Kensley was reading the New York Times in the Aberdeen lobby when McColl arrived back from Paterson. After dropping his bag off in his room, he reluctantly went back down to meet the Canadian – after the events of the weekend, he felt Cumming and the British Empire could allow him a few days off.
There wasn’t even a coffee on offer – the normally phlegmatic Kensley hustled him out of the door and onto Thirty-second Street as if their professional lives depended on it. ‘I was afraid you’d ended up in the Paterson city jail,’ he said as they began walking.
‘I nearly did.’
‘And Seán Tiernan?’
‘He wasn’t arrested, as far as I know.’
‘So he’s back here?’
‘Probably. Why the panic?’
‘Kell’s people came through with information on him. He’s only twenty-seven, but up until a year ago, Tiernan was on the ruling council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood.’
‘But no longer?’ Tiernan was obviously a bigger wheel than McColl had thought.
‘We don’t know. Have you heard of the ICA – the Irish Citizen Army?’
‘Nope.’
‘It was set up last summer by Jim Larkin. A workers’ militia to defend the strikers against the police during the lock-out. The only weapons they had were hurling sticks and cricket bats, but they can be pretty effective in narrow streets.’
‘I know,’ McColl said wryly.
Kensley looked at him. ‘Was it that bad?’
‘I can’t say I expected American cops to treat women and children quite that viciously. Stupid of me really, especially after the way the British police have treated the suffragettes.’
‘They don’t take many prisoners,’ Kensley agreed, with only the faintest hint of disapproval. ‘But getting back to Tiernan … He was an ICA commander. Second-in-command of the whole shooting match according to one source, but he was never arrested. When the strike was defeated, and the men went back to work, he and others kept the ICA going, and it’s still very much in existence. But it seems there’s been a split at the top, between those who see it the way Larkin originally did, as a workers’ defence force in time of dispute, and those, like Tiernan, who see it as an embryonic revolutionary organisation. Tiernan and his friends want to drive out the English, abolish capitalism, and set up an Irish socialist republic.’
‘Don’t the IRB?’
‘Not all of them. The IRB is a broad church – all kinds of socialists, old-fashioned liberals, Gaelic mystics, even traditional Catholics who think socialism is a Protestant trick. And most of them will dismiss the ICA as being far too radical. Some because they loathe the idea of socialism, others because they don’t think such an extreme programme has any chance of success.’
‘But Kell’s people think they’re dangerous?’ McColl asked, once they’d crossed Ninth Avenue.
‘The jury’s out on how effective they might prove, but they’re considered reckless enough to make a splash. No one seems to think the people in this group would have any compunction about committing treason if the reward looked promising enough.’
‘Is there any indication that they’ve approached the Germans?’
‘None. But that could be why Tiernan is here in New York.’
‘It could be. He met someone in Paterson, by the way. An IWW man named Aidan Brady. I don’t know if Tiernan had met him before, or if Colm Hanley had, but they seemed pretty close. With a name like Brady, I’m assuming the man has Irish connections, but they might not matter to him. He is a murderous bastard – I watched him kill that policeman in Paterson, the one in the newspapers.’
‘Jesus!’ Kensley almost shouted. ‘You witnessed it?’
‘I did. And for obvious reasons, I didn’t go to the police.’
‘You did right,’ Kensley said after a few moments’ reflection. ‘We don’t want your name and face all over the papers. What made him do it?’
‘The cop came at him with a nightstick.’
‘I take it the cop didn’t see the knife.’
‘Not till it was too late.’
‘Jesus,’ Kensley said again, softer this time. ‘Do you know where he is now?’
‘No idea. He came from Detroit, so maybe he’s gone back there.’
They were approaching the end of Thirty-second Street, the last few buildings framing the view of New Jersey’s chimneys and factories.
‘I’ll ask my BOI contact to see what they have on him,’ Kensley said. ‘But we’ll concentrate on Rieber. Cumming has sent two men over from London, and he’s even authorised the hiring of a couple of automobiles, which shows how seriously he’s taking this business. So we’ll be covering all Rieber’s waking hours, one pair watching from seven to three, the other from three till eleven. Neither of these new boys has ever been to America before, so we’ll each have to take one in hand. And since I know the city better than you do, you can have the daylight hours. Okay?’
‘Okay. Though if I’m spending the night with Caitlin Hanley, I might have trouble explaining what I’m getting up so early for.’
Kensley was unsympathetic. ‘I’m sure you’ll think of something.’
*
At six the next morning a blond Englishman named Neil Crabtree picked McColl up at the corner of Seventh and Thirty-second in a rented Model T. He looked as sleep-starved as McColl felt, and seemed lamentably short of driving experience. ‘I’ve only ever driven in the countryside,’ Crabtree cheerfully explained, ‘and until yesterday I had no idea that Americans drive on the wrong side of the road.’ When McColl told him to pull over, he managed to leave half the vehicle on the sidewalk.
They swapped seats, and McColl drove them north towards Rieber’s address. It was still dark when they reached Forty-fourth Street, but lights were already burning in the German’s windows. McColl parked a hundred yards from the apartment block, and reminded himself to make time for coffee next day – the first cigarette didn’t taste the same without it.
Crabtree didn’t smoke, and pointedly opened his window. His clothes were smarter than McColl’s, a charcoal ensemble of suit, overcoat and hat which had probably cost a fortune. The plummy accent added to the impression of inherited privilege, but he seemed friendly enough. As they sat waiting for Rieber to put in an appearance, he brought McColl up to date on all matters English, and offered an enthusiast’s preview of the upcoming cricket season.
McColl was on the verge of falling asleep when his companion suddenly interrupted himself: ‘Here comes our Hun!’
It was fully light by this time, and there was no mistaking Erich Rieber as he descended the apartment block steps, briefcase in hand. The German took a cursory look in their direction, and McColl was glad that theirs wasn’t the only automobile on display. He let the man cross Tenth Avenue before starting the engine and easing forward in slow pursuit.
As expected, Rieber strode all the way to the Hudson before turning south on Twelfth, forcing McColl to advance down Forty-fourth Street in stages, like a player in ‘creeping up on grandma’. It was a two-mile walk to the Hoboken ferry, but, as Crabtree bitingly observed, the Huns did love their exercise.
Once certain that Rieber was headed for ferry and work, McColl drove past him, parked by the terminal, and ordered Crabtree to beat the German aboard. He waited until they were both through the turnstile before leaving the automobile and following them onto the ship. According to Crabtree, Rieber had taken a seat up front, so the two of them stayed by the stern rail until the ferry docked on the New Jersey side, and then followed their quarry at a very safe distance to his inevitable destination – his office on the Hamburg American pier. While Crabtree leant against a convenient wall and kept watch on the shipping office entrance, McColl scoured the immediate locality for suitable observation points. He found two cafés, which was better than nothing, but not much. Sitting in these for hours on end was likely to attract notice or comment, and they certainly couldn’t afford to loiter outside in view of Rieber’s window. But there was no other choice.
McColl collected Crabtree and led him to the closer of the two. They ordered coffees and established a routine, one reading the New York Times which McColl went out and bought while the other kept both eyes on the distant entrance for Rieber’s familiar figure. They were too far away to make out other faces, but Kensley had been sure that Rieber would keep his American contacts far from his place of work.
The newspaper was only slightly more interesting than the surveillance. Smoking cigarettes, McColl discovered, decreased one’s ‘power of initiative, of grasp, and of facility of execution’ – the smoker thought his mind was working better, when it was actually ten per cent less efficient. On the political front, President Wilson was moving heaven and earth to reinstate one Miss Mattie Tyler as postmistress of Courtland, Virginia. After a ‘clique of Virginia politicians’ had conspired to displace her, she had called on the president for help, and he had taken time off from national and international affairs to sort things out. Mattie was, after all, the granddaughter of a former president.
In France, a more dramatic story was unfolding. A woman named Henrietta Caillaux had walked into a national newspaper editor’s office and emptied a pistol into his chest. Her reason: that the editor had published a leaked letter damaging to her government minister husband’s reputation. It looked an open and shut case, but the defence lawyers were calling it a crime of passion, as if that were grounds for acquittal. He wondered how Caitlin would see it.
After a couple of hours he and Crabtree began to feel like they’d outstayed their welcome, and moved to the second café. He could barely imagine a more boring job, and McColl soon found his attention beginning to wander. It was hard to keep your eyes focussed on the one spot, particularly when you knew that the chance of anything happening was remote. The river was so much more interesting, the ferries weaving their way between tugs and other small craft, the occasional liner almost filling the view as it headed for a quay or the open sea.
At two o’clock Crabtree walked over to the passenger terminal and used one of the public telephones to tell Kensley where they were. He arrived to relieve them at three, along with a dark-haired boy of not much more than twenty. Peter Gladwell, as Crabtree told McColl on their ferry ride back to the automobile, was a decent enough sort, but not the brightest star in the sky. He had been seasick for most of their Atlantic crossing, and blushed whenever a woman came near him. His father was an admiral.
Crabtree, as McColl discovered the following day, had been to Winchester and Cambridge, before spending a few years in the diplomatic corps. He had become friendly with one of Cumming’s people while stationed in Cairo, and when a ‘misunderstanding’ had forced his resignation from the corps, he had wangled his way into the Service. Serving one’s country was what mattered, not how or where one did it. Crabtree was keen to see the world, and particularly its women. He had always heard that American women were ‘fast’, but none had so far confirmed it.
These confidences were shared in the familiar cafés. Rieber showed no signs of changing his routine, and the only differences from the day before were an obstructed view – courtesy of the huge and newly docked Europa – and utterly miserable weather, with cold wind and rain sweeping across the puddle-strewn quays and turbulent river. And it was probably all for nothing, McColl thought. Rieber could be doing his clandestine business by telephone. Or mail.
Kensley and Gladwell arrived at three, looking like they’d swum across the Hudson. Rieber had gone straight home on the previous evening, and not gone out again before turning off his lights.
‘Does he have a telephone at home?’ McColl asked Kensley.
‘Not anymore. I persuaded the BOI to disconnect him for a couple of weeks. He thinks there’s a fault at the local exchange.’
‘He could be using the one in his office.’
‘He could, but I don’t think he’d risk it. It’s a German company line, after all. He’d be afraid the Americans were listening in, either for themselves, or on our behalf.’
Kensley looked at them all, like a teacher addressing his pupils. ‘I know this is really boring, but it’ll pay off. Believe me.’
It did, and sooner than McColl expected. Soon after noon on the Thursday Rieber emerged from the shipping office, briefcase in hand, and set off in the usual direction. ‘Half-day off?’ Crabtree wondered out loud.
‘We’ll soon know. Why don’t you get ahead of him?’
Crabtree did so, hurrying down the other side of the street towards the Hoboken terminal. McColl kept about fifty yards adrift of Rieber, collar up and hat pulled down lest the German decide to look back. Away to their left a French liner was gliding majestically up the river.
As they approached the terminal McColl closed the gap, and was rewarded for his foresight. Rieber walked straight past the gate to the Twenty-third Street ferry and on through the one signed Barclay Street. McColl joined the queue two places behind him, and looked back in the hope of seeing Crabtree. Though he’d boarded the other ferry, his partner should have realised by now that Rieber had not.
McColl passed through the turnstile, walked aboard, and waited by the rail, hoping that Crabtree would appear. There was a dull clang as the gate shut, a blast on the ferry’s horn, and a churning of water as the wheels began to turn. He was on his own.
The German was at the head of the disembarkation queue as they approached the Barclay Street pier, consulting his fob with the air of someone who had an appointment to keep. He ignored the line of waiting cabs, though, and strode off down West Street at a remarkably brisk pace. There was no doubt about it – the man loved walking. He probably hiked around Alps on his holidays.
There were a lot of people on the sidewalk, so it was easy for McColl to keep bodies between himself and Rieber. He tried to avoid looking at the man’s back for more than a few seconds at a time, as experience had taught him that many people sensed another’s stare.
The German crossed Battery Place and entered the park of the same name, McColl still fifty yards adrift. The trees were springing into bloom, the benches full of giggling secretaries enjoying the sunshine and devouring their packed lunches. Out in the bay two Staten Island ferries were crossing, a sight which caused Rieber to consult his fob and lengthen his already impressive stride.
The German disappeared through the maw of the terminal building, and McColl slowed his own pace, confident that the incoming ferry was several minutes away from loading. He almost miscalculated; lacking the requisite change and having to procure it, he ended up being one of the last to beat the gate. Having done so, he walked aboard with his hat tipped even lower over his face. He might be mistaken for a criminal on the run, but at least Rieber wouldn’t recognise him.
A cautious tour of the boat found the German close to the stern on the upper deck, alone and looking out across the sunlit bay at the smoke-raddled New Jersey shoreline. McColl worked his way up the other side towards the bow, and found a spot on the crowded rail from which he could keep watch with only a minimal chance of being spotted. But no one approached the German, who seemed, for all of the twenty-minute journey, fully engaged by the panoramic view.
As they docked at the Staten Island terminal, Rieber made no move to disembark, and McColl took his eyes off the German for a few moments to scan the people who were streaming aboard below. And there was Seán Tiernan, lifting his head to survey the upper deck as McColl stepped hurriedly back out of sight. He thought he had moved quickly enough, but he couldn’t be sure.
The ferry suddenly seemed a very small place. One of the toilets, he decided; he would lock himself away until Tiernan and Rieber had convened their conspirators’ meeting. Because that was what it had to be. Anything else would be far too much of a coincidence.
The toilet stank, but he stuck it out for several minutes, until the ferry was underway once more, and someone started hammering on the door. He first thought it must be Rieber or Tiernan, but immediately realised he was being ridiculous – they were hardly likely to simply confront him, and if they wanted to kill him they would choose a more private location.
It was a young boy, holding himself with panic-filled eyes. As the door slammed behind him, McColl hoped he’d made it.
Rieber and Tiernan were side by side on the upper deck rail, deep in conversation. Neither man was casting glances over his shoulder, which surely must mean that McColl hadn’t been seen. And there was no point in watching them further, and risking that one of them might spot him. He moved back out of sight, and descended the stairs to the lower deck.
If Tiernan had seen him, it would have been a disaster in so many ways. Another group of Germans would be after his blood, and might prove more successful than the last lot. In the fight to prevent whatever it was that Rieber and Tiernan were planning, the Service would lose Cumming’s ‘knowing what they don’t know you know’ advantage. And most importantly to him, as he realised with no little shame, Caitlin would find out. Tiernan would tell Colm, and he would tell his sister. It would be over.
How had he got into this mess? A piece of worldly wisdom from an Englishman he’d met in India came back to him. ‘Some men follow their hearts,’ the drunken sage had told him, ‘and some go where their minds take them. Most of course just follow their cocks. Any one of the three can lead you to happiness, but only if you stick to that one alone.’
He seemed to be following all three.
There was no point in agonising about it. Across the bay the sun was shining on the Statue of Liberty, and McColl found himself seeing it through Tiernan’s eyes. He didn’t like the man, but could understand his hunger for Irish independence, and see the logic of seeking German help to achieve it. The notion of ‘joint action on enemy soil’ might be treasonous in law, but no doubt Tiernan saw it as a patriot’s duty. That wouldn’t stop McColl from doing all he could to foil any such endeavour, but he felt no sense of outrage.
Was that was why von Schön had been opposed to his being killed? A belief that men pursuing their own country’s interest in good faith should be thwarted rather than punished?
The whole business suddenly seemed unreal. A German, an Irishman and an Englishman, playing deadly games in the middle of New York Bay, while ordinary American life went on all around them.
Real or not, he was one of the players. He hung back in the stern when the ferry docked, giving Rieber and Tiernan plenty of time to disembark and go their separate ways. It was almost three, so his colleagues would be waiting for him at the Twenty-third Street terminal, the meeting place Kensley had chosen for such a contingency.
He took the Elevated, and then walked down to the river, feeling depressed by what he had to report. If Tiernan was involved, then so were the Hanleys, and any hope of disentangling his new work from his love life seemed to be receding. He was meeting Caitlin after work that evening.
His colleagues were sitting in one of the Model Ts with the roof thrown back. He climbed into the empty front seat beside Kensley. ‘Success,’ he announced. ‘He met up with Seán Tiernan on the Staten Island Ferry.’
‘Yes!’ Kensley exclaimed, slapping both palms on the steering wheel. ‘What did they talk about?’
‘God only knows. They both know me, for Christ’s sake, and there was no way I could get close enough to hear anything without being seen.’
Kensley raised both hands in mock surrender. ‘Fine. It doesn’t matter. We have the connection. Now we just have to be patient, and watch them hang each other.’ He turned to McColl. ‘But not you. Cumming has other plans for you,’ he added, reaching for the door handle. ‘Let’s walk.’
He led the way off the busy City Plaza and down the sidewalk by the end of the basin beside White Star’s Pier 61. There was no liner at the quay, but enough rubbish in the water to keep the gulls happy. Kensley removed an envelope from his inside pocket, handed it over to McColl, and leaned up against the parapet with the apparent intention of studying the view. ‘It’s been decrypted,’ he said, as McColl opened up the message.
Cumming was ordering him to Mexico. Or, more precisely, to the Tampico oilfields, where German agents were using the chaos wrought by civil war to threaten the Royal Navy’s newest ships’ principal source of fuel. ‘I’m sure you can understand the seriousness of this threat,’ Cumming wrote, somewhat portentously, but McColl could see his point.
Von Schön, he suddenly remembered, had been on his way to Mexico.
‘You do speak Spanish?’ Kensley asked without turning round. ‘Cumming’s lost his list of your languages.’
‘Yes,’ McColl muttered. He was expected to ‘assess the seriousness of the threat’ and take ‘whatever steps deemed necessary to counter it.’ He would have access to Britain’s diplomatic representatives in the area, but, regretfully, ‘no recourse to military assistance will be possible’. A briefing paper covering both the wider Mexican situation and that pertaining in the oilfields was being prepared by the Foreign Office, and would be forwarded as quickly as possible, along with the necessary funds.
Well, he supposed this was what he had asked for.
‘Sorry to lose you,’ Kensley was saying, ‘but less sorry than I was an hour ago. Now that we know Tiernan’s involved, you’d be no use to me here.’
‘You don’t really trust me around the Hanleys, do you?’
‘As much as you trust yourself. It’s Rieber and Tiernan knowing you by sight that disqualifies you.’
‘And we don’t know for certain that Colm is involved,’ McColl said, although both of them knew that he had to be. Suddenly the prospect of Mexico came as a relief, as a chance to put some distance between his work and Caitlin. She would never accept his working against her family – who could? – but at his most optimistic he could sometimes imagine her accepting his work for his country. ‘He doesn’t say when he wants me to leave,’ he told Kensley.
‘Yesterday, I expect, but let’s say Monday. The money might be here by then – if not, I’ll send it on.’
‘How do I get there?’
‘Someone at the consulate is researching boats and trains, and they’ve also asked the embassy in Mexico City for advice – we don’t want you pitching up in a war zone. The moment I get anything, I’ll have it sent to your hotel.’
‘Okay.’
‘At least it’ll be hot down there,’ Kensley told him. ‘Most likely in more ways than one.’
*
McColl went back to his hotel and soaked in the bath for almost half an hour, pondering the sudden change in his situation. How was he going to explain an abrupt departure for Mexico? Business, he supposed, and once he thought about it, the fictional details came readily enough to mind. Sometimes he couldn’t help wondering why Caitlin hadn’t seen through him, but that, he knew, was only because he was so guiltily aware of the deception. She was focussed on her own affairs, and he had given her no obvious reason to doubt him.
She arrived soon after six, her eyes shining with excitement. ‘I’ve got a new job,’ she burst out, after they’d kissed and embraced. ‘On the Times, no less. I’m the new editor for women’s issues. The very first one, come to that.’
‘That’s wonderful,’ he said, and kissed her again. He knew how much this meant to her. ‘When do you start?’
‘Monday, 8 a.m. Let’s go out and celebrate!’
‘Let’s.’
They walked to a swanky restaurant she knew a few blocks north on Fifth. After eating a ridiculously expensive meal and drinking far too much, they took a cab back to the hotel, negotiated the elevator with what felt like great aplomb, and somehow ended up making love on the floor of his room. It was only after room service had provided the coffee to sober them both that he felt able to broach the matter of his imminent departure.
She looked stunned. ‘But why Mexico?’
‘Our rep there has been taken ill, and right in the middle of sewing up some deals. So Tim wants me to go down there and tie things up.’
‘To Mexico City?’
‘Yep,’ McColl lied, thinking Tampico might sound suspicious.
‘Will you be coming back here, or going straight on to England?’
‘I don’t know that yet. But I’ll be back here eventually. You haven’t seen the last of me.’
‘No,’ she said, and put her head on his shoulder. ‘And there’s no hurry, is there? For us, I mean.’
‘None at all.’
‘And we can have this weekend.’
‘Can you stay?’
She smiled but shook her head. ‘Not tonight. They’re expecting me home, and I want to tell Aunt Orla about my job. She’s waited a long time for something like this.’
‘Of course.’
‘But Saturday and Sunday – I’ll make up some sort of story. Look,’ she said, putting him at arm’s length and looking him straight in the face. ‘Come to Brooklyn in the morning – there are places I want to show you, places that mean a lot to me.’
‘I’d love to,’ he said. ‘I love you,’ he added, the words just slipping out, like light through carelessly drawn drapes.
‘And I love you,’ she replied, with a smile that seemed almost sorrowful. ‘And that’s usually the end of the story, isn’t it? – not the beginning.’
*
Next morning, a package arrived from Kensley. The wad of dollars seemed more generous when McColl also found a railroad ticket to Galveston – the US government was apparently sending ships down to Tampico from the Texas port to pick up American citizens threatened by a rebel advance. It seemed less beneficent when he realised he still had the hotel bill to pay.
He was expected to travel under the name John Bradley. The vice-consul in Tampico knew that someone with that name was coming, and would brief him on the local situation when he arrived. If Tampico fell to the rebels – a possibility, McColl noticed, that Kensley had previously neglected to mention – communication would be through the embassy in Mexico City.
His journey would begin with a train to Washington DC, leaving from the New Jersey terminus of the Pennsylvania Railroad at ten on Monday morning.
*
After breakfast on Saturday he took the subway down to City Hall, and the el from Park Row across the Brooklyn Bridge to the other Fifth Avenue. She was waiting at the Sixteenth Street exit, looking as gorgeous as ever, and drawing admiring glances from every male who passed her. After taking McColl’s arm and steering him eastward, she told him how happy she’d made her aunt, and how even her father had offered his congratulations. Neither had objected to her spending two nights in Manhattan with Eleanor, even though her fictional friend lacked a telephone. ‘My aunt might have her suspicions,’ Caitlin admitted, ‘but I think she’s realised that either I’m still a virgin – in which case there’s no need to worry – or I’m already far beyond saving. Either way …’
For the next couple of hours they toured her childhood haunts – her first school, the family church, the store where she and Colm had bought their Saturday candy. They crossed Prospect Park, stopping to look at the menagerie – ‘I was crazy about animals when I was little’ – and the swan boats on the lake in the Long Meadow, before riding the carousel with a host of noisy children. The last place on Caitlin’s list was Green-Wood Cemetery, a Gothic-gated enclave of forested hills, ponds and mausoleums in the heart of the city. She added flowers to those already adorning her mother’s grave. ‘Finola comes every week,’ she explained. ‘She remembers our mother. I don’t, not really. And sometimes I wonder how different my life would have been if she had lived. She wasn’t a strong woman like Aunt Orla. So I expect my loss would have been Colm’s gain.’ She looked down at the gravestone. ‘But she was my mother,’ she said after a few moments.
Neither said much on the train back to Manhattan. He’d felt touched that she wanted to show him her past, but the tour had served to emphasise the reality of their imminent separation. He couldn’t stop counting hours now, imagining the world without her while she was still on his arm.
She seemed to feel it too, and her insistence on visiting friends that evening seemed designed to distract them both. The gathering, when they reached it, was part party, part political meeting, with animated discussions underway in every nook and cranny of several smoke-filled rooms. McColl was able to put faces to several of the names Caitlin had mentioned: the anarchist Margaret Sanger, who was vigorously lecturing two much younger men on the political significance of birth control; the author Sinclair Lewis, holding court with a pair of younger women; the journalist Jack Reed, who moved from group to group, wine glass in one hand, cigarette in the other, dropping off ideas like an intellectual postman.
And there was also the famous Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, who, much to McColl’s surprise, looked even younger than Caitlin. She had missed the rally in Paterson, but had been there for much of the strike, and seemed heartened and dismayed in equal measure by Caitlin’s report on the wives and McColl’s account of the mayhem on Market Street.
He could see that Caitlin was in her element, and found himself wondering if he’d ever fit in. He had hoped Oxford would be something like this, but had soon realised his mistake. The crushing burden of hierarchy and tradition, the breathtaking prejudice, the remarkable stupidity of so many fellow students, who were only there because Daddy had money or breeding – all combined to thwart any real adventures of the intellect. Perhaps he was being naive, and Harvard and Yale were every bit as bad, but in these rooms, in this city, America did feel like the land of the free. These people were using their brains, and they seemed to enjoy the process no end.
The party moved on soon after ten, when Reed announced he was keen to go dancing. Almost everyone came along, though some could barely keep to the sidewalk, let alone move to music. The dancehall round the corner was already full, the Negro orchestra louder than any that McColl had ever heard. He and Caitlin managed two dances before agreeing it must be bedtime.
*
Sunday was the third bright day in a row, ready-made for a walk around Central Park. They were sitting by the lake when Caitlin suddenly announced that Colm was going back to Ireland that summer.
‘With Tiernan?’ McColl asked.
‘Yes, I’m afraid so.’
‘Are you worried about him?’
She laughed. ‘Of course. I spent most of my childhood looking after him. It’s hard to lose the habit.’ She sighed. ‘But he’s a grown man now, and I’m the last person who should object to anyone chasing after his own star.’
‘But?’
‘I don’t like Seán very much. He’s one of those people with a deep sense of injustice, but no sense of love.’
‘Yes,’ he agreed. She had described Tiernan perfectly. And his friend Brady.
*
That evening, lying in bed after making love, she asked him if he was tired of her.
‘God, no. How can you ask?’
She took a moment before replying. ‘Do you remember me saying, on the ship, that one day we could part like friends, with no regrets?
McColl felt a literal pain in his heart. ‘Yes.’
‘In case you hadn’t realised, I’ve changed my mind. So how about you? Do you think we have a future together?’
‘I thought you were about to say that this is goodbye.’
She reached out a hand to caress his cheek. ‘You haven’t answered my question.’
‘There’s nothing I want more.’
‘I have to take this job.’
‘I know.’
‘Will you think about coming to live here?’
‘If you’ll think about living in England. We have newspapers too, you know.’
She smiled. ‘All right. Anything’s possible.’
*
Monday morning he was awake before her, and lying there, studying her sleeping face, he had a sudden, almost overwhelming urge to make a full confession. But after waking she went straight to the bathroom, and on returning snuggled into his arms, scattering all semblance of resolve.
He had packed the previous evening, and after breakfasting downstairs they took a taxi together to the railroad ferry. One long last embrace, and he was walking aboard, hardly able to credit the fact of their parting. As the ferry set off his eyes sought and found her, standing by the open cab door, waving and blowing him a kiss. He waved back, and she stood there for what seemed a long time before finally turning and climbing inside. The cab pulled out behind a passing streetcar, and was swallowed by the city.