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The trouble with hope is that it is almost impossible to ignore, and even harder to resist. I carried the canvas bag into the gaol with my head high; believing the pit of hell had miraculously improved in my absence.
Much to my consternation, it had not.
The moulding brick still caused the morning sunlight to rot. Acidic stenches of guilt and urine stained every inch of air; blistering with toxication the further one dared. A different constable had been stationed behind the front desk, but he was just as young and insolent as the other. I gared, grinding my hands together, as the bag’s contents were poured onto the counter, scrutinised, and shoved back into the sack with neither care nor concern. Freshly pressed shirts were subsequently stained and wrinkled. A pair of grey trousers gathered strange creases. Keane had rightly believed the open razor to be forbidden, but soap and a comb were highly encouraged. The only other article that seemed fit to question was an old set of brown braces and several packages of branded cigarettes. However, following a long and heated discussion, these too were stuffed atop the rest.
“A constable will take these to the professor. You can wait in one of those chairs until the review is over.” I slunk solemnly to the furthest corner; exhausted and utterly alone.
Though I did not feel lonely.
The confidence to which I was accustomed still remained, though at a lesser vigour than before. Fingal had been called back to London briefly by an emergency, leaving me the sole stone upon which the course of hope relied. I did not find myself fearful of the review, but nor was I brave in spite of it. Cowardice bowed beneath bravery, though not stupidity. I tolerated the idiots buzzing before me, but I did not ignore their annoyances. It was through only a hundred painful contradictions that I stayed in the cramped, wooden chair, and through a thousand more I did not leap to my feet the moment Sergeant Crowley appeared.
Between his carefully diverted eyes and hesitant syllables, I was not fooled.
––––––––
FROM SUSPICION TO POSSIBILITY, the rules of the deadly game had changed. I was no longer permitted to visit Keane in the privacy of his own cell. Instead, I was positioned on one side of a wooden table with a guard glowering from the corner. We were no longer to plot fanciful escapes behind bars, but to be observed as freak oddities not to be trusted by our own words.
Though that was not the worst of it.
The man yanked through the door was hardly a man at all, but a haggard finger enshrouded within collapsing layers of tweed and cotton. Beneath the cold, yellow light of a single bulb, Keane’s face was ashen—near grey—and carved with agony and exhaustion. The lack of shaving, and that alone, was able to lessen the hollows of his cheeks.
A constable shoved Keane forward again. His foot caught on one of the chair’s legs and sent his fading body crumbling to the floor. I jumped instinctively to my feet, to be pushed backwards by a callous and merciless claw.
“Sit down. No physical contact.” I did as I was told; silently berating myself for my inability to do more than wait for Keane to find his seat. Two, rawboned hands appeared on the edge of the table.
I mirrored the action.
“Hello, Keane.”
“Lawrence.” Christ, his voice sounded absolutely lifeless; entirely bereft of energy and hope. The cornerstone for all I had become shattered before me as deep lacerations ripped through the bravery of a man who knew no fear.
I glared at the vast canyon between our fingers.
So often physical touch was secondary to the intimacy of carefully toned minds. However, as that too faded into a whirlwind of uncertainty, I was abruptly reliant on the very niceties we had constantly neglected and despised.
“How are you?”
“As well as can be expected. And yourself?”
“Well enough.” Keane’s right hand slid forward a few inches; stopping only a splinter from my forefinger. “Mrs. McCarthy, then. How is she?” I shrugged.
“She is as she has always been. Bloody dangerous.” A rough chuckle instantly solidified the connection of our minds. I had forgotten how good it was to hear him laugh. True laughter. Almost boyish in sound, though having given way to the deeper tones of age and dryness of cigarettes. It wasn’t raspy, but it was quiet. And clean. A baptism of familiarity.
It was worth not revealing the pig-headedness of the grocer, who refused to sell decent produce to “lowlife, Soviet bastards”.
Keane leaned forward slightly until the crinkles at his eyes were deeply accentuated.
“And Fingal? He isn’t giving you trouble, is he?”
“A little, perhaps, but I find most Irishmen share that trait.” I chanced the dimmest hint of a smile, but rather tha return the action, my companion slumped over with his arms wrenched around his stomach. Despite the guard’s bullied orders, my hand was nearly on his heaving shoulder when Keane’s guttural groans abruptly ceased and the sickening sheen of sweat was hastily wiped from his forehead. The cigarettes beneath his eyes swelled into caverns dark and endless.
“Cigarettes.” He choked. “Did you...” My hand dove into my jacket and slid a fresh package across the splintering tabletop. The box was hungrily snatched by his hands.
My stomach dropped.
His hands.
I had marvelled through the past decade or so at the grace of his skilled fingers.
Elegant fingers.
Moving without so much as a single breath of hesitation.
The very same fingers that trembled from the end of each digit all the way down to his wrist; slipping fruitlessly against the cellophane sealing. I waited patiently as he all but tore the cigarette package in half before he was at last able to shakily place a cylinder of paper-rolled tobacco between his quivering lips. However, I drew the line at handing him the matches from my trouser pocket. Holding the shuddering flame a few inches from his face, Keane bent toward my hand; his unsteady hand cured near mine to hold the match just so. Soon he was sitting back rigidly in his chair. A skeleton without life or memory.
Though the cigarette did appear familiar to him.
I wrenched my head toward the officer still lurking in the corner.
“Is there any chance of a glass of water?” Oh, the irony of indecisiveness. For half an eternity, I expected nothing less than a sharp bark forbidding so much as a sip of the life-granting luxury. But a nod was eventually given, followed by the rattle of polished keys and deafening clang of the metal door as it was again shut tight against the world.
Before I could tear my eyes from the painted hatch, a quaking hand had dove across the table and slipped firmly around my palm.
“Hello, Lawrence.”
There it was.
There was his voice.
Keane’s voice.
Not the grim replication of a fine portrait, but the painting itself. Bits of the flaking darkness had been chipped away from his face, but the rot of reality still remained.
I pressed our hands into the table.
“Tell me honestly, or I swear I will dismember your organs: have they beaten you again?” The bruising on his face had settled. Faded even.
But they were far from forgotten.
“On the contrary, the young officers have learned to keep their fists at bay.” Keane grimaced and pressed a hand firmly into his side. “No, what you see before you is a digestive system revolting against His Majesty’s caterers.”
“Is that all?” A grey eyebrow arched slightly.
“Lawrence, I may be incarcerated, but I have not fallen so low as to perrish of a few bruises. Now, what about you? Have you found the young boy yet?” I shook my head and started my companion another cigarette. “What about the woman?”
“I have sent letters to as many of your acquaintances as I did friends. Some were possibly little more than highly regarded strangers.” A few being far less reliable than I would have dared believe, but, if there was even the slightest thread of hope woven within a poorly formatted lie—
Keane’s fingers tightened painfully around mine.
“And what have you learned? Information, Lawrence.”
“Nothing.” My companion’s hand disappeared to stab a mound of burning tobacco into a standard, industrial ashtray. I hastened further. “But that doesn’t mean the information doesn’t exist, only that we have yet to find it. Collecting such data does take time—”
“Of which I am limited.” Keane interrupted. “The list of witnesses was brought forth today. No fewer than five, Lawrence. Five people swore to have spotted that boy on his way or entering the cottage. Five. No doubt they have already been informed of the trial date.”
“Which is?”
“Of no consequence.” My companion’s outline was momentarily blurred through the tobacco haze. “I do wonder if it wouldn’t be better to send you to Bridget’s until the entire escapade is over.”
“Send me away? I’m not a bloody parcel.”
“Of course not.”
“Then I shall stay.” I reached for the cigarette carton to hand Keane another and, with some consideration, took one for myself as well. “Besides, there are still a few existing obligations. The Society, for one.”
“Ah, yes. The Society.”
“You can hardly abandon them, can you?”
“Can’t I?” A wisp of smoke curled dizzily from Keane’s mouth. “You hated them for several years. Still do, from time to time.”
“Keane, you yourself said they were. . .were. . .what was that phrase you used?”
“Duine d'amaidí an Diabhail iad.”
“Yes, that. I don’t even know what that means, and frankly, I don’t think I want to.” Another stream of steady smoke spun up toward the ceiling.
“You should learn Gaeilge, Lawrence. You would like it; all full of bluster. No, I’m not making fun. Give me some credit. I am only trying to say the Emerald Isle suits you. As for The Society,” Keane’s cigarette went out, and he waited patiently for me to start another. “As for The Society, you will be proud to know you were right in your judgements.”
“I was?” This from the same man who frequently stood by the opinion hatred was created by foolishness; energy wasted on people who were, quite frankly, not worth the effort.
Keane began to search through his pockets, with the cigarette rakishly balanced between his lips. The unusual gesture might have been ornemental—even artistic—had the process not been prolonged by the continuous trembling of his fingers.
The paper he slid across the table was of a similar, sorry state.
“Burke brought it personally just before the review. He did try to explain. There had been an emergency meeting, and Burke did what he could; however—perhaps you should read it for yourself.”
So I did.
I read it.
Then I reread it.
Then a third time if only to allow the blood rushing through my ears to settle into a mild explosion.
“The Society has terminated your membership?”
“Our membership, Lawrence. I am sorry to say you were unfairly included in the vote.” The vote. Of course the democracy-abiding hyenas would have a vote. Quite an exciting one too, it seemed. All but two in favour.
I brushed a spot of ash from my sleeve.
“The termination is only temporary, right?”
“‘Until further notice’ hardly sounds temporary.”
“But they can’t keep you out forever, can they?”
“Lawrence, if I am not found innocent at the trial, The Society will revoke my membership indefinitely.” And with the last, harrowing thought, a glass of water was slammed between us.