Give Us This Day (74 page)

It flashed through Joanna’s mind that her sister was sleep-walking and the memory returned to her of a woman teetering on the edge of nervous collapse, whom she had encouraged to climb into bed with Clint when they were at Tryst shortly after Helen’s return from Peking. And yet, there was no real indication of sleepwalking here. Indeed, her sister’s carriage and movements were those of a person thoroughly alerted to her surroundings. And then, while Joanna still watched, Helen turned the knob and slipped inside, leaving Alex’s door ajar.

She was not out of sight for more than twenty seconds, hardly time enough for Joanna to come to terms with the fact that she was not dreaming herself, and when she emerged, recrossing the shaft of light adjoining the main landing, Joanna saw that she was holding something flat and bulky close against her breast.

The strangeness of what she had witnessed—a sister prowling about the house like a burglar, seemingly for the purpose of purloining her brother’s luggage—did not register on Joanna at first. She told herself, standing there with one hand gripping the edge of the door, that there had to be some innocent explanation of what she had seen and again the thought that Helen was acting under some mysterious pressure returned so that she thought, desperately,
I can’t challenge her here, right outside Alex’s door, and within earshot of Mary… She might scream or struggle and that would rouse the servants as well as Alex and the child… And yet, I can’t leave it there, without finding what she’s taken from Alex’s room and why…
But then Helen herself decided her next move by passing round the wide curve of the stairhead to descend by the main staircase. This served to increase the mystery, for her own quarters, in the old nursery, lay in the east wing of the house approached by the corridor matching this one. Whatever purpose Helen had in mind it was clearly not to take her spoil back to her own room and, realising this, her sister’s eccentric behaviour made a connection with the presence of that motionless cabriolet outside.

She knew then, with a small spurt of relief arising from decision, precisely what she must do. If Helen had some notion of leaving the house, and passing whatever she had stolen to the driver of that cab in the crescent, she must be headed off and this was still possible, providing she moved quickly and quietly. The back stairs led directly to the kitchen quarters at the rear of the house, and these were partly on ground-floor level occupying a semibasement area, with one door opening on the tradesmen’s alleyway and another into the enclosed yard bounded by high brick walls. Access to this part of the house—already, or so it would appear—visited by Helen that night, was direct by the back stairs but indirect by the front hall to which Helen was now descending. Moving quickly, Joanna passed into the corridor and hurried down the stairs as far as the green baize doors, double doors here to prevent cooking smells rising to the bedrooms. She passed one and put her hand on the other, holding it open an inch or so, to give her a clear view of the kitchen.

She was just in time. Steps, less cautious now, approached from the servery and the door opposite opened, revealing Helen holding what looked like a small leather portmanteau fastened with a brass lock in addition to straps. There was a light in the kitchen and she could see her clearly. In the old days, Joanna had always been known as “the pretty one” for Helen’s complexion was sallow and her eyes were deepset, emphasising high cheekbones, but seeing her now, with her dark hair streaming and a flush of excitement on her cheeks, she looked, Joanna thought, beautiful. She stood framed in the aperture for a moment before gliding into the room, putting the case on the scrubbed table, and emitting a kind of sigh that enlarged itself into a startled gasp as Joanna flung open the second door and stepped through it.

For a moment they stood regarding one another and then Helen’s expression crumpled so that she suddenly looked like a child, caught in an act of mischief. “You’ve been following me?”

“Why not? This is my house and I’ve a right to know what you’re about taking things from Alex’s room,” and she laid a hand on the case, anticipating Helen’s swift movement towards it. There was a silence. She could see her sister’s breast heaving under her ruffled nightgown and loosely-tied robe. Helen said, slumping down in a chair, “What’s the use? How could you possibly understand?”

“I understood last time.”

“That was different.”

“And this, whatever it is, concerns Rory Clarke, and all those fancy ruffians he consorts with? Well, I realised you were committed to him, but not to this extent, not to the extent of raiding your brother’s room in the middle of the night. It is Rory’s cabriolet outside? And he’s waiting, waiting for you to hand him this, whatever it is.”

“He doesn’t intend stealing it. We aren’t pickpockets.”

“Great God!” Joanna burst out. “How can you do this? Creeping about the house and taking things from the luggage of a guest in someone else’s home? What on earth has Rory done to you to make you so much as think of behaving in this way? Keep it, copy it, or look at it, what does it matter in Heaven’s name?”

“As I say, you know nothing about these things. Nobody English does, not even people like Clint, who have lived and worked here all this time.”

“You’re English, aren’t you?”

“Not any longer.”

Joanna sat down facing her. She kept both her hands on the case and noticed that they were trembling. “Then tell me. Tell me if you can. What’s in this case that makes a thief out of you?”

Helen looked across at her, very levelly. “A list of the military depots he’s visiting, with inventories of the arms and ammunition held in each of them. I said I’d get it for Rory to look at, no more than that I swear. Then I was to return it and Alex wouldn’t have known a thing about it. No one could have held him responsible for the information in there getting to us, for no one would have known how we came by it.”

“‘Us’! ‘We’! You talk as if you were fighting some kind of war and Alex was the enemy.”

“We are fighting a war, or will be the moment the British implement the Home Rule Bill. Doesn’t it mean anything at all to you that those people up north are buying guns from Germany and drilling openly in the streets? With encouragement from Parliament and the army? Haven’t the Irish the right to know what’s going on, when more than half the senior officers at the Curragh sympathise with the Protestants in Ulster and won’t even try and stop them when they start a civil war?”

“No, it doesn’t matter to me. All I know is I can’t ever ask you into my house again. That matters terribly, to me if not to you!” She took a deep breath. The kitchen was large but it felt unbearably close tonight. “I saw you on the back stairs before you went to Alex’s room. That means you were down here earlier, so you’d best tell me why, before I rouse Alex and Clint. And I’ll do that, I swear, unless you tell me exactly what you had in mind. Well?”

“Don’t do that, Jo.”

“You’re saying Rory and his friends are prepared to do violence to get at these papers?”

“I’m not saying anything of the kind. All I want you to understand is why I took it, what it could mean in terms of other people’s blood. I did come downstairs earlier, to unbolt the back door, for Rory won’t stir from the cab until I give the signal.”

“What signal?”

“What does it matter what signal? I can’t give it now. You’ve spoiled everything by interfering.”

”
Interfering
? Wouldn’t anyone in my position interfere in these circumstances?”

She was some time answering. Finally she said, in a low voice, “Yes, I suppose they would, Jo. In your circumstances, that is.” She turned away, her expression infinitely troubled. “You’ve always been good to me. I hate hurting you, and I realise how it must look to you but… this… it means everything to me, just everything, you understand?”

“No, I don’t, Helen. You tell me if you can.”

“It proves I’m
with
them, don’t you see? It would make all the difference to my life. And nobody need ever know. Alex is asleep and I could give you my word of honour that case will be back in his room in less than an hour.”

Joanna jumped up, tucking the case firmly under her arm. “It’ll be back in five minutes. And no one, least of all Rory, is coming into this house to pry. I’ll make sure of that,” and she went into the scullery and reshot the top and bottom bolts on the door leading to the alley. “Now you can make whatever signals you please, for I shan’t leave you until you’re dressed, packed, and out of the house.”

“You won’t do this one thing for me?”

“Of course I won’t! Not for your sake, for Rory’s, or for the king of the Cannibal Islands!” She glanced up at the kitchen clock, noting it wanted a couple of minutes to two. “I’ll give you fifteen minutes to leave. After that, if you haven’t gone, I’ll wake Alex and tell him what you’ve done and why. I’m not leaving you down here either, to open that door again and use my kitchen as… as a plotters’ den. Get up and get dressed. I mean to see you upstairs and out of the house.”

They went through the hall and up the main staircase, turning down the corridor to the old nursery. She stood wordlessly by the door and watched Helen dress and it was as if a terrible weight was pressing on her breast. In ten minutes they were back in the hall and she pulled the lobby curtains aside and looked out. The cab was still there. She said, “Draw the bolt and turn the key. You can let yourself out,” and at that Helen turned and she was surprised, and a little startled, to see tears streaming down her face.

“We’ve been close a long time, Jo.”

“All our lives. You think this is easy for me?”

“No, no, it can’t be, but you still don’t understand. Rory’s committee, especially since he lost his seat and joined the staff… well… they didn’t trust him before. They don’t trust any of Redmond’s men. But they trust him now. Him but not me. Because I’m English.”

“Dear God, it can’t be all that important, Helen! It just can’t!”

“To stand well with Sinn Fein? No, that isn’t important. Not on its own it isn’t. But can’t you understand, Jo? It’s all I’ve got to offer Rory. I’m years older than him, and I’ve never had your looks. And I can’t give him children. It’s too late for that.”

She had a glimpse then of the hidden pressures at work in the relationship of this ill-matched pair; one a man consumed by his own conceit, his mind lost in the fog of Celtic legend and the real and fancied injustices practised upon these people, the other a woman whose entire being was centred on a younger man’s flattery and probably unable to think straight once he laid hands upon her.

She said, “I understand in a way, but it doesn’t make any difference, Helen. You must see that, besotted as you are with that man. From here on we’ve no choice, have we? You go your way, I’ll go mine,” and she moved past her to withdraw the bolts of the front door. And then, as the night air struck chill on her, she remembered something else that might be important.

“I’m returning that case. You’ll have to tell me where it was in Alex’s room. It wouldn’t do for him to find it had been moved in the night.”

“You won’t tell him then?”

“I don’t know. It’s something I’ll have to think about.”

“It was on his chair. He isn’t very careful for a man with his responsibilities.”

Was it the vaguest of threats? Or a last-minute warning? Did it mean that, from here on, Alex was a marked man as long as he moved unescorted about Ireland? Joanna didn’t know. Suddenly she was too tired and too depressed to think about it. Instead she watched her sister descend the steps and stand hesitating under the street lamp. Opposite the cab door opened and somebody got out, but she did not wait to identify him.

2

Back at Tryst, Henrietta’s first reaction was of intense relief that she had prevailed upon Joanna to tell her, without piling this additional load on Adam’s shoulders. It was enough, as she had found to her cost of late, to put a bold face on one’s own troubles without meddling in the affairs of factions, sects, and nations. Her spirits lifted for she recognised, in her interception of Joanna’s tale of woe, an opportunity of service, a way leading back to the summit she had occupied in her youth when, by common consent, Adam had confined himself to his business and she to hers, that of steering the family through the crosscurrents of the years.

She said, unequivocally, “Don’t mention a word of this to your father. You’ll not so much as hint at it, is that clear?”

Joanna, looking pained and puzzled, said, “But surely I have to, don’t I? I mean, suppose Helen or Rory come here on a visit? And suppose that visit coincides with one from Alex and Lydia?”

“I’ll deal with that if it arises, but I’ll not have your father worried, you understand? It was right of you to tell me, and right of you to act as you did. But this is as far as it goes, do you hear?”

“And Alex?”

“There’s no point in saying anything to him either. You know that in your heart, Jo.”

She paused, recalling an earlier family quarrel that had never really healed, one between Alex and Giles in connection with that awful war, and the misery that had emerged from it for Hugo. What would be served by widening the family breach to include Alex and his sister, who were unlikely to meet again for years? Ireland, confound it, could look to itself. For her part, having lost a grandson, a daughter-in-law, and a daughter in swift succession, she was concerned with what remained. Nothing else mattered. She said, “Listen Jo, Alex and Lydia are sailing for India in a week or two. I was sorry when I heard, but I’m right glad now. Let it pass. Leave it where it is.” And then, dejectedly, “You and Helen—I suppose you’ll keep yourselves to yourselves from now on?”

“How else could it be?”

“No other way. But it’s sad just the same. And very stupid, too, if you think about it. Meddling in men’s affairs is always dangerous. What did it bring Romayne but a messy death? What purpose does it serve any of us in the end?” She mused a moment, aware that Joanna was watching her intently. “A woman should have more than enough to absorb her, especially if she has children to rear.”