John and Bridget Tyrone were in a box almost opposite. With the intimate size of the theatre she could see their faces quite clearly. He was watching the stage, leaning a little forward as if not to miss a word. Bridget glanced at him, then — seeing his absorption — turned away. Her gaze swept around the audience. Charlotte put up the opera glasses McDaid had lent her, not to see the stage but to hide her own eyes, and keep watching Bridget Tyrone.
Bridget’s searching stopped when she saw a man in the audience below her, to her left. From where she was, she must see his profile. To Charlotte all that was visible was the back of his head, but she was certain she had seen him before. She could not remember where.
Bridget remained staring at him, as if willing him to look back at her.
On the stage the drama heightened. Charlotte was only dimly aware of it; for her the emotional concentration was in the audience. John Tyrone was still watching the players. In the audience at last the man turned and looked back up at the boxes, one after the other until he found Bridget. It was Phelim O’Conor. As soon as she saw his profile Charlotte knew him. He remained with his eyes fixed on Bridget, his face unreadable.
Bridget looked away just as her husband became aware of her again, and switched his attention from the stage. They spoke to each other briefly.
In the audience below, O’Conor turned back to the stage. His neck was stiff, his head unmoving, in spite of the scene in front of them reaching a climax where the actors all but hurled themselves at each other.
In the second interval, McDaid took Charlotte back outside to the bar where once more refreshments were liberally served. The conversation buzzed about the play. Was it well performed? Was it true to the intention of the author? Had the main actor misinterpreted his role?
Charlotte listened, trying to fix her expression in an attitude of intelligent observation. Actually she was watching to see who else she recognised among those queuing for drinks or talking excitedly to people they knew. All of them were strangers to her, and yet in a way they were familiar. Many were so like those she had known before her marriage that she half-expected them to recognise her. It was an odd feeling, pleasant and nostalgic, even though she would have changed nothing of her present life.
‘Are you enjoying the play?’ McDaid asked her. They drifted towards the bar counter, where Cormac O’Neil had a glass of whiskey in his hand.
Did McDaid know how little she had watched it? He might very well. She did not want either to lie to him, or to tell him the truth.
Now O’Neil was also waiting for her answer with curiosity.
‘I am enjoying the whole experience,’ she replied. ‘I am most grateful that you brought me. I could not have come alone, nor would I have found it half so pleasant.’
‘I am delighted you enjoy it,’ McDaid replied with a smile. ‘I was not sure that you would. The play ends with a superb climax, all very dark and dreadful. You won’t understand much of it at all.’
‘Is that the purpose of it?’ she asked, looking from McDaid to O’Neil and back again. ‘To puzzle us all so much that we will be obliged to spend weeks or months trying to work out what it really means? Perhaps we will come up with half a dozen different possibilities?’
For a moment there was surprise and admiration in McDaid’s eyes, then he masked it and the slightly bantering tone returned. ‘I think perhaps you overrate us, at least this time. I rather believe the playwright himself has no such subtle purpose in mind.’
‘What meanings did you suppose?’ O’Neil asked softly. He had said it as if it were mere conversation to amuse during the interval, but she thought he was probing to learn something deeper.
‘Oh, ask me in a month’s time, Mr O’Neil,’ she said casually. ‘There is anger in it, of course. Anyone can see that. There seems to me also to be a sense of predestination, as if we all have little choice, as if birth determines our reactions. I dislike that. I don’t wish to feel so. . controlled by fate.’
‘You are English. You like to imagine you are the masters of history. In Ireland we have learned that history masters us,’ he responded, and the bitterness in his tone was laced with irony and laughter, but underneath the pain was plainly real.
It was on her tongue to contradict him, then she realised her opportunity. ‘Really? If I understand the play rightly, it is about a certain inevitability in love and betrayal that is quite universal — a sort of darker and older
O’Neil’s face tightened and even in the lamplight of the crowded room Charlotte could see his colour pale. ‘Is that what you see?’ His voice was thick, almost choking on the words. ‘You romanticise, Mrs Pitt.’ Now the bitterness in him was clearly overwhelming.
‘Do I?’ she asked him, moving aside to allow a couple arm in arm to pass by them. In so doing, she deliberately stepped close to O’Neil, so he could not leave without pushing her aside. ‘What harder realities should I see? Rivalry between opposing sides, families divided, a love that cannot be fulfilled, betrayal and death? I don’t think I really find that romantic, except for us as we sit in the audience watching. For the people involved it must be anything but.’
He stared at her, his eyes hollow with a kind of black despair. She could believe very easily that Narraway was right, and O’Neil had nursed a hatred for twenty years, until fate had given him a way to avenge it. But what was it that had changed?
‘And what are you, Mrs Pitt?’ he asked, standing close to her and speaking so McDaid almost certainly would not hear him. ‘Audience or player? Are you here to watch the blood and tears of Ireland, or to meddle in them, like your friend Narraway?’
She was stunned. She had no idea how to answer. For a moment the rest of the crowd were just a babble of noise. They could as easily have been a field full of geese. Was there any point at all in pretence? Surely now to feign innocence would be ridiculous?
‘I would like to be a
‘God from a machine?’ he said with an angry shrug. ‘You want to descend at the last act and arrange an impossible ending that solves it all? How very English. And how absurd, and supremely arrogant. You are twenty years too late. Tell Victor that, when you see him. There’s nothing left to mend any more.’ He turned away before she could answer again, pushing past her and spilling what was left of his whiskey as he bumped into a broad man in a blue coat. The moment after, he was gone.
Charlotte was aware of McDaid next to her, and a certain air of discomfort about him.
‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised. There was no point in trying to explain. Reasons did not matter, and she did not know how much McDaid was aware of either Narraway’s present trouble, or his part in O’Neil’s past tragedies. ‘I allowed myself to express my opinions too freely.’
He bit his lip. ‘You couldn’t know it, but the subject of Irish freedom, and traitors to the cause, is painfully close to O’Neil. It was through his family that our great plan was betrayed twenty years ago.’ He winced. ‘We never knew for sure by whom. Sean O’Neil murdered his wife, Kate, and was hanged for it. Even though it was because she was the one who told the English our plans, some thought it was because Sean found her with another man. Either way, we failed again, and the bitterness still lasts.’
Murder, and then hanging. No wonder O’Neil was bitter and the grief had never died — and Narraway still felt the guilt weigh dark and heavy on him also.
‘It was an uprising that you intended?’ she asked quietly. She heard the chatter around her.
‘Of course,’ McDaid replied, his voice carefully ironed of all expression so it sounded unnaturally flat. ‘Home Rule was in the very air we breathed then. We could have been ourselves, without the weight of England around our necks.’
‘Is that how you see it?’ She turned as she spoke and looked at him, searching his face.
His expression softened. He smiled back at her, rueful and a little self-deprecating. ‘I did at the time. Seeing Cormac brings it back. But I’m cooler-headed now. There are better places to put one’s energy — causes less narrow.’ She was aware of the colour and whisper of fabric around them, silk against silk. They were surrounded by people in one of the most interesting capital cities in the world, come out to an evening at the theatre. Some of them, at least, were also men and women who saw themselves living under a foreign oppression in their own land, and some of them, at least, were willing to kill and to die to throw it off. She looked just like them — cast of feature, tone of skin and hair — and yet she was not, she was different in heart and mind.
‘What causes?’ she asked with interest.
