The Red and The Green Part 20

Pat released, or rather dropped her, and she staggered. 'I can't stop you from getting yourself murdered, but you're not coming along with any of us.'

Millie stared at him, biting her lip. She looked at Andrew. 'I still don't understand about him.'

'He knows. He wouldn't give us his parole so he's going to be tied up and left here.'

'Hmmm. I see. Wait a minute, wait a minute. If I solve your little problem for you will you let me come with you today?'

Pat hesitated, 'I don't see how you-'

'But if I can, will you promise?'

'Well, yes-'

'Listen then.'

Millie put her two hands on Pat's shoulders and jolted him back against the frame of the window. She stood on tiptoe, hauling herself up towards his face as she hissed out an inaudible stream of words. Again Andrew saw Pat's eyes fixed upon him, now widening a little as Millie's whisper continued. What a nightmare, thought Andrew. And he thought, how jerky and unreal. Surely nothing connected him to this cardboard catastrophe. Should he not just get up and walk away through the door and leave these grimacing puppets? He moved, or twitched himself, like someone under a spell, trying to find if he is still sentient. But Millie and Pat had stepped apart and Pat now blocked his way.

'All right,' said Pat.

'Shall I take him in there?' Millie pointed to the scullery door. 'There's no way out, is there?'

'No way out.'

'Come in here for a moment, would you, Andrew?'

Andrew followed Millie into the dark scullery and she shut the door. A little square window gave on to the dirty wall on which the sun was obliquely s.h.i.+ning. There was a small table, a sink full of unwashed dishes, and a smell of decaying wood and tea leaves. Andrew thought, I have been taken to the end of the world, and at the end there is nothing but idiocy. I am in h.e.l.l and h.e.l.l is gibberish. He was standing close against Millie and saw her face below him looking up, not with the obscene vulnerability of the last time, but with a cruel intentness, like a stalking cat's face. This is insanity, he thought, this is dishonour, to be standing in this little room up against this woman.

Millie pushed him as she had pushed Pat, her two hands hooked upon his shoulders, her chin poking into his chest, her hair, which now seemed to issue from her mouth, spread on to his khaki sleeve. She began to speak in a low voice. As he looked over her shoulder Andrew saw the sun fading in the window square. He looked at the pile of dishes. He listened to Millie and began to take in what she was saying.

'I don't believe you,' said Andrew.

'I have the evidence.'

Andrew thrust her violently away from him. He saw her evil cat face, the eyes screwed with purpose, the lips wet, bobbing near him in the scullery which had suddenly become dark.

'I don't believe you.'

'She would.'

'And I couldn't trust you.'

'You've got to.'

'Don't touch me.'

'If you will do what I want I will have everything destroyed. Otherwise-'

'Oh, shut up. Let me think.'

'Well, think quickly, Andrew. Believe me, dear boy, it is true. Look, I will write you a letter to take to Upper Mount Street. I swear to you I won't cheat. And will you then do what I ask? Otherwise I shall be completely ruthless.'

'What is it that you want me to do?'

'Simply to promise to stay inside this house until twelve and keep your mouth shut.'

Andrew sat down and laid his head on the table. The surface of the table was damp, soft and rotten. He said, gazing along the grain of the wood, 'A promise given under duress is not a promise.'

'You are not under duress. You are perfectly free to refuse and take the consequences. You are perfectly free to promise and to break your promise. But if I find out later that you have, I'll tell everything, evidence or no evidence.'

Andrew lifted his head. 'All right. I'll do as you ask. Write that letter and give it to me at once. And if you cheat here I'll kill you.'

'Ah-' Millie breathed with satisfaction and flung open the scullery door. Pat and Cathal were talking on the other side of the kitchen. Millie went through and Andrew followed her. He sat down in a corner and laid his head awkwardly against the wall, turning his face away from them.

'He will,' said Millie.

The three of them came and stood round Andrew. He did not look up at them, but fixed his eyes upon the gas stove. He saw his revolver there. It had fallen down inside the iron framework of the gas burners and hung there suspended. Andrew felt as if he had had a stroke. His eyes seemed to be askew, his limbs recalcitrant and twisted. He listened dully for his sentence.

Pat said, 'Andrew do you give me your promise, your most honourable promise, that you will stay inside this house and say nothing of what you know until twelve o'clock today?'

'Yes.'

'You have a watch, haven't you. Well, you'll hear the angelus. You do faithfully promise?'

'Yes.'

Pat seemed to hesitate. Andrew looked up at their three faces. Cathal was looking puzzled and frightened. Millie's face was plumped with triumph, her cat eyes slanting. Pat was perspiring. The sweat trickled down past his eyes to his cheeks and his lower lip palpitated. What is it, thought Andrew, what is happening, what are they going to do to me? At that moment it seemed to him that they were intending to kill him.

Cathal said, 'You're not surely-'

'Could you stand up?' said Pat.

Andrew stood up.

'Turn round.'

He turned round and saw again the brick wall, sunny now, its crust of dirt shadowed by the slanting sun.

'I'm sorry to use the handcuffs,' said Pat's voice. 'I have to make sure. Cathal, could you just help me hold his wrist. There.'

There was a click. Andrew felt the steel on one wrist. Then there was a wild outcry, an animal howl, and Andrew's wrist was jerked and seared. He staggered, exclaimed and then for a moment everyone stood still. He was handcuffed to Cathal.

'Ingenious, eh?' said Millie.

The moment of stillness pa.s.sed. Cathal began to shout out something in a loud voice and ran towards the door dragging Andrew with him. Pat caught Cathal in his arms and smothered his shouting mouth against his chest. He called out something to Millie.

'Don't worry,' said Millie. 'I'll gag him. Just hold him tight. I learnt all about that in the South African war. We used to gag troublesome patients. You'd be surprised what goes on in military hospitals. The trouble with gagging is the shape of the human head. Those scarves are no use. I need four yards of surgical bandage. In that drawer? What luck. Get him down on his knees, would you.'

Pat forced Cathal down, and Andrew was pulled down too, slipping half under the table. The dragging handcuff bit into his wrist and his arm moved jerkily, following the convulsive movements of his fellow-prisoner, s.h.i.+fting so as to ease the pain. He did not look at the struggle which was going on beside him.

'Open his mouth. That's right. Keep your tongue down, boy. Ouch, he bites! There, that's comfy and safe. Don't worry, I know what I'm doing, he won't choke. Now wind the bandage so, plenty of room to breathe, over the bridge of the nose is the important bit. It's all a matter of mechanics. Just as well I was here, isn't it. You couldn't have managed this alone. Now he won't be able to shout for help. Safety pins are best. That's done it.'

Millie and Pat stood up.

Now Millie had placed a sheet of paper against the window and was writing on it. Andrew s.h.i.+fted along the floor as Pat pushed Cathal to the wall and began to bind his free hand. Pat groaned softly and rhythmically as he tied Cathal's hand to the foot of the stove. Over Pat's shoulder Andrew could now see Cathal's thrown-back head. His head, entirely swathed in bandage which thickly covered his mouth, wound over his nose and round his brow, leaving only eyes and nostrils free, looked like an old picture of Lazarus, or some faceless monster glimpsed in a dream. As Andrew watched, tears filled Cathal's eyes and streamed down on to the bandage and darkened it. Andrew turned away, saw Pat's feet in army boots, peered up at Pat's face which was red and quivering. Pat looked down, his mouth opening, the lips drawing back in a snarl of pain: then he turned and leaned his head against the door.

'Here's your letter.' Andrew held it automatically. 'I'm sorry, Andrew. I'm a desperate woman. Hadn't we better go, Pat? You will keep your promise, won't you?'

Pat was on his knees beside Cathal. 'I should have been useless if you had come with me. I had to do this.'

'I must say I don't understand why,' said Millie. 'You are destroying the child. If the world ends, let it end, is how I feel.'

Pat sat back on his heels. He turned to Andrew, and his face was the face of a weeping man although his eyes were tearless. 'Andrew, I just want you to know that I don't know what it was that Millie told you.'

Andrew nodded slightly.

Pat had turned back to Cathal. He knelt awkwardly and his cheek grazed the bandaging as he bowed his head for a moment on to his brother's shoulder. Then he rose and picked up his rifle and Andrew's revolver.

'Cheer up.' Millie squeezed Andrew's arm. She opened the door and moved out. Andrew saw the boots and the green leg-bands follow her. The front door banged. There was a long silence. Cathal was crying with a soft hissing sound behind the bandage.

Andrew said, 'Do you mind if I lie flat for a while?' He lifted his pinioned hand, edging the wrist round inside the handcuff, and managed to adjust himself supine upon the floor. The sun, rising higher, began to s.h.i.+ne into the kitchen. The m.u.f.fled weeping continued.

Chapter Twenty-four.

IT was twenty-five minutes to twelve, Easter Monday morning, on the clock at Findlater's Church, as Christopher and Frances Bellman hurried through Rutland Square and on up the hill towards Blessington Street. The sun shone from a sky of pallid, exhausted blue upon the green domes of Dublin, the majestic dome of the Customs House, the lace-cap dome of the Four Courts, the elegant little dome of the Rotunda Hospital. The two figures moved urgently onward against the slow crowd of holiday-makers who were sauntering down to enjoy the sudden suns.h.i.+ne in the centre of the city.

Christopher had spent the previous day, Sunday, in a condition of frenzy. He had woken early at Rathblane to a state of consciousness which he could scarcely endure. It was not just the sense of having lost Millie, it was the sense of having lost her in such a horrible, muddled, undignified way. He recalled with misery and disgust the pathetic, defensive, frivolous tone which Millie had adopted. This hurt him more than jealousy. He could have born a firm, even a mysterious no from Millie. He could even more easily have born a tragic severance with tears. But this confused matter of having 'found her out' made his own position not only painful but unmanageably absurd. Neither he nor Millie knew how to behave. Christopher hated muddle, hated the plunging to and fro in confusion of half-guilty half-frantic human beings caught up together like carriage horses in an accident.

He decided to leave the house early before anyone was up and in fact set off on foot shortly before seven o'clock. He walked for nearly an hour and began to feel extremely tired and it began to rain. Then there was the sound of a galloping horse behind him and he was overtaken by Millie. A ridiculous conversation followed during which Millie tried to persuade him to mount behind her and return to Rathblane. Christopher turned and walked on, stumbling in the mud out of sheer anger and misery, and Millie followed, leading her horse and expostulating. Finally, as it was now raining very hard indeed, he consented to wait under a tree while she rode to the factor's cottage and got the factor to come down bringing a bicycle. After an exceedingly long time the factor arrived riding his own bicycle and pus.h.i.+ng his daughter's. Millie once more galloped up and there was another confused conversation in the factor's hearing, with Millie saying she wanted to talk to Christopher and Christopher saying he must be going. Finally, as he began to wobble down the stony track on the factor's daughter's bicycle he could hear, behind him, Millie addressing friendly remarks to her horse.

Christopher arrived back at Finglas wet, exhausted, s.h.i.+vering, to find an extremely upset and anxious Frances waiting for him. He had forgotten to tell her that he would be away for the night, he had not even reflected on whether he would be away for the night. His daughter's distress and reproaches, and the fact that there was no warm meal waiting for him and that the fires had not been lit, sent Christopher into a paroxysm of self-pity in the course of which he told Frances everything: Millie, Pat, Andrew, the engagement ring, everything. He regretted this immediately after. If he had been calmer and less self-absorbed he would have spared her a revelation which was unnecessary and could not but be intensely painful. But a little later still, when he had had his hot meal, and in the lucid brutality of a renewed concern with self, he decided it had been right to tell her after all: for her sake, because she would now have fewer regrets about Andrew, and for his sake, because the bitterness of Frances would now support him in the loss of Millie. He did not really conceive that Frances might have changed her mind again about Andrew.

Yet her reaction to his news was extreme and she gave herself up to weeping and declared, which he did not take too seriously, that she was forthwith going to England to become a nurse. Christopher thought that it was probably the bit about the ring which hurt most. Frances had not even known about the existence of the ring. How touching to know that Andrew had had it ready for her. How humiliating to know that he had almost directly after her refusal given it, and in such circ.u.mstances, to another. It is enough to refuse a man without experiencing also the muddy splash of his too precipitate departure. As Christopher imagined the chagrin of his daughter he had dark thoughts about Andrew and then, returning to his own hurt, even darker ones about Millie. He was still utterly unsure whether or not to believe Millie's a.s.surance that she had not tampered with Andrew until after his refusal by Frances. He began to wonder again whether Frances had not somehow found out something. He went early to bed to lie sleepless with these speculations, hearing the soft sound of weeping in the next room.

On Monday morning Christopher became aware that his daughter was in some quite new frame of mind. She was no longer tearful, but seemed excited, frightened, yet resolute. When he asked her what was now the matter she explained at last that she had seen the gardener that morning and she felt sure that something was going on. Further questioned, she explained that she had found the gardener in Citizen Army uniform searching frantically in the potting shed for something which, when found, looked like a box of ammunition. He had mumbled something about 'manuvres' and departed at a run, but, Frances said, something about the way he ran, and his excitement, and his confusion at being discovered, suggested that something extreme might be going to happen after all. And having got this idea into her head it was evident that Frances could do nothing now but worry about it.

Christopher argued; and ended by being infected by her anxiety. He was a little irritated by this evidence of a continued concern about young Andrew, who might, if Frances' guess was correct, find himself in the firing line sooner than he bargained for. But this piece of drama was at least something new to think about; and the idea that, after all the talk and the anti-climax, something violent was perhaps going to occur upset and moved Christopher in a great many ways when, even momentarily, he gave it credence. He let himself become worried too, and readily agreed when Frances herself suggested that they should go over to Blessington Street and see if anything could be found out from Barney. It was at least something to do, and something which was not connected with Millie.

Blessington Street was deserted as usual except for a few scratching dogs and Keogh's laundry van, whose horse had mounted the pavement to eat as much as he could of an elder tree which was growing out of one of the areas. Once out of the crowd, the particular desolate peace of Dublin established itself round about them: the wide pale sky, low down even when it was cloudless, the open dusty cliff-like streets, the endless dark facades, spongy with dirt, absorbing light and sound. A half-clad child emerged slowly from a gaping doorway. Keogh's van moved on a few yards. Surely nothing could happen in this quiet city.

Frances had quickened her pace as they got into Blessington Street, her boots briskly kicking back the skirts of her coat, and Christopher was panting and falling behind when they reached the door of the Dumay's house. Christopher started to say something to her about not alarming Kathleen, but she had already rung the bell. The bell jangled harshly inside the dark hallway and they waited until it had stammered itself into silence. Frances rang again. Then she tried the door which was usually left unfastened. It was locked. Christopher, who did not want to meet Pat and who had been having misgivings about the whole project as they came up the hill, was beginning to suggest that they should go and have some coffee and that Frances might come back again later, when Frances, who had been peering through the letter box, gave a startled exclamation.

'What is it, Frances?'

'I don't know. Something very odd. It looks as if someone's lying on the floor in the kitchen. I can see their foot. You look.'

Christopher stooped and looked through the aperture. He saw and smelt the dark hall and saw beyond it the half open door of the kitchen and a sunny segment of the kitchen floor. Something was lying just inside the doorway which looked like a foot, or at least a boot. The rest of the person, if person it was, was hidden. Christopher felt a thrill of fright. A foot, a leg, extended there upon the kitchen floor while the bell pealed in vain seemed to him at first uncanny. What could it mean? An equally vague but more rational fear followed.

'Let me look again.' Frances straightened up with a frightened face. 'Do you think there can have been-an accident?'

'It might be just someone's boot lying there.'

'No, I'm sure it's someone's foot. I can see part of the leg.'

Something about his daughter's agitation made Christopher push her aside. As he looked more carefully it seemed to him that the immobile object in the kitchen doorway resembled the booted foot of a British cavalry officer.

Christopher shouted through the letter box. 'h.e.l.lo there! Barney, Kathleen, Pat! h.e.l.lo, h.e.l.lo!' He pulled the bell again so violently that it gave one yelp and jolted to silence. The stillness of the house absorbed the din.

Frances was now stooping at the slot. She exclaimed, 'It's gone.'

'What?'

'The foot. It's gone.'

Christopher looked again. The boot-like object had disappeared. Had they imagined it? They stared at each other.

'I must get inside,' said Christopher. 'There's a lane at the back. You'd better wait here.'

He ran to the corner of Mountjoy Street and round into the lane, a narrow track of cinders and black earth, smelling of cats and dust-bins, which ran along behind the yards of the houses. The houses looked entirely different at the back, made ugly and formless by every kind of jutting annexe and out-building. The yards, behind earthy, weedy walls, were full of sheds and wash-houses and high lines of tossing linen. As Christopher hesitated, wondering which house belonged to the Dumays, Frances appearing from behind his shoulder said, 'This is the one,' and began to push the door of the yard. It was locked.

'Look, you stay here,' said Christopher. 'I'll see what's happened, if anything's happened.'

The wall was not high. He dragged an empty dust-bin up against it and mounted. The top of the wall crumbled under his knee and he jumped down on the other side. But before he could advance to the house he saw the shadow of Frances who was trying to pull herself up on to the wall. She got one leg over the top and then almost fell into his arms bringing down a shower of broken brick and earth.

'Please stay here, Frances, and don't come till I tell you.'

But her eyes, large and vague with fear, looked past him, and he had to push forward to intercept her. Together they approached the kitchen window.

The sun was s.h.i.+ning directly into the kitchen. At the moment of looking in Christopher felt extremely afraid. He had no notion what he expected, except that now, somehow through Frances, he expected something dreadful. The combination of the disappearing foot and the silence of the house had produced an effect both of catastrophe and of eerieness. What he now saw, though it was less catastrophic than his fears, was perhaps ever more eerie. Two people were sitting on the kitchen floor opposite to the window with their backs against the wall. They looked unreal, too big, like outsize dolls. Their faces looked so strange that it took Christopher several seconds to recognize them as Andrew and Cathal, and to be certain that they were both alive. What was unusual was their expression, or rather something which had communicated itself to their entire posture. Andrew, in uniform as usual, had taken off half his jacket and loosened his tie. He sat slack and limp, his feet spread out rather wide apart in front of him. He was caressing his moustache in a curiously absent manner. Cathal, who had a great deal of white stuff which looked like bandage hanging loose around his neck, sat with hunched shoulders half turned away from Andrew, his legs drawn right up and his cheek against the wall. Both heads moved slightly as the two figures appeared in the window and with a shock of horror Christopher saw on both faces a look of utter la.s.situde and indifference. It was impossible not to think of drugs, insanity. Sitting there vacantly on the floor, the one crouched, the other with outspread feet, they looked like two derelict beings in a madhouse.

Frances was pulling at the kitchen door, and now at the window. 'Help me push this up, I think it's unlatched.' Christopher pawed at the window frame and it moved a little. Frances got her fingers underneath it, and in a moment had thrust her arm through and unbolted the door. They went into the kitchen.

Cathal had leaned his head back against the wall and was wiping his face with a piece of the bandage. He appeared to have been crying. His eyes moved a little, observing the newcomers, but he did not change his posture. Andrew peered up with a frightened hostile look but seemed unable to focus his gaze upon them. The blank expression returned. It was as if some appalling meditation had been momentarily interrupted.

'What's the matter with you, what's happened?' cried Christopher. 'Are you ill?' He stooped over Andrew.

'Look,' said Frances behind him.

He followed her pointing finger and saw that Andrew and Cathal were handcuffed together.

Christopher jumped back as promptly as if he had touched a metal limb. The comatose propped-up figures, and now the handcuffs, produced an effect of the mechanical, the less than human. Frances, who was looking down with a grimace of fascination, had backed away to the window.