ANNIE WOKE WITH A CRY OF TERROR, PUSHING BLACK water away from her as she drowned. In her dream she had been a man voyaging across the sea from the Americas to England.
She sat up, clutching at memory to replace dream. She never knew her father. Her grandmother had spent time in London, years earlier, and came back pregnant and with a husband in tow, a Murphy of Kilkenny who may or may not have been the baby’s begetter. It was all rather murky in Grandma Mary’s stories, who had liked to sit up late drinking gin and brandishing a pistol, and whose only gift to Annie before she died was a cheap pocket watch with peeling gold paint around it and the name Feebes engraved, which some English gobshite had swindled her with in exchange for services rendered, she said. The baby she carried in her womb from England, born in Cork, was Annie’s mother, Katherine, who lived just long enough to accumulate a record for vagrancy, loitering and immorality of the usual sort, get knocked up and die giving birth to Annie. As for the Murphy her grandmother married, he took off to fight in the American Civil War when Katherine was seven, and was never heard from again. It was not uncommon for men at the time to go fight in America, reasoning that the experience thus gained could be used for the future fight for the liberation of Ireland from the English. But anyway, this was how Annie found herself at the age of twenty-six, unmarried, pregnant and alone, living in Grandma’s old house and wishing she could get the hell out of Cork.
No wonder she was having nightmares, she thought. She framed the composition: faint light coming in from the high window, illuminating the bed but leaving the rest in darkness, so that it looked as though it were floating in a black sea. Herself: sat up, face illuminated, pale and wet with night sweat. Press the shutter, release and hold.
Gunshots broke the stillness of the night. She tensed, but they were far away, and followed by shouts, and wild laughter, and the sound of glass smashing on the pavement, and running feet. The running came close and then someone rattled the door handle.
‘It’s me! Annie, it’s me! Let me in!’
‘Jesus, Jamie!’
She unlocked the door. He burst in and grabbed her in his arms, laughing, smelling of sweat and smoke and whiskey.
‘Lock it, quick,’ he said. ‘I’ve got the bobbies after me.’
‘When don’t you, Jamie!’ she said. He swirled her round and let her go. She locked the door. ‘What did you do?’ she said.
‘Robbed an Englishman in the harbour, Annie.’
‘Is he dead, Jamie?’
He grinned, looking like a lunatic.
‘Dead enough,’ he said.
‘You goddamned idiot!’
He touched her belly tenderly.
‘It’s for the baby, ain’t it,’ he said.
‘You idiot,’ she said again, affectionately. ‘Be quiet, now,’ she said.
They waited, unmoving now. She heard them come, no longer hurrying. Men with boots that trod the ground. On they came. She willed them to go on and go away.
Their steps slowed. She heard their voices. Cold and low. A truncheon drawn, so softly, like a feather trailing against a wall. She shivered. She felt so full of life. So much damned life inside her. She heard the coppers knock on doors.
‘Hide,’ she said.
Jamie was ahead of her. He went into the cellar. Grandma’s old smugglers’ cove, where Jamie now kept the things he stole down in the harbour. The knock came on her door. She didn’t answer. The knock came louder. Next they’ll break it down, she knew. The constables. She went and opened it.
‘Annie,’ the policeman said.
‘Tom.’
Dark-haired, unsmiling, white as a worm.
‘We know he’s in here,’ he said.
‘What did he do?’ Annie said.
‘Killed a man.’
‘What kind of man?’
Tom shrugged. ‘An English sailor,’ he said.
‘Not much of a crime,’ Annie said. Bolder than she felt.
‘A navy sailor,’ Tom said.
‘Oh.’
‘Yeah. May we come in?’
‘Listen, Tom, you won’t hurt him much, will you?’
He pushed her aside. Went in, his men behind him.
‘Come out, Jamie!’ he said.
‘Screw you, Tom!’
She heard it then. They all heard it. A gun being primed. The old shotgun she kept downstairs.
‘Jamie, don’t do anything stupid!’ Annie screamed.
Tom said, ‘He’s been doing stupid his whole life.’
The constables spread out, against the walls.
‘Please don’t hurt him,’ Annie said.
‘Go outside, Annie,’ Tom said.
‘No.’
‘Get out!’
‘Don’t talk to her like that!’ Then the floor exploded upwards, wood flying as the shotgun blast tore through it.
‘Jesus Christ, Jamie!’ Annie screamed. How drunk was he? she thought. She touched her face. Something wet, and a pain blossomed. A chip of wood cut her, she thought. She put her hands on her belly.
‘I’ll be outside,’ she said.
She stood shivering under the stars, the neighbours’ windows with the blinds twitching. Charlie-Next-Door and his drunken mum. She wanted to shout abuse at them all. She didn’t. She could hear the constables moving inside. Heard the shotgun go off again, then a crash, then Jamie’s scream.
He screamed for a while. Then he stopped. She waited in the cold. When the door reopened the men came out. They dragged Jamie behind them. Their truncheons were slick with blood.
‘Oh, Tom,’ Annie said.
‘Sorry, Annie. Had to hurt him some.’
‘I can see that.’
‘Have a good night.’
‘You too, Tom.’
They pulled Jamie along. His eyes were too swollen to see much.
‘Jamie,’ Annie said. ‘Jamie!’
There was no response. They put him on the back of a cart tied to a pony. The pony shat on the road. Annie said, ‘Aren’t you going to clean this up?’
‘Not tonight, love,’ one of the constables said. Then they left, going downhill with their prize.
*
She made a half-hearted effort to tidy up but it was useless. She brewed a pot of tea and sat up in the kitchen and leafed through old White Star Line brochures. Sleek steamers floated in pale blue seas, a glorious sun behind them. Swift to the goal! the adverts said. Just buy a ticket, board the ship. These monsters of the sea: double and triple-screw, Teutonic, Britannic, Majestic, docking at these grey shores and sailing to Shanghai, Hong Kong, the Azores, Boston and New York! Every day people boarded those ships in Queenstown, sailed across the ocean, landed in a world where everything was possible, everything was new again.
All she needed was the money to go. She tried not to think about Jamie – gorgeous, adorable Jamie with his dark puppy eyes and his ready smile, so hard to resist in the night, whispering promises: how he loved her, how he wanted to marry her, how they would be so happy together, living here in Grandma’s old place. The nights were cold and Jamie was warm, and when he wasn’t there she ached for his touch. But it did not mean she believed a word out of his stupid mouth, for he was just a boy, taking up nationalism less from fervent belief than as a handy excuse to beat people up when they all got together and they all got the chance: a few drinks, a bit of trouble, a lot of good times. Jamie didn’t want to go to New York. What would he do there? he said. This was his home, right here, with her. Her and the baby. The damned baby. She touched her belly. Jamie was going to propose. That’s what he kept saying. Get her married under the eyes of man and God, so that she didn’t end up like those unfortunate girls, as they called them, working on her back in the Monto in Dublin. It was that or the convent, and Annie wasn’t about to end up in either. She supposed she might have married Jamie, if it came to it. But it had seemed like just another one of his dreams, which he wove for her in the night, in the bed, and she knew in her heart of hearts he was sooner or later going to end up dead or in prison. So here she was, her prophecy fulfilled, and she didn’t feel one damn way or the other about it. This was just how it now was.
That was how it was always going to be. A candle burned on the table before her. She framed the image: a lone young woman with a cut on her face, sitting at a wooden table, the light illuminating her within a sea of dark. Press and hold. Were all her photographs going to be like that?
They were, she thought, unless she changed them.
*
‘You’re late,’ Lady Julia said. She wore her habitual black. With her austere white face unlined above it she looked like a widowed china doll.
The shop wasn’t much to look at from the outside. A sign said Montmorency Photographic Studio, Lady Julia Montmorency, Proprietor. Her husband, Sir John, had died in the Belfast dock strike of 1907 – fell off his horse while policing. He’d had a fondness for law, order, the King, booze, cigars and unwed women of a certain age, not necessarily in that order. Wagging tongues said he hadn’t so much fallen off his horse than collapsed on top of one of those unfortunate girls in a kip on Amelia Street, but that was loose gossip for you, it could go anywhere. Lady Julia, bereft of husband, and with a fortune either squandered or never to have existed in the first place, retreated to Cork, where she kept a house, and opened the studio, turning her never quite respectable society hobby into a moderate business. Tongues wagged and people talked, but Lady Julia, whose only companion now was the Lord, was deaf to it, or indifferent. An enlarged photograph of Sir John hung on one wall and looked down on anyone entering the premises.
‘I’m sorry,’ Annie said. ‘It won’t happen again.’
‘See that it doesn’t,’ Lady Julia said. She clasped her hands before her and nodded twice in a rapid fashion. ‘You must go to Blarney,’ she said. ‘You have an engagement at Mahoney’s, while I must tend to portraiture at the Lord Mayor’s. You will take the No. 2 Brownie, stand and flash. Look after them well, for any damages will be docked from your pay. Remember, you represent the studio in all your interactions. Carry yourself with composure and do not embarrass me. Am I clear?’
‘Very,’ Annie said. ‘My lady, how do I get there?’
‘Joe Doyle will take you,’ Lady Julia said. ‘Make sure he does not idle in the village over drink. He is a sensible enough lad when sober, but you couldn’t whip the Irish out of him if you tried.’
Annie bit her lip but refrained from answering. She nodded.
‘Good girl. Now go! The dead wait for no man. Or woman.’
‘Yes, my lady,’ Annie said.
She collected the equipment from the storeroom. For a moment she ran her hand fondly over the older devices: an Abraham bellows camera with glass plates, a Knight Daguerreotype machine, a collection of hand-made tintype cameras of all shapes and sizes that Lady Julia had amassed over the years. Annie liked the tintype machines, which were simple and reliable. But for the clients, newer was always better, and so she collected the Kodak Brownie and carefully wrote it out in the record book. She went out and found Joe Doyle leaning against his horse cart, chewing on a blade of grass.
‘Hey, Annie,’ he said.
‘Hey, Joe.’
‘Heard about Jamie,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’
She smiled and touched him lightly on the shoulder.
‘Thanks, Joe,’ she said.
‘It’s not right, what they did to him,’ Joe said.
‘It’s not.’
‘Still.’ He reflected. His eyes were blue and guileless. ‘I suppose Jamie didn’t make it easy for them.’
‘He did not,’ Annie said. Thinking, he did not make it easy for her, either.
‘Let’s go,’ she said.
‘It’s going to rain,’ Joe said.
‘So?’
He shrugged.
‘Just saying.’
It was like saying the Earth went around the sun, she thought. She thought again of the brochures. Of how they showed her blue skies without a cloud in sight, a hot sun shining down. She thought of beaches and orange groves.
‘Let’s go,’ she said again. She put the equipment in the cart and got on herself.
‘Right you are,’ Joe said.