The City of Shadows

‘I’m afraid I prefer my darkness to your light.’ The woman looked back at the laundry, at the pasty-faced girls and women, still working, but all watching her so intently. ‘You evil old bitch.’

Mother Eustacia slapped the woman hard across her face, with all the irritation, anger and humiliation she had felt welling up within her. But the woman barely blinked. She laughed as if the Mother Superior had just handed her a victory she hadn’t realised she even wanted. And there wasn’t a split second between that laugh and the sound of her hand striking the Reverend Mother’s face in return, quite as hard and quite as full of anger. There was complete silence in the laundry. No one spoke. Work had stopped. Every eye in the laundry was on Mother Eustacia, though the Reverend Mother seemed unaware of anyone else now. In her long years as the mother of this convent she had slapped many, many women, but no one had ever dared to hit her back. She turned slowly towards Stefan.

‘What are you going to do, Sergeant?’

‘I’m going to do what you told me, Reverend Mother. I’m going to get her out of here. As requested. For the rest, I think I’d call it quits.’

He grabbed the woman’s arm and pulled her away. The nun on wheels was holding the door to the courtyard open, bog-eyed and fearful as she still stared at her Mother Superior. No one else moved. Then there was a sound. It was a clap. It was followed by another clap, and then another. Then there were more. The sound of slow clapping, from every girl and woman in the laundry, filled the building. The nuns turned back to their charges, shouting at them to stop. But they kept on. The Reverend Mother walked slowly back towards the office, as if she didn’t hear the noise at all. The women’s clapping grew even louder now. They would suffer for it, of course; but it would be worth it. Nothing would erase this moment.

As Stefan drove out of the convent and the high gates closed behind them, the woman brushed her hair back from her face. She looked at him, smiling, as if this sort of thing happened every day.

‘So, am I under arrest?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘I’m glad you know what you’re doing.’

‘What I want to know is what you’re doing.’

‘I’m not sure any more. I thought — ’

She stopped. For the first time he felt her mask slipping.

‘Do you know what happened to Hugo Keller?’ asked Stefan.

‘You mean you don’t know?’ She sounded surprised.

‘No.’

‘Those nice guards were going back to Merrion Square with him.’

‘Did they say that?’

‘He did. He was the one giving the instructions.’

Stefan drove on. Dessie always said that when things didn’t make sense, sometimes it was better left that way. It smelt like one of those times.

‘So where are you taking me now, Sergeant?’

‘I need a drink. You too. It’s not every day you’re beaten up by nuns.’

He expected her to bounce back a sarcastic remark; she had before. But she said nothing. She looked straight ahead through the windscreen. Then she put her hands to her face and sobbed, in almost complete silence.

Saturday. Dear Tom, Today I’ve been busy doing so many things I’m not sure what they all were. Some days are like that. But Christmas is coming, that’s the main thing. There’s the biggest Christmas tree you ever saw in O’Connell Street. They were there putting the lights and the decorations on. It’ll be something to see I’d say. The windows in Clery’s are full of toys. And boys from St Patrick’s were singing carols in Grafton Street. Tell your grandfather. The day you come up with Opa and Oma we’ll go and see it all. I hope the new calf’s getting better. Don’t worry about her. It’s no more than a bit of scour, and she’ll be tearing about again in no time.

Stefan put his pen down and looked up to see the woman watching him. He hadn’t seen her come into the bar. He had driven her back to her home in Rathgar so that she could repair some of the day’s damage. Now he was waiting in Grace’s, a pub close by. It sat at a busy road junction, south of the Grand Canal that marked the boundary between Dublin’s inner and outer suburbs, between streets where nothing ever grew and avenues wide enough for trees. The avenues of red-brick Victorian terraces fanned out all around Grace’s Corner, quiet and tidy, substantial and well-ordered. There was space here, and there was air, and on clear days, looking to the south and east, the round tops of the Dublin Mountains rose up in a ring, not far away.

The woman smiled. She was herself again. But make-up hadn’t quite covered the bruise on her cheek from the struggle in the convent.

‘You look a long way away.’ She sat down opposite him. There was a glass of light ale waiting for her. She picked it up and drank, still watching.

‘Not that far really, just West Wicklow. I was writing to my son.’

‘Oh.’

‘Oh?’

‘I suppose that’s not what I was expecting from a policeman.’

‘Having children?’

‘No, I meant — ’ She laughed. ‘All right it was a silly thing to say.’

He folded the piece of paper in half and put it in his pocket.

‘How old is he?’

‘Four, nearly five. I’m up here and he’s down the country with his grandparents. I try to write something for them to read him most days. It doesn’t amount to much. Still, it makes me look for something in a day that’s worth saying to a child. It’s not always that easy to find.’

‘No. There won’t have been much today.’ She smiled, but behind it he could see the thing he couldn’t get hold of about her. Was it sadness, loss?

‘How often do you see him?’

‘I get down every Sunday I’m not working. It’s the best I can do.’

She wanted to ask more. She wondered why his son didn’t seem to have a mother. At that moment it felt as if they were two people who’d just met, sitting in a pub, starting to ask questions about each other. He wasn’t much older than she was. It felt ordinary in a way that nothing had for a long time. The pub felt ordinary too, in a way that she found reassuring. It was nearly two years since she had sat in Grace’s Lounge with the friends she grew up with, saying goodbye to them. The dark mahogany shone as it had always shone, so did the brass. There was the sound of familiar laughter, the smell of beer and cigarette smoke and furniture polish. The same watercolours of the same racehorses lined the walls; the same prints of the Curragh and Leopardstown, Fairyhouse and Punchestown. She wanted everything else to be the same, everything that couldn’t be. The feeling caught her unawares. And the guard sitting opposite her was unaccountably part of it. She didn’t know why he was so easy to talk to. But it didn’t matter how easy or how hard the conversation was. That wasn’t why she was there.

‘You look better now anyway,’ he smiled.

‘Hannah Rosen. That’s my name.’

‘I’m glad you’ve got one, but it doesn’t tell me much. It doesn’t tell me why you wouldn’t say who you were before. It doesn’t tell me why you solicited a miscarriage when you’re not pregnant. Or why you and Herr Keller were carted off by Special Branch, with him giving them orders. It doesn’t tell me why I don’t know anything about any of this, and you do.’

‘I don’t know much, really. I’m trying to work backwards.’

‘I’m a simple soul, Miss Rosen. Why not start at the beginning?’

She looked at him, hesitant, still not quite sure she could trust him.

‘Whatever it is you wanted from Keller, you didn’t get it, did you?’

She shook her head, watching him before she continued.

‘I’ve been away from Ireland for quite a long time. It’s almost a year and a half. In Palestine, I live there now. I’m probably going to stay there.’

The last words were spoken more reflectively. They weren’t for him at all. Clearly Palestine wasn’t a simple issue for her. But whatever issue it was it couldn’t have much to do with Hugo Keller and the Garda Special