“No. You already have my word, I can’t give it to you twice. Over here ... a gentleman only has one word-— would you have insulted Michael Collins or Frank Ryan like that?”
The Irishman rolled a glance at the American. “Insufferable! And you wonder why we’re as we are, by God!” Then he relaxed slowly, with a light in his eye not present before. “And yet . . . you have no Irish blood in you by any far remote mischance, Dr Audley?”
“Not a drop. No Irish raiders ever reached Sussex—fortunately for them. Good Anglo-Saxon, Mr Smith, I’m afraid. King Alfred’s men . . . the ones who beat the Danes in the end—remember?”
“But not the Romans. Or the Normans?”
“The Romans were before our time. The Normans were no more than a useful tincture, to tone us up. We assimilated them—as you have assimilated your English aristocracy, Mr Smith . . . We’ve done the same with anyone prepared to stay the course—French Huguenots and German Jews—and the Poles and GI’s left quite a few souvenirs behind them more recently.”
“And now the Pakistanis and the West Indians?”
“Nothing wrong with them. They may not play rugger, but they play damn good cricket. In a hundred years’ time they’ll have improved us—” Audley grinned at the CIA man “— they’ll be as English as Howard is American . . . It’s you Irish who make a tragedy of your history—you have this boring obsession with re-dummy1
living it, as though it mattered what Cromwell did in Drogheda and Wexford any more than what Vespasian did to Maiden Castle with his legion just down the road from here, outside Dorchester .... It doesn’t worry
He waved a hand. “It’s all a joke, so long as we don’t have to live through it, and we can laugh at our ancestors slipping on the historical banana skins, don’t you see?”
He was challenging the Irishman to disagree with him in a way that no Irishman could disagree, thought Benedikt.
“So what did Auntie tell Aloysius Kelly ten years ago?” Audley came on frontally, like any good tank commander who reckoned he could break through the centre now, with no more messing around on the flanks to draw the Irishman’s reserves away.
“Aargh ... it wasn’t Aloysius she’d kept in touch with—it was Michael who was her boy ... it was always him that she’d been close to—her man had been with Michael Collins, not one of the Republicans—a Free Stater, when it came to the Treaty—and he’d been alongside the English in the trenches too, before that, so it was Michael that was always closer to her. And it was Michael that kept in touch with her over the years.”
“But then Aloysius turned up—?”
“Out of the blue. Asking after Michael.” The Irishman had lost his wary look. “He said there was this debt he had, that had been on his conscience for more years than he cared to remember. But now he’d come into a bit of money—and he showed her a wad of notes dummy1
to prove it .... It was before the darkness had come on her, while she could still see what was close up . . .”
“What did she make of him?”
“She didn’t like the sound of it—of him . . . There were too many notes—and it was English money—and she’d not a lot of time for the English, but she’d no time at all for Aloysius—it was Michael who’d written to her over the years, with never a word from Aloysius until he came through her door as bold as brass, with his handful of money .... No, she didn’t like it at all. But just at that time Michael had been having some bad luck: a bit of bother with his insurance, he said, after he’d had this knock in his taxi . . . but she reckoned it was more likely it was a knock in the betting shop he’d taken, the way he fancied the horses as every good man should ... So in the end, balancing that against the other, she let him have Michael’s address. And that was the last she saw of him
—” he stopped suddenly.
“Yes?” Audley was right: there was more.
“It was some time later ... It was the next year her sight went, and she’s a bit vague about time after that. A year or two, maybe . . .
there were these two fellas came looking for Aloysius—had he been to see her? Did she know where he might be? ‘Old friends’, they were, and for old times’ sake, having lost touch with him, they wanted to meet up again.” Mr Smith paused. “It was just her in the house, with her great-grand-niece for company—and these two fellas.”
An old blind woman, and a child, thought Benedikt. And . . . would dummy1
that be two ‘old friends’ from Special Bureau No 1, come to ask questions only the very brave or the very foolish refused to answer?
“They didn’t have a chance, of course—not a chance!” The Irishman settled his glance finally on Benedikt himself, as though it was he who needed education most. “ ‘Oh yes’, says she—and thinking it’d serve Aloysius right, whatever he was into, but now there was Michael to remember, which was the name and address they were after—‘Oh yes’, says she, ‘that fine boy Aloysius—him that put those two Black-an’-Tans in the gas works furnace at Tralee—a fine boy!‘ And that flummoxed them, because they were foreigners, and if they’d heard of ’Black-an‘-Tan’ it was in the history books—or a drink across an English bar, more likely. ‘Oh no’, says one of them. ‘This is Aloysius Kelly, our old friend—him that was Frank Ryan’s friend in Spain, auntie.’ And she looks into the air between them and nods. ‘Frankie Ryan?’ she says. ‘No—
but he was a fine boy too! Yet he had no part in what was done at Tralee—it was Kilmichael he was at, when they took that Auxie patrol— an’ it was Tralee, where the Tans burnt down the Town Hall afterwards, that Aloysius was—with young Seamus, that was killed by the Free Staters afterwards, and little Patrick Barry, who’d made his fortune in America an‘ wanted me to join him.
Only it was Mr Kelly that I’d given my word to—that you see there on the mantelpiece, above the fireplace, in his silver frame.’ . . . And every time they asked her a question, she gave them an answer that was more than fifty years out-of-date, would you believe it!” Mr Smith shook his head admiringly. “And when I was there, not a week ago, it was Cruise missiles she wanted to dummy1
know about—it’s her great-grand-niece, that’s still not married, who has to read the paper to her every day—
