Those years culminated in the period of the Sinn Fein ‘troubles’; by the time she made her first stage appearance the treaty with England had been signed and the Free State, precariously born, was already fighting for its life against the Republican Army. At the height of the fratricide Rory O’Connor and his men were shelled in the Four Courts (within a few streets of the Abbey Theatre), and many a night the city echoed to sporadic roof-top shooting. One of the lively areas was the neighbourhood of the Portobello Bridge, which lay on a direct route between the theatre and the southern suburb of Terenure, where Carey lived with her stepfather. Several times, along with other passengers, she flattened herself on the floor of a tram as it crossed the bridge during a fusillade, and whenever she could arrange it she drove home with an actress friend named Ursula, who had a very ancient car; they could then make long detours through safer districts. Sometimes, also, if there were shooting near the theatre, she would spend the night with another friend named Mona who lived in an apartment approachable by a sheltered route from the stage-door itself. Since the Terenure house had no telephone, her stepfather could not be notified, but she had always urged him not to worry or stay up for her return.
Often, though, when she got home late at night she found him still hard at work in the room which he called his study. He was learning Gaelic as an apt expression of his enthusiasm for the new Ireland, and perhaps as an aid to promotion in his job—he was an official in the Tax Department of the Dublin City Corporation. “How was it out tonight?” he would ask, as about the weather.
“Ursula heard there was something going on in Rathmines, so we drove around by Donnybrook. It wasn’t so bad that way.”
“Ah, I THOUGHT I heard something—I wouldn’t have been surprised if you’d stayed all night with Mona again… Rathmines, eh? Well, well, that’s getting pretty close.” His casualness was part of an English manner that many years in Ireland had not effaced and which, combined with short stature and a strutting walk, gave him an appearance which to Irish eyes was sometimes a little ridiculous. But he was a kindly man. “You know, Carey, you can always give it up if the journeys make you nervous.”
“Oh, but I love the work—I wouldn’t know what to do with my life if I didn’t have it to think about.”
“Well, well, so long as it doesn’t get you down. These are certainly great days in the history of our country. And of course there’s not much real danger—to you girls, I mean.”
“Oh no.” Which was true—statistically. “It’s fun, in a way.”
But this was not quite so true, for after the strain of a theatre performance all one wanted to do was to go home quickly and get to bed; the effort to find a quiet route and the perhaps ten-thousand-to-one chance of stopping a stray bullet added no pleasurable thrills. “At least I’m getting to know much more about Dublin, finding all these different ways home.” It was a cheerful way to look at it, and the colourful topography of Dublin and suburbs—such names as Crumlin, Dolphin’s Barn, Harold’s Cross, Beggarsbush, Drumnagh, Rathfarnham—became the symbols of her almost nightly ordeals.
One rainy morning about two o’clock, as she and Ursula detoured through Ballsbridge, a man, hatless and trench-coated and pointing a gun, stepped into the dark street in front of the car. When Ursula braked hard, he jumped into the back seat and gave curt orders. “Drive through Palmerston Park and towards Dundrum. Not too fast but don’t slow down. Keep in the middle of the road. I’ll tell you when to stop. And for your own sakes, no tricks.”
Ursula panicked into silence, concentrated on the driving, but Carey was panicked into just the opposite. She began chattering and giggling for a reason she could not at first discover, but soon her nerves propelled her more and more surely into a pattern of behaviour; she felt the kind of unspeakable terror she sometimes felt on the stage, but which she could always with an effort control, and which sometimes seemed to help rather than hinder her performance; and this too, she decided, must be a performance. So she fell into a rather broad and bawdy impersonation of a girl who had had too many drinks and was not particularly distressed at being kidnapped in the middle of the night by a forceful and handsome male. The man made no response. After a few miles there was a stretch of lonely country, and here he gave the order to stop; he then changed places with Ursula and took the wheel. Carey, sitting now beside him, kept her eyes on his stern profile and prayed that somehow, during the short interval of the drive to wherever they were bound for, she could talk herself and Ursula out of being raped, or even into being raped as a substitute for being murdered; maybe if she played up to him with all she had she could win him over. So she played. Actually the man was an exceptionally high-minded member of the Republican Army, burning with political zeal and puritanical to the point of primness. He had never even had a woman, much less raped one, and his only murders had been cold-blooded ones of men; on this occasion all he wanted was the car. Amidst empty moorland, where the climb began towards the Sally Gap, he brusquely ordered the two girls into the road, gave them a receipt for the commandeered vehicle (correct I.R.A. procedure), and drove off with scarcely concealed contempt for a couple of prostitutes.
Carey, indeed, had proved herself an effective actress, but her judgment had not been shrewd in her choice of the play. It was a combination that was to happen again in her life. The more immediate result, however, was a near collapse from the strain of the whole incident, for the two girls had to walk miles in the rain before they were picked up; they both caught bad chills. Furthermore, the theft of the car meant that from then on the problem of getting home from the theatre would be much more burdensome. “It’s Ursula I’m really sorry for,” Carey told her stepfather. “The car wasn’t insured and she hadn’t finished paying for it.”
“She should keep the receipt,” he answered judicially. “A truly independent Ireland has a responsibility in all such cases—I’m sure eventually it will realize that.”
During her next non-acting spell Carey visited her great-uncle in Kingstown. He had been her childhood hero, and as he lived in a district where there had never been any ‘trouble’ she could expect to relax more easily than at home. Captain Halloran (retired from the British Navy after a somewhat eccentric career) lived in a hillside house overlooking the harbour; he was seventy-odd, keen-eyed, loganberry red in countenance, with endearing qualities; he liked youngsters and animals, gave generously to the undeserving, and was a cheerful loser at Leopardstown races. Comfortably off, he kept a couple of horses which he galloped over the local countryside, or else hitched to a variety of two-wheeled vehicles that might well have been in a museum. Carey was driving one of these things on an August afternoon when she met Paul Saffron.
* * * * *
Paul was then twenty-nine, attractive in a slightly mannered way that sometimes suggested the feminine but never the effeminate; a little plump, with wavy black hair, intense blue-grey eyes, and a long strong nose, he was striking enough to be noticed in a crowd, and much more so on a quiet Irish road. Carey stared at him from some way off, and with growing apprehension, for he was hatless and wore a raincoat whose pockets bulged.
In truth the bulge on one side was from cigars, the other was from a rather conspicuous copy of the New York Times. The reason for this was that he wanted to be taken for an American before anyone could shoot him, and the reason he thought such a thing possible was that, being the kind of journalist as well as the kind of person he was, he thought anything possible. He had, in fact, just lately stepped down the gangway on to Irish soil with an almost conditioned reflex of naďveté, for he knew his job was to write something about Ireland that would be readable by those who were not really interested in Ireland at all. Somewhat to his carefully nurtured surprise there had been no ambush on the pier as the boat from Holyhead put in, so he had ignored the waiting train to Dublin and strolled inland through the first Irish streets he came to. It was often his luck to find things to write about thus casually—a dog or a child or a shop window or
anything that met his eye. (One of his most successful pieces had been about a cat playing with a skein of wool in the ruins of an earthquake.) This time it was a girl, a girl driving a horse and some sort of a buggy along the road towards him, and he first noticed her because she was sitting on one leg in a way that looked uncomfortable. Now why? Or WAS it uncomfortable? Good enough for a start… Then he glanced at her face, which did not seem to him beautiful so much as appealing and piquant; it had a look that somehow complemented the question-mark of the posture. Maybe a talk with such a chance-met native would save him the effort of walking further, for he disliked walking; so he stepped to the middle of the road in front of the cantering horse.
“Well?” she said, before he could speak a word, and he caught then a quality in her voice that stirred him far more than anything in her looks. He did not guess that it was fear, and that she had not yet noticed his Times.
“Can you tell me where this road leads to?” he asked.
“Just up in the hills.”
“Ah, then I’ve lost my way. Are you driving into town? Could you give me a lift back?”
“Sure. Jump up.”
She had been too scared not to invite him, and he took her readiness for affability. This made him pleased with her, for he liked people to like him, and when he thought they specially did so he paid them the supreme compliment of talking about himself. He did this then, as they clop-clopped through the peaceful downhill streets; he told her who he was, of his recent arrival in Ireland, his mission to report on that disturbed country for an American magazine, his real ambition, which was quite different, and the extreme likelihood that he would one day be famous. He talked to her, indeed, as he could always do to anyone (whether celebrity or bell-hop) when he felt in the mood or thought it worth while—as if he had known and would continue to know them all his life, and as if neither his nor theirs could possibly have been complete before the meeting. It was a technique that had won him both friends and enemies, and would have perhaps worked out all right on balance if he had ever felt a need to discover who were which.
Carey, on her part, was warming to the relief of finding him not another gunman, and the warmth put her at odds with herself for having been so mistaken. She listened to his chatter in a daze, unwilling to try her voice lest there might still be too much tremor in it. By the time they reached the centre of the town she had said scarcely a word, and was already chagrined to find him so content with her silence. The looks she gave him were increasingly quizzical. “Well, here we are,” she said at length, pulling up at a corner.
“Already? This is as far as you go? Well, thanks. Very good of you. Can I get a street car from here into Dublin?”
STREET CAR? “Oh yes, of course. They stop over there.” She pointed.
“Much obliged for the lift,” he said, climbing down with caution. She noticed he was not very agile. “It’s a hot day,” he added, mopping his forehead. “How about having a cup of tea somewhere?”
“And what would I do with the horse?” She half smiled, not so much to him as to herself about him. Maybe he thought a two-year-old would wait at the kerb like a car—a city fellow, evidently (she was wrong about that, for he came from Iowa, but she was basically right, since he had always been peculiarly inept at country ways). Paul Saffron. He had told her his name but had shown no curiosity about hers, and that too had rankled, giving her a sudden defensive pride in being Irish, and in the duality of Irish life that made nobody either countrified or citified to an absurd extent.
He was still mopping his forehead. “I wonder, then, is there a place I could get some ice-cold beer?”
“Ice in Dunleary in the month of August?” She shook her head at a rueful angle… PAUL SAFFRON. “And besides, the pubs aren’t open yet.”
“I see. Like the English. I thought you were free of them now.”
“Sure, but they had us so long we learned all their bad habits.”
He grinned. (More for his article. Irish counterpart of the New York taxi-driver—never at a loss for an answer.) “You said some name just then that I didn’t quite catch?”
“Dunleary? It’s the new name for Kingstown. Or rather the old name before our oppressors changed it. So we changed it back. It’s spelt Dun Laoghaire… And Dublin is Baile Atha Cleath.”
“Tell me that again. How must I say it?”
“Better not say it at all, or nobody’ll know what you’re talking about. It’s a craze they have these days for turning everything into Gaelic. Dublin’s still good enough for most people.” She gave ‘Dublin’ this time the caressing, almost Brooklynese vowels of the patois.
He looked as if the whole subject of place names and pronunciations were infinitely beyond his comprehension, for he had heard again that peculiar note in her voice that set him listening without taking in the words. It made him, from the sidewalk, give her a slow upward scrutiny and then put the question that had been in his mind from the first. “What’s the matter with your leg?” For she was still sitting on it.
“‘Tis broke,” she answered.
Her voice was so much in his ears that he didn’t immediately show that he caught the joke; and this, it seemed, was an extra joke at his expense, for after a few full seconds of relish she drove off laughing.
* * * * *
When she got back to the house on the hill, she could not stop thinking about the American, for he had told her, amongst so much else, that though his current task was journalism, he had directed plays in New York and the real love of his life was the theatre. Which would have been a natural cue for her to tell him about herself, but she had failed to do so, partly because she was still recovering from the initial shock of the meeting, but chiefly because his complete absorption in his own affairs had teased her to a more and more deliberate concealment of hers. She would not disclose anything that would interest him so much. Or would it? As soon as the doubt prevailed she wished she had told him. Fortunately, it would be easy to let him know, since there were only three Dublin hotels at which he would be likely to stay.
Neither could Paul, on the tram, stop thinking of her, and for a reason that flattered them both: he had already diagnosed what he called a histrionic personality. Not, of course, that it was specially rare; many types in all walks of life were apt to be so equipped (auctioneers, athletes, and the clergy, for instance); besides which, one often met the unlikeliest people who made their personal or professional world a stage and their own lives a continuous play. To be an actor, a real actor, much more was needed than any kind of personality; nevertheless, to have the right kind was a good start.
By midnight of that August evening he was already blaming himself for the incredible stupidity of not having enquired even the girl’s name—how on earth could he trace her, even if he should want to? For it might well become a whim to do so, as casual as her own voice answering him about her leg. “‘Tis broke.” It was the way he would have liked her to say it if it had been a line in a play.
By that same late evening Carey was writing three identical notes addressed to Mr. Paul Saffron at the Gresham, the Shelbourne, and the Hibernian hotels. She wrote that since he had stressed so much his interest in the theatre, doubtless he would like to visit the famous one in Dublin, so she would leave a couple of tickets for next week’s opening night for him to pick up at the box office in Middle Abbey Street. She signed herself ‘Carey Arundel’, but she still left it to him to discover, if and when he cared to, WHAT she was.
* * * * *
He was not, as it happened, staying at any of the three hotels, but at a private house called Venton League, the home of a rich brewer whom he had met at a party in London, and who had promptly extended the invitation on learning of his Irish visit. Brewing, one of the more historic trades, has almost escaped the stigma of being a trade at all, and its distinguished dynasties rank high and are considerably international; Michael Rowden, in his late fifties, was a fine fleur of the culture, a Rothschild of his line, with family
connections well scattered across England, Europe, and America, and financial interlockings from Milwaukee to Dortmund. Had he been a younger son he might have made an excellent diplomat, bishop, or even cardinal (for he was both a Catholic and a bachelor); as it was, he sold beer (with an inverted snobbery that made him thus describe his business), drank wine, collected French impressionist paintings, and found ample time to cultivate the habits of a gentleman-savant. Temperament and wealth insulated him from most of the troubles of life, even from the Irish ‘troubles’, for neither side wished to drive into exile a man so eminently taxable. The hotheads had once put Venton League on their list of large houses to be burned, but Rowden had let it be known that he didn’t much care; its destruction would spare him the eventual problem of whether to demolish it for villa development or bequeath it to Holy Church for some institutional use. And there really was a sense in which he did not care; he would be quite happy, if he had to be, in London or Palm Beach or Capri. Yet Venton League did, for all that, give him a special sort of satisfaction; it was the house of his ancestors, as far back as four generations, and family pride, well tempered with cynicism about it, was strong in him. Moreover, since this was Dublin and not any other place in the world, there was a uniqueness in the kind of life he could live there—an eighteenth-century quality marvellously and miraculously preserved into the fabric of the twentieth. Leisurely elegance, half urban and half arcadian, part scholarly, part merely sophisticated, gave a ripeness even to anachronism; the kitchens were monstrous and old-fashioned, yet the bathrooms combined the luxuries of ancient Rome and modern America; the library windows offered a view of formal gardens backgrounded by green mountains, yet at the end of the half-mile carriage drive, and just outside the lodge gates, the threepenny tram started for the Pillar in O’Connell Street. All this suited him and immensely intrigued his constant succession of house guests. For as a suave Maecenas to young men of promise he performed a function all the more admirable because he took so much pleasure in it; at Venton League there was always apt to be some visiting painter, writer, musician, or even tennis champion, and the language at dinner was almost as often French or Italian as English. Rowden had not needed much acquaintance with Paul at that London party to decide that he would make an apt recruit, both culturally and racially, to the Venton League ménage—a young American with literary and theatrical connections… good… he could stay as long as he liked.