as he realized just what the man was proposing.

“Swim? Have ye done yer nut man?!”

Matty had calmly regarded the agitated man in front of him. Having had some experience with the father and his opinions on largish bodies of water, he was willing to let the son vent before he elaborated further. Casey had gone on at some length, detailing why this wasn’t a good idea, but rather a suicide mission doomed to fail.

A day later, he listened grimly silent while Matty explained it to him once again. This time he watched while a silken head, the color of glossed pewter, bobbed in and out of the waves. Biting back the nausea that merely observing the movement caused, Casey counted the seconds off between each time the seal resurfaced. It was a way to gauge the waves and where the tide was likely to land them at a given point of the day.

His father, neither more nor less fond of the sea than he himself, had nevertheless taught both his boys to swim in it. ‘Know the enemy, an’ either figure out how to beat it, or work with it,’ he’d said and then shown them how to do just that—swimming with the currents, resting before your strength ebbed too low, knowing that time and determination were the only things you had on your side with such a formidable foe. He didn’t want to do it, but the fact was he
could
do it.

A few more days and they’d informed Declan, Roland and Shane of their plan. Declan, as was his wont, pointed out the flaws in the plan, and helped them take the wrinkles out. Thus on the next moonless night Casey found himself holding his breath and watching as a soldier’s silhouette drew parallel with the porthole the five of them were clustered about.

“Now,” he said urgently, and Declan and Roland heaved a large can over the side. It made a frightful noise when it hit the water, but the guard above never flinched in his stride. He’d neither heard nor seen a thing. A bubble of elation began to form in Casey’s chest, this harebrained scheme might actually work. As men, they could likely hit the water much softer than the can had, but it was as wise to be certain that if one of them fell and hit the water, the noise wouldn’t rouse the guns above them.

The plan was on for the second week of January. Christ help them all if it didn’t come off as hoped.

He drifted back to himself enough to hear that Roland had awakened and was having one of his escalating conversations with Declan.

“God or no God,” Declan was saying heatedly, “ye’d not catch me walkin’ through there alone at night.”

“That is an indication,” Roland said piously, “that yer faith isna strong enough then.”

“Walkin’ through where?” Casey asked, striving for a casual tone, though his heart still thumped madly.

“The Murph,” they replied in unison, then glared at one another.

“Why ever not?”

“Because of that old man’s dog, remember the big Shepherd that was killed by the Brits.”

“I don’t think ye can fairly blame the Brits for that,” Matty interjected, “the dog picked up a nail bomb, thinkin’ it was a ball. A nail bomb that was thrown
at
the Brits, if ye remember correctly.”

“Had the Brits not been there,” Roland said, looking down his long nose, “there’d have been no need for the nail bomb to be present.”

Matty, always one to pacify, replied, “True enough, lad, true enough.”

“I was there,” Declan said, “’twas tragic really, was a great beast of a dog, hated the Brits somethin’ vicious. He comes runnin’ up to Jim Scally—ye remember him—like he’s somethin’ grand to give him. Soon as everyone realized what was what, they took off like the devil was loosed, people were arse over teakettle into hedges an’ over fences. An’ Jim’s runnin’ hell bent fer leather up round Divismore Park, with the dog gallopin’ merrily behind him an’ Jim screamin’ ‘drop it Pansy, drop it!’ Would have been comical if it hadn’t ended so badly. Killed the dog, an’ Jim lost the three toes. Oh Christ, I’ve lost me place in the pattern,” he exclaimed, having abandoned construction on his balaclava in the excitement of the tale.

“I still don’t see what the problem is with walkin’ through the Murph,” Casey said.

“It’s because they,” Roland aimed a gimlet glance from bloodshot eyes at Declan, “say that ye can hear the dog howlin’ still, when someone from the Murph is about to die.”

“’Tis true,” young Shane said solemnly, looking up from his cards. “I heard it one night, when I was walkin’ down the Glenalina Road, an’ the next day Col Naylor was shot.”

Roland merely appealed to the ceiling for divine intervention, rather than dignifying this with a response. Declan however, stirred by the story, continued on with a list of ‘remember whens’.

“Do youse remember that big bull mastiff, name was somethin’ funny—Amarbas—Amercan?”

“Amergin,” Casey said quietly.

“Aye, Amergin—belonged to that Temple kid. Did anyone ever know what happened to his kid sister?”

“No, but the rumor was always that Hunchback Pete had taken her,” Roland said, “he was always a mite shifty round the little ones, especially the girls. Do ye remember the summer he disappeared? Word was Joe Doherty had him taken out in a field beyond Ballymena an’ tortured then shot him, let Robin do the shootin’ was what I heard.”

Matty cleared his throat and gave Roland a pointed look.

“What? It’s not as though I’m tellin’ secrets out of school. Everyone knows what sort of—”

“Shut the feck up,” Declan said, poking Roland in the shoulder with a knitting needle, “the man ran with our Casey here for years. If anyone’s like to know the truth of the matter it’s him.”

Roland turned red in patches the way he was wont to in moments of great embarrassment.

“’Tis alright,” Casey said, “ye didn’t know, an’ I’ve few illusions about Robin an’ what he’s capable of. I know for a fact though, that ‘twasn’t Robin who killed Hunchback Pete, he froze to death in Liverpool the next winter.”

Roland changed the topic and soon he and Declan were in one of their laborious arguments about who was the greater man, Mick Collins or James Connolly.

Later when quiet had resumed and the only noise to be heard was the clicking of Declan’s needles and the occasional snap as Roland turned over another card in his game of solitaire, Casey noted that Shane had put his head down, his mail bunched under one gripped fist. The lad was having a hard day of it. Christmas tended to magnify loneliness and troubles until they blocked out the little light to be found. And on a ship such as this, light was in short supply already.

“Matty, how many years have ye been imprisoned?” Casey asked casually.

Matty served him a sharp glance, taking in the situation at once.

“Mmphmm, lad, ye’ll have to give me a moment to add it up—there was those two years in the Curragh, when I met yer daddy, an’ there’d been four years afore that, then the five in Brixton—bad years them, but then ye’ll be no stranger to the Englishman’s prison yerself—then the seven months in Portlaise,” Matty continued on, ticking off fingers. “When ye add it all up, I ‘spose it amounts to about twenty-two years of my life.”

“Roland?”

“Nine years all total, though times it seems more. I’ve missed the births of all my sons, excepting Luke. He’s the second oldest.”

“Declan?”

Declan finished his row of stitches before replying.

“Four years. My da’ died last time I was in. Didn’t get to the funeral.”

“I damn near missed my weddin’ day,” Matty said with a chuckle, “eluded the police by a hair, though they caught me the week later soon as we returned from our wee honeymoon.”

“I didn’t know ye’d been married Matty,” Declan said, biting off a wool end with his teeth.

“Oh aye, though ‘twill be a long time past. She left me when I was in England. Divorced me, married my younger brother an’ emigrated over to New York.”

“Yer brother?!” Declan exclaimed, “I’d have killed the bastard.”

“Ach no, he was the man that was there for her, made certain she had what she needed. Always put groceries in the cupboard an’ made sure there was a roof over her head. I didn’t blame either of them, life moves on without a man when he’s locked up too long. It’s a fact. She needed someone, he was there an’ I wasn’t. He’s been a father to my daughter these many years.”

“Ye have a daughter?” Casey asked, sitting up in surprise.

“Aye, she’d be nineteen last May,” Matty replied. “She’s been in America since she was three. She’s the three sisters now, never did know that I was her da’. I thought it best if I was just Uncle Matty to her same as her sisters.”

The five of them fell silent as they digested the magnitude of such a loss.

Matty looked over at Casey. “An’ what about yerself, laddie? How many Christmases have ye spent starin’ at prison walls?”

“This’ll be the sixth,” Casey said, feeling a sudden slump in his spirits. He stood up off the bunk and stretched carefully, his skin protesting instantly. “I’m just goin’ out for a wee breath of air.”

“Mind how much air,” Declan said with a stern look over his needles, “ye’ve a ways to go before yer fully mended.”

“Aye Declan, I’ll not be long.”

‘Outside’ merely consisted of a cracked porthole through which one could catch a bit of fresh air and on the odd night see a star or two.

The night was very still, the snow falling so lightly that he could discern the individual flakes. Even the big spotlights that swept the water seemed softer than they usually did.

Someone moved behind him, the hesitancy of the step told Casey that it was Shane.

He turned from watching the snow. “Do ye need somethin’ lad?”