Women of Courage (70 page)
Authors: Tim Vicary
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Genre Fiction, #Historical, #Literary, #Historical Fiction, #British, #Irish, #Literary Fiction, #British & Irish
What?
That she was glad they had been lovers. That she did not hate him anymore. That he was right; his child would be brought up in a good home, with all the advantages which wealth and education could give. And that she would love it, with a love as fierce and protective as she had for Tom.
I would like to tell him that, Deborah thought. And that if I had not taken his advice, I would have lost Tom also. But if he does come, and Sarah is here? I shall have to pretend, and deceive her.
Still Deborah hesitated. She thought of Sarah, who had wanted children so much and would probably never have any now. She would probably stay married to Jonathan for form’s sake, but they wouldn’t live together, not any more. She was likely to be hurt, jealous even, when she learnt that Deborah was pregnant; if she learnt about Rankin too she might never speak to her sister again.
But Deborah was tired of lies. She realised how much she needed someone in her life to whom she could speak honestly. Who would love her for what she really was. Charles was dead, and anyway, she had never been able to talk to him. Even if Rankin came, he would go away again after an hour or a day or a week — she would never be able to rely on him.
So if not Sarah, who?
I could go and whisper my secret to a shell on the seashore, she thought. And what good would that do?
I don’t want her to go back to London, and leave me alone with my guilt and my memories. I want her to stay here with me at Glenfee, at least for a while. When my baby is born I want someone to share the moment with me. I want there to be at least one person, apart from myself, who knows everything about where it came from and how it was conceived, and who still loves it, for all that.
I want that person to be Sarah, my sister.
I want her to know the truth.
So she began.
‘A while ago I met a man . . .’
The two rich ladies, Mrs Devlin thought, did not seem to know their own minds. They had ordered tea at eleven o’clock in the morning, but when she had laid a cloth over the wooden table in the garden and set out two willow pattern cups with the sugar bowl and the milk jug and the tea pot which was only a little chipped at the spout, and a selection of cakes with some hot soda bread fresh from the oven, they had not come to sit down.
They just continued pacing up and down by the shore of the lough, the fair-haired one in the blue coat doing all the talking, while the slim dark one in the grey skirt and jacket and straw hat listened quietly, until all the heat had gone out of the soda bread and the tea in the pot would be tepid and stewed for sure. At times they frowned and looked very solemn, and once the fair one cried, so that Mrs Devlin felt certain all the good food would go to waste, but the dark one put her arm around the fair one and started talking earnestly, and they walked right the way up to the reeds so that the heron flew away in disgust.
Mrs Devlin was just wondering whether to clear the table and brew fresh tea, or give it all to the chauffeur, when the two ladies suddenly came and sat down laughing and ate and drank as though it was the most delightful meal they had had in their lives.
Mrs Devlin didn’t like to interfere. She just stood at the stone sink in her kitchen and watched from the window until they had finished, and marvelled. All that money, so that they could have a chauffeur in a big shiny six-seater car just sitting outside the shop by the roadside reading the newspaper until their ladyships were ready, and yet they understood nothing about good food and drink. Perhaps it came from living in a big house, Mrs Devlin thought, where everything would be stone cold anyway by the time it reached the table from the kitchens. Maybe rich folk grew to like their food and drink like that.
Anyway, the two ladies had certainly found plenty to talk about, Mrs Devlin couldn’t deny that. They spent nearly two hours in her garden, and never let up for a moment. And when at last they came to pay and left her a two shilling tip, they were both smiling and laughing all the time, as though the good Lord had just granted an extra birthday to the pair of them.
Mrs Devlin came out into the garden to clear the table, and stood watching wistfully as they drove away out of sight, in the back of the shiny black car.
A Novel of Love and Irish Freedom
First published as an ebook by White Owl Publications Ltd 2012
Copyright Tim Vicary 2012
ISBN 978-0-9571698-5-2
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention
No reproduction without permission
All rights reserved.
First published in Great Britain by Simon & Shuster Ltd in 1992
Copyright Tim Vicary 1992
First Published in Great Britain by Pocket Books, an imprint of Simon & Shuster 1993
The right of Tim Vicary to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988
To Sue,
with love and gratitude
The Blood Upon the Rose Contents
25. A Soldier of the Irish Republic
32. Stone Walls Do Not A Prison Make
Author’s Note
On Easter Monday 1916, on the steps of the General Post Office in Dublin, Padraig Pearse read out a declaration of Irish independence. Ireland, he said, was not part of the United Kingdom; it was a sovereign independent state. Behind him, several hundred armed Republicans raised the flag of an Irish Republic.
They had no chance of success. The British government was at war with Germany and had no sympathy for Irish rebels who had tried to get guns from the enemy. A week later, after a battle in which 450 people were killed, the rebels surrendered. Pearse and 13 other leaders were convicted of treason and executed. Their followers were imprisoned in North Wales for 6 months, and then released.
Pearse’s death made him a martyr. As the poet W.B. Yeats wrote, ‘a terrible beauty is born.’ In the general election of 1918, the party of Pearse’s supporters, Sinn Fein, won 73 out of 105 seats in Ireland. One of these was won by the first ever woman MP, Constance Markiewicz. But instead of going to Westminster, the Sinn Fein MPs declared themselves the new Parliament of Ireland, Dail Eireann. A state of war existed, they said, between England and Ireland.
Ireland was thus blessed with two governments, each of which had politicians, soldiers, and tax collectors. The Irish Republican Army (IRA) was led by Michael Collins. His men began to kill policemen, particularly intelligence officers. They were very good at it. Not surprisingly, the British government wanted to capture Michael Collins, dead or alive. But it was not easy. No one knew where Collins lived, or even what he looked like. And his agents were getting more and more successful.
That is where this story begins.
I see His blood upon the rose
And in the stars the glory of His eyes.
His body gleams amid eternal snows
His tears fall from the skies
Joseph Mary Plunkett,
written in Kilmainham Jail, Dublin, 1916
I have been told the new policy and plan, and I am satisfied, though I doubt its ultimate success in the main particular – the stamping out of terrorism by secret murder.
A letter from C. Prescott Decie, newly appointed commander of the Royal Irish Constabulary, to the Assistant Under-Secretary at Dublin Castle, 1st June 1920.
1. Assassin
T
HE POLICEMAN cycled slowly along the road from Ashtown Station. He was a burly man - too big for the bike, really - and his knees stuck out sideways as he pedalled. He was frowning; partly because of the concentration needed to avoid the potholes in the unmetalled road, and partly because of the importance of the task his sergeant had given him.
As he approached the pub, the Halfway House, a motor car swept round the corner towards him. It was a big car - a huge, gleaming, armour-plated limousine, with a little Union flag fluttering from the bonnet - and it confirmed all the constable’s worries about the importance of what was to happen that morning. Awkwardly, he raised his hand to salute. But the car was going very fast, and as it came nearer it swerved into the middle of the road, to avoid the potholes. This flustered him. As he saluted with his right hand he turned the handlebars sideways with his left, and put his front wheel straight into a pothole. The bicycle tipped him forwards, and he grabbed the handlebars and floundered desperately with his legs to stop himself falling into the deep, muddy ditch that gurgled along beside the country lane.
A derisive cheer completed his embarrassment. The armour-plated limousine had rushed past, and behind it came an army lorry, a Crossley tender, with half a dozen tin-helmeted Tommies sitting high up on the back of it. They had had an excellent view of what happened, and roared their appreciation.
‘Go on, Paddy, go for a swim!’
‘Get off and milk it, flatfoot!’
Flushed with annoyance, the policeman shook his fist at them, and then hurriedly raised his hand in salute again as a third vehicle followed them down the lane. This was another big, armour-plated limousine, going slightly more sedately. Like the first, it was empty apart from the chauffeur, who raised a gloved finger casually from the wheel to acknowledge the constable’s salute.
The constable watched them go a couple of hundred yards down the road and over the level crossing to the little country railway station. It was a warm, clear December day, and the wheels threw up a little cloud of dust that irritated his eyes. Through it, he saw them park outside the station, where his sergeant greeted them. An officer got down from the lorry and began to post sentries where they would get a clear view of anyone approaching or leaving the station. Then he went inside, and the soldiers began to chat and smoke, settling in for a long wait.