Chapter Four: Portmarnock, Dublin July 1909

Paddy headed the car into the field that served for a carpark beside the racecourse, and braked the car beneath the shade of an ash tree.
‘Well, Earnan,’ he said to his tall, dark-haired brother, ‘Here we are. Are you sure you want to be seen with me?’

Ernie pulled the cap across his forehead. ‘Jaysus Paddy, I'm going to place a few bets and drink a little beer, not tangle up in your nasty Fenian business.’ He was a drayman, heavily built, a stolid labourer through and through. He thought his younger brother a high-flown romantic, and had no compunctions about saying so. But they loved one another for all that, in a gruff sort of way, meaning that they would as soon punch each other in the nose but when it was the world against the family, they stood by one another.
‘I know,’ Paddy persisted, ‘ but I'll be seen, and you'll be seen with me, and there's certain. I just thought to put you in mind of the danger.’

Ernie laughed as he got out of the car. ‘You and your imagination, Paidín! Sure, where's the harm in meeting with a bunch of old age pensioners from Americkey?’
‘Plenty, if it's who I expect to find with Patch,’ he said tersely. With that, saying no more about Fenians, Devoy or the Clann na Gael, he shut the car door and shoved the keys into his trousers pocket hurriedly. He knocked his slouch hat back into shape and pulled it on as they walked away toward the sea and the track and the imposing white reviewing stand, silently enjoying the look of dumbfoundedness on his brother's face.

It was before the beginning of the third race, when they were sitting in the beer tent with a consoling pint, that Ernie finally convinced Paddy to lay odds. Misery loved company, he supposed, for Ernie had lost a pound already on the two races before, which wouldn't go down well with Rosemary, his wife.
‘It’s only a fecking bob or two,’ Ernie cajoled. ‘What’s that to you?’
‘All right, all right so,’ Paddy said. ‘Hold your noise. If we win, I’ll split it with ye. Who’s the horse?’ In reaching for his wallet, he discovered a hole in his pocket and that that he mislaid the car keys, which could prove disastrous in the afternoon. Shite! Devoy was known for a hair-trigger temper and had disposed of men for less. They looked all round the table and the stand where they had been, but the keys were nowhere to be found.
‘I must have dropped them at the car,’ he said, his heart racing in anxiety. He would be damned lucky if he had. It would be hell to get a locksmith out of a Sunday from Dublin to fit another key. ‘I'll be back -’

Ernie nodded, grunting, and Paddy went, running, scanning the ground before him to the carpark as he retraced their route an hour earlier. He dashed over the hillock that separated the refreshment tents from the betting booths and reviewing stand - and ran smack into a young girl standing there watching the race. She landed with a thud on the ground before him and he was brought up short.
‘I'm sorry Miss,’ he said, holding out his hand automatically to help her up. ‘Are you hurt?’ She took his hand, exclaiming angrily,
‘No thanks to you if I'm not!’ She rose with his help, a tall, slender girl with long black hair and grey eyes, he noticed as he looked into them. And then he froze. It was the girl from the concert. He had no time to absorb this shock as a roar went up from the crowd, and the girl pulled away from him to look at the track. There were too many people milling around the finish line to see the winner clearly. She whirled back to face him, all haughty fire. Her accent was of the gentry, her manner also.

‘See now, you've made me miss the end of the race as well!’ she accused in ringing tones. ‘I can't even see who won now! Why don't you look where you are going! Oh, and you've just ruined my frock- ‘ she brushed in annoyance at the torn and grass-stained lace of her white lawn summer dress. She sighed with impatience, her hand going to her head. ‘And I've lost my hat....’ she glared at him. He thought in a moment she would strike him. A real spitfire, she was. The thought gave him some amusement, in the midst of this dressing-down.
‘What does it look like? I'll help you find it.’ He said gallantly. ‘I'm sorry about your dress.’ He found himself colouring and was annoyed. He was very conscious of his accent. The long, slow, round vowels of Kerry were a long way from the clipped drawl of posh Dublin drawing rooms, and he felt like the perfect clod she accused him of being.
‘No thank you,’ she retorted, scanning the hillside behind them. ‘Bother, there it is,’ she started off after a small straw hat that was rolling about at the edge of the carpark fence, threatening to take wing yet again.
‘Let me, since I am the one who lost it for you’ he said, taking her arm, and obligingly ran down the hill after the errant hat. He returned with it to the girl who stood with her hands on her hips.

She did not thank him, but rammed the hat on her head and called to a passer-by,
‘You there! Who won the last race?’
‘Em, Sweetwillow, I'm thinking, Miss,’ came the reply.
The girl's eyes lighted and she jumped a little, clapping her hands like a child.
‘Oh, Liam you're a darling!’

She was a pretty spoiled child. Beautiful. Oh, beautiful! A lovely figure and lovelier face, but no woman, not yet. She could not be twenty. He was stricken again with the feeling that had passed through him as he watched her play the other night, weird electric feeling. She felt his eyes on her, and looked up. Her good humour was entirely restored.
‘My brother is the rider, you see, and we just won three hundred guineas!’
He smiled at her perfunctorily, disquieted. ‘That's nice.’ He didn't know whether he wanted to kiss her or shove her down the hill, or why he should want to do either. She was just a gentry girl, like many another. One of the enemy. Three hundred guineas for the purse were probably nothing to her. Her lot would spend that in an evening's gaming, while passing the hovels of the starving poor without a glance of pity. They were the enemy. He had no business standing here, staring into the grey sky of her eyes. He was missing his keys, meeting Devoy, had more important things to do than pass unpleasantries with a gentry girl.... So why did his heart beat hard to notice how the sun shone on her gleaming hair?

He pushed back his hat, folded his arms. ‘Miss MacLenaghan -’ he saw her astonishment that he knew her name. ‘ -I am on an errand, but if you will permit me, ‘ he found himself saying the words before he could stop them coming out of his mouth, ‘I would like to make this up to you-’ he made a gesture toward her ruined dress, didn't know what else to say, and fell silent, colouring again. Awkwardness with women was not a hallmark of his life, and he found his discomfort with this one irritating. Why was he even wasting his time? But the queer, electric feeling was running through him again, and he was compelled.
‘You know my name!’ She exclaimed.
‘... I saw your concert the other night, on Thursday, at the Rotunda.’ He managed.
He looked in some desperation towards the carpark, but could not see beyond the ash tree to where his car should be. The view was blocked by another car. He looked back at her. Mary, that was her name. ‘Look, I am in earnest. I feel terrible about your frock... Please let me buy you a cup of tea, at least. But I must do something first.’ He caught the suspicious frown that passed over her features. ‘Please. I swear to you I am in earnest, you need have no fear of my intentions.’ What were his intentions? He didn’t know them himself. ‘My name is Patrick Leary and I teach at Trinity.... Here -’ he dug in his coat pocket, brought out a card case - a graduation present from the Mahaffys - and gave her a calling card. They were plain white with printed black bold lettering, bearing only his name; a proper affectation he didn’t often indulge in.

She looked from the card to his face, up his arm, coolly, and he was suddenly conscious that the cuff of his shirt was frayed. Devoy would hardly notice or care, or his uncle neither, but this girl did, and it was infuriating because of the quite unconscious expression of disdain on her face. He was not, it said, the sort of person from whom she was accustomed to receiving cards. He was, it said, an upstart - a thing noted from the first words from his mouth. However high you climb, it said, you will never be equal to us, to me.
‘Thank you,’ she murmured correctly in her low voice. ‘My family are in the third box in the stand. I’ll be there when you finish your errand, Mr. Leary.’

It was clearly a test. There was an undertone of amusement in her voice, as if she regarded it as a great lark to be called upon by an errand boy from Trinity. He wanted to snatch his card back and tell her to go to hell, but her sudden smile and the nod as she turned away killed that impulse. The Queen of Ireland had granted him audience and he would go.

The keys were where they had dropped when they fell out of his pocket., on the driver's side of the car, lying half-hidden behind the front tyre. He put them in a different pocket, this one sound, and walked away from the Lanchester wondering at the strangeness of fate.
‘I found the keys,’ he murmured to his brother, tossing his hat down on the table as he slid into the seat beside him in the beer tent. They had won a pound on their three shillings, which meant that Ernie was no worse off than when he left the wife, except for what was spent on beer, so he was pleased with himself..
‘...I also ran into a girl.....’

Ernie was grinning, and shoved him good-naturedly. ‘Ha! So that's where you were all this while! Leave it to ye to pick up a girl at a race meet.’ He drank his beer.
‘No, I mean I ran into her,’ he insisted. ‘Knocked her over, and she a gentry girl too.’ He ran a hand through his hair. ‘I'm buggered.’
‘Jaysus, why?’ Ernie scoffed at his pale face. ‘She's not in hospital!’
He swallowed, and refused to look up. ‘I gave her a card, told her I'd buy her a cuppa, make it up....’
‘Shite, man, you're not bound by that! Was she lavered itself?’
‘No...’ he said sullenly. ‘She won a bunch of money then all was right as rain.’ He pushed Ernie's empty pint glass around the table.
‘So, leave it be! It's nothing! What d'ye care for what the toffs think?’

Paddy looked up now, and his face was brooding and bleak. ‘Ah, you should but see her, Earnan...’ he fell silent, unhappily. He couldn't explain it even to himself, let alone to Ernie, who was straightforward as a pike. He sat for a moment, then, ‘ I'll just go.’ He made to rise.
‘What about yer man from Americkey?’ Ernie asked in surprise as he pulled on his hat.
He smiled ironically. ‘I'm only goin' for a wee chat,’ he said, leaning over teasingly. ‘I'll be back long before that.’ He dug in his pocket, and came up with ten shillings in odd change. ‘Here, put that on a horse. Maybe we'll get lucky again. I won't be long, right you.’
‘Paddy--’ Ernie spluttered in astonishment, but he walked on resolutely, out of the tent and into the sunshine.

She was where she said she would be, in the third box from the near end of the reviewing stand. Smack in the middle, but at least it was at the ground level. With her was a sullen little girl, a sweated young man in racing silks -- the brother, doubtless -- and two others he assumed were her parents. She was not looking for him -- he would have been surprised if she had been -- but watching the current race just begun absorbedly. The father, standing next to her, was shorter than she; a round, florid, dark-haired man. The Northerner of the name. He looked a banker or a barrister, for all his informal linen. The brother was tall and black-haired, young, with a sullen expression. The little girl was pretty, with soft curling brown hair, nothing like the rest of them, but spoiled-looking. She wore a carefully casual summer costume whose ease was belied in the material and the details. No ordinary little girl would wear lawn that fine. The mother was tall, gaunt, stunningly beautiful, elegantly turned-out, and cold. The picture of every English lady he could ever imagine. She evidently did not care for racing. Of all of them, including the girl Mary, the old man looked the most human and promising. But that wasn’t saying much. Ordinarily, he would have paid such people no mind, viewing them as an unnecessary relic, a curiosity. And now... just what the hell was he doing?

The race ended and he came forward at last in the movement of the crowd. Her eye lit on him instantly, and she greeted him with delight, reaching out her hand.
‘There you are, Mr. Leary! Mummy, see I told you he would come and present himself,’ she came through the gate and drew him into the box, smiling up at him archly. ‘It’s entirely possible the ruining of my frock was a mere contrivance to gain my acquaintance, for he saw my concert, did you not?’

‘Yes,’ he nodded in confusion at her easy merriment, glanced at the parents and the brother uneasily. ‘Last Thursday. But I was genuinely surprised to meet you here....’
Her face showed cheery disbelief, which rang false to him. It was as if he had walked into the middle of a family quarrel. It occurred to him then that perhaps he had; perhaps her merriment was to cover a row about the state in which she had returned. He watched her social manoeuvring, marvelling. She clucked her tongue, shook her head playfully at him and turned to her parents, crying,
‘Oh Mummy, Fa, this is Mr. Patrick Leary, who teaches- what did you say? -at Trinity College’ He had not done, but he admired her facile handling of their meeting. ‘English Literature,’ he volunteered, with a nod.

‘Oh yes.’ Mary said, laughing. ‘And these are my parents, Mr. and Mrs. Clennaghan, my brother William, and sister -’ she pulled the little girl out from behind the chair where she was sulking ‘- Anne.’
He took off his hat to the mother. ‘Very pleased to meet you.’
The father shook his hand. ‘Hello, my boy. How do you do?’ The brother looked down his nose crossly, and the mother gave his suit what could best be described as a withering appraisal.
‘And where are you from, Mr. Leary?’ she asked levelly. The lilac silk of her costume rustled in the light breeze. Otherwise she was unmoving.
‘Kerry, ma'am,’ he supplied, and fought again the impulse to nod or bow. He drew himself up. ‘But we have been in Dublin long years.’

‘You teach literature,’ she said deliberately.
‘Yes, ma'am. The classics and belles lettres, primarily British authors, but some Americans and Germans.’
‘Oh Germans,’ she waved her hand. ‘Ghastly people!’ She turned to her husband. ‘Charlie, do you remember that German we met on holiday in the Channel Islands? Whatever was his name?’
‘Em, Hesse, I think, my dear’ came the response.
‘Yes. Dreadful man. No manners at all. Do you care for Germans, Mr. Leary?’
‘ I have only known one as a student, and a pair of Norwegians, so I don't consider myself fit to judge.,’ he said amiably. It earned him a startled look from the mother.
‘I'm sure I don't know what you mean. One may take the measure of a person by their conduct in society, and if that conduct leaves something to be desired,’ here Mrs. Clennaghan looked directly into his eyes, ‘one may know they are not of the quality with whom one associates. It is fairly simple.’

The girl Mary was not worth enduring this treatment. He was not a corner boy after all, but a university don, better educated than this snobbish bitch would ever be. ‘I quite agree,’ he said softly. ‘In Kerry, we value hospitality above all things. No guest is ever treated ill in our houses.’ He looked at Mary, who regarded him with the same false brightness as before. He was on his own that was clear; he would have no help from that quarter.

‘I always enjoyed marvellous hospitality from the people of the West,’ Charles said amiably. ‘I recall when I was there in ‘85, in Galway it was. I went out walking and was caught in the rain. A very kind woman offered me a seat at her hearth until the rain let up, and plied me with whiskey that I shouldn’t fall ill in the wet. Very kind, very kind indeed. That was about the time I met my wife. I had injured my knee, you see, and was quite lame, so went to take the cure. Lovely people, in the West.’ His blue eyes gleamed an ameliorating welcome.
‘Thank you, sir,’ Paddy said feelingly. Charles blinked benignly and dug in his pocket for a cigar.
‘And now that our business for the day is done, I’d like to celebrate.’ He said, looking up. ‘If the young people would care to join me in a ramble, I certainly wouldn’t mind the company.’
Mary looked up him now, expectantly. So that is how it was. She was mighty docile for a girl who had nearly bit his head off half an hour ago. Bold, within a very narrow margin. Well. He did owe her some restitution for ruining her dress. A walkabout would not be out of order.
‘Thank you,’ he said. They made their brief adieus to the company and went out of the box, Charles leading. They had his company so far as the drinks tent, before he turned to them, saying, ‘Not too long, now.’ And he disappeared.

Now what? He and Mary had not spoken two words on their walk here. He looked down at her, colouring. He still wanted to kiss her.
‘Fa’s a good egg,’ she said, her eyes not leaving his face. They were the colour of the sky on a soft day, the palest shade of grey, eerie.
‘Yes,’ he said bemusedly. ‘Mary -’
She made a face. ‘Please don't call me that. Only my mother calls me that.’
Now he smiled. ‘What should I call you then?’
‘Molly... or Gerry if you’re feeling chummy. Shall we walk? People are staring.’ Passers-by were not the only ones staring. Her eyes had never left his face.
‘Very well,’ he felt more like himself now, amused, and controlled, a lovely girl in his thrall. They walked beside the racecourse. ‘Was there much trouble about your frock?’ he asked.

She rolled her eyes. ‘Oh my! Mummy had a fit! She thinks me a great hoyden anyway, riding astride and all. I’m certain it can be mended. My maid is very good at things like that.’ She said it easily, with no trace of snobbery. What different worlds.... He tilted his head and took in the front of her lawn summer dress.
‘It looks pretty hopeless to me,’ he admitted. ‘Would it be indelicate of me to send to your dressmaker’s the means for a replacement?’ He was rewarded with her impish smile.
‘Not if you wished me to be considered your mistress,’ she murmured. His pulse gave a violent leap. He looked at her sidelong.
‘Do you wish to be so considered?’
She clucked her tongue at him.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, but was not. Her olive skin was suddenly rosy. That was worth any audacity.

They walked on in silence to the end of the racecourse grounds. Howth was before them, and the wild coast teeming with seabirds. Even here, the air was salt. They paused at the may hedge that marked the boundary, looking out over the peaceful countryside to the sea. The sun was pleasantly warm, but not as warm as Paddy’s racing pulse. The breeze caught the loose mass of her hair and lifted it briefly, and he was intoxicated.
‘I enjoyed your concert the other night,’ he said at last, shoving his hands into his pockets. He leaned against the hedge and its supporting fence, facing her with his back to the sea. ‘Your choices were very moving.’
She looked at him quickly. ‘Thank you. They are some of my favourites.’
‘Have you been playing long?’
‘Since I was seven or eight.’ She said. ‘Mr. Leary -’
‘Only my students call me that,’ he smiled. ‘For the rest it’s Pat or Paddy...’ he reached out a hand and touched her hair. She was so very young. ‘What were you about to say?’
‘I’ve forgotten...’ She looked at him with the same expression he had seen on the faces of students when five minutes was called on exams, a sort of desperate, hopeful fearful look. He found it oddly endearing. She was not as poised as she pretended and he enjoyed her distress and confusion. She was innocent, likely, but ripe for adventure. He could almost feel her heart beating.

‘I would like to see you,’ he said suddenly, heaving himself off the hedge. The movement brought them within inches of each other. He touched her hair again. It was like silk in his fingers.
‘I owe you something; would you have tea with me? In Howth or Dublin?’ Her clothes smelled of gardenias. The debutante’s flower.
‘Howth,’ she said breathlessly. She was blushing again. Oh sweetheart, how lovely you would be in abandon....
‘Good,’ he murmured, letting his fingers trail along her arm. The world was standing still, and there was only this, only this girl, standing with him in a field, both of them charged with the hope of desire. Yes. He saw it in her eyes. If he kissed her now she would yield. But he would not. The game was too luscious for that. ‘Are you on the telephone?’
‘Yes,’ she whispered.
‘Howth?’ His eyes did not leave her face now. He did not touch her again, but let the space between them draw her to him like a magnet. Lovely, lovely game.
‘No,’ she murmured in some confusion. ‘Baldoyle.’
‘Good...’ He looked up, towards the racecourse and the reviewing stand. It would be time to meet Devoy before long. ‘Well, Miss Molly, I should have you back to your Da, as he was kind enough to permit you to go walking out with me.’ He smiled at her, teasingly, breaking the spell deliberately. She shook her head, as if waking from a spell, a dream, and began to walk back with him, reeking of confusion and disappointment.

‘I may ring you tomorrow, then?’ He asked as they came to the tents again.
‘Yes,’ she murmured abstractedly.
‘Very good. Thank you,’ he smiled.
He left her safely and decorously with her family and made his farewells, then dashed back over the hillock where he had knocked her down earlier. As he sprinted into the beer tent in search of Ernie glanced at his watch; it was a quarter ‘til two.

Devoy did not show. Paddy told himself that he should have expected as much from the infamously cantankerous old man, but he was, nonetheless, disappointed. He and Ernie sauntered into the tea-tent -full of ladies, old age pensioners, desiccated teetotallers, and not a few priests - and saw the group of four men seated near the end of the concessions table. It would have been hard to miss them, by their clothes and the air of expansion they breathed. Patch was the spit of Da, tall and large and florid with heavily greying black hair that was well oiled. He wore a salt-and-pepper tweed suit, entirely unsuited to the warm day, and a flower in his buttonhole.
‘There he is,’ Ernie said, rather too loudly for his liking. Paddy wanted in no way to draw attention to them.
‘I know. Shut up.’ He went to the table and paid fourpence for two cups of tea, handing one to his brother. ‘Shall we look for a seat?’ Ernie stared at him as if he’d grown another head, and he wished he had coached him on his lines before this little performance. He’d not been thinking of his guileless brother being here in the midst of this meeting.

Carefully, seemingly casually searching for a table, he made his way balancing the teacup in one hand, with Ernie following after. As he passed the table of the Clan na Gael men, his uncle looked up and said with the same false cheeriness of his letter,
‘Well, can it ever be Paddy Leary before me? And Ernie!’ He rose. ‘Fancy you being out here, and me expecting you in Dublin! Sit down, sit down, both of you!’
Paddy looked at him with deliberate blankness. ‘Sir? I beg your pardon, have we met?’ He did not respond to the choking noise that came from Ernie as he snorted into his tea behind him.
Patch laughed boomingly. ‘Leave it to the lad not to recognise his own flesh and blood!’ He told his companions. ‘For he’s never clapped eyes on me since he was in nappies.’ He turned to Paddy again. ‘It’s your own uncle Patch, as if you didn’t know, you playboy. Isn’t that so Ernie?’
‘Yah,’ Ernie managed in a strangled voice.
‘So, sit down, sit down, and I’ll introduce yez....’

They sat, and were introduced to the three ancient cods with him from the Clan, but no Devoy. Before Ernie he would not ask where the old man was, but one of the others, Mitchell was his name, volunteered the information in an offhanded manner.
‘Now, young lad, there was to be a friend with us on our holidays, but he took ill just before the boat sailed.’

My arse, Paddy thought, folding his arms. ‘Is that so? What a pity that he hadn’t the chance to see the home country again with yez. He must have been disappointed.’
‘Oh he was, he was,’ Patch murmured hurriedly. ‘He said it was too bad, he'd never see Ireland again on this side of the grave.’
Paddy felt his stomach drop. Something had gone terribly wrong. ‘There's many an exile has said the same,’ he conceded, though his face felt numb around the words.
‘Oh yes, to be sure,’ Mitchell said, ‘and died in the new land.’

Whatever had happened, Devoy would obviously stick by his determination never to set foot in Ireland again. Paddy could hear the ‘over my dead body’ reverberating in the words. He had heard from Tom Clarke, who knew him, that Devoy was ‘a stubborn old bastard, mean as a boar and just as prickly. I don't know who he hates more, the priests or the English.’ What would he tell Old Tom? No, it was not his place to tell Tom anything. He would hear it from these men, or a telegraph from Devoy himself. Perhaps he already knew.... No, Tom would not send him on this wild goose chase. He'd have been told not to come.

‘Mammy and Da are looking forward to seeing you,’ Paddy said to Patch, and swallowed the contents of the teacup at a gulp.
‘Jaysus, aren't they?’ Ernie chimed in, rolling his eyes. ‘They've broadcast to the whole neighbourhood you're coming.’ They looked at one another, then Patch. He would not get out of this one, Devoy or no Devoy, they would have him understand that. He did, by the way he coloured and harrumphed, saying to Mitchell and the others,
‘Ah, you shouldha seen my brother Danny and me in the old days, we were thick as thieves in Kerry. There wasn't a pair of boys could get in as much trouble as Danny and me, and he's never forgotten me all these years. It'll be great to see him again and Trina - that's the wife, Catherine.’ ‘They've great plans for your visit,’ Paddy warned, folding his hands on his knee beside the table. ‘At great outlay,’ their eyes met, and Patch's were guiltily uneasy. ‘It means a good deal to them that you've come home, since Rory died. Da goes on often about your being his only brother. He looks forward to your letters, and so does Ma.’
Patch laughed, the same bluff laugh. ‘Isn’t it great to be missed?’ He boomed to no one in particular. ‘Isn’t it great to be home?’ Paddy decided he didn’t care for him much, uncle and benefactor or no.

They drove into Dublin at the closing of the day. Two of the three antiques with Patch were teetotallers, so they had their cups of tea while watching the remaining races; Patch, Ernie, and the sharp, cadaverous Mitchell stood each other rounds until the three of them could hardly walk straight, so were comradely together weaving their way to the car, singing The Jaunting Car at the tops of their voices, straggling and badly out of tune. Paddy said nothing but drove grimly through the rolling hills of Howth, dappled in golden late afternoon light, bracing himself for the lash of Rosemary’s tongue when he brought his brother home with all sails unfurled. Her last words to him had been, ‘Keep him off the drink, won’t you, Padge? You know how he gets.’ What he got was ill. The last time he got as drunk as this he was in Jervis Street hospital for a week with a poisoned liver. Shite. All for a guilt-ridden old shite of an uncle. Paddy wished they’d all stayed at home. Bloody Yanks.

Griffith was cordial, as he always was, and affected not to mind the state in which his guests were delivered to him. He went down with Paddy. Ernie had stayed with the car, so they could be frank.
‘I heard about Devoy,’ Art said. He was a short, dark man, balding prematurely, with glasses hanging on his nose.
‘Good,’ Paddy barked shortly. He could give vent to his annoyance here as nowhere else. ‘It will save me having to tell Old Tom.’
Art looked at him in surprise. ‘It wasn’t your fault the bastard didn’t show.’
He smiled ironically. ‘But history is full of stories of shooting the messenger. It’s easy to take out such a cock-up on the one in front of you.’
‘Tom would never do that!’
‘No, but Eoin might.’ He meant MacNeill, head of the IRB Supreme Council, and as hard a man in his way as Devoy. Whether in the lecture hall or the meeting hall, he accepted no excuses from anyone.
‘I’ll see that he doesn’t, never you fear,’ Art said. They got on well.
‘Thanks.’
‘Not at all.’ Art shook his head. ‘Good night, Paddy. Thanks for bringing ‘em.’
‘As if I had a fucking choice,’ he muttered. He opened the street door. ‘Good night, Art.’ And so he left it.