THE FIDDLER STRUCK HIS BOW AND WILD MUSIC FILLED the smoky hall of the Palace of Varieties. It was late into the string of acts. A strongman came and did the things that strongmen always do. A troupe of dancers in kimonos flashed long legs. A comedian told off-colour jokes, a singer sang songs, a clown clowned. The lights grew dimmer, the smoke thicker, the atmosphere bawdier. Couples formed and vanished into dark corners. A sailor was getting his sail polished by a dockhand in the stalls. Furtive men in furtive groups exchanged pamphlets and plotted sedition. Another Friday night on St Patrick’s Quay.
‘I need a man and I’m not fussy!’ Lily said, laughter spilling around her. She was a little drunk. ‘Come dance with me, Annie! Come dance!’
Annie, sober and miserable with it, framed the sad clown on the stage, the spotlight, white make-up, the darkness of the backdrop. The clown foundered in a dark sea. She froze the image, the shutter clicked, if only in her mind. The clown face suspended, still, reminding her unpleasantly of all the corpses she had had to shoot. Memento mori. It was good business, nothing more.
She checked Grandma’s gold watch. It was nearly midnight. She traced the faint outline of Feebes etched on the metal. A relic from another era. What would she call the baby? She thought of Jamie, locked up in the city gaol. How many times had he been there? This time, she thought, he wasn’t coming back.
‘Come on, Annie!’
She let Lily draw her by the hand. The clown mercifully took his bow, giving up in the face of the fiddler and the crowd. The music took over then, and it was anything goes. A drunk bumped into Annie, stared at her in confusion and threw up on her shoes.
‘Get off!’ She shoved him and he went flying, stumbled into a sailor who cursed and swung at him. The drunk fell.
‘Hey, lay off him!’
The drunk had friends. The friends were drunk. Annie could sense where this was going. The sailor stuck up two fingers.
‘Son of a bitch!’
The sailor laughed. The sailor had friends. The friends were drunk. Annie pulled Lily away.
‘It’s going to get—’ she started to say.
Glass broke. The lads in the corner swapping pamphlets about resistance and revolution heard the bottle break too. They looked up from their political discussion. Annie saw them smile. The fallen drunk’s friends went at the sailors. The sailors went at the drunks. The would-be revolutionaries waded in just for the hell of it. Annie pulled Lily along as another bottle whistled overhead, struck the wall and smashed. The fiddler stopped abruptly. No one cared. The air filled with curses, grunts and fists.
Just another Friday night on St Patrick’s Quay.
‘Oh, Annie, you’re no fun anymore!’ Lily said. They staggered out into cold air, the Lee flowing dark and the street lamps stuttering. Annie shivered. She said, ‘I met a man today.’
‘Aren’t you fancy!’ Lily said.
‘He’s rich,’ Annie said.
‘How rich?’ Lily said.
‘He has an automobile.’
‘An automobile!’ Lily said.
‘It’s a Wolseley,’ Annie said.
She thought of the ride with John Savage back from Blarney to Cork. She had no idea motor cars could be so fast! It was terrifying and exhilarating all at once, the open roof and the sheer speed of the thing, going along that narrow road, scaring the birds. She loved it. She vowed then that when she got to America she, too, would have a motor car.
‘Let’s go somewhere else,’ Lily said. She swayed on her feet. ‘Somewhere with music.’
‘I’m going home,’ Annie said.
‘What’s gotten into you, Annie?’ Lily said. ‘Is it about Jamie?’
‘Jamie’s going to hang,’ Annie said flatly.
‘All he did was kill an Englishman,’ Lily said.
‘All he did,’ Annie said, ‘was kill an Englishman and get caught.’
Lily burst into laughter. ‘There’s just no luck to that boy,’ she said. She wove her hand through Annie’s. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I’ll walk you home. You can tell me more about this rich suitor of yours.’
‘He’s not my suitor,’ Annie said. But she thought of John Savage, and the hidden longing she could feel inside him, under that layer of calculated indifference. They were kindred, in a way. He’d driven her back and let her out at the studio. She’d gone in and replaced the equipment she had taken. The Kodak film still had a few pictures left on it. Lady Julia was there, back from the Lord Mayor’s. She chatted to Savage and seemed quite delighted by him. Lady Julia was a snob, in some ways, but she also had her independence. You could be independent when you were rich. Annie wasn’t rich, so Annie’s choice was either marriage or…
She wasn’t sure yet. She didn’t know how to get rich, other than to marry money. It was different in America. There you made your own luck. And everyone drove an automobile, and there was so much food you couldn’t even finish it all.
She walked with Lily, hand in hand. They had known each other since they were children. She came with Lily when a boy knocked her up and she had to do something about it. Annie remembered the hard old woman who opened her door to them in the middle of the night. The dim light of a lamp and candles, the sweat and fear on Lily’s face, the taste of sugared tea the old lady made them. She gave Lily something to make her sleepy. But Lily didn’t sleep. Annie held her hand as the old woman went about the business. Then the blood. There was too much blood. Annie knew something went wrong. She helped Lily back, Lily wracked with fever. She’d recovered, eventually. But she could not have children, Annie knew this much.
‘I love you, Lily,’ she said.
‘I love you too,’ Lily said. They walked arm in arm, up the hill, the sound of their footsteps echoing in the fog.
*
The presiding judge was devoid of mercy. It was in his eyes. His wig sat like a nest of wasps over his head. The court was full, Jamie’s aunt in black as though preparing in advance for the funeral. She had an embroidered handkerchief pressed to her face. Beside her sat Father O’Malley, who wasn’t so bad as far as priests went. He was there to offer comfort and the Lord.
The Lord was not in evidence. Other evidence there was aplenty, presented by the Crown: to wit, a knife, the defendant’s shoes soaked in the victim’s blood, and witness testimonies.
‘I saw him broad as daylight,’ Agnes Pugh, the fishwife, said. ‘I was gutting a flounder when I saw Jamie, I mean, the accused, engage in an argument with Able Seaman Williams, a lovely fellow, he liked my pickled cockles—’
There was a brief wave of laughter in the gallery. Agnes looked confused.
‘You knew them both?’ the King’s Counsel said.
‘I’ve known Jamie since he was a boy,’ Agnes said. ‘And of course, I know all the sailors round these parts, on account of my profession.’
Again, a titter. Annie hid a smile. There were always stories about London Agnes in her youth. She wasn’t from around here. Which was all that needed to be said.
‘Then what happened, please?’ the KC said.
‘I saw Able Seaman Williams fall,’ Agnes said. ‘And heard an impact as a knife fell to the ground. It made a dull sound, like a silenced bell.’
‘This knife?’ the KC said, holding up the evidence.
‘I couldn’t say,’ Agnes said. ‘My eyesight is less keen than it once was.’
‘But you made out the two men plainly,’ the KC said.
‘That I did.’
‘Let it show the weapon was collected from the scene of the crime by the constabulary,’ the KC said. He turned back to Agnes. ‘Please, continue,’ he said.
‘Williams fell,’ Agnes said. ‘Jamie turned and ran. The able seaman had a satchel bag. When Jamie ran he had it in his arms.’
‘You are sure of this?’ the KC said.
‘I am.’
Annie thought. Jamie had no satchel on him when he came to the house. So where was it? And what was inside it worth killing a man?
‘Then what?’ the KC said.
Agnes shrugged.
‘People ran to Williams,’ she said. ‘But Williams was dead. Then the constables came. This is all I know.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Pugh,’ the KC said.
Annie had taken to wearing a looser dress. The pregnancy was new. She didn’t want people to know. Babies changed everything. When they brought out Jamie he was wearing a suit. He looked good in a suit, she thought.
He looked at her. She couldn’t read his eyes at all. Was he sorry? Was he proud of what he’d done? They were meant to have a life together. Now the life they’d made was hers alone. This tiny human growing inside her.
Outside the court, the rain drizzling, Jamie’s aunt came over with Father O’Malley.
‘The poor child,’ Aunt Eithne said. ‘The poor child!’ She dabbed her tears. Father O’Malley patted her back.
‘There, there,’ he said.
There was no sympathy for Annie, she realised. No care as to her position. Aunt Eithne had never approved of the relationship. If she found out about the baby all hell would break loose. She would want it to grow up a Flynn. Well, Annie didn’t know what will happen to the baby, but she wasn’t giving it to Aunt Eithne. She mumbled something about the unbearable tragedy of it all.
‘There, there,’ Father O’Malley said. He patted her back. His hand remained a little too long, stroking. Annie moved away.
Back inside, Jamie’s solicitor offered a final plea for lenience, and the King’s Counsel, all but smirking, spread his arms as if to say, Fate is inevitable. Or so Annie thought, watching it all, and watching Jamie in the dock, and wondering, still; about Able Seaman Williams, and that missing satchel, and what Jamie was doing down in the harbour at that time anyway.
The gavel descended. That gave her a fright. The judge frowned in irritation. He was pastry-flour white under the wig. He tapped the gavel again, as though uncertain of its use.
‘James Patrick Flynn,’ the judge said, ‘you are sentenced to the rope.’ A cry rose in the gallery and the judge tapped the gavel again for silence.
‘And may God have mercy on your soul!’ he said.