Gunner Kelly

“Hell!” The swarthy American shared his surprise with Audley.

“He had no next-of-kin, damn it—”

“There now!” Pure satisfaction peeled off the veneer of the Englishness in the man’s voice. “You have to go back . . . and you have to have the connections to get the sense of it, which your man prying wouldn’t take from it in a month of Sundays! For there was an age-gap you wouldn’t credit, between the one of them marrying young, and the other marrying late—and the scandal of the first one, that had to marry, that they always like to forget so they had the chance to ... And it was a Kelly marrying a Kelly, that was no relation at all—and a difference of opinion between the families as well...”

Benedikt gave up trying to disentangle that convoluted relationship. Michael Kelly’s father had served with the British Army, and that might have made for enmity. But he wasn’t sure which generation the man was talking about.

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“What has Michael Kelly go to do with Aloysius Kelly?” The edge of anger in Audley’s voice indicated that he had the same problem, and was cutting through it.

“They grew up together—I’m trying to tell you, Dr Audley. The same church and the same school, and houses in adjoining streets.

And they kissed the same girls down by the river, and put their hands where they shouldn’t under the same skirts . . . Or, perhaps Michael didn’t, because he was the good one, that did as he was told—and enlisted in the British Army, like his father before him . . . Not like Aloysius—he was the clever one—and the bad one, to your way of thinking, Dr Audley.”

“The bad one?” Benedikt was tired of the nuances of their fools’

quarrels, which evidently encompassed Ireland’s own enmities as well as those he more or less understood.

“His father was a Republican. They say he was one of those that lay in wait for Michael Collins.” The Irishman’s mouth twitched.

“Michael’s was a Free Stater. And he wasn’t ashamed of wearing his medal ribbons—the DCM among them— the old man wasn’t.

Out of their frame beside the fireplace, for all to see.”

Mil Eliot zu Ruhm und Sieg, thought Benedikt: like the Elector of Hanover, the King of England had scattered his battle honours far and wide in the days of empire.

“But . . . the two families—it was like there was an armed truce between them, the generation of the Troubles, and the Partition, and the Civil War, because there was blood between them as well as common to them . . . But the boys would have none of that—

they were like brothers in the mischief they got up to between dummy1

them . . . There’s this auntie, blind as a bat and sharp as the razor the barber shaves himself with—she remembers them both . . .

until Aloysius went off to the seminary and Michael went to fight for the English—which was maybe just a little better than being a butcher’s boy, which was all the work he could get when they wouldn’t have him at the garage ... It was always cars he was into, the auntie said: it was a driver he wanted to be for the English, but his father said it was a gunner he must be, because it was only the presence of the guns on the battlefield that turned mere fisticuffs into proper warfare—” The Irishman looked around him quizzically “—which is all these things are, I suppose, if you think about it—just bloody great guns on wheels, with an engine bolted to them . . . Anyway, that’s when the two boys split up—” He slapped his hand on the Tiger “—and went their own ways—and very different ways, by God!”

It was time, decided Benedikt, to cut his own losses ruthlessly: both the Englishman and the American clearly knew what the Irishman was talking about, but he did not.

“Who is Aloysius Kelly?” He could have asked the question of any of them, but Audley was the most likely to give a straight answer.

“David?”

“Hah!” It was the Irishman who reacted first. “Now that’s a question that’s been asked a time or two!”

Benedikt waited. The big Englishman wasn’t looking at him, he was staring past him, past the Tiger, at nothing, as though he hadn’t heard. “David?”

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Finally Audley drew a breath. “Who was Aloysius Kelly ...”

“Of course.” They had all said as much: the Englishman and the American had argued over the length of time since that event, and the Irishman had agreed that it was four years since they caught up with him. “Who was he?”

Audley looked at him. Then he looked at the American. “It was in Spain he was first spotted, wasn’t it?” He frowned. “With General O’Duffy’s Blue Shirts on Franco’s side?”

“That’s probably just a story. He would have been absurdly young to have been with them on the Jarama.” The American frowned back at him. “Too young.”

“They say he lied about his age.” The Irishman turned to Benedikt.

“They say he first went into action alongside your General von Thoma’s tanks—they say the General wanted O’Duffy’s men with him because he reckoned they wouldn’t run away.”

“But I don’t go for it.” The American shook his head. “I don’t reckon he was there so early.”

“But he did go straight from the seminary,” countered the Irishman. “And he lied about his age, they say.”

“Maybe. But if he was there he changed sides damn quick, that’s for sure.”

“Ah . . . well, isn’t that the Irish for you!” Mr Smith smiled.