His smile widened, as if to brush it aside. ‘Social injustices, old-fashioned laws to reform,’ he replied. ‘Greater equality. Exactly the same as, no doubt, you fight for at home. I hear there are some great women in London battling for all manner of things. Perhaps one day you will tell me about some of them?’ He made it a question, as if he were interested enough to require an answer.
‘Of course,’ she said lightly, trying to master facts in her mind so she could answer sensibly, if the necessity arose.
He took her arm as people milled around her, returning to their seats, courteous, hospitable, full of dry wit and a passion for life. How easy, and dangerous, it would be for her to forget that she did not belong here — she particularly, because her husband was in Special Branch, and his friend Victor Narraway could be the man who had used Kate O’Neil to betray her own people, and destroy her family.
Narraway was uncertain what Charlotte would learn at the theatre. As he walked along Arran Quay, on the north bank of the Liffey, his head down into the warm, damp breeze off the water, he was afraid that she would discover a few things about him that he would very much rather she did not know, but he knew no way to help that. He knew, from Fiachra McDaid, that she would meet Cormac O’Neil, and perhaps judge some depth of his hatred, and the reasons for it.
He smiled bitterly as he pictured her pursuing it, testing, pushing until she found the facts behind the pain. Would she be disillusioned to hear his part in it all? Or was that his vanity, his own feelings — that she cared enough for him that disillusion was even possible, let alone would wound her?
He would never forget the days after Kate’s death. Worst was the morning they hanged Sean. The brutality and the grief of that had cast a chill over all the years since. Why had he exposed himself to the hurt of Charlotte learning anything about it? Perhaps because he was afraid she would, and he would rather deal the blow himself than endure the waiting for someone else to do it.
He should know better. His years in Special Branch should have taught him both patience and control. Usually he was so good at it that people thought him a cold man. Charlotte thought it, he knew. Was that the real reason why he risked her discovering so terribly that he was not?
He did not want her affection, or her grief for him, if it were based on a misconception of who he was.
He laughed at himself; it was just a faint sound, almost drowned by his quick footsteps along the stones of the quayside. Why, at this time in his life, did he care so much for the opinion of another man’s wife?
He forced his attention to where he was going, and why. If he did not learn who had diverted the money meant for Mulhare and placed it in his, Narraway’s, own account, knowing anything else about O’Neil was pointless. Someone in Lisson Grove had been involved. He blamed none of the Irish. They were fighting for their own cause, and at times he even sympathised with it. But the man in Special Branch who had done this had betrayed his own people, and that was different. He wanted to know who it was, and prove it. The damage this traitor could cause would have no boundary. If he hated England enough to plan and execute a way of disgracing Narraway, then what else might he do? Was his real purpose to replace him? This whole business of Mulhare might be no more than a means to that end. But was it simply ambition, or was there another, darker purpose behind it as well?
Without realising it he increased his pace, moving so swiftly he almost passed the alley he was looking for. He turned in and fumbled in the lightless construction of it and the uneven stones under his feet. He had to feel his way along one of the walls. Third door. He knocked sharply, a quick rhythm.
He had brought Charlotte to Ireland because he wanted to, but she had her own compelling reasons to be here. If he was right about the traitor in Lisson Grove then one of the first things that person would do would be to get rid of Pitt. If Pitt were fortunate, he would simply be dismissed.There were much worse possibilities. Some of them passed through Narraway’s mind as the door was opened. He was let into a small, extremely stuffy office piled high with ledgers, account books and sheaths of loose papers. A striped cat had claimed itself a space in front of the hearth and did not stir when he came in and took a seat on a chair opposite the cluttered desk.
O’Casey sat in the chair behind it, his bald head gleaming in the gaslight.
‘Well?’ Narraway asked, masking his eagerness as closely as he could.
O’Casey hesitated.
Narraway considered threatening him. He still had power, albeit illegal now. He drew in his breath. Then he looked at O’Casey’s face again, and changed his mind. He had few enough friends, he could not afford to alienate any of them.
‘So what is it you expect of me, then?’ O’Casey asked, cocking his head a little to one side. ‘I’ll not help you, not more than I owe. Only for old times’ sake, but that’s little enough.’
‘I know,’ Narraway agreed. There were wounds and debts between them, some still unpaid. ‘I need to know what’s changed for Cormac O’Neil.’
‘For God’s sake, leave the poor man alone! Have you not already taken all he has?’ O’Casey exclaimed. ‘You’ll not be after the child, will you?’
‘The child?’ For a moment Narraway was at a loss. Then memory flooded back. Kate’s daughter by Sean. She had been only an infant, six or seven years old, when her parents died. ‘Did Cormac raise her?’ he asked.
‘A little girl?’ O’Casey squinted at him contemptuously. ‘Of course he didn’t, you fool. And what would Cormac O’Neil do with a six-year-old girl, then? Some cousin of Kate’s took her — Maureen, I think her name was. She and her husband. Raised her as their own.’
Narraway felt a stab of pity for the child — Kate’s child. That should never have happened.
‘But she knows who she is?’ he said aloud.
‘Of course. Cormac would have told her, if no one else.’ O’Casey lifted one shoulder slightly. ‘Although, of course, it might not be the truth as you know it, poor child. There are things better left unsaid.’
Narraway felt chilled. He had not thought of Kate’s daughter. They had been so close to the violence erupting and spreading beyond control, he had thought only of preventing that. He had not expected Kate to die; it was never planned. He knew Sean.To deceive him in rebellion was one thing, to deceive him over Kate was another.
Looking back, even weeks afterwards, he knew that she had crossed sides because she believed it was a doomed uprising, and more Irishmen would die in it than English, far more. But she knew Sean as well. He had been willing enough to use her beauty to shame Narraway, even lead him to his death, but in his wildest imagination he had never considered that she might even give herself willingly to Narraway, or worse, care for him.
And when she did, it was beyond Sean’s mind or heart to forgive. He had said he killed her for Ireland, but Narraway knew it was for himself, just as, in the end, Sean knew it too.
And Cormac? He too had loved Kate. Did he feel an Irishman bested in deviousness by an Englishman, in a fight where no one was fair? Or a man betrayed by a woman he wanted and could never have: his brother’s wife, who had sided with the enemy — for her own reasons, good or bad, political or personal?
What had he told Talulla?
Could it possibly be anything new in the last few months? And if it were, how could she have moved the money from Mulhare’s account back to Narraway’s, using some traitor in Lisson Grove? Not by herself. Then with whom?
‘Who betrayed Mulhare?’ he asked O’Casey.
‘No idea,’ O’Casey answered. ‘And if I did know, I wouldn’t tell you. A man who’ll sell his own people deserves to have his thirty pieces of silver slip out of his hands. Deserves to have it put in a bag o’ lead around his neck, before they throw him into Dublin Bay.’
Narraway had not much liked Mulhare, but he needed to keep his promises; to whom they were made was irrelevant. A broken word is as self-defeating as a broken sword.
He rose to his feet. The cat by the fire stretched out and then curled up on the other side.
‘Thank you,’ he said.
‘Don’t come back,’ O’Casey replied. ‘I’ll not harm you, but I’ll not help you either.’
‘I know,’ Narraway replied.
Charlotte did not have the opportunity to speak at any length with Narraway after returning from the theatre, nor did she the following day. They met only briefly at breakfast and there were others eating at nearby tables. Narraway said he had business to attend to, but that he had heard from Dolina Pearse that Charlotte would be most welcome to attend the opening of an art exhibition, if she cared to, and to take tea with Dolina and her friends
