‘All right, gentlemen.’ Justice Cohalan clapped his big hands together. ‘For now…’
14. More Friends and Enemies
THE FOLLOWING MORNING Wolff visited the offices of the Hamburg America Shipping Line on Broadway. ‘Contact Dr Albert, he will have something for a man like you,’ Nadolny had said to him. But Albert wasn’t there and his clerks pretended they didn’t know when he would be. Wolff left a note with his name and address, mentioning their ‘friend’ in Berlin.
It was another blue day and with nothing particular to do until the afternoon he walked to Battery Park and sat in the sunshine watching the traffic along the waterfront, a liner creeping upriver to Hoboken, freighters in and out of the Jersey wharfs. Busier than he remembered it, with a score or more ships waiting for a berth, smoke and steam drifting north-west on a warm breeze. Horses, cattle, grain, iron, guns, ammunition to stoke the fire in Europe. In the name of peaceful commerce, of course. Stocks at the Broad Street exchange up again. No wonder the Germans were raging. Like children in a sweetie shop, everything for sale without discrimination, but with no possibility of slipping the British naval blockade of the Atlantic. If they couldn’t dip into the jar, the best they could do was stop the enemy doing the same. Sabotage made sense. But not Dr Albert; he was the man with the purse strings, the commercial attache in Washington before the war. No, he would pass Wolff’s note to someone else — if he decided it was worth the trouble. What were his instructions from Berlin? The sun slipped behind cloud; somewhere in the outer bay a ship was sounding its horn, three, four, five urgent blasts. Rising from the bench, Wolff ambled by the river rail in the direction of the pier and a line of taxicabs. For now it was Casement, quietly losing his mind in Berlin, sad, desperate, lonely Roger, who was still his passport.
Wolff telephoned Casement’s sister later that morning and arranged to visit her at four. Not just for King and Country, he liked to think, but out of a sense of duty to Casement too — or was he deluding himself? Mrs Agnes Newman lived in a prosperous tree-lined neighbourhood of Brooklyn among bank clerks and city accountants, a modest single-storey house, neat white picket fence and garden. Her bell tinkled impatiently. She answered the door herself and he was struck at once by the family resemblance. A little greyer, fuller in face and figure, but the same fine features and brooding deep-set eyes.
‘Roddy wrote to us about you,’ she said, stepping from the door. ‘I’m worried about him, you must tell me everything… please…’ She led him into her sitting room.
‘You met Miss McDonnell?’
‘Still to be properly introduced,’ he said. It was the young committee secretary of the night before. ‘Miss McDonnell.’ He gave a stiff bow.
She smiled in amusement: ‘Mr de Witt.’
‘Sit down, sit down, please.’ Mrs Newman patted the only armchair. It had been positioned in the middle of a tight circle of wooden ones like a throne. The room was crammed with furniture, none of it interesting, the atmosphere alive with dust, swirling impatiently in the sunlight pouring through the lace curtains.
‘Laura says you spoke well,’ said Mrs Newman, taking a seat opposite. ‘Those people don’t understand Roddy — such a pity his friend, McGarrity, from Philadelphia wasn’t there.’
She leant forward, hands clasped in a big fist, almost touching his knees, but gazing at his face too intently to notice. ‘His last letter… I’m worried, Mr de Witt.’
‘I have another,’ he said, reaching into his jacket. She took it from him, turned it over twice, three times, as if reading it with her fingertips, then put it to one side. ‘I want to hear from you first, everything — where is he living, is he eating well?… he wrote to say he’d seen the Bluchers.’
Wolff told her a little of the party, an account so anodyne it might have been another event. Then he described Casement’s life in Berlin, his hotel and routine and the sympathetic hours he’d spent walking with Roger in the Tiergarten, friend and confidant. ‘He likes to walk, Mrs Newman…’
‘Yes, of course he does,’ she said irritably. ‘What I want—’
He cut across her, ‘…and walking is free.’
‘…to know…’
She lifted an anxious hand to the nape of her neck, her mouth opening and shutting like a trout’s. ‘I know he’s short of money,’ she said, finding her voice again. ‘Be frank with me — how is he managing? He seems so very low.’
Wolff nodded. ‘I think he’s lonely. He doesn’t trust the Germans and they don’t entirely trust him, Mrs Newman. Do you know anything of his plans for a brigade?’
The two women exchanged glances. Plainly it was Clan business and she wasn’t supposed to know. Laura McDonnell was avoiding his gaze.
‘He’s loyal to his men but he must doubt, well, he has black times. He’s so alone. I think that’s why we became friends — ships in a storm… you’re right to be concerned for him.’
She looked away, discreetly brushing a tear from the corner of her eye. ‘I knew it,’ she said fiercely. ‘He gives so much — people don’t understand — he’ll sacrifice himself.’
What could they do to help him? The Clan must answer his rallying cry with recruits and money. For the good of Ireland, for freedom, for liberty, for Roddy — Mr de Witt, don’t you agree? Mr de Witt was careful not to pour cold water on his ‘friend’s’ high hopes, not in sister Agnes’ sitting room. Miss McDonnell chose her words with care and said very little. He was conscious of her watching him closely, watching him nod, watching him smile, perfectly insincere, the smile he’d practised in front of a mirror, a ‘whatever you’re buying I’m selling’ smile, the friend, leader, hero, saint smile. Ah, dear Agnes, if only you knew about me, he mused. May I call you ‘Nina’? Your brother calls you ‘Nina’ in his letters, doesn’t he? Nina, you’re passionate like your brother but a bit of a bully. But, Nina, the world is so full of duplicity and confusion. There are things you don’t know, even about your Roddy. Yes, wipe away that tear and I’ll tell you. Imagine him bent over his dear sweet Adler. Yes, giving it to the Empire in Ireland’s name. It’s true, really. That much is true. Can’t you read it in my eyes? Of course he couldn’t, no; couldn’t stir the dust in the room.
‘Tea, Mr de Witt?’ she asked after a while.
When they were alone, Miss McDonnell observed, ‘You’re very… discreet, Mr de Witt, careful — practised, like a lawyer.’
‘You disapprove, Miss McDonnell; what would you…’
‘Laura, please, I really do prefer it.’
‘What would you have me say, Laura?’
‘You should tell the truth,’ she said quietly.
‘Do you? You were at the meeting — is your committee going to recruit young men here in America for Roger?’
She shook her head sadly.
‘Roger isn’t going to recruit any there, you know — in Germany — but he might go mad trying.’
They sat in silence, Laura trying to avoid his gaze. Short, curvy, well dressed but not expensively, with the easy confident manner of someone older. Content to say nothing, a smile close to her lips and a twinkle in her blue-green eyes; a rich mane of dark auburn hair — proud of her hair, she wore it loose, turning her head out of habit to present it to advantage.
‘And you, Mr de Witt…’ it swept towards him as she looked him in the eye at last, ‘what about you?’
‘There are always jobs for engineers.’
‘And gun runners.’
He raised his brow quizzically. ‘Who have you been talking to, Laura?’
She gave a mischievous laugh but didn’t answer, and a moment later Mrs Newman came into the room with a tray. The conversation returned to Casement and childhood tales. Plainly dear Nina had always known what was best for her brother. There was no mention of Mr Newman. Out of politeness she asked Wolff about his own childhood and his time in South Africa and listened to his answers with an expression entirely empty of curiosity. But when he rose to leave, she made him promise to visit her again soon so they could settle what ‘our Roddy’ should do. ‘He needs his family,’ she said, ‘…and friends,’ she added with less conviction. Laura made her excuses
