No Peace for Amelia (12 page)

Patrick moved his position and gave a little moan as he jostled his bad arm.

‘You shouldn’t be waving that arm of yours about,’ she said after a bit. ‘Your old sling was pretty well done for, though, and the strips of sheeting Mary Ann brought for bandages aren’t long enough. Have you a scarf?’

Gingerly, Patrick felt inside his jacket with his good hand.

‘No scarf,’ he said.

‘Here, we’ll have to use this so,’ said Amelia, and took off her shawl.

He sat up and inclined his body forward, and Amelia knotted the shawl around his neck, to form a sling. Then she eased the wounded arm into it.

‘Now, you’re as snug as a bug in a rug,’ she said, in a satisfied voice.

Mary Ann came skipping back to the shed with a steaming mug of milk and a slice of bread and honey for Patrick.

‘That was a good idea, Mary Ann,’ said Amelia
scientifically
. ‘Honey. For energy.’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Mary Ann, ‘but listen, you two, I’ve had an idea. A great idea! I’m delighted with myself. Here, take this, Patrick, before I spill it, I’m that excited.’

‘Well?’ said Amelia, taking the mug and handing it down to Patrick.

‘It’s Tommy O’Rourke, the milkman. He works for
Lucan
Dairies, the crowd that deliver the milk around here. But he comes from the Ward, out in north County
Dublin
. Isn’t that on the way to Ashbourne?’

‘Well, it’s in the right direction, I think, anyway,’ said Amelia, beginning to follow Mary Ann’s thinking.

‘Well, Tommy and myself are great pals, you know. He often has a cup of tea with me in the morning. This road is near the end of his rounds, so it’s late enough when he gets here, maybe half-seven, and I’m often up at that time.’

‘Are you really, Mary Ann?’ said Amelia. ‘That’s terribly early.’

‘Oh, I don’t mind. A cup of tea now with Tommy is a grand way to start my day. And I can safely say that Tommy would be willing to do me a favour. He’d
certainly
carry the message to Ashbourne for us, no trouble. The only thing is, he’d have to finish his rounds first and then report back to the depot. By the time he’d be ready to leave for home it’d be getting on for half-eight or nine. Would that be time enough, Patrick?’

‘Well, I would prefer to get through with it tonight, but it’s time enough in the morning, I suppose. It’s tomorrow the surrender is to be anyway.’

‘Right, so. That’s that fixed.’

‘Would he take me with him?’ asked Patrick.

‘I didn’t think of that. Would he be able to travel in the morning, Amelia?’

Amelia thought for a moment, then she spoke
carefully
: ‘It probably wouldn’t be advisable. On the other hand, he can’t stay here either. He would be better off going to a hospital, but I know he’ll never agree to that. The next best thing would be to get him to a safe house, where he can be warm and have a proper bed and good food. That’s more important than not moving him, I’d say.’

‘And we’ll be rid of him too,’ said Mary Ann
half-playfully
, but with real relief in her voice. ‘And without having to get your parents involved, Amelia.’

‘Just when I was getting to like it here,’ said Patrick, with a flirtatious look at Amelia that made her blush.

So it was settled that Patrick would try to snatch a few hours more sleep, and in the morning would finish the milk round with Tommy O’Rourke, and then travel with him to Ashbourne. Amelia insisted that he take her
father
’s second best greatcoat, to keep him warm and to hide his sling. She went and got it from the hallstand there and then, and threw it over Patrick as an extra blanket. After that, she said she would get off to bed, and she advised Mary Ann and Patrick to try to get some sleep too.

‘Goodbye, Patrick,’ she said then, offering him her small, cold hand.

He propped himself up on one elbow again, and took the proferred hand gingerly in the hand of his bad arm. Instead of shaking Amelia’s hand, to her great
astonishment
he brought it carefully to his lips, and kissed the backs of her fingers with a little feathery kiss.

‘Oh!’ she said, and drew her hand away quickly.

His eyes laughed at her.

‘Goodbye,’ he said. ‘And thank you very much, Dr Pim.’

A
melia didn’t get back to sleep for a long time that night. She was chilled right through after the
episode
in the shed, and her thoughts were racing. When she finally drifted off, it was a pale face set with smiling eyes of cloudy grey that hovered behind her own closed eyelids and accompanied her dreamily into sleep, not the light-flecked caramel-brown eyes she usually
conjured
up on the brink of her dreams.

But when she did sleep, she slept heavily, and she didn’t hear the clatter of the milk-cart in the road in the early morning, or the hurried, whispered conversation on the doorstep, or the shuffling threesome footsteps as Mary Ann and Tommy O’Rourke supported and
encouraged
Patrick quickly through the house and settled him on the wooden seat beside the carter, his back against a milkchurn, nor yet again the rapid clanking and
spanking
as Tommy wheeled the cart swiftly in the roadway
and set off at a brisk trot, the empty milk-churns making a merry racket behind him and his silent, muffled companion.

She slept through it all, and only woke when Mary Ann drew her curtains and the morning flooded her room. The sunshine bounded over the floor and leapt onto her body, like an over-excited puppy licking and making a fuss of its beloved owner. She beat off the puppy sunlight with one arm held defensively across her face, and squinted out of one eye at Mary Ann, who stood fully dressed, just as Amelia had last seen her at midnight, and outlined fuzzily against the window, a cup of coffee in her hand.

It took Amelia a second or two to remember, and when she did, she sat up with a jerk.

‘Did he get away, Mary Ann?’

‘He did.’

‘Thank goodness.’

‘And thank you, Amelia, for all you did for him. Here, I brought you a cup of coffee to wake you up.’

Amelia would have been quite happy not to wake up just yet, but Mary Ann was taut with excitement and clearly needed her company, so she took the coffee and patted the edge of the bed comfortably.

‘Sit down, Mary Ann, and tell me all about it.’

Mary Ann sat down gratefully and told Amelia how Tommy had been only too willing to take Patrick and his precious message with him and had helped her to
bundle him up and make him comfortable.

‘Did you get to bed at all, Mary Ann?’

‘Well, I just took my dress off and lay down for a few hours, but I didn’t get much sleep, I have to say. I was terrified I would sleep through the milk delivery, and then our only chance to get rid of Pat would be gone.’

‘Oh, don’t say “get rid of”. It sounds unkind.’

‘I don’t care how it sounds. It’s a weight off my mind to have him out of this house, and if he ever comes next, nigh or near darkening its door again I’ll kill him stone dead within an inch of his life and I won’t be responsible for my actions.’

Amelia started to smile at the piled-up illogicalities of Mary Ann’s threats, but she quickly realised that Mary Ann was not in any state to share her amusement. In fact, Mary Ann leant her elbows on her knees at this point, and her head on her knuckles, and burst into tears of
relief
and anger and gratitude, the strain of the night finally breaking in her.

‘There, there,’ said Amelia, soothingly, leaning
awkwardly
forward and patting Mary Ann’s spiky shoulders. At Amelia’s touch, or perhaps at the sound of her voice, Mary Ann’s sobs intensified, and she picked up the hem of her apron and pressed it hard against her eyes, as if to stanch the flow of tears.

‘There, there, it’s all over now, it’s all over, he’s all right, now, he’s gone,’ Amelia repeated several times, still patting Mary Ann with one hand and trying not to
spill the coffee, which she hadn’t sipped yet.

Gradually Mary Ann stopped crying, her sobs coming only in occasional and sudden waves, like breakers on the shore, and she dabbed at her face and fingered strands of damp hair off her forehead.

‘Here,’ said Amelia, ‘you have the coffee. You need it more than I do.’

‘Thanks, I will,’ sniffed Mary Ann. ‘A hot drink is
always
a great comfort in a crisis, isn’t it?’

Amelia nodded. ‘Better than cooking sherry anyway,’ she said with a smile.

At this, Mary Ann’s sobs turned to choked giggles and she had to put the cup she had taken from Amelia down on the bedside locker.

‘Will you ever forget the look on his face when we
offered
him sherry?’ she squeezed out between sobs of laughter. ‘He must have thought we were three ha’pence short of the full shilling. I bet he thinks the gentry all sit around sipping sherry in their drawing rooms and
shaking
their heads over the doings of the natives.’

‘Is that what we are – gentry?’ asked Amelia, turning the word over in her mouth. She rather liked the sound of it.

‘Well, in comparison to us you are, anyway,’ said Mary Ann, drinking the coffee, ‘And now, my lady, it’s time your ladyship got up for school. Lucky Saturday is a short schoolday – I don’t think you’d make it through an ordinary weekday.’

Indeed it was no ordinary weekday, but not only
because
it was a Saturday. When Amelia arrived, late and breathless, there was a simmering excitement in the classroom, but since class was already in progress, she couldn’t ask what it was all about. Several of the girls threw her sidelong looks, which made her quite uneasy. It felt almost as if they knew what she had been up to in the dark of night, consorting with a rebel and conspiring to help a traitor escape. When she put it to herself like that, she began to feel quite nervous. What would
happen
if anyone did find out? Would she be slapped in handcuffs and thrown into gaol? It sounded dramatic, but Amelia knew that even good people could get into trouble with the law very easily, through no fault, or at least, very little fault, of their own, just for doing what they thought right and for the best.

As soon as the teacher left the classroom, a murmur broke out, which seemed somehow to have Amelia at its centre. She still didn’t know what it was all about. One girl caught her eye and made a jerking movement with her head, towards an empty desk, the desk where Lucinda Goodbody usually sat this term. Amelia looked at the empty place, but Lucinda was often late for school, so late that she sometimes missed the first lesson, and it didn’t strike her as all that very odd. Maybe she’d done it once too often and was now going to be disciplined for it. Maybe the others had heard that she was in some sort of disgrace. But would that really cause such a level of
interest and murmuring among her classmates? Hardly. Just then, the next teacher came bowling into the
classroom
, a large globe in her arms, and the whispering
subsided
again.

After the second period it was time for coffee-break, and the girls all stood up and milled about with more agitation than usual at break time, some of them casting odd looks at Amelia. She wondered if she had a smudge on her nose – she shared with Mary Ann a talent for
getting
streaks of dirt on her face – or if her hair had come loose. She rubbed her nose briefly with one hand and patted her head anxiously with the other, but her
hairpins
seemed all to be in place. She looked down then at her dress, which seemed to be in order, and her boots matched too. It wasn’t her appearance. They must know something. They must have heard. Maybe Patrick had been apprehended on the road to Ashbourne and had mentioned that the Pims had harboured him. He wouldn’t do that to them, would he? How could he
betray
them, after they had helped and trusted him?

As she was checking her attire, and running thoughts about Patrick’s probable arrest through her mind, her friend Dorothea Jacob came up to her, took her by the wrist, and pulled her urgently into a corner. The
whispers
grew louder, and all heads seemed to be turned away from Amelia, but all were held at a taut angle that suggested their owners were bursting to turn and look at her.

‘Amelia,’ said Dorothea gently. ‘There’s a rumour
going
around. I don’t know if it’s true.’

Amelia could feel anxiety wash over her, and she gripped Dorothea’s hand hard. They must have arrested him. He must have squealed.

‘But I think you ought to know what they are saying.’ Amelia heard Dorothea’s kindly voice as if it was coming through on a badly tuned wireless.

‘Yes?’ she said, having swallowed first to try to relieve the dryness in her mouth.

‘People are saying that Frederick Goodbody has been killed in the war.’

Everything went all colours, all wavery, everything shone about the edges, a strange, almost angelic singing rang in her ears, and a slow, swinging sensation gripped her body in a seductive grasp, as if she was being swung, down, down, down, with a slow swoop in a giant
swing-boat
at a carnival; then it all stopped, the lights, the
kaleidoscopic
movements of colours, the singing, the swinging, swooping, falling feeling; it was all muffled, blurred.

When she opened her eyes she was lying on the schoolroom floor. Far above her she could hear the humming sound again, only louder, more intense, like upset and angry bees swarming from an invaded nest. A great white moon hung in the air, just above her. She could see now what they meant about the man in the moon. Certainly, if you squinted carefully, you could see
a face in the moon. Definitely a human face. Wasn’t that odd, Amelia thought. But then the man in the moon started to move his lips, and he spoke to Amelia in Dorothea’s voice, and his great white moonface came closer to hers, and her head was lifted up and someone held something saline and whiffy to her nose, and then pressed a glass of water to her lips.

Amelia drank the water, though it was warm and unpleasant-tasting, and then she sat up wonderingly, wishing the bees would go away, buzz off somewhere else and leave her with Dorothea the moon to ward off the ache that was starting.

‘I have a headache in my throat, Dorothea,’ she whispered.

‘Yes, of course you have, dear. I know how it is when you faint. It happened to me once. Now, see if you can just get to your feet long enough to sit properly on a chair. It can’t be comfortable or clean down there on the floor.’

Arms appeared around Amelia’s body. She closed her eyes and gave herself up to the arms’ embrace, and in a moment she found herself sitting on a bentwood chair, with more water being pressed on her. She pushed the glass aside, and someone passed another ammoniac whiff under her nose.

‘Let her be, now. Just let her be. Shoo off the lot of you,’ she could hear Dorothea say, as she sat with eyes still closed, and then she heard the door opening and
closing, opening and closing, and at last the bees had stopped and Amelia sat in a silence broken only by her own breathing and the companionable sound of
Dorothea
’s breathing, close to her ear.