The Soldier's Song (29 page)

She took him by the arm again and led him up the steps. They were inside before he realized it, and suddenly it was just the same as it had been before. The same creaking floorboards, the same dusty smell, the same yellowing paper pinned to the board. Lillian still had him by the arm and she smiled at him as they came to the door of the common room.

‘Good afternoon, everybody,’ she said, and her students all stood up politely as she came in. Some things had changed after all. ‘This is my friend, Captain Ryan. He was a student here before the war and he is an outstanding mathematician, particularly in the field of number theory. He has kindly agreed to join us for today’s tutorial. I’m sure you’ll make him feel very welcome.’

He smiled at them. About a dozen in all – but they were so young. Had the war aged him that much? They were barely two years younger than him – some even less – but they looked like children. Despite the warm introduction, they looked back at him with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion. Here was the war come into their room, the ghost at the banquet. But they smiled back politely and as they made to sit down the young man nearest the door turned to Stephen, offered him his chair, and took a place on the settee nearby. Stephen sat, feeling the clamminess of his own hatband as he fidgeted with it between his knees.

When everybody else was settled, one young man stayed standing on the other side of the room and Stephen felt his eye on him. He was a lean and stringy individual with long bony wrists that hung out of the cuffs of his jacket. His sallow face was thin and pale and already in need of a shave. As he stood up, he thrust his hands deep in his pockets and leaned forward belligerently. This was MacIntyre. Stephen knew it even before he opened his mouth.

‘Good afternoon,
Captain
Ryan,’ he said, in a harsh reedy voice.

Stephen looked at him charily. This was no ordinary welcome. The sinewy young man had paused to look around the room and make sure his audience was watching. From the way the others averted their eyes it was clear they were afraid of him. He was the class bully, warming up for a performance.

‘Sit down, please, Mr MacIntyre,’ Lillian said wearily, as she crossed to the chair by the window, where she had left a stack of papers.

‘I’ll not sit down with a warmonger,’ MacIntyre said, shooting her an ugly glance. Stephen felt his face hardening. His hands clenched into fists.

‘Very well then,’ she returned to the door and pulled it open. ‘You may leave.’

MacIntyre stood his ground. His mean face took on a dogged look. ‘I will not leave on account of an imperial officer,’ he said indignantly. ‘I’ll not make way for an Irish mercenary in the King’s service.’

The others gasped at his audacity. MacIntyre was pleased with himself, leaning back with a sly smile twitching at the corners of his mouth, the height of smug insolence. How long had he been rehearsing that?

‘That is your prerogative, Mr MacIntyre,’ Lillian said, and strode quickly across to where he stood. Stephen could see no trace of the shy girl who used to come into class early to avoid making a fuss. She seemed to have grown in stature; now standing taller than her student, her face pale and furious, her head upright. She had the formidable grace of a square-rigged battleship with all its sails unfurled, bearing down upon the enemy. ‘But let me tell you what else you will not do. You will not insult my friends, and you will not obstruct my classes with your political ranting. We have no place for politics in this class, as you well know. Nor do we have a place for obnoxious young men who lack the common courtesy to welcome a guest. This is a class for mathematics and mathematics alone – we leave all other concerns outside. Which is where you are going, Mr MacIntyre.’ There was another gasp as she seized him by the arm, no face so shocked as his, and before he could utter a word of protest she was dragging him to the door. ‘You may return after you have apologized to the class and to Captain Ryan.’

With that she thrust him into the hallway and shut the door behind him. Stephen saw poorly disguised smiles as he turned back to the students sitting around the room. MacIntyre was clearly more feared than admired. Lillian took her seat near the window and smoothed her skirt.

‘Now, I believe we were discussing the Mersenne primes and Brother Mersenne’s method for finding them,’ she said pleasantly. ‘Like Mersenne himself, Captain Ryan has a particular affinity for prime numbers. I have no doubt he will be able to explain the technique far better than I can.’

There was a light burning in the drawing room when he came back. Billy was sitting in an armchair with a book and a brandy. He was still in his dinner jacket and a cigarette was slowly burning itself out in the ashtray beside him.

‘I thought you’d be gone to bed,’ said Stephen when he came in. ‘I hope you didn’t stay up on my account.’

‘Not at all,’ Billy smiled and closed his book. ‘It was such a wonderful evening that I didn’t want to just slide off to bed. I thought I’d savour it for a bit.’

Stephen unbuckled his Sam Browne and opened the top buttons of his tunic.

‘Good idea,’ he sighed. He was in such good humour that he’d made the walk home at a brisk pace and was slightly out of breath. He threw his cap on the sofa and went to the sideboard, where he poured himself a brandy.

‘I take it you got her home safely.’

‘I did,’ he grinned and eased himself into an armchair. ‘She asked me to thank you again for a very pleasant evening.’

‘The dear girl. The pleasure was all mine.’ Billy took a drag from his cigarette and blew a long plume of smoke into the air. The meal had gone far better than he had expected. Three was such an awkward number and he had been extremely conscious of being the gooseberry, but in the end it was the most gratifying evening he’d had in a long time. ‘I congratulate you, Stephen. That is a very fine young lady you have there: witty, charming and sharp as a pin.’

Stephen nodded agreeably, his mind still half on the walk down through Rathmines and then along the canal to her house in Percy Place. The pleasant feeling that he was floating through the warm night air, with only her hand on his arm to anchor him, and yet the dread of it ending: the knowledge that soon they would reach her house and he would be coming back without her.

‘Isn’t she?’ He raised his glass, ‘Here’s to her!’

‘Yes, indeed. God bless her!’

They drank their toast and fell into a companionable silence. It had indeed been a very pleasant evening – far better than if it had just been the two of them. It was as if Lillian had been a catalyst, transforming the atmosphere and freeing them from the bonds of long acquaintance. Everything was discussed anew, and as the evening wore on Billy found he was surprised at the changes wrought in his friend.

‘You don’t mean to tell me,’ he said to Stephen as they finished their soup, ‘that you actually agree with the rebels. And you sitting there in your uniform.’

‘I didn’t say I necessarily agreed with them,’ Stephen answered carefully. ‘I said they’ve changed everything, and I think people should understand that and stop dreaming about what might have been. Because we haven’t heard the last of Sinn Fein – not by a long chalk. Now that they’ve gone into politics, it looks like they’re here to stay.’

‘Oh, hardly! They’ve only won two by-elections on the back of the executions of Pearse and his men. And both of them have refused to take their seats in Westminster. Yes, they’re enjoying the run of public sentiment, but that never lasts. No politician can survive on a political idea alone. Sooner or later the people who elected them will want their voice heard in Parliament and then they will elect somebody who will speak up for them.’

‘But are people not tired of talking?’ Lillian asked, ‘I mean, look at this convention that John Redmond is running above in the college. It’s supposed to gather together all the Irish politicians so they can resolve the Irish problem, but half of them wouldn’t even go – including Sinn Fein. Not that it stopped the rest of them from sitting down and talking, which proves nothing, except that talk is cheap. And what do they think they will achieve? Home Rule? Sure, Home Rule is dead. Didn’t Lloyd George offer it only last month and was turned down, because even Johnny Redmond knows it’s not enough any more, and that Welsh divil was only offering it to keep us quiet.’

These last words were delivered with such passionate vehemence that they all froze, looked at each other and then burst out laughing.

‘Well,’ Billy said, ‘to think that the pair of you used to be so quiet. I can hardly believe my ears. But everything you say is true. It looks as if I shall have to modify my outlook to suit these changing times.’ He picked up his glass, ‘May I propose a toast?
Tempora mutantur.
To the changing times!’

Now that they were alone again, Billy reflected that not all the changes were for the better. He watched his friend through half-closed eyes and remembered the worrying things he’d spotted during dinner; how Stephen’s hand shook when he lifted a cube of sugar into his coffee, and the way he often lapsed into morose silence. True, he had never been the most talkative creature, but this evening he’d clearly been making an effort to be pleasant company – and yet sometimes he had simply dropped out of the conversation, as if he’d fallen into a trance. Billy wasn’t the only one to notice it either. When it happened, Lillian would give him a concerned look, then take a breath and turn to Stephen directly with a question, or pat his hand – anything to bring him back to the land of the living.

Stephen had noticed it too. He was aware of his own behaviour just as he was aware of the war; it was pushed back, suppressed. He’d struggled with it, tried to keep his mind on the meal, tried to be witty – but the war cast its shadow even here. Time was slipping through his fingers. Another three days and it would be back to France. This day next week he would be back to tinned jam and bully beef, living from one letter to the next, waiting for
that
bullet or
that
shell. The one that would blot him out, end it all. Every time his mind turned in that direction he stopped it, but it always went back, like an obstinate dog on a scent. He didn’t want to, but when he started thinking like that he couldn’t help himself. That was why he stayed silent. He bound it to himself, buttoned it up, and tried to keep it down. Because if he let it out, even a little bit, it would end in tears.

‘I want to thank you too,’ he said, slowly swirling the brandy under his nose and inhaling the sharp scent. ‘Not just for the dinner – for having me to stay. It’s been unbelievably pleasant to get out of barracks.’

‘Don’t mention it, old man.’

‘I’m afraid I haven’t been much of a houseguest.’

‘Nonsense. You’re more than welcome.’

‘And I’m afraid I’m rather making a pig’s ear of it with Lillian.’

Billy sat up and looked at him sharply. ‘Why? Did she say something when you left her home?’

‘No, not at all.’ His mind turned to the pavement outside her house. The dim glow of a lamp behind the sitting room curtains. When he called to collect Lillian she’d brought him in there and introduced him to her mother, a handsome woman with greying hair and shrewd eyes. Then Lillian had gone upstairs to change and it was half an hour of tea and Eccles cakes, answering quick-fire questions about the war, the front, what life was like over there. Her motive soon became clear: Sheila wanted to go to France to work in a hospital near the front. Did he ever hear the likes of it? As if there wasn’t enough for her to be doing in Dublin. Sure wasn’t she working even now – on a Sunday, God love her – otherwise she’d have been here to meet him.

‘Well, here we are then,’ he said to Lillian as they stopped at the gate at the end of the evening. It was silent save for the distant thunder of water in the canal lock down the street.

‘Yes, here we are,’ she smiled. ‘Thank you for walking me home.’

‘It was my pleasure.’ He’d been steeling himself for so long that he hardly noticed when she let go of his arm. Now there was a gap between them, he knew it would only get wider. But his mind was a muddle; he genuinely didn’t know what to do next. ‘Well, goodnight then.’

He was on the point of turning away when she laughed.

‘Stephen Ryan, you really are quite insufferable.’

He felt himself begin to blush. He’d put his foot in it somehow. What had he done wrong? In some ways, the war was simpler.

‘I’m sorry . . .’

‘You walk me all this way and then leave me on the doorstep without so much as a goodnight kiss.’

‘Ah, yes. Sorry.’

She moved closer, but his eye went to the light in the living room window.

‘Won’t your mother be . . . ?’

‘My mother?’ She looked at the window and shook her head, ‘Don’t you worry about her. Ever since I was a girl, she’s been afraid I’ll turn into an old maid. I thought you’d have guessed as much from the interrogation she gave you this afternoon. Anyway, it’s long past her bedtime. I doubt she’s watching, but if she is then I shouldn’t be surprised if we get a round of applause.’

The kiss. It was so easy, as if they naturally fit together. The warmth in her lips was surprising. The strength in her hands on his shoulders, the scent in her hair. It was overpowering, but when they finally parted his heart was beating madly and he could hardly find the breath to speak.

‘Goodnight, then,’ he said, and watched her go up the path and open the door. A final wave and a smile and she was gone. He lingered with one hand on the cold iron of the gate, his lips still warm, and with the urge to laugh and run madly down the deserted street. But in the end he just whispered the words again and walked away with his hands in his pockets.