Edith, page 13
‘It’s for Ireland.’
‘Your mother must be worried sick.’
‘I wish I could send her a letter. Mam made sure all of us could read and write. Said we’d need some bit of lettering so as to write letters home from America, or wherever we wound up. She thought we’d have to go away to make a life for ourselves, d’you see.’
‘Was there a school near you?’
‘A good twenty miles away. ’Twas Mam taught me my letters. She cut a willow rod, poked one end in the embers to blacken it, and used it to write on the outhouse wall. A was for where the roof beams joined, B was the priest’s spectacles, C was the moon. D a bow and arrow – that’s me, so it is.’
‘What was E?’
‘E was a gate.’ Unconscious of having given away a clue about his identity, he adds,‘Mam always wanted us to better ourselves.’
‘You’re going the wrong way about it.’
He gestures with his rifle. ‘That’s enough aul’ blather. Let’s go.’
Edith pushes back her chair and stands, holding tight to Loulou. Remember always use your wits and strike a bargain where you can. That’s what Martin told her in automatic writing. She takes a guess. ‘D for Daniel, is it?’
‘My friend’ll be pure mad if we keep him waiting. Come on, now.’
‘Or could it be D for Denis?’
His eyes pop, giving her the answer.
‘Denis.Well, well.’
‘The captain’ll be pure mad at me over this.’
‘It can be our secret. So, Denis, your name’s not the only thing I know about you. I know you’re about to send a storm of trouble raining down on the heads of your family. When you swapped boots here, you left your old pair behind. Colonel Somerville found them. They can be used to trace you – the boot maker’s name is marked on them. J.J. Carroll of Listowel.’
He wilts.‘Where are the boots? Give them here.’
‘They’re somewhere safe. Elsewhere.’
A moan escapes from the boy.‘I don’t believe you. I want them back.’
‘You said they belonged to your father. Well, your father can expect a visit from the Black and Tans.’
‘Please, no, ma’am, you mustn’t. It’d kill me mother and father stone dead. Sure, they’ve had the house burned over their heads already by the Tans. A neighbour’s given them an aul’ bit of a cattle byre to tide them over. But if that’s raided maybe nobody’ll take them in. Please don’t do this, your honour-ma’am.’
‘I have a proposition to make you, Denis.’
‘Don’t keep using me name.’
She walks around the table and stands beside him, looking into his face. Reading his uncertainty. ‘I might – might – be able to dissuade Colonel Somerville from handing your boots over to the military commander in your area. But you’ll have to do something in return for me.’
‘Tell me.’
‘Leave our horses alone.’
‘Both of them? I can’t do that. Captain says …’
‘Tell him they weren’t here.’
‘But what’ll I say to the other lad? Sure we saw the two of them in their stalls. And how are we to get back to the lads with no horse to carry us?’
‘How did you come here?’
‘Managed to hitch a lift in a wagon most of the way. The people is good to us.’
‘I have an idea about transport. An alternative to a mount. Something that will make your captain think well of you. He’ll be impressed by your initiative.’
‘What is it?’
‘We’ll talk in the kitchen. I’ll tell you at the same time as the other fellow.’
‘I want me boots. No boots, no deal. I know you have them.’
Edith has seen where Cameron stored them: in a battered old sea-man’s chest in his study. ‘I might be able to get them for you.’ In a twist of the knife, she repeats the bootmaker’s name.‘J.J. Carroll of Listowel.’
She can smell his fear, although he’s trying to mask it with bravado.
‘What’s to stop your brother landing me mam and dad in trouble? Soon as I leave here, the bootmaker’s name could be in the hands of the Tans.’
‘Look, if my brother wanted to get you in trouble, he’d have done it by now, wouldn’t he?We’re not totally unsympathetic to your cause. Play fair by me with our horses and I’ll play fair by you.’
‘Are you … on our side, ma’am?’
‘I’ll tell you whose side I’m on.Your mother’s. She didn’t go to the trouble of teaching you how to write letters to her, only to receive one telling her you’ve been hanged or shot.’
—
In the kitchen, an unexpected sight meets their eyes. A man cradling a rifle is slumped at the deal table, sound asleep. Philomena, Mrs O’Shea and Mike Hurley are transfixed by him. At Edith’s arrival, Hurley puts his finger to his lips, pantomiming silence.
She is mystified why they haven’t overpowered him, until she realizes the intruder’s forefinger is resting on the trigger. One false move will deal out injury or death.Yet how peaceful he looks.
Quick as thought, Denis sets down his old boots, hooks his rifle over his shoulder and approaches the table. Inch by inch, his hand advances on the metal. Inch by inch, he slides it out from under the sleeper. The trigger is gone from the other man’s fingertip but the butt remains under his hand.
‘W-What?’ The IRA volunteer jolts awake, one hand clamped on his weapon and the other on Denis’s wrist.‘Feck are you at?’
‘Easy now,’ says Denis.
‘I said, what the feck are you doing with me rifle?’
‘You were asleep. I was afraid of an accident.’
The sleeper’s eyes dart around the company. ‘Move back. Get over there where I can see ye.’
‘We need to buck up,’ says Denis. ‘We’ve spent long enough here.’
‘Right, so.You,’ he waves the rifle at Hurley, ‘saddle the horse. And we’ll take a spare saddle with us and some extra tackle.’
‘Not so fast,’ says Denis. ‘The animal’s half-dead. We wouldn’t get the length of Skibbereen on him.’
‘So we’ll take both. Ride one, lead the other.’
‘I’ve a better idea,’ suggests Edith. ‘There’s a motor car you can use. It’s in the West Cork Hotel. Belongs to an American staying there. Why don’t you borrow it in the name of the Irish Republic? Your captain would be terribly impressed if you drove up in it.’
Denis directs a look of admiration at her.
‘Sure we wouldn’t have a notion how to drive one of them yokes,’ says the other.
‘The owner has a chauffeur. Perhaps he could be encouraged to go part of the way with you, until you get the hang of things. He’d be cover for you if you run into any patrols.Who’d suspect a fancy chauffeur?’
‘Just picture the captain’s face!’ says Denis.
‘The West Cork, you say? And he’s there tonight?’ The sleeper considers it.
Edith crosses her fingers. ‘Yes, both he and the motor car.’
Denis leans into the other volunteer and whispers to him.Their conversation is rapid. All Edith can hear is, ‘How do we get to the hotel?’ from the sleeper.
‘Mike could give you a lift in our trap,’ she says. ‘But I’d want your word of honour that both Mike and Tara are allowed home to us. He drops you on the outskirts of Skibbereen. Then he turns back.’
‘No bother,’ says Denis.
‘Is that a promise?’ asks Edith.
‘What’s to stop him going to the peelers?’ objects the sleeper.
‘I’ve never given evidence to the police in my life and I’m not about to start,’ says Mike.
‘Besides, you know where we live.Your captain wouldn’t take it lying down,’ says Edith.
The sleeper reflects. ‘That’ll do.’
‘I’ll have me boots now, ma’am,’ says Denis.
She collects them for him.
He puts them under his arm, and makes for the door. ‘Come on, Hurley, let’s get the trap on the road. Good night to you, Miss Somerville, and you, ladies.’
Edith catches Mike’s eye. ‘You be very careful, Mike. Please. No heroics.’
ten
Edith watches the spill of rain turn holes in the avenue into pools of water. Through the downpour, a hunched shape emerges. It is the postman on his bicycle. She hasn’t seen Timmy the Post in weeks. Head bent over handlebars, he steers around the side of the house towards the kitchen door. She checks the time and decides to give him twenty minutes to dry off and have a hot drink. But impatience sends her to the kitchen sooner. From the passageway, she hears his voice sharing the latest news.
‘The postman beyond in Schull was savaged by a wild dog on his rounds. Some of them beasts would ate you alive and go back for the toenails.’
She clears her throat, to alert them to her arrival, and sweeps in. ‘You’re welcome to Drishane, Timmy. I hope there’s good news in your letters.’
Mug in one hand and rasher sandwich in the other, he springs to his feet.‘Miss Somerville, I’m sorry to be sitting in your kitchen in me bare feet, but the socks and boots are drowned-wet, so they are. Philomena here insisted on drying them by the range.’
‘Quite right, too. And it’s not my kitchen, it’s Mrs O’Shea’s.’
Mrs O’Shea, preparing a meat pie at the far end of the table, looks up.‘Timmy O’Driscoll’s thinner than a farthing. He needs building up.’
‘Indeed he does. Unlike that cat of yours eating our butter.’
A tabby cat, tail as fluffy as a winter muff, is perched on a side table applying her tongue methodically to the butter dish.
Edith claps her hands to startle the cat. ‘She should be kept in the barn. And the butter dish should have a lid on it.’
Philomena, who is separating a jumble of fish knives from fruit knives, takes a run at him with a sweeping brush. ‘Go on out o’ that, ya dirty brute!’ The cat jumps down and shelters behind the dresser.
‘Really, Mrs O’Shea, I can’t think why you permit this. We’ll all be poisoned.’
‘Ah now, Miss Edith, I just fetched the butter out of the pantry this minute to make Timmy his sandwich. And you know, Tiger is a good mouser. She earns her keep.’
‘Sure the kitchen and pantry would be overrun without her dropping in now and again to put manners on the mice,’ Philomena chimes in.
‘But who’ll put manners on her? Look, she’s still here, biding her time. The minute my back is turned she’ll be at the butter again.’
Philomena opens the back door and calls to the cat, which streaks past her and out through the rain. Mrs O’Shea pounds her displeasure on the pastry beneath her rolling pin.
Edith turns back to the postman. ‘I’m glad to see Mrs O’Shea has given you something to eat, Timmy.’
‘Fed and watered like a prince, I am. Faith, you’re always very dacent to me here.’
‘It’s the least we can.’
‘No truer word.We must be good to each other.When St Patrick met Fionn McCool, he asked was God good to the Irish in pagan times. And Fionn said sure there was no need because were all good to each other.’
Mrs O’Shea and Philomena bless themselves.
‘Did you have much trouble getting through to us, Timmy?’
‘’Asier to swim to America than cycle these parts. But I do me poor best.There’s some post from England for you, ma’am. Never fear, I kept it all dry in me pouch.’Toes splayed, he pads across to his leather satchel, dripping over a three-week copy of Skibbereen Eagle.
‘Thank you, Timmy. And how are things in Skib?’
‘You wouldn’t believe the goings-on there, ma’am. ’Deed and troth you wouldn’t. Sure, wasn’t the Yankee gentleman’s motor car, a great brute of a machine that’s his pride and joy, pinched by the Shinners four nights back.’
A furtive shaft of joy glows in Edith.
‘They borrowed his driver, as well,’ says Timmy. ‘Didn’t harm him, mind you, and he got the motor car back last night. But it took a pounding. Dunched, scratched and whatnot. He’s in a powerful rage. Talking about taking it up with Mick Collins hisself. Says he wants the men responsible handed in to the authorities.’
‘That seems a little ambitious.’
‘Collins might soft-soap him. He might even throw him a few pounds towards repairs. But as for turning in his own men? That’ll happen when yesterday comes again.’
Edith wonders if she ought to make amends to the American – invite him to lunch or something. Without admitting her own role in his misfortune, of course. ‘I should think Mr Collins has bigger fish to fry. But theft of one’s property is irksome. Still, all’s well that ends well.’
‘I’d be banjaxed without me bicycle, on loan from His Majesty King George. The American gentleman, Mr Grun by name, is a journalist. He’s over here reporting on the goings-on. So Mick Collins might be a shade more sympathetic to him than to you or me, ma’am.’
‘In that case, I expect his motor car is insured and the bill for repairs won’t come out of his pocket.’ Relieved, Edith downgrades lunch to a calling card left at his hotel as a courtesy, perhaps with an invitation to afternoon tea if he should find himself in the locale.
Meditative, Timmy sucks his teeth. ‘There’s some say he’s been spying for the British. Sure what else would he be doing so long in a place the size of Skibbereen?’
‘God bless us and save us! A spy is it?’ Mrs O’Shea drops a piece of diced meat on the floor and the cat materializes to pounce on it. The cook flips a cloth half-heartedly at her. ‘No, Tiger.’
‘How did that creature get back in?’ demands Edith.
‘Through the pantry window,’ says Philomena.‘I left it open.That’s a day fit for neither man nor beast.’
Edith gives up and returns toTimmy.‘The American’s taking an enormous risk, surely? He’s hardly inconspicuous. And the flying columns are particularly active in West Cork. I know there’s a truce, but still.You’d hardly know the difference pre- or post-ceasefire here.’
‘Hidden in plain sight, that’s what he is, ma’am.’
Edith decides she has wronged the motor car owner quite enough without indulging in speculation about his activities. ‘I’ll attend to my letters now, Timmy. There may be one that needs a quick response – I could deal with it while you’re still here, if you wouldn’t mind taking it with you to the post office. Whatever you do, don’t leave until I come back to you. Oh, and make sure your stockings and boots are dry before you put them on.Wet stockings next to your skin do untold damage.’
‘Occupational hazard in my line of work, Miss Somerville, but thank-ee kindly.’
Edith retreats to a chair in the inner hall with her letters. One of them is from her friend Ethel Smyth, announcing her inability to sell the hunters but readiness to pay a visit to Drishane.Would the following week be convenient? She names a day and the arrival time of her train. Edith reflects. She can use the visit as a deadline to force the pace on her play. Ethel Smyth is a disruptive house guest, all-pervasive, like a Castletownshend sea mist – the prospect of her arrival will act as the impetus she needs to finish Flurry’s Wedding. And perhaps she can circumvent postal disruptions by sending it back to England with her.
She scratches out a hasty note to Ethel telling her she’ll send Mike in the dogcart to meet her off the Cork train at Skibbereen station, along with a warning that the unsettled state of the country means little by way of tennis or croquet parties in the neighbouring houses. We’re living as quietly as mice inside a skirting board, trying to avoid the notice of the resident cat, she writes. Pleased with her analogy, inspired by the rapacious Tiger, she seals the envelope and goes back to the kitchen.
Passing a window, she notices Jeremiah sheltering under the oak where Dooley is buried, puffing on his pipe. Odd, that business where he couldn’t or wouldn’t sit up in the stables with Mike. The day after Mike delivered the IRA men to Skibbereen, she asked him if there was more to Jeremiah’s inability than met the eye.
‘He’s just old, miss, and has no one to see about him. His daughters call in, but it’s not the same.’
That’s the trouble with the times they’re living in, thinks Edith.You start doubting everyone.
While she’s watching, Jeremiah takes something from his wheelbarrow and places the object under the tree, propped against the trunk. Then he lifts the barrow handles and pushes away with it through the mizzle. Edith waits until he’s out of sight before throwing on a raincoat and darting out.
Why, it’s a white stone, almost an oval, the size of her face. At one end of the stone there’s an indentation, so that it resembles a lopsided heart. Some time ago, unable to find anything that satisfied her, she asked Jeremiah to keep an eye out for an appropriate marker for Dooley’s grave. He’s done her proud.
—
Edith completes Flurry’s Wedding on the day Ethel Smyth arrives, radiating vitality. Exuberant in a tricorn hat, which lends her a buccaneering air, she brings the smack of the wider world.
‘Boney, dear, you’re laden down with packages like a Christmas tree. I see you’ve brought champagne. You clever puss, how did you guess I had something to celebrate?’ Boney is her personal nickname for Ethel, because she reminds her of Napoleon Bonaparte, on red alert to conquer the world.
‘Intuition,’ booms Boney.‘Besides, catching up with friends is always cause for celebration.’
‘And so say all of us. Let me show you to your room. Then we can have tea.’
Boney slips an arm round Edith’s waist as they walk through the outer hall towards the inner one, leading to the main staircase. She’s demonstrative, overwhelmingly so, in Edith’s opinion, but perhaps it’s understandable after a year apart.
‘And how is every inch of you, Edith Somerville?’
‘As old as Methuselah and stupid in the head from doing nothing but work. Apart from that, all the better for seeing you.’ From habit, Edith pauses at the foot of the staircase, readying herself for the climb.
