Oakley Street

After Tampico and almost three weeks of ocean horizons, London seemed to whirr with activity. Automobiles had been few and far between in Mexico, but as he stood on the pavement outside Embankment Station, it seemed clear to McColl that they were well on their way to inheriting the earth. The horse-drawn hansoms still jostling for space already looked out of place.

During his nine-month absence the pace of innovation had showed no signs of slowing. On the train up from Portsmouth a buffet attendant had told him that tea was now sold in small porous bags, for dipping in individual cups, and only a few minutes earlier he had been brought up from the new Hampstead Railway platforms on a moving metal staircase.

He walked under the South Eastern and Chatham Railway bridge, and turned away from the sparkling river. The Service HQ had moved into 2 Whitehall Court in 1911, gaining more space and easier access to the nearby Admiralty. The building’s entrance was on the corner with Horse Guards Parade, the actual offices in Flat 54, up under the roof. McColl took the lift, reported in, and was shown straight through to Cumming’s spacious office, where nothing seemed to have changed. The large desk was covered in papers, the various shelves and side tables crammed with maps and charts; models of aeroplanes, submarines and automobiles filled all the space that was left. The painting on the wall – of a Prussian firing squad executing French villagers in the war of 1870 – had survived the move from the old HQ in Vauxhall Bridge Road.

Cumming seemed his usual self – friendly but brusque, or was it the other way round? His grey hair showed no sign of thinning, grey eyes no sign of dimming, and if he’d put on weight no one could tell.

His first questions were also typical. How had the Maia behaved in tropical climes? Was a new model under development? What did McColl think of the new De Dion-Bouton, with its electric ignition and water-cooled engine?

McColl answered the first question, but regretfully pleaded ignorance regarding the other two. He had been away a long time, he reminded Cumming, and obviously had a lot of catching up to do.

The Service chief did his best to help, and McColl tried to look more interested than he actually felt. The two of them had met at a motor rally, and McColl suspected that his knowledge of automobiles ranked above linguistic skills in Cumming’s estimation of his talents.

They eventually got round to Mexico, and the job McColl had done there. No actual praise was forthcoming, but his boss seemed satisfied. He had news of ‘that character von Schön’, who had last been sighted heading back across the Pacific. ‘I doubt we’ll see him for a while,’ he announced, with the air of someone watching a foe limp off into the distance. ‘But I didn’t call you back to hand out plaudits,’ he went on. ‘Kell’s people can’t seem to find your Irishman.’

McColl tried not show how little he liked that news. ‘Tiernan?’ he asked. ‘Didn’t he come back to Dublin?’

‘They think so, but they’ve only got hearsay to go on. Either the picture they have is poor, or he’s changed his appearance somehow, but no one has actually recognised the man. So Kell would like to borrow you for a few weeks.’

‘In Dublin?’

‘In Dublin’s fair city, as the song has it.’

‘How long do they think Tiernan’s been back? What happened in New York after I left?’

‘Not a great deal, I’m afraid. As far as we know, Tiernan and Rieber had no further contact before Tiernan took ship at the end of April. Rieber’s still in New York, so if Tiernan’s still plotting with the Germans he must have a new contact.’

‘What about Aidan Brady? And Colm Hanley?’

‘Brady left New York with a ticket to Chicago, but he wasn’t on the train when it got there. We’ve no idea why, or where he went, but as Kensley said, at least he was headed in the right direction – away from us. Colm Hanley, on the other hand, left New York two weeks after Tiernan, jumped ship at Queenstown, and promptly disappeared. He’s presumably with Tiernan.’

Oh shit, McColl thought.

‘And we still have no idea what the “action on enemy soil” might be,’ Cumming continued. ‘Or even which “enemy soil” we’re talking about. Kell’s people think it might be Belfast, the enemy being Ulster.’

‘No,’ McColl said flatly. ‘Tiernan’s after bigger fish than that.’

‘Well, I guess we’ll find out the hard way if we don’t find Tiernan first. Can you leave tomorrow?’

‘I’m visiting my family this weekend,’ McColl said firmly. ‘I haven’t seen them in a very long time. But I can take the boat from Glasgow.’

‘That should do,’ Cumming conceded.

‘And my expenses?’

‘Ah. I took the liberty of opening a bank account for you. My secretary has all the details. You’ll find that your salary for the last three months has already been deposited, and any further expenses, well, you’ll just have to claim for them in the usual way.’

It was better than nothing, McColl thought. The three months’ salary might even cover his debts. ‘What about the wider situation?’ he asked. ‘We and the Huns were getting on like a house on fire in Tampico, and I read in the paper that the government’s just reached an agreement with them on the Berlin to Baghdad railway. It sounded promising …’

Cumming shook his head. ‘Don’t get your hopes up,’ he said. ‘The Germans have just finished widening the Kiel Canal to accommodate their biggest ships, and last week the chief of their general staff met with his Austrian counterpart. He told him – and I quote – “Any adjournment will have the effect of diminishing our chances of success.”’

‘Oh. But surely they’ll need an excuse.’

‘They’ll find one.’

The night sleeper from Euston didn’t leave until ten, which gave him time to meet Mac for a homecoming drink on Eversholt Street. The pub Mac had chosen was full and noisy, so they joined the overflow out on the pavement, and stood with their beers watching the sun slide down through the smoke suspended above the station.

Mac was in good spirits. He said their former boss was trying his best to be furious with McColl – ‘first he abandons my sister, then he abandons my business’ – but couldn’t quite get there. ‘If he was really angry with you, he wouldn’t have taken your advice and given me your job.’

‘How is business?’ McColl asked.

‘Booming, but I think it’s the beautiful summer. In this sort of weather the rich all want to drive themselves down to their country piles for the weekend. And have the best-looking automobile in the park.’

‘Is it still the best?’

‘One of them. Have you been in New York all this time?’

‘No, I left soon after you did. I’ve been in Mexico, trying to save the Navy’s oil.’

‘First Glasgow, then Dublin. Have you heard from Jed lately?’

Mac sighed. ‘Yes. He’s not happy. He says he hates his job, and he probably does, but, you know, a trip like the one we did – it can either cure your itchy feet or make them itch all the more.’

‘Oh, I’ve seen enough of the world to keep me happy for a while. I’m enjoying London.’

‘What’s her name?’

‘Ethel, if you must know.’

‘So tell me about her.’

‘She’s lovely. She likes me. Her father’s an office manager at St Katherine’s Dock.’

‘Hair colour?’

Mac smiled reflectively, as if he was picturing her. ‘What happened to the American girl?’ he asked.

‘We’re still in touch. She was taken on by one of the big New York papers.’

‘And there’s a favour I’d like to ask you. If I sent you letters for her, could you mail them on from here?’

‘Of course I will. I take it you don’t want her to know you’re in Ireland.’

It was McColl’s turn to sigh. ‘It’s not the simplest of romances.’

Which was something of an understatement, he thought an hour or so later, as the sleeper rattled out of Euston and chugged its way up Camden Bank. Two such different lives could only be spliced together by one person utterly subsuming the other. That was that not going to happen to him and Caitlin, and he didn’t want it to. The things he admired about her were the things that made that impossible. The woman he loved would never settle for less than equality.

In the night bar he composed the last letter he could send himself, telling her he was back in England and on his way north to visit his parents. Two cigarettes and a whisky later, he walked back to his compartment half-expecting a sleepless night. The next thing he knew a steward was shaking his shoulder with a ten-minute warning of their arrival. He had slept like a stone.

He’d sent a telegram the evening before, and Jed was waiting at the ticket barrier in a smart blue suit and tie. ‘I have to work this morning,’ he said, ‘but I thought I’d meet you for a cup of tea.’

They sat in the buffet for twenty minutes, bringing each other up to date. According to Jed, things at home were much the same, which McColl supposed was better than worse. ‘Have you told them anything about my working for the government?’ he asked his younger brother.

‘A little,’ Jed admitted. ‘Just that, I think. That you work for the government abroad. I might have mentioned the Foreign Office.’

He left McColl at the tram stop, and walked briskly off down Hope Street. He seemed older, McColl thought, and, beneath the welcome, more subdued.

Twenty minutes later he was staring at the familiar house on Oakley Street, and catching a glimpse of his mother at the window. She had the door opened before he reached it, and stood there looking at him, tears running down her cheeks. Breakfast and his father were waiting in the back parlour, the one still warming on the stove, the other cold as ever. His father complimented him on his tan, and somehow managed to make it sound like an accusation. He was home.

He talked to his mother for most of the morning, about the round-the-world trip and his brother, about neighbours and relations he hadn’t seen for years. Jed had told her about Caitlin, but his mother didn’t press when she realised his reluctance to discuss her. His father sat there listening for a while, interjecting the odd barbed joke, but then tired of the sport and took refuge in his garden shed.

Jed came home for lunch, and they contrived to act like a normal family for the time it took to eat it. After washing and drying, the boys and their mother listened to the new gramophone Jed had bought her with his earnings, and then the brothers went out for a walk round the old neighbourhood, which seemed even more depressing than McColl remembered. The weather played a part – the grey skies hanging over Glasgow were enough to make anyone yearn for Mexico.

Their father went down to his local soon after tea, and their mother insisted on their doing likewise, and ‘giving her some peace’. They decided to brave the city centre, and joined a sizable crowd at the local tram stop.

‘I don’t know how long I can stand living here,’ Jed confessed as they waited.

‘Get a room,’ McColl suggested. ‘I’ll lend you some money if you need it.’

‘No. I don’t mean with them. I mean Glasgow. Everyone’s so damn narrow-minded.’

‘That’s true of most places.’

‘Not London.’

‘Not so much maybe. Is the job not going well?’

Jed shrugged. ‘I could do it in my sleep. Some days I do. It’s boring.’

It was hard for McColl to argue – fifteen years earlier he’d felt much the same. ‘Just don’t run away to join the Army,’ he warned. ‘They wrote the book on narrow-minded.’

Jed smiled. ‘You survived it.’

‘Only just.’

The tram arrived, and everyone squeezed aboard. They ended up in a pub on Sauchiehall Street, reminiscing about their long trip and taking bets with each other on which of the male patrons would throw the first punch. In the end it was a middle-aged woman, who swung her handbag like a medieval mace, and knocked a hapless youth to his knees.

‘You’re not seeing anyone?’ McColl asked.

‘No one special. I don’t want more reasons to stay here.’

Their mother was drinking cocoa when they got back, and the two of them followed her upstairs, rather than wait for their father. McColl lay awake in the dark, listening for the sound of a key in the lock, remembering all those nights in the past when the sound of a curse or a stumble would tell him how drunk his father was. Tonight, though, the feet on the stairs were steady, and the murmured conversation carried no hint of threat.

How did his father live with himself? How did he, come to that? Selling cars to the rich wouldn’t get him to heaven, and neither, he suspected, would working for Cumming. So far he had thrown one Chinese girl to the German wolves, helped keep Britain’s boot on India’s jugular, and prevented evidence of American atrocities in Mexico from seeing the light of day. All could be justified as preserving the British advantage in competition with the Kaiser’s Germany, an aim which seemed defensible, though some way short of meriting sainthood. But when it came down to it, the only enemies who didn’t leave him feeling conflicted were the Irish extremists and their nasty German friends. If only Colm Hanley hadn’t been one of them.

On Sunday morning he escorted his mother to church, then went to the pub with his father and brother while she stayed home to cook lunch. His father was on his best behaviour, radiating unspoken pride in his two boys. It would have been hard for anyone present to imagine a cross word passing between them, let alone realise that the man’s sons couldn’t wait to get away from him.

While the brothers cleared up after lunch, both parents fell asleep in their armchairs, and eventually McColl found himself standing in the parlour doorway, staring at his mother, and thinking how old she looked. She was pleased to see him, pleased to have Jed back, but there was an underlying sense of resignation that he hadn’t noticed before. Her husband might not beat her anymore – there were no bruises these days, and Jed would probably kill the old man if he did – but over the years he had slowly beaten her down. If Jed left Glasgow, she wouldn’t have much to live for.

As she saw him off at the door, fighting back the tears, McColl felt like a heel, felt like running. He and Jed took the tram to Central, and sat, mostly in silence, with their cups of tea until his train was finally announced. ‘It was easier for you,’ Jed said, as they walked to the ticket barrier. ‘You knew I would still be there.’

An hour later, the train pulled into Ardrossan Harbour station. Boarding was already in progress, but it seemed hours before the ship pulled away from the jetty, and out into the Firth of Clyde. He managed a few hours of fitful sleep, then took to the deck to enjoy the early sunrise, thinking that most of his life these days was spent on boats and trains. When the counter finally opened inside, the bacon rolls proved worth the wait.

It was almost six when the ship entered Belfast Lough, the sunlit green fields sloping up from the southern shore, the scattered white houses of Carrickfergus nestling beneath the hills to the north. Most of the city was still asleep when the ship docked, but a few of the old-style cabbies were waiting with their horses. As he listened to the iron-shod hooves clip-clopping across the cobbles, a heretical thought crept into McColl’s mind, that this mode of transport was something he would miss.

He bought a newspaper from the boy at the station entrance, and glanced at the front page as he waited in line for his Dublin ticket. The writer of the leading article was spitting venom at all those responsible, no matter how obliquely, for the apocalypse known as Home Rule – the reckless Liberal government, their spineless Tory opponents, Redmond and his hated Nationalists, the Pope and all his works. If Ulster had to fight them all, then Ulster damn well would.

Elsewhere, as the adjacent article made clear, blood had already been shed. On the previous morning the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne had been riding through the Bosnian town of Sarajevo with his wife when a lone gunman had shot and killed them both. It was not yet known who the gunman was, or what, if any, his motives had been.