Chapter Eighteen: Derry, Dublin February—November 1917

Molly’s family were horrified when she announced that she and Paddy were moving to Derry and thought she had run mad with grief over the long separation. But nothing they could say would change her mind. She went because she met Paddy with the rest of the returning internees at Sir John Rogerson’s Quay beside the gasworks and was appalled at the sight of him. A living skeleton with haunted eyes, a grey beard, and a wheezing cough, if he had not held out his arms to her and called her name in Irish she would not have known him. They were given a heroes’ welcome, but at what cost had England made them heroes! It was very different from the early days after the Rising, when the rebels had been pelted with rotten vegetables and harried through the streets on their way from Kilmainham to the dockside. It was a long chalk from the last time she had seen him, going off to Trinity on the morning of 15 May, until that grey November.

On the Friday before he had gone off as usual to the College, rather dispirited, but he had been since the executions of the leaders began on the 5th, ordered by that horrid man Maxwell, who had put all of Ireland under martial law for the transgressions of a few. They had only just got home the day before, after it was posted in the papers that all persons employed in Dublin were to report to work as usual the next day. Hardly usual, when no one was allowed out after eight o’clock in the evening without a military pass and the streets were full of troops and armoured lorries. Paddy’s shoulder was still unhealed, although the doctor had managed to get the bullet out. She thought him in no condition to leave the house, but he reasoned that his absence would be suspicious. They had planned a dinner party for the School of English long since and he refused with a peculiar savagery to let her cancel it, but under the circumstances – since they must dine at six, to be home before the curfew – only the Mahaffys and the Olivers came. She wouldn’t have minded John and Frances, but Oliver was always a trial. Paddy came home in a blue funk while she was dressing.

‘Whatever is the matter?’ She asked him, coming downstairs. She was wearing a beaded pink iridescent gown he especially liked and her grandmother MacLenaghan’s opals, but neither roused him, despite a rather swooping décolletage.
‘Nothing but the death of two more men,’ he said bitterly, his hand on the newel post. ‘Only Jim Connolly, who they had to tie to a bloody chair.’
‘Oh that,’ she murmured with distaste. ‘Why didn’t they just do it all at once?’ It had been dragging on forever in fits and starts, day after day. ‘Well. You must hurry to change. The Mahaffys and the Olivers will be here in less than an hour, you know. I’ll have Rose run you a bath.’
‘Yes,’ he said resignedly. ‘I suppose.’

It was a ghastly evening, beginning with the Olivers bringing their niece from Galway unannounced, which threatened to ruin dinner, in addition to which Oliver was only this side of falling into the soup, and the bloody girl was a Sinn Feiner with eyes for Paddy. During the interval while they waited for the men, Maggie Oliver made feeble apologies for her husband – he had come home too late for anything but a quick change into evening clothes-- and her niece tried to insinuate herself into Frances Mahaffy’s careful conversation about the unfortunate cancellation of the Ballsbridge Show. The girl was either too stupid or too rude to be put off by meaningful looks, so amused herself by leaning on the piano and sighing dolefully.
‘Oh Verity, do stop being so tiresome,’ Mrs. Oliver snapped at last. ‘Gracious, one would think you’d never been to town! Sit down!’ The girl did so, pouting. All her theatrics came to nothing however, for at that moment the men appeared from the dining room..

‘Mrs. Leary,’ Professor Mahaffy said as they sat down, ‘would you be so kind as to play for us? Liszt perhaps? Or Grieg?’ He looked about, ‘If that isn’t too heavy for the company?’
‘Or won’t you sing. Mrs. Leary?’ The niece interjected. ‘My aunt tells me you have an uncommon singing voice.’
She did her best to regard the girl with a measure of interest. ‘You mustn’t brag about me to your relations, Maggie,’ she said to Mrs. Oliver. ‘They’ll have the wrong idea. I am not a professional singer, Miss Richardson, nor even a remarkable amateur.’ Paddy made it worse by piping up from the mantel where he stood leaning,
‘Don’t be so modest my dear. You have a lovely voice. Please sing something.’
She would not condescend to frown at him, but acquiesced with ill grace, adjusting her train as she rose. ‘Very well, since you are all clamouring for a sing I will sing one, but I don’t promise to sound like a linnet.’ She sat down at the piano and played Keep The Homes Fires Burning. It served him right for making her sing while Miss Richardson made cow eyes at him. She knew he hated it. She sang another while she was at it, a John MacCormack from the records, to nettle him, Say Au Revoir But Not Good-bye. She played Liszt then and Chopin to please J.P. There was polite applause afterward, except from Oliver, who was snoring on the sofa. His wife nudged him. Miss Richardson was prevailed upon to sing – at least the girl had some talent beyond troublemaking – but she chose an old rebel song,

‘When all beside a vigil keep; the West’s asleep, the West’s asleep
Alas and well may Erin weep when Connaught lies in slumber deep
There lake and plain smile fair and free mid rocks their guardian chivalry
Oh let man learn liberty from crashing waves and lashing sea
For often in O’Connor’s van to triumph dashed each Connaught clan…’

Oliver was wide--awake now, purple as a beet and huffing in outrage. He glared at his wife. The Provost was shuddering from his place on the sofa. Frances was staring at the windows with their drawn blackout curtains. The troublemaker finished her song to a deadly silence.
‘Really, Oliver,’ J.P. managed at last, ‘I think it is in the worst possible taste, having this gel yours sing her trashy Irish warbling! It sounds as if you approve of this fiasco thrust on us by the fanatics!’
‘She is not ‘my girl’, sir,’ Dan spluttered, glaring at her, ‘but my wife’s relation from the Wild West.’
‘Verity how could you,’ Maggie pleaded, blubbing into her handkerchief. There must be a rule for managing such occasions – political topics setting fire – but at the moment, Molly couldn’t think of it. She sat numbly at the piano dumbfounded and outraged at the ruin of her dinner party by this gatecrasher.
‘No matter whose relation she is,’ Mahaffy went on, ‘it’s unconscionable, young woman, to subject us to this barbaric…’

Paddy threw himself off the mantel where he had been lounging smoking, watching everything with a blank expression. ‘I hardly think it’s barbaric at all,’ he said coolly. ‘Brava, Miss Richardson!’ He applauded sharply, and addressed the girl in Irish, ‘Thank you, dear girl. It’s what I needed.’
Molly sprang up from the piano now. ‘My God, Paidín, have you gone mad?’ she exclaimed, striking a discord.
‘I quite agree with your wife, Pat,’ Mahaffy muttered.
‘You knew I spoke Irish, J.P.,’ Paddy said in the same bland tone. ‘I don’t see what the fuss is.’ He was very pale, and Molly wondered suddenly if he was in pain. A lack of morphine would explain his perversity. She had been too busy to ask him before dinner if he had remembered it.
‘I don’t mean your cursed Irish,’ Mahaffy continued, ‘though it’s hardly civilised from a man possessing Latin and Greek, but this – Do you mean to say that you countenance this girl’s behaviour, with her treasonable songs?’

Paddy went over to the mantel and lit another cigarette. ‘It’s only treason from the one side, J.P. To the rest of us it’s a question of national dignity.’
‘To the rest of us?’ Oliver echoed, turning round.
Molly scowled at the troublemaker, but the girl stood by grimly.
‘You’re not a nationalist?’ Frances asked in horror.
Paddy sighed and blew out smoke. ‘The provisional Government had liked to think so, ma’am,’ he said. And this to the woman who had been a second mother to him!
‘The what?’ Her husband demanded. ‘Confound it, Pat, what’s got into you? You sound like that idiot Pearse.’

Paddy laughed a barking short laugh without humour, throwing back his head in the manner of the Abbey actors. ‘‘We have lived to see an Irish Republic proclaimed. May we live to establish it firmly, and may our children and our children’s children enjoy the happiness prosperity which freedom will bring.’’ He looked at his old prefect. ‘Commandant General Pearse issued that on Easter Tuesday. At the time I was holed up in a barricaded house at the Jacobs garrison under Tom MacDonagh, one of my oldest friends,’ he raised his arm, pointing, his voice rising, ‘who now lies in quicklime at Arbour Hill barracks! All we ever saw of loving support from our fellow countrymen was rotten vegetables thrown at us. Where’s the dignity in that, I wonder?’ He took a long drag on the cigarette, his hand shaking. ‘They shot the last of them today, J.P., so I don’t think we’ll have to worry about any more ‘treason’ for a while.’
Student and mentor, they gazed at one another across the distance. ‘Are you saying, Pat,’ he asked slowly, clearly begging a denial, ‘that you aided and supported these Sinn Fein lunatics?’
There was the starkest of silences. The clock ticked. No one moved.
‘No, J.P.,’ Paddy said with regret at last. ‘I am saying that I was one of the Volunteers, and we are neither Sinn Feiners nor lunatics, merely men who desire the English garrison out of our country; men who desire decent jobs and housing; men who desire an identity as Irishmen in control of Irish destiny. That, sir, is what I am saying.’

‘You should have been shot with the rest of them!’ Maggie Oliver exclaimed savagely.
‘Would that I had,’ Paddy said with emotion. He looked at the Provost. ‘I realise that you would be justified in reporting me to the military,’ he said frankly. ‘And I wouldn’t blame you if you did.’ He closed his eyes for a moment, his knuckles white on the mantel. Molly saw it then, a dark patch on the back of his evening jacket. He was bleeding again. The ragged open wound had been impossible to stitch closed. She sprang for the bell and yanked it viciously. There was enough time later to sort out the ruin of their lives.
‘Yes,’ J.P. said wearily, looking over at his wife. ‘It has been a long night and we must get home before the curfew. Shall we, my dear?’ he held out his hand to her.

On the Monday, Paddy had gone to Trinity to tender his resignation to the governing board. He had spent the weekend in bed, in great pain despite morphine. He insisted on going to work so she helped him dress, watched him kiss the children good--bye, and saw him out the door. It was nine o’clock in the morning, and it was the last they saw of him for seven months. The garrison seemed to think his arrest sufficient reason to search the house, which they did twice in May and June, upending everything from the top to the bottom of the house and taking all of Paddy’s papers from his study. She was questioned closely by the Deputy Inspector, providing not only genuine ignorance but also withering scorn that a person of her station should be so ill--used. The man was obviously embarrassed, and apologetic when she upbraided him, saying he was only doing his job as this was a neighbourhood known to harbour the disaffected. It was only then that she learned that there was a house up the street in the next block next to the Moore Hotel that was rented by a group of Sinn Feiners.

She took the children to Baldoyle after that where they would not be troubled. From the safety of this vantage, she rang Hobbles to see whether her husband, being recently made King’s Council, could discover where they had taken Paddy, making it very clear that he had been taken when gravely ill. It took Dick three weeks to come up with anything, by which time Fa had prevailed upon her uncle Jocelyn in London to see what he could do. There must be some good to having a member of Lords in the family, Fa said dryly. The reply was so curt as to be insulting:

NO TRAFFIC WITH FENIANS. JUSTICE SERVED. TREGWELYN.

There seemed to be no end to the insults and frights to be endured at the hands of once--friendly society. The members of the old quartet struck by her, but almost no one else did. Socially she became a pariah. Invitations, once rife, halted entirely. Her own sister questioned the prudence of having her attend her wedding, delayed because of the disturbances until late in August. Mummy shocked her by telling Patsy very strongly that family was family and if she refused to do her duty by it they wouldn’t pay a cent. She and Neddy could have a registry office wedding. That shut Patsy up, though it did nothing to induce warm feelings. Patsy went through all the proper motions expected towards one’s chief attendant, but she was grim as a Presbyterian minister the while. Not that Molly cared. She thought both Patsy and Ned MacNeeson were wet beyond endurance. The only ones of the Trinity set to remain in the least kind were the Mahaffys. She received a very nice note from Frances, saying that misguided as they thought ‘the boy’ was, they would still welcome news of him, and wished her trials soon at an end. Molly appreciated their magnanimity. Paddy’s parents were broken up of course. Of their four sons, three were victims of Easter week. Paddy was at Frongoch, Rory was at Lewes, and Danny had died at Richmond Barracks before the first of the leaders were shot.

So after long and difficult months of isolation, trouble with the children, alarming news reports, and fitful letters from Paddy, she stood on the quay that cold morning to see him home.
He had trouble walking -- he had been beaten badly at Wormwood Scrubs before the mass trial there, so he had written -- and was healing slowly. For a time, the doctor at Frongoch had feared for his vision, for a shard of crockery had lodged in his temple in a fall, and even now he had blinding headaches as after Bloody Sunday. She took his arm to help him to the car and was shocked at the thinness of him. He had always been of a raw--boned build, but sinewy; never like this. There was nothing in her grasp but skin and bones. The effort of walking so far had exhausted him, and by the time she had him put to bed at home he was so pale and strained that she thought she should call for the priest.
‘No,’ he said faintly. ‘Come here, M’aille,’ he spoke with effort. ‘Don’t leave me.’ So she had stayed, sitting in bed with him as he wanted with his head on her shoulder. She cried then, alone, and silently as he slept, smoothing his hair as she did Joe’s when he was sick.
‘What have they done? What have they done?’ She murmured to herself, weeping starkly, hating everyone who had been so rotten. But from that day until he died he never told her all of what he had endured.

What happened was that they had been taken from the internment camp in Wales by military lorry to Wormwood Scrubs for the inquest about the Rising, to see who required sentencing. The veterans of the Manchester bombings in the 1880s had been here briefly and some of them had carved their names into the limestone walls of the cells. The journey had taken half a day, and during the breaks they had been allowed free association as at Frongoch, cigarettes, and so on. Nothing had changed. But once inside the gates of the Scrubs it was another matter; they were under the jurisdiction of the prison authority now, and it was clear from the first moment that they would be made to know it. Paddy had a very bad feeling about it all. He was in the same lorry as Tom Kilgallen and Jack Rafferty and it was some small comfort to know as they were marched through the doors of that infamous hellhole that they might be billeted together.

They were separated into wings, strung out along two floors to discourage communication, and put into cells for the three days, two men to a cell. Because they were standing together, Paddy went in with Jack Rafferty. The door clanged shut in that desperately cold, spartan little room – there were two narrow bunks screwed to the wall and a radiator which was not on, a pot beneath the lower bunk, and that was all; not even a chair – and the bolt shot from the other side, the sound ringing. The pleasant, warm August day outside was suddenly a dream. Well, we’re in, he thought. What happens now? Despite every assurance that their stay was to be temporary, he was not at all certain they would come out again, dead or alive.

On the lower bunk were two of the prison uniforms, shirt and trousers of a dirty grey blue colour. No belt or braces. God forbid they should hang themselves and deny the British the pleasure. He ignored them and sat on the floor, steeling his mind as he had done in Easter Week not to crave a cigarette. He was too tall to sit on the bunk. Jack paced around for a moment in silence, then proceeded to pick of one of the uniform shirts.
‘Are you a criminal?’ Paddy asked. He put it down and went to sit on the radiator.

A little while later a pair of guards came in, and stopped abruptly at the sight of them, nonplussed. They were young men, and doubtless they were here rather than being conscripted to the Western Front, but they were wet as pilchards. Perhaps they had never encountered prisoners of war before. In any case, they had no idea what to do, especially when Jack spoke up from his place on the radiator,
‘We’re not wearing ‘em,’ he said of the uniforms. Paddy said nothing, but stared at the wall behind the lower bunk, trying to discern a pattern in the cracks in the stone. The guards marched out, clanging the door again – Jesus did they not know how to be quiet? – and presently a sergeant came in with two different guards, older men with truncheons, and shouted at them,
‘Get up, you Fenian bastards!’

Impassively, without hurry, Paddy got up and stood to attention and Jack followed suit. He continued staring at the wall, and began to consider that it was of limestone and where it might have come from, rummaging through his knowledge of geology, which wasn’t huge.
‘Now,’ the sergeant barked, ‘what might be the matter here? Do you feckin Irish bowsies not understand that you’re Crown prisoners now? You’ll march to our step, or I’ll make you understand it --’ He came near, whipping out his stick. Paddy didn’t flinch. He was taller than the sergeant but was outweighed by a couple of stone at least. And unarmed. Then there were the other two. The odds were not good.
‘You’ll get in those uniforms, you bloody bog gorillas, or suffer for it----’ He waited, but neither of them moved or spoke. Paddy was counting to himself, Wales, Shropshire, Devon, Cornwall, Ayrshire, Grampian, Lewis, Harris, Jura – all the places the limestone might have been brought from. ‘Very well.’ He jerked his head at the two guards. ‘Take him out,’ he said of Paddy, ‘then we’ll see how stubborn the other one is.’

He was dragged out by the two burly guards, who were both bigger than he, and hustled down the dim corridor which fronted the equally dim interior of the massive stone fortress. He began naming the counties of Ireland -- Antrim, Armagh, Carlow, Cavan, Clare-- About halfway down the passage, it began. He was pushed ahead and the batons came out. He was hit in the head on the left side, and in the lower back. He stumbled, blood running down into his collar, but didn’t fall.

‘You’ll dance to our tune now, ye murdering bowsie!’ one of the guards cried, and gave him a kick. He sprawled on the cold stone, trying to shake off his glasses as he went down. They were a danger now. Cork, Derry, Donegal – When he did not rise, they kicked him again and hauled him up, the truncheons raining down a steady barrage. He was cracked on the jaw and his mouth filled with blood. He made no move to defend himself. The corridor was a blur. Down, Dublin, Fermanagh – He was shoved into a large bare room painted brown – there was a desk in it, which the guards knocked out of the way – and was slammed against the wall. His face and nose by this time was bloody and he couldn’t see out of his swelling left eye. Galway, Kerry -- The guards abandoned the truncheons and began pummelling him with bare fists. He felt a couple of teeth go, and yer man yanked his fingers back, pulling one from the socket. Kerry, Kildare, Kilkenny – He was hit in the stomach and doubled over, groaning. The one grabbed his hair and slammed his head against the wall again and his mate kicked him in the groin he didn’t know how many times. Laois, Leitrim, Limerick –
‘You’re a dead man, paddy,’ the one at his shoulder breathed. ‘I’ll cut your fucking throat.’ Longford, Louth, Mayo, Meath –

The sergeant came in again and the two guards stood aside. It was everything Paddy could do to stand upright approximately to attention. He leaned his head against the wall, staring at the door through which the sergeant had come. Monaghan, Offaly – The sergeant paused, inches from him, tapping one end of the truncheon in his palm. He looked him up and down.
‘You’re a stubborn bastard, aren’t you?’ He asked in an almost conversational tone. ‘With no respect for law and order… I wonder boys why this Fenian shite is so shy to strip for us. Is he hiding something, maybe? Hmm?’ The truncheon came up against his throat, choking. ‘Is that it, paddy? Are you secreting arms or information on your person? We’ll find out----’ He pushed himself away with the force of counter--pressure. Paddy gasped, gagging and coughing. O Jesus God! His brain was on fire from the lack and sudden surge of oxygen and his mind reeled, balking at taking in the awful words. He knew what was coming. And it did:
‘Search him,’ barked the sergeant and stalked from the room, banging the door behind him. Strip searches were an excuse for the worst sort of brutality ever devised by evil minds. He had to steel himself to it. Tom Clarke and Dermot Rossa had endured it, endured worse, and so could he…. Nevertheless, was shaking when they threw him to the floor.
Roscommon, Sligo, Tipperary –

A blanket hastily thrown over his battered nakedness and ruined clothes, he was carried unconscious back to the cell about an hour and a half later. They had broken all his fingers; two ribs, cracked his sternum, opened up the old skull fracture and gave him a new one. A piece of broken crockery they were threatening to cut out his tongue with because he wouldn’t talk had been driven into his temple. He had a herniated rectum, a punctured lung, a bruised heart, a severely lacerated testicle, and many smaller wounds. He had lost two pints of blood and was lucky to be alive, the doctor back at Frongoch said. But he had not cracked. He lived through it, never giving in. He never stood before the dock to hear himself called a traitor and a murderer. He never wore their prison uniform. He made it. Poor Jack Rafferty was not so lucky. The brief few moments in the cell was the last time Paddy saw him.

He had reason, in the end, to be thankful that Fate had put him at Frongoch, for when he returned there was a new internee just transferred from Portland Jail; a young fellow from Cork by the name of Michael Collins. He had worked in the London Post Office until a few weeks before the Rising, and had been in action in the GPO. Foul--mouthed, quick--tempered, but brilliant and hard working even in the deadness of the camp, he was a Brotherhood man into the bargain. In Mick Collins Paddy found the leader he had been waiting for, the man who could lead the country into the 20th century. Collins organised the camp, hammered out an intelligence system, and made a viable plan for resistance after they were let out, as they surely would be soon, given international opinion of the round--ups and executions. Mick formed a group from amongst the Frongoch men, the Black Hand Gang, whose sole purpose was to subvert the running of the British Government in Ireland.
‘We’ll need men in the North,’ he told Paddy at one of their meetings. ‘Carson and Craig will hang on like bulldogs. Will you go?’
‘I will.’
‘Good,’ Collins said evenly, tossing his hair back. ‘You’re a teacher, is it?’ He asked squinting.
Paddy nodded slowly.
‘We’ll get you on at a National school,’ Mick went on smoothly. He clapped his arm then and flashed a grin that must have dazzled the ladies. ‘Good man, yourself.’
So that was how the path of his life changed, was decided. Watching him in those months in the camp, marvelling, Paddy would have followed Mick Collins to the ends of the earth.

Paddy had contrived a plan while in Wales, where he had met up with Mick Rafferty’s brother--in--law, whom he seemed to know in some way from Easter Week; she did not enquire too closely. It was this man, Kilgallen, who had turned his mind to the North as a place to go if they were released. If he stayed in Dublin and taught at St. Enda’s as he had first hoped to do, he would be harried by the security forces, being a known republican. Likewise, if he went to Kerry, he would be harried as the Sinn Feiners were great there with their recruitment meetings and their fund--raising dances. So he decided he would go to Derry where Kilgallen lived and find work at a primary school there.
‘Not without me,’ she said impulsively when he told her. ‘Not without us.’
He stared at her. ‘Why would you do that? It’s hardly safe. Stay in Dublin.’
She regarded him sceptically, hand on her hip. ‘Where I may be caught in a gun battle any day of the week?’
‘Baldoyle then,’ he reasoned. ‘It would be good for the children.’
‘I’m sick of my mother,’ she said frankly. ‘And the children want you.’
There was a long pause before he asked in hushing tones, ‘...And you?’ Her heart thudding, she looked at him from across the room as she stood at her desk in the feeble winter sunlight.
‘And me,’ she said at last, gulping.
His eyes narrowed behind the glasses. ‘Why?’
‘Look at you and ask me why!’ she exclaimed, pushing aside her calendar with irritation and pacing before the window. ‘Can you have the least idea what it’s been like while you’ve been away? Joe is wild as can be -- he swears in the vilest language and he bit poor Kate, among other things -- and Sally has nightmares and refuses to let me out the door without a screaming teary scene. The house was searched, twice! We are followed continuously, disrupted on the most ordinary of business in town. I can’t even go across town without minding where I walk in case I should be accosted by the garrison or mowed down on the pavement by an armoured lorry! I fail to see how it could be any worse!’

She stopped pacing and looked at him askance, her arms crossed. He still sat on the arm of the overstuffed chair watching her with that narrow expression he’d used to have during their salons when arguing an obscure point with one of his students.
‘I appreciate that you want to spare the children further trauma of separation,’ he said evenly, giving nothing away, ‘but why you? Why cast your lot with a world you know nothing of when you could be safe with your own people in the country? Your parents would take you, or at least your uncle or aunts. Why Molly? Why throw your lot with me, when like as not it shall end for me as every Fenian before me? Why when you have had nothing but scorn for all that?’
‘It’s not for the bloody Fenians!’ she cried, her voice rising and breaking. ‘I love you! I care what happens to you! Unless that no longer matters to you. If that’s so, then go,’ she flung her arm to encompass the whole nationalist movement, ‘and die alone in a place among strangers, if it means more to you!’ She was shaking and could not go on.
‘It still matters to me,’ he said, in that same even tone still watching her with arms crossed, impassively. There was a long pause during which she struggled to get control of herself. She could not believe that he could sit there so coldly. She rammed her handkerchief into her skirt pocket and raised her eyes to him, pleading in silent misery against the inscrutable expression in his eyes.

He rose at last and came to her. ‘But it is a hard way,’ he said, taking her arms. ‘Harder and crueller than you can imagine. And in spite of what you might think at the moment, I have no wish to see you suffer on my behalf. Mallaidh,’ he raised her face with his fingers. ‘You were not made for that, beanín.’
‘But I am your wife,’ she said, ‘and I won’t be deserted!’
He smiled a little now. ‘If all Kitchener’s armies had such resolve,’ he murmured. ‘All right,’ he nodded. ‘I’ve no more care for a parting of the ways than you, and for as many reasons. God help us, but you are a stubborn bitch.’ She drew a quick breath, stung, but he was smiling. ‘Thank you.’

They let the house to a family from Sandyford who wanted a townhouse for their married daughter, though why anyone would want to move into Dublin under the present circumstances was quite beyond Molly’s imagining. It was not that they needed an income. Even if Paddy never worked another day, they could do quite well on her allowance. It was more to keep the house open; not to suffer the fate of other closed houses in the Square, which had been taken over by republicans. Paddy pointed out the illogic of this reasoning with amusement, but she would not be dissuaded. It was her house and she would do with it as she liked. She planned to let go of Kate Rafferty, for they would hardly need a nanny in Derry, especially with Joe and next year Sally going to school with Paddy. But the girl insisted on coming, at least to see her sister. The one thing she did not want was to go back to Sligo. Her soldier beau a thing of the past, she had nothing to keep her in Dublin. She didn’t care very much for Mick’s wife, so visits with him had become ordeals.

Derry was not an impressive sight. Stinking air, billowing grey clumps of smoke over grey row houses, Derry stood on the River Foyle like an oozing scab on a wound. When they passed the city walls she saw the city flag flying below the Union Jack and shuddered. Skeletons and swords did not a friendly city make, especially when one’s husband was not of the Unionist persuasion. When at last they had come to their street, she had been greeted with the sight of an open gutter running down the centre of the narrow cobbled lane, dirty children playing everywhere, windows broken or stuffed with cardboard; she was sure there must be some mistake. Anne and Tom Kilgallen had appeared in their doorway as they pulled up in the motor. It was a cold Sunday afternoon, but their children spilled out of the house barefoot in thin clothes. Molly counted six, including the baby Anne held. And she was pregnant.

Inside the house, yellowed paint and terrible orange -- or once--orange -- flowered wallpaper covered the walls in the hall, which opened directly into the parlour. The parlour had Paddy’s old dusty plum Victorian furniture and a couple of dark, ill--used tables. The drapery hung in fragile shreds at the windows, of which there were two looking out into the alley at the Kilgallens’ next door, and they gave the room a weird ochre tint that Molly found oppressive. There was a small fireplace that had been bricked up but for a narrow flue, and she wondered if they were to freeze in the winter. There was no dining room either, merely an alcove between the kitchen and parlour, a space that held a very large ugly table and three rickety chairs. There were no windows in this area, and she hesitated to look too closely into the corners of the room. The kitchen was no better. An old coal and wood stove, one table and no chairs, and a small standing dresser was all it held. No electricity, needless to say. Not so much as a light bulb hanging. The walls were greyish, and looked as if they hadn’t ever been washed. Morbid curiosity bade her pull aside the curtain from a doorway. In the tiny cubicle behind it was a commode chair. She dreaded to think what that meant. In despair she went to the sink to turn on the tap and the water ran red with rust. She could have wept. The only light came from a greasy--looking window beside the stove, and, possibly, the half--door, if it were left open. Up the narrow stairs with the rickety stair rail were two small rooms, one with an iron bed much like the one at Paddy’s uncle’s house in Kerry, and a tiny alcove barely large enough for a bathtub. At least there was a bathtub.
‘So you won’t have to take a bath in the kitchen as I did when I was a wee ane,’ Paddy said.
Well, that was something.

At close quarters, she didn’t find Tom Kilgallen any more attractive. He came over to help Paddy with the cases and stepped in the kitchen door without knocking. He was as tall as Paddy but broader in the shoulders, all brawn and suspicion. She held out her gloved hand and he took it with evident reluctance.
‘How do you do?’ She murmured.
‘Well enough,’ he returned shortly. She took it that he was a man of few words. ‘Hey Paddy,’ he said, ‘where do you want those great green trunks out there? They weigh a bloody ton, and you’ll have to help me with them, like.’
‘Those would be Molly’s,’ Paddy said, laughing at Kilgallen’s sour expression. ‘They go upstairs.’ He slapped Tom’s arm. ‘Come on.’

Anne she liked, which had nothing to do with her being Mick’s sister; Kate she could take or leave. Annie was not much like her brother as far as Molly could tell. She was a great talker and sometimes shockingly forthright, but beneath all that she was kind. She promised to come over and help with the cleaning in the morning, and bring some of the women in the lane. Nevertheless, when everyone was gone and reality sunk in, it went hard. Why had she ever agreed to come here? She cried herself to sleep that night after everyone was abed.

The first morning she would always remember. The winter cold in the unheated bedrooms was unbearable, and she had passed the night waking every hour or so shivering, until in the small hours before dawn she finally slept soundly from sheer exhaustion. Even the patrols of the constabulary with their heavy lorries no longer disturbed her. It was the shrill of factory horns all over the area that jolted her from her few hours’ rest. Thinking it a Zeppelin raid at the very least, she snatched her dressing gown off the bed rail and flew to the window, her heart hammering in her ears. There were only girls and women to be seen on their way to the factories in the grey morning light and not one dirigible in sight. She leant her head against the window and sighed in relief, inspecting these new neighbours. They were a plain lot, generally, ill dressed and far too scantily for the weather. The only bits of pride about them were the enveloping shawls they wore, flung over their heads or clutched or pinned at the neck, for they were beautifully woven. Apart from that in colour they blended in with the oppressive landscape of steep streets with houses directly fronting the street. No saving grace terraces here, only a vast stretch of dun and purple bog in the distance.

Their street was so steep that the best exercise one could get would be to walk to the corner. To go ‘up the corner’ as the natives said took on an entirely new meaning. The houses were all identical to their own, narrow, ill--lit, poorly heated and poorly maintained. The street was cobbled, testament to its age. She supposed it could be rather quaint, living in a narrow winding cobbled street, but the health risks posed by the running gutter did not charm her. There was no green land in sight beyond that bog and the cold and windy lake, whose wind she had been warned was ceaseless. Nowhere for the children to play but in the streets as they had been yesterday afternoon. With her face and hand against the frosty, wavy cold glass now, watching the rubbish blowing about she could well believe it. How these people didn’t suffer from epidemics of typhus or consumption in this dirty place, she didn’t know. Perhaps they did. But the Kilgallens had seemed healthy enough.

She glanced behind her into the rose--papered room. Paddy had slept all night perfectly well so that she wanted to kick him. He could sleep anywhere now he said, after Frongoch, and he had certainly proved it. His arms were flung innocently and vulnerably over his head in the dark--blue pyjamas, and in the grey light his russet and white colouring was beautiful. He was a well--made man, striking even in his present gauntness, more so than many another more gently bred. He rolled over onto his side, encompassing most of the too--narrow, too--short bed. As in Kerry, that would wake him, getting tangled up in the bed rail, and he would complain of the bloody bed. But it was evident that he loved the dirty old place. The only reason she could see was that it was owned entirely by him purchased on his leaving salary, for architecturally it was a disaster.

She met the neighbours in turn. She wore her plainest housedress and a cardie but she was still overdressed. The first moments were awkward. They looked her over, Mrs. Faolain and Mrs Sullivan, and then at one another. Anne Kilgallen smoothed things over by saying that Paddy had been at Frongoch with her Tom, and with that the frozen expressions melted and it was Kate and Mary and won’t you come for tea. Mary Sullivan, a stout grandmotherly woman who lived next door, was Mummy’s age and the local midwife. ‘So if ever you have a need, dearie,’ she said, reaching across to pat Molly’s hand. ‘I’ve done all of our Annie’s.’
Molly threw Anne and Katie a twitchy smile. ‘Thank you, I’ll remember that,’ she told Mary.
‘But mind her, ‘ Katie put in, drolly, rolling her eyes, ‘the last was born before she could get upstairs!’ Such bold familiarity from Kate was shocking, but the girl clearly now considered herself an equal. Between the five of them, with plenty of tea and gossip intermixed they had the house looking spruce before Paddy got home with Joe, even with Anne’s children in and out underfoot.

She had learned much since coming here; housewifery from Kate and Anne, cookery from Mrs. Sullivan. Kate Faolain tried to teach her plain sewing, but she was hopeless. She was yet apt to burn the dinner, but simple things were not beyond her, even with the wretched stove. She would never be able to cook like Lymon, or even Mrs Mac, but they wouldn’t starve. The ironing and endless cleaning she managed well, though she paid Kate Rafferty to do the washing and starching. The accounts she had always kept, so it was no stretch. She wrote amusing letters to her friends and to Aunt Caro about her misadventures to pass the time while Joe was at school, and in return Caro sent her a little book called the Housewife’s Companion, which had come out just before the war. ‘This isn’t quite the manner in which I had envisaged your being useful,’ Caro wrote in her accompanying letter, ‘but as needs must.’ It was deadly dull, with economising recipes for ivory black and floor wax, but useful. She couldn’t be forever asking the neighbours how to do things. Besides, they sometimes didn’t know the answers. She had asked Annie when to apply starch to the laundry and she’d looked at her as if she’d grown another head.
‘The day my Tom goes in a box,’ she snorted.

Telegrams were as rare as telephones here, so when the man from the Post Office stopped his bicycle in front of their door in Lamb Street, all the neighbours knew of it. Heads came out the doors and faces appeared in the windows, all wondering who was sending a telegram to the Learys. Molly paid the man and pulled Sally back inside from where she had sidled out beside her. She hated the neighbours’ staring, and the postie’s offering Sally a lolly was sure to excite remark.
‘Come along, darling,’ she murmured, closing the door against the beetles of the neighbourhood gossips. She went into the parlour where the light was better and slit the top of the envelope.
‘It’s from Grandmama,’ she told Sally. Then: ‘Oh dear.’ Fa was dead. He had suffered a stroke at the bank and died shortly afterward on the way to hospital. Mummy hadn’t even a chance to see him. It had been a very long time since she had been able to feel the least pity for her mother, but she did now for she knew well that terrible moment when the word came through that the man one loved was dead.

It was only three o’clock. Paddy and Joe would not be home from school for another hour. She must begin to pack. Sally was bouncing on the sofa with the lolly, making a sticky mess of her frock. Molly put the telegram down on the arm of the chair and went over to her, kneeling on the carpet.
‘Sweetie, Mummy has to go up to Pat Halinan’s. Will you go over to Annie’s and play with Maire and Kate?’
Sally stopped her bouncing. ‘Why d’you have to go to the pub, Mammy?’
Molly drew a breath, unsure of what to say to the child right now, when she herself was so shaken. It was only by attending to the necessary details that she could muster any calm.
‘I have to ring Grandmama,’ she said. ‘Grandfa died this morning, mo rua, so Mummy has to go to Dublin for a few days.’ She kissed Sally’s mop of red curls and rose, holding out her hand. ‘So will you come along? Let’s fetch your coat.’

When they were walking across the narrow space of the alley to the Kilgallens’, Sally asked,
‘Why did Grandfa die, Mammy?’
She didn’t want to frighten the child with a tale of the suddenness of it. Sally was skittish enough since the rebellion of Easter Week last year, when the soldiers had taken her Dada away for seven months -- an eternity to a child. She picked her words with care.
‘We all die. It was just Grandfa’s time.’
Sally looked up at her. ‘Did he want to die?’
Molly stared up the street, willing back the tears that blurred the scene. ‘Probably not,’ she murmured.
‘Will he go to heaven with Uncle Danny and baby Liam?’
Molly stopped, tears spilling over, and hugged the child. ‘Yes, I expect so, a charín.’ She sniffed and wiped her eyes, conscious of the neighbours. ‘Come along now. Look, there’s Katie!’

They saw her on the late afternoon train at Waterside. She had handed her cases over to the porter and was about to board when she turned again. They had already made their good--byes, but her anguish over Fa’s sudden death was matched only by her anxiety about leaving them alone -- even with Kate and Annie watching over them -- for five entire days. She couldn’t refuse go to Fa’s funeral, but dear God!
‘We’ll be all right, so,’ Paddy said, taking her arm. ‘Go on now.’ Their eyes met and she saw he knew why she was fretting. ‘There’s Joe at school if anything happens, and you know we’ve no peace at home.’ His mouth twitched with the shadow of his old devilish smile. He was always one to try to jolly her out of moods. ‘We’ll be fine.’ Since his return from Frongoch he had suffered from blackouts and heart palpitations. He was still very thin, even after three months, often breathless -- which alarmed her, knowing it well herself -- and very grey and haggard. She clasped his hand.
‘Please God,’ she said. He leaned forward suddenly and kissed her again.
‘Ring Pat’s when you get in,’ he murmured.
She nodded. The call came to board.
‘No time for slackers,’ Paddy said, pushing up his glasses. He stepped back. ‘Come on, yez,’ he said to the children. ‘You can wave your Mammy goodbye from the end of the platform.’
‘Ay!’ Joe shouted, and raced off.
‘Wait!’ Sally cried, looking back at her with a stricken face. Molly blew her a kiss, and she smiled and followed after her brother then.

On the train she took her seat in the first--class compartment and drew the curtains, hoping it would dissuade company. The last thing she wanted was to make conversation. She settled resolutely in the corner behind a copy of the Derry Standard and stared out the window until they were away. No one else came in, apart from the conductor to punch her ticket. He saw her mourning, and murmured,
‘I’m sorry for your trouble, ma’am.’
‘Thank you very much,’ she returned, and his ears perked up at her accents.
‘If there’s anything you need, ma’am, just ask and I’ll be happy to oblige.’
‘Thank you. You’re very kind.’ It was nice to know, in the midst of this wilderness, that there was some civility left in life. Even the townies in Derry regarded her with suspicion.

Though it was a night train straight through, Molly did not sleep at all. There were too many memories, too much anxiety for the children left alone with Paddy, too much anxiety of Dublin and its remembered horrors. She had managed not to think of Fa at all; time enough for that in Dublin. She stepped off the train at Westmoreland station haggard and bone weary. Her sister’s driver, who came to meet her, certainly didn’t mind. Ladies in grief were not expected to make bright conversation. Her sister’s house in Merrion Square was as pristine and safe as if the Rising and martial law had never occurred in Dublin. Patsy met her in the hall in a neat, chic frock, looking simply gorgeous for all that it was mourning. She envied her ease and security. Mummy was there too, not wishing to be driven back and forth from the country. They met on the stair as Molly’s cases were being taken up.

‘I’m sorry, Mother,’ she said. Her mother’s glance was measured dignity. Whether she cried alone or not, she would present a calm face in public. They faced one another with straight backs and quiet--murmured politeness. There was that much mercy left in the madness of the world.
‘Thank you, Mary,’ Grace said.
Molly was about to continue up when her mother laid a hand on her arm.
‘Before you go up to your room, there is something from your father that he wanted me to give to you… now,’ she murmured in the same controlled voice. Molly nodded silently and followed her mother to her room. From the bottom drawer of her jewel case, Grace removed a letter and handed it over. It was unsealed, and as she took the sheet from the envelope, she knew Mummy had read it.

‘29 May 1916.
My dear Molly –
I have chosen that you read this now when I am gone because I have
no wish to cause trouble in your marriage and I hope that by the time you
have read this it will be long years and water under the bridge.
When you told us you were leaving for Derry, I realised again how
wrong it was to force you to marry Pat. If there was a way to renege believe
me I would avail of it.
We received a letter in the package of your brother’s effects from the
front. It was from a comrade of his, saved from his kit and written by Willie shortly
before he died. I think he knew. They tell me men do. In it, he accused us of being
unfair to both of you, saying that we always favoured George over any of you,
and that was why he went off. I doubt very much his well--meaning comrade knew
the content of this letter for it came sealed, but nevertheless this came as something
of a shock to your mother and me.
One cannot help but to focus on the heir, I suppose, but it was never our
intention to ignore the feelings of the rest of you. When I read those words however
they struck me as true, for I did insist that you marry to spare your mother’s feelings
rather than consider your own. I was wrong and I ask that you’ll forgive your foolish
old dad. I pray that you and Pat can make your peace together someday, and that
you will realise that we love all you children most deeply.
Your loving father,
Charles Clennaghan.’

It had been written about the time she had asked for his help in contacting Uncle Jocelyn. She looked up from Fa’s small neat writing with tears blurring her vision. Grace’s face was still closed and calm.
‘How can you be so foolish, Mary?’ She asked. ‘You and your brother. How can you be so foolish as to think we did not love you? If we had ever guessed that was Willie’s reason for capering off, for your own wildness…’ she coloured. ‘How can you think it?’

A thousand old painful memories whirled in her mind. Her parents had been so enrapt in each other, they had no thought for their children. Even George hated them. Tears clogged her throat. She would not be made the villain now, now that Fa was dead, and Liam and George, when she was the only one to speak. Patsy she did not include; she was as cold--blooded as they.
‘Perhaps because you never showed us the least affection or coddling!’ She ground out between her teeth. ‘When was it ever anything but indifference or outright scorn? Nothing we ever did was good enough so why bother being good at all?’ She was crying now, as she had not on the train. ‘Thank God, thank God that my children know that I love them!’
Grace paled. ‘I am sorry,’ she said coldly, ‘I was not aware that love was measured in physical demonstrations!’

Her voice rose. ‘It needn’t be physical! A kind word, a smile for heaven’s sake! Anything but treating us like we were unwelcome guests!’ It felt so good to say the words, after all the long years of holding them back.
‘Do not yell at me, Mary Margaret, I am your mother,’ Grace retorted. ‘Good grief child, what you think of love! Of course I love you, but it would have been no favour to spoil you.’
‘But what about now, Mother?’ Molly pleaded. ‘Dear God, don’t you think my life has been wretched enough? Don’t you think a little tenderness would make all the difference? I am only human! Why do you think I have stayed with Paddy? Because of all of you, he has stood by me when none of the rest of you did! Whatever he has done, he deserves my loyalty for that. You might take a lesson there, Mother! All of you! All of you,’ she turned away, weeping. She was astonished to feel her mother’s hand awkward on her shoulder. Then, slowly, when she was still wretched, the arm went about her back, and while Grace’s back was straight and her posture uneasy, it was at least the first embrace Molly could remember since her childhood’s earliest days.
‘You’re such a foolish girl, Mary,’ her mother said in a fierce, soft voice. ‘Of course I love you. Of course I do. And I am proud of you. You’re a strong woman, just as I intended you should be. Not like my poor soft mother.’ That was what all this was about? Scorn for her mother’s weak will in the face of Grandfather’s wildness? She could not believe it. But at this point it hardly mattered what lies her mother told herself. She had spoken the unspeakable at last, and they could have some peace.

She slept until it was time to dress for dinner. On the stand beside the bed she noticed a letter that had not been there when she lay down. One of the servants must have brought it in. Her knees went to jelly at the handwriting. It was from Mick. She tore it open and sat down again on the bed. There was a single sheet with few words. He was as terse as ever writing.

‘Dear Molly,
I saw your father’s name in the paper and thought you’d come to Dublin.
I am very sorry for your trouble. And for something else as well. I must see you.
Please come to the Lodge at four on Thursday next. If you don’t come, I will know
your mind, and there’s an end to it.
Yours,
MR’

She stared at the letter in disbelief. How he could write after all this time, after running off to marry willy--nilly without a word, she didn’t know. What could he possibly have to say to her that would make the least difference? He knew about Paddy of course. Kate would have told him that, the little gossip. She put the letter down on the bed and rose to dress. As she was putting on her shoes there was a knock at the door.
‘Come,’ she said. The door opened and her Uncle Frank popped his head inside.

‘Are ye decent, Molly?’
She smiled. ‘Uncle Frankie! Yes, just a moment,’ she patted her hair in the mirror and went out with him into the hall, hugging him tightly.
‘Do you never look like your mother!’ he said, shaking his head. ‘How are you holding up in all this girl? Your mother’s broken up you know.’ They began to walk down the hall together.
‘Yes,’ she said to be polite. ‘When did you get in?’
‘A few hours ago, but there was word not to disturb you.’ He said.
‘Is Violet here?’ She asked, to veer him away from the difficult subject of Fa.
‘Oh yes,’ he said, stroking his moustache. ‘Still putting on the finishing touches. Where is that husband of yours, not here I take it?’
She shook her head. ‘No, he stayed at home with the children.’
‘Damned funny business, that,’ Frankie muttered. ‘His place is here with you.’
She took his hand. ‘It’s all right, really. I insisted.’ The lie came so easily. She could never say that he was so erratic these days as to be a worry. ‘He’s not really fit to travel yet.’
‘Hph! Well, none of my business. It’s good to see you, anyway. You should come to visit us, get you out of that wretched town from time to time.’
She smiled brightly, her society smile. ‘Thank you. I’m sure the children would love that.’
‘There’s our brave girl,’ Frank said, and they went downstairs to the heated solarium with its view of the garden, splendid even in winter, for drinks.

On the Wednesday morning they made the long and solemn journey to St. Peter & Paul’s. The rosary the night before had been hideous. She hated all this religious sham in the first place -- everyone there knew Fa’s religion was horses -- but the snivelling of the Aunties combined with the maudlin eulogies by his cronies from the Bank was unendurable. All she wanted was to spend a quiet moment with him away from people, but that had to wait until everyone had left. Mummy, Violet, and Caro had dragged out old photos from their hiding places and there was a fine one of Fa in hunting pinks when he can’t have been more than twenty--five. It brought her brother George to mind, for he had looked just like him. When she first saw it, she thought it was George and was confused by the horse he held. They had not laid him away in his pinks as he had often said that they would, but in a proper dark suit. He looked for all the world a banker.

‘It’s not you at all, Fa,’ she murmured as she stood before the coffin, and reached down to ruffle his excruciatingly perfectly combed hair. ‘That’s better....’ she smiled. ‘We’d have you out in your pinks, Liam and me, if it were left to us.’ The grief she had allayed welled up and she stood shaking with it, refusing to cry in public. ‘I’ll bet Rajii’s wondering where you’ve got to,’ she told him. She winced again, her throat closing. ‘I’ll see he’s looked after, Fa, so he doesn’t pine for you.’ She remembered him on all their hunting days, laughing and happy... How safe and comfortable those days! Ah! She kissed him and fled, unable to bear being in public any longer. She needed to be somewhere safe and quiet to cry. She put in a trunk call to Pat Halinan’s in Derry when they got back to Merrion Square, and took the phone in the library when Paddy rang her back. The door was closed and she was safe here.

‘Hey,’ he murmured, guessing she would be upset. ‘How’s my girl?’ The sound of his voice, low and sonorous, undid her.
‘I wish it were over, I want to come home,’ she blubbed.
‘Ah, mo ‘gra,’ he murmured. ‘Tá sibh tuirseach.’ And Fa had thought they made a mistake! There was no one like him for a crisis. He was right, she was only tired and grieving. He always knew the right things to say. They spent ten minutes talking, and after that she was able to face the company again.

They buried Fa next to Geordie and the memorial for Liam. Molly stood tall now beside her mother, her face grim but composed, while Patsy wept all over Mummy’s arm on the other side. Caro was a brick, and took Mummy away from the graveside after the people had filed past with their condolences and fetched her a flask of tea from the groundskeeper who stood nearby. Caro laced it with brandy from her own pocket flask and when Grace would refuse said gently, ‘It’s a cold day, dear. We won’t have you following poor Charlie, he’d never forgive us. Think of the girls.’ And so they carried on, the women together.

The next day she took the tram out to the Phoenix Park, getting off before the Zoo stop and walking over to the Lodge. It was wet, but not actually raining, but she walked with her head down against the weather and nearly jumped out of her skin when a man stepped out from behind a tree. She gave a weak cry of fright. It was Mick.
‘Molly,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to frighten you.’ He met her eye. ‘I’m glad you came. I’m sorry for your trouble.’
‘Thanks,’ she grimaced. ‘I nearly didn’t come.’ He was staring at her and it made her nervous. ‘What’d you want?’
‘It’s wet here,’ he said, taking her arm. ‘Let’s go somewhere. I’ll buy you a cup of tea.’

They went to Bewley’s and he bought an enormous tea. When the steaming pot and plates of scones and sandwiches were before them she asked after his wife.
‘Jenny’s away visiting her sister in Laois who just had a baby,’ he said, buttering a scone. He would never call it Queen’s County. It was amusing, as Joe’s rigorous insistences were amusing.
‘Is that why you wrote me?’
‘Sure,’ he grinned, ‘it’s deadly with just my own company.’
‘Just like men,’ she said as she poured out tea, ‘to fall apart when the women leave --’ she thought of Paddy, alone in Derry, and her joke fell short.
‘Paddy’s not here?’ Mick ascertained.

She regarded him with astonishment. ‘Would I be here if he were? You took an awful risk,’ she said, now they were on the subject. ‘If he had come, he knows your writing as well as I do. What was to have kept him from reading it?’
‘Being two hundred miles away might have something to do with it,’ he said breaking apart the scone. ‘I didn’t imagine he would come, not being terribly fond of your family.’
‘We’ve spoken every evening,’ she informed him to put him in his place. ‘He has been very kind.’
‘Pardon me,’ he murmured, colouring. ‘Jail has obviously changed him.’
‘Did you come here to discuss my husband?’ she said scathingly. One word more and she would leave.
‘No….’ he drank tea. ‘I’m sorry.’ He ran a hand through his hair. ‘I’m not doing this right. I’m sorry. Can we start again?’ It was an absurd notion that one could unsay things like rewriting a theatre script, but she agreed because this was Grafton Street and people were staring.
‘What did you want?’
He smirked at her. ‘You’ve been taking lessons from Annie.’
She smiled now genuinely. ‘I’m sorry.’
He paused to gather his thoughts, obviously ill at ease, and the hesitation filled her with a sense of foreboding.

‘I made a terrible mistake in my dealings with you,’ he said at last, without looking at her. ‘If I had been thinking of the big picture instead of with Willie, I’d have done it all differently…. I have to admit,’ he looked up now, ruefully, ‘there is still that. Who wouldn’t fall at your feet? But we had something really fine working together, and I bollixed it.’
She leaned forward. ‘Mick, what are you saying?’
‘I want you to model for me again.’ He held her in a glance. ‘Please. It’s never been the same without you.’ She supposed she ought to be flattered, but hardly under the circumstances. Did he expect her just to fall in like that?
She raised her head. ‘Wouldn’t your wife object?’ she asked dryly. ‘Kate tells me you’ve been painting her for years now.’
‘Damn Katie,’ he muttered, slapping the table. ‘The meddling cow.’
She looked quickly about. ‘Mick!’

‘Look,’ he barked. ‘It’s all a sham, all right? We haven’t a marriage, Jenny and I; we have a living arrangement. I do paint her because she’s there and there’s no one else, but as for the rest -- a home instead of a house, children, there’s no chance of that. I may as well have become a priest.’ He folded his arms and scowled darkly. She had forgotten how moody he could be.
She regarded him closely. ‘What d’you mean?’ she asked in a low voice, though she had a suspicion. Such things had gone on at school, but she never knew anyone to carry on that way after. His expression was cavalier. But it was a mockery, painfully acute.
‘She doesn’t care for men. All that art school influence, don’t you know. She has a girl chum at the front, in the nursing corps. They write. It’s quite touching.’ He looked away.
‘Poor Mickey,’ she said.
‘I don’t want your pity, Molly,’ he murmured, draining the teacup. ‘I want you in my studio, and to hell with Sinead.’
‘I don’t see how it’s possible,’ she said frankly. ‘I can’t leave Paddy to manage the children alone for long stretches. He’s not the same since he came back. He’s not well yet.’
‘Would you, if a way could be found?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t see how----’
‘Would you?’ He insisted.

She looked at him a long moment. She had forgotten his effect on her. It was purely carnal; no part of her mind thought it would be in any way wise to spend any time alone with him for whatever reason, but there was the physical response and it was considerable. It set her on edge, always had, which was perhaps why they rowed so much. He touched all the nervy places in her in the same way that Paddy did. The force of attraction was dizzyingly voluptuous. Blindly, instinctively, she murmured barely audibly,
‘Yes.’
He nodded briefly. ‘I’ll find a way, then.’ His blue gaze was intense. ‘Thank you.’

She met him at his house after luncheon with Liz and Hobbles, walking the few blocks to Townsend Street. There were British patrols roaming the streets. Just like home, she thought wryly. But she was not stopped, dressed as she was in town clothes, and mourning at that. She came to the house and stood looking up at it for a moment, her nerves taut. She wasn’t at all sure this was the right thing to do, but she had agreed and she couldn’t renege now. She climbed the few steps and knocked. Mickey came to the door, his shirt and knitted waistcoat covered by a work smock. He had a rag in hand the reeked of turpentine.
‘You were working,’ she said.
He smiled. ‘It’s all right, I was about to come down anyway.’ He took her arm as she stepped inside. ‘Did you have a nice lunch?’
‘Yes.’ They had lunched at Liz’s, a safe haven in the midst of the madness of town.
‘Come up,’ Mick said, tossing his hair back.

She could see his wife’s hand in things. They must be doing well – that he was not working on a Friday told her that – and the garish arty furniture in the parlour had been replaced with pieces of real taste and elegance, even if it wasn’t of top drawer manufacture. There were pieces of sculpture on the tables, papier mâche. Sinead’s, no doubt. The front windows had been replaced with plain glass and the sunlight streamed in, illuminating the room.
‘What happened to your windows?’ she asked as she followed him up the stairs. It was something to take her mind off her nervousness.
‘They were broken in Easter Week,’ he said tersely. ‘The house was occupied by the rebels. There was a barricade up by the lunatic hospital. Some of our furniture went into it.’ He spoke blandly, without rancour. It explained the new equipage, anyway.
‘Whatever did you do?’
‘Jenny went to her brother’s in Dundrum. There was heavy fighting near her parents’ house. DeValera’s men.’ He tossed his head. ‘I spent the week around town with the Red Cross, getting the wounded out of the streets.’
‘Mick!’
He turned at the upper landing. ‘What?’
‘You might have been killed!’
He shrugged. ‘Many brave souls were,’ he said. She remembered then both his earlier wish to go into ambulance service at the front, and that his brother had died in the fighting, or after it. She felt gauche.
‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured.
‘We all have our afflictions,’ he said lightly, pushing open the door to his studio at the top of the stairs.

Nothing had changed. The little room was still strewn with art supplies, canvas to be stretched, wood for frames, sketch books, pigments and oil, even the same old jumbled bed against the wall. One of the paintings was of a blonde woman with a long narrow face.
‘This is your wife?’ She asked as he set up the dais for her.
‘Yeah,’ he grunted.
‘She’s very pretty.’
He did not respond to that, but came and took her by the shoulders and sat her down on a stool in the sunshine with the light coming over her left shoulder, then went across the room from her and sat cross--legged on the floor, sketching. The sun poured down on her neck, warm through the window glass, and after forever she began to be uncomfortable with sitting still. Her foot had gone to sleep and she needed to move.
‘Don’t move!’ He barked at her fidgeting.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t talk, either. It messes you about.’ She had forgotten how tyrannical he was when working. This is why it had so quickly ceased to be amusing to sit for him. He came and repositioned her head and the ache in her neck ceased. ‘All right.’ He leaned and kissed her mouth and she stared at him out of the corner of her eye – all she was allowed to move. ‘Good girl. You’re very patient.’

To pass the time he talked about some of his adventures in Easter Week, how he had at first worked with Francis Skeffington trying to dissuade the looters in O’Connell Street. After Skeffy was arrested, he was approached by a girl from the Cumann na mBan and a priest from the Pro--Cathedral to help with the wounded. It was a terrible week, as if Hell had yawned open under the streets of Dublin, and it galvanised him. Nothing at the Western Front could be worse, nor the bravery of lads on both sides greater. There was something so unspeakably poignant in Irish boys shooting each other in the service of Ireland. A young fellow from the Dublins had a poem published in the Independent about it. And it seemed to Mick such a waste, all this rowing over nuances. Ireland grieved for all her dead sons, no matter their stripe of creed or party. So he had the idea for this painting, and there was no one who could sit for him but her. Sinead was completely wrong, and none of the girls at the Met school had the character.
‘So you are my Ireland,’ he teased. ‘You shall be my Dark Rosaleen.’

She wasn’t at all sure she cared to be immortalised in this way. But under the circumstances she could say nothing, ask no questions, until he stopped working. He did at five o’clock, when they had been going for more than three hours. He came and took her hands, helping her down. The light was nearly gone and the shadows had begun to fall about the room. She was stiff with inactivity, and stretched while he put the stool and the light faux broken pillar away. It was one of his wife’s creations for an exhibit, now part of his store of props. Irrationally, she was sick of hearing about his bloody wife and her art. Why was she always made to feel inadequate?
‘How are you?’ He asked over his shoulder.
‘Hungry,’ she complained. ‘I must get home to dinner. The sherry hour is six.’
He came to where she was putting on her hat beside the bed.
‘Wait,’ he put a hand on her upraised arm. ‘I’d like to kiss you, without that confounded hat.’ She went hot and utterly still at the words. The tension that had gripped her was alive. All afternoon she expected this, from the moment she had stood before his door, and now her throat closed and she could only stare at him. He took it as assent. His hand came round her and she was in his arms. Weak--willed, beguiled as a sacrifice, she only managed to break away when they collided with the bedpost.

‘Mick, no,’ she murmured, still shaking. ‘Please.’
‘Why not?’ His eyes were nearly black with desire.
‘I must get home, they are expecting me.’ But she did not move. The room was growing dark around them.
‘Tomorrow,’ he countered.
‘I can’t,’ she winced.
‘Why not?’ he repeated, taking her wrist. ‘Deny that you want me too.’
It was utterly humiliating to admit how irresolute she was, worse than the confession to her parents about Joe, for now there were a thousand complications crowding her mind, and still, if he had not pushed her into the jarring iron finial she would have abandoned herself to him without a thought until it was too late.

‘I can’t,’ she murmured, meeting his eyes miserably. ‘Is this what you wanted? Is this --’ she tore her arm from his grasp, ‘all this afternoon has been about? Is this the price of my sitting for you? Mick, hasn’t there been enough grief! I can’t! Can’t we just leave it alone? It’s dead it’s over -- Please, please, leave it alone.’ She picked up her hat from the bed and jammed it on anyhow, sticking herself with the pin. She stood nursing her bleeding finger while he watched her in silence.
‘I’ll get you a plaster,’ he said at last, and went downstairs to the lav. He was forever about it, but when he came back he said,
‘I rang for a cab.’
She took the plaster from him. ‘Thank you.’
‘It’s not true, you know,’ he said quietly. ‘I don’t just want to make you.’ He drew a long breath, and ran a hand through his hair. ‘I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry to make you unhappy. It wasn’t my intention, then or now. I hope you believe that.’

She wasn’t sure she did, but there was no point in arguing about it. She was very tired. She picked up her coat and gloves and put them on. It gave her time to think of an answer.
‘I want to believe it,’ she said, looking up at him, troubled and sad. ‘Given this last year, I so want to believe that the whole world has not conspired to make me wretched. I loved you once, Mick. I suppose I still do, but there’s no hope or happiness in it, not the way things are.’
‘Jenny and I are having the sham annulled,’ he told her. ‘We made a bargain when we married, and now it’s over.’
He knew even then, and married her anyway. The reasons for that would be interesting! She shook her head. ‘It doesn’t matter. I couldn’t do the same. Not after four children.’ The irony went right by him.
‘You could leave,’ he said. ‘Just leave. Come with me.’ He took her arms. She stared at him in shock. There were times when she would have considered it, gone in a moment, but that was years since.
‘I can’t!’ she cried. ‘I can’t just leave him, not this way! He’s ill! He needs me. And the children -’ she shook her head. ‘You must have heard from Anne and Kate how he is, how they are since he’s been gone. Are you seriously asking me to turn by back on them in their darkest hour? Could you respect that?’

The bell rang downstairs. The cab. She went past him and opened the door.
‘Cab, Mrs.?’
‘Yes, just a moment. Wait if you please, I won’t be a tick.’ She didn’t wait to see his expression at her command. Mick stood behind her in the hall with his arms crossed, his expression pained. ‘What you must think of me,’ she said, shaking her head.
‘Molly, I had no idea ----’
It was too late for words. ‘I have to go,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry, Mick.’ She turned and went out into the cold night and stepped into the cab without a backward glance. ‘Number 52, Merrion Square,’ she told the driver, and sat back.

There was a note the next morning on her breakfast plate. She slipped it into her belt quickly and read it in the solarium afterward over tea. She was supposed to go shopping with Liz in an hour in Grafton street and didn’t relish the ruin of another day. Wasn’t her father’s death enough to endure? Why must he make things more difficult?
‘I am most terribly sorry,’ he wrote. ‘You must believe that I had no idea what you have endured. You who are so brave never give the least sign. Please forgive me.’
She sat in the chintz overstuffed chair, looking out at the garden and trying to decide what on earth should she do now. There were no rules. The consequences of answering his note were many, mostly unpleasant as far as she could see, but she was not as heartless as he had painted her to be and the thought of coldly walking away was wrenching. Grace came in just then and she looked up.

‘Hello, Mother,’ she said wearily.
‘Mary, I thought you’d gone shopping with Mrs. Talbot!’ Grace exclaimed.
‘Mother, could I have your advice on something?’
Grace looked nonplussed. ‘Of course!’ She sat in the adjacent chair. ‘Whatever is the matter?’ Molly regarded her as she sought for words. Uncle Frankie was right; the last several days had been hard on her mother. She looked tired. But she was still remarkably beautiful. Her hair was only threaded grey, though she was fifty, and her complexion bright and smooth. One should look so well at fifty. Their tentative truce was about to have its first test of faith and compassion.
‘Some time ago, I sat for an artist at the Hibernian Academy,’ she began haltingly. ‘We had a falling out. Now he has written me with an apology, and wants me to sit for him again. Paddy was against the idea in the first instance, and now I cannot fathom how I would manage looking after him and the children if I had to come to Dublin. But I believes he deserves a hearing, if for no other reason than to put things right. What would you do?’ She looked up, hoping Grace could read between the halting gaps in her words. Her mother regarded her a long moment, her face set.

‘One’s first duty is always to one’s husband and children of course,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘I presume this fellow is not of our class or you would not hesitate. We must be careful in our dealings with such people; their motives must always be suspect until they can be proved pure. But you are a sensible girl. If it would ease your mind to give him a hearing, then by all means, do so. But do it at some neutral place, for your own safety. Your friend Elizabeth’s for instance, if she would agree.’ Grace bent her a speaking glance. ‘Whatever you decide, Mary, remember who you are.’
‘...Thank you, Mother,’ Molly murmured, stunned.

She rang Liz, and then Mick, and in an hour was in Townsend Street. Liz was a brick, and laughed at the escapade. ‘Same old fellow, is it?’ She said. ‘You’re a great patron of the arts, darling.’ Mick flung open the door before she was even up the steps. He must have been watching for her. He was dressed and shaved, but looked as if he hadn’t slept.
‘I am so terribly sorry,’ he said closing the door. ‘Thank you for coming!’ He flung his arms around her, burning his face in her neck, knocking off her hat. ‘Molly, Molly, darling Molly, I’m sorry. I’m sorry,’ he murmured, until she broke away enough to look at him. He was overwrought, his face wet with tears. It would ruin her frock, but there was nothing for it now.
‘Mick,’ she said gently, and kissed him. ‘Poor Mick,’ she took his hand. ‘Come, I’ll make you some tea.’

They sat at the table in the kitchen before the now curtained window holding hands while he poured out his miseries. ‘I’ve done it all wrong,’ he said at last. ‘And this.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s a terrible thing to hear the truth, and you spoke it: I have been prejudiced against you because of your class, putting on you all the collective evils subjection nurtures in the heart, resenting everything that makes you what you are. I have hated the very thing I loved -- yes, it is not too strong a word! And blamed you because I loved you, and you were married.’ He grimaced. ‘I hated him too, Paddy, because he had you and I wanted you. Molly! I loved that man! When we first met, he was a wonder to me! He was everything I strove to be, and I let my obsession come between us.’ He leaned his head in his hands, obscuring his face from her. ‘Even when you met me in the park, I hardly considered that your father had just died, what your feelings might be. It was all what I wanted...’

A penitent in a stony cell could not have been harder on himself than Mick with this wretched catalogue. She had always thought him an opportunist, and not a little manipulative. Handsome men were used to getting their own way, but this soul--baring recital was something different; there were the seeds of a profound and shocking melancholy in it that no religion would cure; certainly not the Church, which encouraged this sort of flagellation. Her heart went out to him now, genuinely.
‘Mickeen, achara,’ she murmured, coming round the table. She put her arms about him and he buried his face in her waist, clinging as Sally in one of her panic attacks. She smoothed his silken black hair and whispered, hushing, ‘We are none of us perfect, my poor darling, and you are not evil as you seem to think... This last year I have been most grateful for the loyal kindness of a few friends. Such things can no longer be taken for granted. That, if anything is your sin.’ She smiled. ‘But there are greater ones... You are so tired, agra, and overwrought. Come and lie down. You are forgiven, now rest.’ She disengaged herself from his grip and held out her hands to him. ‘Come, agra.’ She leaned and kissed him as one would a child, smiling, filled with a tender kind of mercy and wash of love. His talk of peasant resentments was nothing to her. He followed her down the hall and into the bedroom where she turned down the bed.
‘Come lie with me,’ she murmured, holding out her arms.

Later, he slept in her arms for six hours during which she drifted and dozed. This week had been a trial, exhausting for her as well. It was as well she had not gone shopping with Liz. When she woke after a deeper sleep, the light in the room was golden, and Mick was leaning on his arm, studying her face. He smiled then and kissed her softly.
‘Beautiful Molly, ‘ he murmured, ‘sweet, darling Molly.’ His hand moved down her side under the silk chemise and burned where he touched her bare thigh above her garter. Languid, half awake, she turned to accommodate him. She had already arranged with Liz to give out that she was there overnight, if anyone rang.

The train pulled into Waterside at 10.45. She had been travelling for sixteen hours and was heartily sick of trains. The lamplight gleamed in the streets, and the moonlight glinted off the river Foyle. Welcome home, she thought. Welcome back to real life. She saw Paddy standing against the wall of the terminus, the red glow of a cigarette indication that he had been waiting a while. He saw her as she stepped down and flung the cigarette away, walking quickly over.
‘Hello,’ she said dutifully, and kissed him.
‘How was the journey?’ he asked with an edge in his voice. She frowned in puzzlement.
‘Well enough. Tiring.’
‘Pity.’ He took her cases from the conductor and handed him a shilling.
‘How are the children?’ She asked, beginning to be nervous. He was behaving very strangely.
‘Well enough,’ he grunted, shouldering one of her cases. ‘This way.’ He led her through the station to the small carpark. He said nothing more until they were in the motor, heading over the Craigavon Bridge. The lights from the city sparkled like stars in the night. He looked over at her briefly.

‘You’re very quiet.’ Again, the sharp edge to his words, as if much lurked beneath the surface. He was in one of his dangerous moods. She would do best to humour him and give him a wide berth.
‘I suppose I am,’ she agreed. ‘I’m just tired.’
‘I’ll bet,’ he said, and she frowned again at his tone. He had seemed fine the last time they spoke. ‘Well, it’s nothing but what a hot bath and a bit to eat won’t fix up,’ he murmured. The false cheer in those words was worse than the other. She was stricken with alarm as she began to perceive the sinister undertone to everything he had said. He was waiting for... something. But what? She shifted into the corner of the seat against the door., perceptibly away from him, gulping to ease her suddenly dry throat. She felt wild with irrational fear. He glanced over, sidelong, and reached out to shift gears. She started.
‘Is something wrong, my dear?’ he asked in a smooth even tone.
‘No,’ she said, too quickly.
‘Good,’ he murmured, drawing out the word in the round tones of Kerry. He made to shift gears again, jammed the sticky third and swore under his breath, shoving the second forward so that she had to brace herself against the windscreen. He did not apologise for the jolt, which did nothing to increase her confidence, but she could hardly accuse him of doing it on purpose. She wasn’t such a fool as to directly provoke him in such a mood.

She took a quick bath at home in little water, clumsy with fear. Paddy came in from downstairs when she was brushing out her hair. She heard his step on the stair with dread. She looked up at him through the mirror but he ignored her, yanking off his coat and tie and throwing them on the chair. She picked up the nail file, her hands shaking, and made a desultory pass at her nails, but it was more to keep her self--control than anything. She watched him covertly through the mirror, stalking about the room. Her legs started to shake as well, and she felt sick. Dear God dear god -- she prayed. Please let him not start anything now!
‘Did you have a nice time shopping with Liz yesterday?’ He asked suddenly. She started.
‘Yes,’ she said, her voice unnaturally high. She cleared her throat. ‘I didn’t find anything, though.’
‘Amazing,’ he barked. She half--turned in her chair.
‘Paidín --’
He cut her off. ‘Did you see anyone else, apart from Liz and Susanna?’ He had stopped his pacing and was directly behind her.

Her stomach lurched in terror. He knew. Somehow he knew, she was certain. That was why he had been so strange all evening. ‘N--no,’ she stammered, turning back to her dressing table and clenching her fists in her lap. He laid a hand on her shoulder, and looked at her through the mirror with a deadly cold expression.
‘What’s this?’ he asked softly, moving his hand. There was an unmistakable mark there that he uncovered. She went numb and could hardly speak.
‘I -- I don’t know,’ she managed thickly.
He drew a long breath and his eyes were darkly murderous behind the glasses. ‘Oh, I think you do,’ he said with deceptive softness. ‘I think you do very well know.’ With lightning swiftness he pulled her up by the hair and she screamed. ‘Don’t lie to me,’ he ground out, shaking her. ‘Don’t lie to me!’ He shoved her and she collided with the dressing table. ‘You lying bitch!’ He struck her. ‘Don’t you think I know where you were?’ He struck her again, twice, and her head reeled. ‘You must think I’m bloody stupid!’ His hands were on her shoulders. ‘Oh Liz was very good, but I’ve heard her lies before. Damn you for a lying trull, you’re my wife --’ he shook her again and threw her against the wardrobe, ‘and you’ll know it!’

She stumbled and landed in a heap, her spine gouged by the open drawer. A cry escaped her and her only thought was for the children in the next room. They had come to the door once, wakened at the sound of the row, and only once. After that, Joe kept his sister in the room, huddling with her in her bed, as Molly had discovered in the morning. She covered her head in her arms now, trying to protect her face from Paddy’s blows. They rained on her, open--handed, closed fisted, until he had reduced her to a shuddering, cowering lump at the foot of the wardrobe. He kicked her and she shrieked, clutching her side.
‘Get up,’ he muttered savagely. ‘Lying bitch.’
Shaking violently, she was unable to move and could only stare at him in terror. He kicked her again.
‘Filthy whore, I said get up!’

Hiccoughing and sobbing she rose her knees, felt a stabbing pain in her side and collapsed again. She screeched as his hand twisted in her hair and he pulled her to her feet. He was large and menacing before her, his face livid and his eyes all a black rage. He held his fist before her, and it was only that he had taught her Irish that she understood half of what he said. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die, she kept repeating in her mind to stay conscious. Her wits were not right after his hitting her in the head and his face was a blur.

‘You insolent trollop, you’re my wife and it’s as such you’ll behave, by God, if I have to make sure no man would ever look at you again. Is that what you want, lying cunt?’ He had threatened her with a razor before. Now she was in now condition to resist. ‘I’ll do it, so help me if it is the only thing to keep you from whoring around with him!’ He struck her again and had her by the neck. ‘Lying whore, you’re only good for one thing --’ He gave her a heave and she collided with the iron bed rail. He shoved her again and she went over, sprawling on the creaking bed. He yanked the bedside table drawer open and pulled out his straight razor. ‘I’ll do it, bitch,’ he said, advancing on her.
‘No,’ she pleaded thickly. ‘No, no, no, no please --’
‘Shut up!’ he struck her and with one swift movement sliced the front of her nightgown athwart. She gave a weak cry, but was unharmed but for a small beaded scratch. He pulled off his belt, folding it neatly in his hand, and knelt over her, surveying the wreck he had created.
‘Now we’ll see who’s the man about,’ he murmured.

He was not a drinking man, and for that she was usually grateful. His abuse would probably have been more frequent if he were. But there was no temper to his lust of rage. Prison had not taken that from him. What was once a delight was now a holy terror for he held off his coming off until she was bleeding, gagging, defiled in every possible way. Then he left, where she didn’t know for blessed oblivion descended then, and by the time she stumbled up in the morning he was gone to school with Joe, leaving her a note that Sally was at Kate’s. She wished he had killed her, she decided after she had been sick in the pot. There were worse things than dying. Three weeks later she knew she was pregnant.

They had been distant but polite with each other since the morning after. There was no hiding what had happened to her, so she stayed indoors and avoided the neighbours. Paddy never apologised, never mentioned it again, though there was no repeat. She had no idea whether he was remorseful, as they had hardly spoken except as necessary. The children asked no questions, but for the month it took the bruises to heal often left off their play to come and kiss her for no reason, as they had when they were very young. The doctor raised an eyebrow at her condition, however.
‘Should this have been reported to the police, Mrs. Leary?’ he asked. She started and shuddered.
‘No!’ she said quickly, and avoided his eye. ‘My husband wouldn’t ----’ she faltered.
‘I see,’ he said. He turned away to his notes, shaking his head. What he saw was a matter for debate. At best he merely thought her husband the sort to blame her; at worst he suspected the truth, but he could never guess the whole of it. She would worry the whole time whose it was, and what Paddy would do if it were obviously Mick’s.

When she told him he said, ‘Well, I’m sorry for you.’ It was the first sign of anything but bare civility from him in a month. The clock ticked on the mantel, and she twisted her wedding ring with its sparkling row of diamonds.
‘What will we do if --’
He looked up sharply from lighting a cigarette, the only sign of his distress, squinting at her in that appraising way. ‘We’ll raise a bastard, I suppose,’ he said, taking a long drag. ‘You’ll not leave me.’ It was a blatant statement of fact, carrying all the weight of a casually spoken threat, the first allusion he had made to his threats on her return. He meant them, cold--bloodedly. He blew out smoke and said shortly, ‘Did you expect me to say differently?’
‘No.’ She looked at her hands. The plea was humiliating to make, but she must. ‘Paddy,’ she looked up and he swam in her vision.
‘What?’
She closed her eyes, shaking, her voice trembling. It took every ounce of will she possessed to force the words, ‘Please don’t hit me anymore. Not while --’ she swallowed, coughed. ‘Not while I’m carrying this child. I don’t want to lose another.’

He went to the window and stood looking out over the rooftops to the river, smoking.
‘Don’t give me a reason,’ he murmured. ‘It all comes down to that simple thing, Mallaidh.’ He turned and swept her figure in a glance. ‘It could be mine,’ he said tonelessly. ‘Mick had better hope it is.’
She went cold. ‘What d’you mean?’
He squinted at her. ‘Just a bargain we made, a long time ago....’ He said casually. ‘Have you told him?’ It sounded of the most profound indifference to him, but she knew better from that deadly cold tone.
‘Of course not!’ she snapped. ‘I haven’t been out of the house since --’ her throat closed and she went hot and cold at his expression.
‘Since you were shown your place?’ he enquired lightly.
‘I hate you!’ She cried.
He shrugged. ‘They’re all the same, love, hate. You’ve hated me before. And loved me. Very recently, I seem to recall.’ Behind the brutal mask he was hurting deeply. The chasm of it yawned in that one short sentence.

She was unsteady with the wild emotions of early pregnancy, and he had put his finger on the point of her guilt. Hadn’t she known that no good would come of an affair with Mick? Hadn’t she railed at him of her responsibilities? And yet, moved by pity or no, she had done it anyway. She burst into tears and sank into the chair, crying,
‘I made a mistake! Will you scourge me forever for it!’ She cried and coughed and was wretched.
‘Not forever, M’aille,’ he said from the window. ‘But you can’t expect me not to have feelings about it.’ He stood watching her, gasping and coughing, and after a little brought her his handkerchief.. ‘Here, mo beanín,’ he pressed it into her hand. He pulled away the ottoman and sat with his elbows on his knees before her. When she was better, he said,
‘We’re in a right mess again. There’s no going back, no undoing. It will take time to work this through --’ He looked up, his gaze intense. ‘You ripped me apart with the betrayal, Molly! With the one person you knew I could not bide!’ He gripped her hands tightly. ‘Can you understand how I feel?’ He paused while she cried again. ‘All right, mo chailín,’ he sighed. ‘We can only go forward. Be with me, and not against me. Let me be your first and last thought. It’s all I’ve ever wanted from you.’

He was asking for a promise of a sort of fidelity of the mind that was the essence of the sacramental vow. He was as Catholic as that after all. Under the circumstances it would not be hard, and it wasn’t as if she had pined after Mick anyway. If that one was an opportunist then so was she. She made him because he was there and she thought it safe. It was a fantasy. What if things were different? And they never could be. Paddy was asking for the reality of their vow, the hard everyday journey they had made these eight years. With all its sorrows, this was her life. She had pledged to it. What else was there to do?
She nodded slowly. ‘Yes. You have my word.’

Katherine Grace was born on the first of November and named for her grandmothers. Annie came to sit with her, bringing Mary Sullivan from next door. Her finer skills, whatever they were, were hardly needed. She simply caught the baby and pronounced her a fine bonny girl. She weighed nearly ten pounds in Mary’s little hanging scale and was healthy, none the worse for her rocky start. Molly looked her over carefully. She was dark--haired with the bright blue eyes that would be blue or grey but so had her last two children been, and there was nothing immediately suspicious about her. They would have to wait to see as she grew who her father was. Perhaps it was the long uncertainty and worry about her or the gap between her and Sally, but Molly was fiercely attached to the child from the beginning. Whoever her father might be, Katie was her child, and she swore she would never permit her to suffer for the accident of her birth.