1949 (28 page)

But it was the nearest refuge Finbar could think of.

Ursula weighed less than he expected, as if her bones were hollow. He dropped onto a bench just inside the front gates, cradling Ursula against his chest while he gazed around frantically for help.

Within moments several members of staff arrived. They helped him take Ursula to the infirmary and make her as comfortable as possible on a narrow bed. No one asked if she belonged at Trinity. She was in need and this was Ireland; nothing more was required.

The nurse on duty brought a light sedative, which Finbar persuaded Ursula to drink. Her painful sobs began to subside. She gazed up at Finbar through swollen eyes.

“What's wrong?” he asked again, as gently as he knew how.

She murmured something he thought he had misunderstood. Bending lower, he put his ear almost against her lips. “What's that? I thought you said freedom was dead.”

“Saoirse!” Ursula wailed, beginning to cry all over again. “Saoirse's dead.”

Getting a coherent account from her took a long time. When she spoke her voice was hoarse from weeping, the narrative interrupted by hiccups.

Lucy Halloran had rung 2RN from Clare when Ursula was away from her desk. Lucy had left a telephone number and asked that Ursula ring back. Recently there had been some unpleasantness about people using the 2RN telephones for personal business, so since Ursula was planning to meet Helena Moloney for lunch at a café in Dame Street, she had waited to use a public telephone on the way.

The conversation had left her shattered. “Saoirse died three days ago and Lucy didn't think it was important enough to tell me!”

Finbar was still mystified. “Saoirse?”

“My horse! The horse who's been mine all his life, almost. He was found dead in his field. He went to sleep and didn't wake up.” Ursula fought to keep talking through her sobs. “The only reason Lucy finally rang me was because the knacker had failed to come and she wanted to know what to do with the body. I told her to have the hired men bury Saoirse in his field. I even said I'd buy the field from her to guarantee no one would plow over him. But I can't. I can't afford it!”

She began to cry again. Bitterly, despairingly. The skies were not weeping half as hard.

Saoirse was one loss too many. Into her mourning for him Ursula poured all the grief she had been storing up for years.

 

Finbar paid a small boy to carry a hastily scribbled note of apology to the café where Helena Moloney was waiting, then took Ursula home to Moore Street. Along the way he bought a small bottle of brandy.

He carried her up the stairs and sat her, fully dressed, on her bed. There was no mention of men not being allowed upstairs. An army with rifles could not have driven him away.

Finbar found Ursula's tooth glass and carefully poured one finger of brandy at a time, until she lost patience and snatched the bottle out of his hand. He watched aghast as she tossed off the contents like a man. “You'll make yourself sick.”

When the bottle was empty she handed it back to him. “I won't be sick. I'm used to drink, I drink Guinness all the time.”

She did not feel the effects of the brandy at all, she thought.

Chimes sounded far off.
Fairy bells ringing?
Or maybe it was the buzzing in her ears. The sound came closer, receded, came back again. How easy it was to sink into that music. Sink down; spin around…

She reached for Finbar to steady herself. He was warm and alive and she needed someone with her because her heart was broken. Broken by all of them. By all who had left her.
Síle and Henry and Ned and Saoirse…

She knew what she was doing yet she did not know. The brandy transformed itself into a permeable barrier that allowed no more awareness than she was willing to accept.

 

Finbar had an abhorrence of women who drank. But this was Ursula. He could not walk out and leave her.

He firmly resolved that nothing would happen. He would take her in his arms and hold her until she fell asleep, then tuck her properly into her bed and go home. Yes. That was what any decent man would do and he was a decent man.

He was also a man in love and this was the third time she had tempted him. Where were the saints when one needed them most? Where were the priests to guard her chastity?

Not here, he thought with a groan as her arms folded around his neck. Her breath was saturated with brandy. Her kiss intoxicated him.

Finbar made one more attempt to live up to his own expectations for himself. “We mustn't do this,” he said hoarsely, trying to pry her arms away from his neck. “I won't let you do this.”

She pulled her face a few inches back from his and gazed at him with unfocused eyes. “Are you going to leave me too?”

“I'm not going to leave you, but…”

“You won't leave me ever? You'll always be here when I need you?”

“I'll always be here,” he assured her.

“Ah.” She increased her grip on his neck, pulling him down against her body. “Ah.” Her small breasts pressed against his pounding heart. “That's so good,” she murmured. “But hold me tighter. Oh, please hold me tighter. Open your skin and let me in.”

With another groan, Finbar gave up the unequal struggle.

At first she did not feel anything except pressure and a sense of movement. A man—was it Lewis? It must be Lewis—she could not make out his face, everything was blurred—was clasping her in his arms while the world spun dizzyingly around them. If he turned loose she would fall. “Don't let me fall!” she tried to say, but her traitor lips were numb. They would not shape the words.

The buzzing in her ears grew louder. From deep inside, a blind, primordial ache swelled to fill her whole being.

If you don't know what you're doing
, Ursula thought giddily,
it doesn't count
.

 

A good Catholic all his life, Finbar had remained chaste in a society where male virginity was not uncommon. Behind the dam of abstinence a mighty reservoir had filled to overflowing. Now nature reclaimed her own.

Tentatively at first, but with increasing confidence, his body took charge. The first touch of naked womanflesh against his penis was maddening. It took all the willpower he had accumulated in decades of rigorous self-denial to keep from climaxing. Panting, he had to stop for a moment.

Ursula's thighs parted beneath him. He sank into warmth and wetness and then there was no stopping.

She was very small and he was very large. He was afraid of hurting her. Yet with astonishing strength, the pelvic muscles she had developed through years of horse riding pulled him deeper inside. Her body responded to his with an identical rhythm, so that what they did was not the act of two, but of one. One flesh and blood and bone, giving and taking.

His long agony pouring out of him.

Her long hunger assuaged.

Something deep and sweet settled into Ursula's soul and nestled there.

Before she could give it a name, she was asleep.

Finbar raised himself on one elbow and bent over her. “I'll take care of you,
a stórín
,”
^*
he promised, though she did not hear him. “I'll take care of you always.”

 

Sitting on the only chair in the room, Finbar never took his eyes from the woman on the bed. He had been dressed since before dawn. Thoughts roiled in his head like stones in the shallows of a turbulent sea.

Ursula was his now. He had possessed her. They must marry, preferably at once. Of that there was no question.

He mentally ran the sums. Augmented by his savings, his wages would just about pay for a small terraced house in a less than fashionable neighborhood. He resolved that someday he would give her a palace. At this moment he felt as if he could do anything. The amazing relief of sex had left him drained but exultant. Oh, yes, exultant! He wanted to open the window and shout down into the street, “I just made love with Ursula Halloran!”

He could not do that, of course. He could never ever say those words out loud, even after they were married. She must be treated with total respect.

He must forget the circumstances under which they had first made love. Made love. Gazing at the sleeping form on the bed, suddenly he was beside her again, lost in her flesh, drowned in the fragrance of her hair, burrowed between her thighs…

He tore his eyes away from her and fumbled in his waistcoat pocket for a cigarette.

He had none.

His body was thundering its demands, but not for cigarettes.

“Ursula,” he whispered.

No response.

He had taken her when she was drunk, a terrible sin surely. He must not compound it by taking her again while she was asleep and unaware.

“Ursula.” He raised his voice just enough to seep into her consciousness and waken her gently.

 

Brandy
, Ursula told herself through a fog of pain,
is not the same as Guinness
.

She kept her eyes tightly shut and waited for the pain to recede. It did not. When she tried to remember the events of the preceding night they eluded her like eels flashing through a weir. A momentary glimpse, a sparkle and a slither…then nothing.

What happened?

Memory returned in jagged flashes. Being carried through the gates of Trinity. Someone comforting her as she wept. Wept for…

When she opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was the bridle hanging on the wall like a silent reproach. “
Saoirse!
”

Finbar jumped up and hurried over to her. She gazed up at him with bloodshot eyes. “Saoirse,” she repeated in a voice breaking with agony.

“Finbar,” he corrected.

“What are you doing here?”

“I spent the night. Don't you remember?”

If you don't know what you're doing, it doesn't count
. “I must ask you to leave.” Her mouth was dry; her stomach heaved. In a moment she would be sick. She could not bear to let anyone see her vomiting.

“I can't leave you,” said Finbar, “not after what happened. I have to take care of you. What sort of man do you think I am?”

“If you're any sort of man at all you'll go right now,” Ursula told him through gritted teeth. She sprang from the bed with her hands over her mouth, brushing Finbar aside as she ran from the room. The door of the toilet on the landing banged shut. Unmistakable sounds came from within.

Embarrassed, Finbar could not decide whether it was best to wait, or to leave and come back later. He stood in the door of her room with his hands thrust deep into his pockets. My poor girl, he thought.
My
poor girl.

 

Ursula hunched over the water closet while the sour contents of her stomach scalded her throat and backed up into her nasal passages. She was choking, she was suffocating!

Vomit exploded into the bowl.

She was being turned inside out.
Never again. Oh sweet Jesus never again
. Gripping the edge of the bowl, she retched repeatedly.

The piece of lino around the base of the water closet was filthy. She found herself staring at it with disgust. Or perhaps the disgust was at herself.

With the emptying of her stomach, her brain began to clear. She could remember almost everything. Including intense, totally unexpected pleasure.

Oh sweet Jesus!

I thought it was Lewis. It wasn't
.

It was him. Finbar
.

Ordinary, oh-so-familiar Finbar. How could he make me feel those things?

Because I thought he was Lewis
.

Or pretended he was Lewis
, she added in a moment of painful self-knowledge.

Please God when I come out of here, let him be gone!

 

When the sounds from the toilet ceased, Finbar pasted a smile on his face. She would be coming out any minute now. He would be loving and tender and concerned. She would apologize for her outburst and he would be infinitely understanding.

Ursula emerged looking very pale. Before Finbar could speak she said, “I apologize, that was disgraceful.”

“You drank too much brandy, that's all. It could happen to a bishop as they say. Come here to me.” Finbar attempted to put his arms around her, but when he smelt her breath he flinched inadvertently.

Ursula was mortified.
How did I get myself into this?
Her head was pounding like the roll of drums. “Please go now,” she whispered, moving farther away from him.

“I have to take care of you.”

“I can take care of myself, Finbar. I just want you to go.”

“May I see you tomorrow?”

She gave her head the tiniest shake and instantly regretted it. Every movement hurt.

“The day after, then?”

“Can't you understand? I don't want to see you.”

“Is there someone else?”

Ursula would not meet his eyes.

“The Englishman,” Finbar said in a tight voice. “He's not good enough for you.”

“I don't want to talk about him, I don't want to talk about anything. How many times do I have to tell you? If you don't leave this minute I shall never ever speak to you again!”

Finbar left with as much dignity as he could muster.

But the retreat was not a surrender. Ursula was his now, Englishman or no. He need only find a way to convince her.

 

Ursula arrived at work late and with a dreadful hangover. At lunchtime she pleaded a splitting headache and went home to bed. “I'll be back on form tomorrow,” she promised.

In the dismal hours before dawn she woke herself up, crying.

 

Finbar's plans for winning Ursula included handwritten notes to himself and long columns of figures. Eamon de Valera, former mathematics teacher, wanted every department of government to support its actions with figures. The habit had become ingrained in Finbar Cassidy.

First he drew up a column listing his assets and liabilities. On the liability side were his wages. Lower-echelon civil servants could never hope to make much money. On the asset side he had some savings, excellent health, and he was Irish. If not a Republican, at least Irish. Perhaps he could convert to republicanism. It would not be such a long leap, not like changing one's religion, for example.

He could do it for Ursula.

Over the weekend Finbar scoured the city looking for houses he could afford. He prepared a painstaking analysis of each prospect, comparing its condition and square footage with every other house under consideration. Sums were allocated for painting and replastering. Most of the eligible structures were suffering from the curse of the Irish climate, rising damp, so additional expenditure would be necessary to protect floors and skirting boards from rot.

Somewhere along the way Finbar Cassidy realized that he enjoyed looking at houses and making plans to improve them.

With the departure of the British ruling class, residential architecture in Ireland had fallen into serious decline. The elegant Georgian houses that had graced Dublin in the nineteenth century were now, many of them, tenements. During the War of Independence the IRA had destroyed a number of magnificent “big houses,” the country homes of the hated ruling class.

In his inmost heart, Finbar longed to offer Ursula a palace. But nowhere in Ireland was there a palace that a working man could afford to buy.