Mr Purce didn’t go to church it would be a miracle. It was like Geraldine Carey going to Mass.
‘I’ll walk out with you,’ he said. ‘I have a half day today for myself.’
They walked together, to her embarrassment. She glanced at shop-windows to catch a glimpse of their reflection, to see if they looked as awkward as she felt. He was only a head taller than she and part of that was made up by his hard black hat. His clerk’s suit was double-breasted, navy-blue with a pale stripe in it, shiny here and there, in need of a good ironing. He wore black leather gloves and carried a walking-stick. He always had the gloves and the walking-stick in church, but his Sunday suit was superior to the one he wore now. Her own fair hair, pinned up under her green-brimmed hat, was what stood out between the two of them. The colour of good corn, Mr Devereux used to say, and she always considered that a compliment, coming from a grain merchant. Her face was thin and her eyes blue, but reflected in the shop-windows there was now only a blur of flesh, a thin shaft between her hat and the green coat that matched it.
‘You’ve had misfortune, Attracta.’ Solemnly he nodded, repeating the motion of his head until she wished he’d stop. ‘It was a terrible thing to be killed by mistake.’
Attracta didn’t know what he was talking about. They passed by the last of the shops in North Street, Shannon’s grocery and bar, Banim’s bakery, the hardware that years ago had run out of stock. The narrow street widened a bit. Mr Purce said:
‘Has she made a Catholic girl out of you, Attracta?’
‘Who, Mr Purce?’
‘Devereux’s woman. Has she tried anything on? Has she shown you rosary beads?’
She shook her head.
‘Don’t ever look at them if she does. Look away immediately if she gets them out of her apron or anything like that. Will you promise me that, girl?’
‘I don’t think she would. I don’t think Mr Devereux –’
‘You can never tell with that crowd. There isn’t a trick in the book they won’t hop on to. Will you promise me now? Have nothing to do with carry-on like that.’
‘Yes, Mr Purce.’
As they walked he prodded at the litter on the pavement with his walking-stick. Cigarette packets and squashed matchboxes flew into the gutter, bits of the,
‘I’m surprised they never told you, Attracta,’ he said. ‘What are you now, girl?’
‘I’m eleven.’
‘A big girl should know things like that.’
‘What things, Mr Purce?’
He nodded in his repetitious manner, and then he explained himself. The tragedy had occurred in darkness, at night: her parents had accidentally become involved with an ambush meant for the Black and Tan soldiers who were in force in the area at the time. She herself had long since been asleep at home, and as he spoke she remembered waking up to find herself in a bed in her aunt’s house, without knowing how she got there. ‘That’s how they got killed, Attracta,’ Mr Purce said, and then he said an extraordinary thing. ‘You’ve got Devereux and his woman to thank for it.’
She knew that the Black and Tan soldiers had been camped near the town; she knew there’d been fighting. She realized that the truth about the death had been counted too terrible for a child to bear. But that her parents should have been shot, and shot in error, that the whole thing had somehow been the responsibility of Mr Devereux and Geraldine Carey, seemed inconceivable to Attracta.
‘They destroyed a decent Protestant pair,’ Mr Purce continued, still flicking litter from the pavement. ‘Half-ten at night on a public road, destroyed like pests.’
The sun, obscured by clouds while Attracta and Mr Purce had made the journey from the centre of the town, was suddenly warm on Attracta’s face. A woman in a horse and cart, attired in the black hooded cloak of the locality, passed slowly by. There were sacks of meal in the cart which had probably come from Mr Devereux’s mill.
‘Do you understand what I’m saying to you, Attracta? Devereux was organizing resistance up in the hills. He had explosives and booby traps, he was drilling men to go and kill people. Did nobody tell you about himself and Geraldine Carey?’
She shook her head. He nodded again, as if to indicate that little better could be expected.
‘Listen to me, Attracta. Geraldine Carey was brought into this town by the man she got married to, who used to work at Devereux’s mill. Six months later she’d joined up with Devereux in the type of dirty behaviour I wouldn’t soil myself telling you about. Not only that, Attracta, she was gun-running with him. She was fixing explosives like a man would, dressed up like a man in uniform. Devereux was as wild as a savage. There was nothing Devereux wouldn’t do, there was nothing the woman wouldn’t do either. They’d put booby traps down and it didn’t matter who got killed. They’d ambush the British soldiers when the soldiers didn’t have a chance.’
It was impossible to believe him. It was impossible to visualize the housekeeper and Mr Devereux in the role he’d given them. No one with any sense could believe that Geraldine Carey would kill people. Was everything Mr Purce said a lie? He was a peculiar man: had he some reason for stating her mother and her father had met their deaths in this way?
‘Your father was a decent man, Attracta. He was never drunk in his life. There was prayers for him in the chapel, but that was only a hypocrisy of the priests. Wouldn’t the priest Quinlan like to see every Protestant in this town dead and buried? Wouldn’t he like to see you and me six foot down with clay in our eye-sockets?’
Attracta didn’t believe that, and more certainly now it seemed to her that everything Mr Purce said was untrue. Catholics were different; they crossed themselves when they passed their chapel; they went in for crosses and confession; they had Masses and candles. But it was hard to accept that Father Quinlan, a jovial red-haired man, would prefer it if she were dead. She’d heard her aunt’s maid, Meta, saying that Father Fallon was cantankerous and that Father Martin wasn’t worth his salt, but neither of them seemed to Attracta to be the kind of
