Michael Russell - The City of Shadows

‘And why’s that so important?’

‘The man is Alexander Phelan. I’ve looked very hard at what’s been happening in the last few years, in cases like this. Phelan sat on one in 1934. A woman had custody of her children taken away from her. She was a Protestant. The Catholic husband was in hospital and dying. There’d been a falling out and the husband accused the woman of interfering in the children’s religious upbringing. Not much evidence, other than his word, but Phelan refused to accept her assurances that she would continue to bring the children up as Catholics. He said he was duty bound to secure the fulfilment of any agreement that was made before a mixed marriage, because of the special position of the Catholic Church in the state. And because, and these are the words he used, “the state itself pays homage to that Church”.’

They walked on in silence again, looking up towards Baltinglass Hill.

‘When we first talked after Christmas, I gave you the bleakest picture, Stefan, but I believed that with the right barrister we could fight this. The more I’ve seen of what’s going on the less sure I am. It’s even bleaker now.’

‘It still feels like this should be impossible, Mr Brady — ’

‘It should be. But you need to think hard before taking this on.’

‘Are we back to me accepting it and being grateful I still see him?’

‘I only know you have to tread carefully.’

The old man stopped.

‘There is another option.’

Stefan shook his head in weary disbelief.

‘You mean convert? Are we back to that?’

‘No, I mean leave the jurisdiction.’

Stefan turned back to the shearing, watching as his father struggled with a recalcitrant ewe. Then he looked round again, up to Baltinglass Hill.

‘That’s the best our Free State can offer us? Leaving the country?’

‘Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it.’

As he turned to face Brady once more he didn’t need to answer.

‘If it’s the decision you’re going to make in the end, make it now. They can’t pursue you for something that won’t stand up in a court in England, but if we go to trial and lose, taking Tom out of the country when he’s a ward of court is a different matter. You could end up in gaol yourself.’

The green John Deere tractor was chugging up the field towards them. Helena drove and Tom perched on the trailer behind her, with a basket of sandwiches and cans of hot, sweet tea. Tess the sheepdog ran alongside, barking.

‘Dinner! It’s the dinner!’ Tom’s voice was shrill and happy above all the other noise.

That evening Stefan and his father were milking in the dark parlour that smelt of fresh hay and the warm breath of cows and the smoke from David Gillespie’s pipe and the urine and disinfectant swirling in the open concrete drain. Stefan sat on one stool, his fingers squeezing milk into the galvanised bucket beneath an udder. On the other side of the cow, out of sight, his father’s fingers pulled at the teats of another one. For a moment the only sounds were the rhythmic spurting of milk into the buckets and the mouths of the cows pulling the hay from the hay racks.

‘Did Mr Rosen pay you well?’

‘What?’

‘I’d say there was more to it than putting your woman on a boat.’

‘Maybe a bit more.’

‘Your mother was listening to the German news on the radio.’

‘You’d think she’d know better. They didn’t mention me then?’

They couldn’t see each other, but he felt the look of disapproval on his father’s face. Stefan didn’t want hard conversations; he wanted to think.

‘I’m not asking you to tell me what happened in Danzig, Stefan.’

‘I’ve told you, Pa, not much. It’s over. It doesn’t matter now.’

‘Other things aren’t over, are they?’

‘Is this a conversation Ma told you to have?’

‘That’s the way she is. We’ve all been avoiding it, haven’t we?’

Stefan didn’t answer. After a few seconds his father continued.

‘Lawyers are going to cost money.’

‘I know.’

‘What we’ve got is yours and Tom’s. I hope you know that too.’

‘Perhaps it won’t come to that.’

‘It’s going to come to something, Stefan.’

‘I’ve a bit set aside.’

He was still sidestepping. David Gillespie couldn’t see the shrug, but he knew it was there.

‘Emmet Brady’s not so sure you can win, is he?’

‘Is that Ma’s question?’

‘The question’s do we give the money to the lawyers, or do you take it and start again, somewhere else? Wasn’t Mr Brady saying the same thing? It doesn’t mean there mightn’t be a day you could come back home again.’

It was the first time the words had been spoken. For David, however hard they were, they were easier without seeing his son’s face. Everyone knew how rarely anyone came home, even when somewhere else was only hours across the Irish Sea. There was only the sound of milk spurting into buckets again.

‘There’s a way to go yet, Pa.’

‘You think so?’ David was surprised by his son’s quiet self-control. ‘If Mr Brady’s not convinced, I don’t know who else can help us.’

‘Sometimes it’s not who you know, it’s what you know,’ said Stefan. It felt like the shrug was still there.

‘Should I know what that means?’ There was a note of irritation in David’s voice. Riddles weren’t answers. These were difficult things to say.

‘No,’ Stefan snapped in return, ‘and you wouldn’t want to.’

At almost the same instant father and son got up from the milking stools and walked to the battered churn behind them. They poured the milk from the buckets in silence. Stefan knew what it had cost his father to speak those words, and what it had cost his mother to tell him to speak them. But it wasn’t time for answers. They said no more till the milking was done and the cows were back in the fields.

When the two men walked into the kitchen the only recognition that the conversation in the milking parlour had happened was the look Helena gave David, and the slightly puzzled shrug he gave her in return. Explanations would have to wait, but she knew the questions no one wanted to ask still had no answers. Stefan and David stood next to each other at the sink, washing their hands. Tom sat at the kitchen table, unaware of anything except for the radio and a woman’s voice reading a story that had taken him somewhere else altogether. Stefan listened too: ‘A faint glimmer floated down from the hills. That was Seamus, holding a candle and riding Long-Ears. The storm lantern the turf-cutter used danced across the bog like a will-o’-the wisp, and the big steady glow of the kitchen lamp advanced on the road and Eileen knew her mother carried it. All the lights came together at the crossroads. “Hee-haw,” sang out Long-Ears, and Eileen knew she was found.’ As David Gillespie opened a bottle of beer and poured out two glasses, Stefan sat down at the table beside Tom, watching him happily absorbed in the story, and wishing he could just be where his son was now, far away from everything.

The following morning Stefan Gillespie set off early on the bicycle it had taken him the best part of the previous evening to repair, after its years in the loft of forgotten things behind the pigsty. His father was milking the cows. It would be a long ride into the mountains. The air was still cold but it was a clear, almost cloudless day; it would be hot as he climbed up to Glenmalure. The last time he had made this journey on a bicycle he was probably sixteen or seventeen, with Terry Lynch and Richard Kavanagh and Billy Harrison and Niall Quinn. None of them really kept in touch now. Terry was in America, somewhere in New York. Richard was still farming in Englishtown, just down the road, but there was never much to talk about other than the way the grass was growing and the price of cattle. Billy was in Yorkshire, a travelling salesman the last he’d heard, with an English wife and three children. Niall was in Baltinglass now, back from Dublin and trying to make something of the auctioneer’s firm his father had drunk into the ground.