Michael Russell - The City of Shadows

‘I’d forgotten about him, Vincent Walsh,’ she said.

‘I’m glad not everybody has.’

‘His parents don’t know what really happened?’

‘There’s no one to tell them.’

‘There’s you.’

‘Not everyone’s like you. Not everyone wants to know.’

‘Do you believe that?’

‘There’s a time to stop. I believe it’s not my business any more. ’

Somewhere that business that wasn’t his was Hannah too. He didn’t want it to mean that, but it soon would. They walked on again in silence.

‘What will you do?’ asked Hannah.

‘My suspension’s over, as of next week. I’m thinking I’ll get out of Dublin and go back into uniform. When Ned Broy’s thanked me for keeping my mouth shut about everything a few more times, I’d say he’ll be glad to see the back of me. I think a lot of people will. He owes me a favour, so he can send me down to Baltinglass. Maybe I’ve got used to being at home after all these months.’

‘Is that what you want?’ She didn’t altogether believe him.

‘I don’t know what I want. I think it’s what I owe Tom.’

‘That’s not the same thing.’

‘It’s close enough,’ he smiled. ‘There are things you can’t have.’

‘If there was any point talking about it, Stefan — ’

‘I know that.’

‘It doesn’t mean I haven’t thought about it. I have.’

‘I’d have hoped so.’

‘I’ve thought about it a lot.’

‘That’s the difference. I don’t need to think about it.’

‘Please don’t, Stefan — ’

‘I think if we were going to find a way to be together we’d have done it, Hannah. I think with you, if I need to ask at all, then there’s no point asking.’

They had reached the Liffey. Dublin was quiet now. They stood on O’Connell Bridge, watching the grey stream of water move towards the docks and the sea. There was no moon, only cloud and the city’s lights below it.

‘I wanted to change my mind. I can’t. It’s not easy to say that.’

‘I know my psalms. I sang them as a boy at St Patrick’s. They stick in your head, whether you want them to or not sometimes. “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem.” That’s the one that’s been sticking. I might be able to compete with Benny and the oranges, but I can’t compete with three thousand years of memory. I don’t know the man, but I know it’s not him you’re marrying.’

She could have been angry with him, but too much of it was true.

‘I wasn’t sure what I felt when I came back, Stefan. I wasn’t sure what I wanted. I mean when I first got home last year, before I met you.’

‘And now you’ve met me, you’re sure. Thanks,’ he laughed.

‘No, being in Europe made me sure. Danzig made me sure.’

‘This isn’t Germany. It never will be.’

‘I don’t know what it is.’

‘You’re Irish. You don’t mean that.’

‘And you’re a policeman. If they sent you to Clanbrassil Street to fill a truck with Jews and take them to a concentration camp — would you do it?’

‘That couldn’t happen, you know that.’

‘People like Monsignor Fitzpatrick would stop it, you mean.’

‘He’s not the Catholic Church.’

‘No. But perhaps he’s more of it than I want to live next door to.’

Stefan said nothing, but he knew she was still waiting.

‘You didn’t answer my question. What would you do?’

‘I hope I’d refuse to do it.’

‘You hope?’

‘I wouldn’t do it. Don’t you know that?’

‘You’d walk away?’

He nodded, but he knew it sounded like evasion, not principle.

‘You think walking away would be enough?’

‘No.’ He couldn’t say otherwise. He remembered Danzig too.

‘I don’t think so either. That’s what I’ve learned, I suppose. I need to be where someone picks up a gun, not where people turn their backs.’

‘Well, you’ve got the money for them.’ It was a stupid thing to say, but her words had hurt him. They hurt all the more because she was right.

‘You think we shouldn’t defend ourselves, Stefan?’

‘I didn’t mean that. I’m sorry. But I can’t fight any of this, Hannah. I want to talk to you about how I feel, about you and me. You want to talk about the world turning itself upside down and inside out. How do I deal with that?’

‘I need a place to stand, Stefan.’ She took his hand and smiled, looking up at him tenderly. ‘I’ve always wanted to make up my own mind about everything. My parents never did, or my grandparents. As far back as you want to go. Everything that happened to them was someone else’s decision. Sometimes whether you lived or died depended on nothing more than other people’s moods, that’s all. And it doesn’t feel any different now. I don’t want to live like that. I can’t. I never really intended to go to Palestine. It was Susan who was the Zionist. She used to irritate me because she was always so sure about it. I didn’t want the label. But my label’s in my blood.’

‘So is it for her as well?’

‘Is what for her?’

‘Palestine.’

She didn’t respond, then she shrugged. ‘I suppose a part of it is.’

‘You’re going to live Susan’s life too?’

‘If I can.’

She looked at him with something like defiance.

He smiled. She was still the woman he had met at Merrion Square.

They started to walk on, holding hands. As they reached Burgh Quay she put her arm through his and held him closer to her. They turned left along the Liffey. He could feel the rain beginning. It wasn’t heavy; it was what it always was, the soft, grey, constant rain of Ireland.

‘We won’t see each other again,’ he said.

‘I know.’ She held his arm tighter. ‘I’d like a drink, Stefan.’

‘There’s nowhere open,’ he smiled, ‘it’s Dublin, remember?’

She stopped. She was crying. He pulled her to him and held her.

‘It’s what I have to do. Can’t you understand? I just want to live!’

At Westland Row Annie O’Neill produced a warm bottle of sweet white wine they didn’t ask for and didn’t want. She’d been drinking. As she left them she pushed a key into Stefan’s hand. ‘No one’s in the front double.’

The next morning they dressed with a familiarity that reminded him for a moment of Maeve, taking no real notice of one another. It wasn’t a painful memory. What was painful was that within a very short time this would be another memory. Hannah was aware of it too. As they walked out of the hotel into Westland Row she kissed him, quite abruptly, and then shook her head as he started to say something. She didn’t want him to speak. She turned and walked away towards Lincoln Place. He stood looking after her, remembering the woman he had first seen in Merrion Square as he sat in a smoke-filled car with Dessie MacMahon. She moved with the same self-assurance. He knew now that sometimes she had to work hard at that. He smiled, hearing Dessie’s words the second day they saw her. ‘She’s back, your dark-eyed acushla.’ He waited, watching her move through the crowds going to work along Westland Row until she was gone. She didn’t look back. He turned the other way and walked down to the junction with Pearse Street. The tram took him past the Garda station and Trinity College and then along the Liffey and the Quays to Kingsbridge, to catch the train to West Wicklow.

Later that day Stefan stood in the door of the farmhouse. Tom and his grandfather were driving the cows in from the fields for milking, as they did every evening. There were fresh flowers from Helena’s garden on Maeve’s grave. He had taken them up that afternoon with Tom. The swallows, back barely a week themselves, were feeding excitedly over the farmyard. He watched his son run out of the milking parlour, chasing the sheepdog. Three hills looked down: Keadeen, Kilranelagh, Baltinglass Hill. They were safe.