‘We can be married in the spring,’ I said, ‘if you wanted.’
She raised her eyes from gazing at her lap and gazed at me as if I were for a strange moment just as inanimate as the gloves.
‘I do love you so,’ I said.
Her brow creased in a frown and her mouth tightened as though someone had pulled on a little hidden string somewhere in her cheeks. She didn’t speak for a full minute. It was one of those times when I was entirely relaxed with her. She was there before me, our knees nearly touching, the black mourning cloth of my trousers nearly joining with the dark, rich brocade of her dress, as if our clothing was marrying first. How can I talk about her now without praising her? Something keeps clearing, clarifying, so that I keep arriving at her without judgement as it were, as now, when I think about her there, and see her in my mind’s eye, long ago, when she was young, and her parents had deserted her. And what I see is an essence which is in itself solo and isolated, but still a woman replete, laden with gifts, musical, athletic, clever as a general, and seems to sit before me, even now, when she is gone, gone for ever, as real as though I could reach forward and touch her, so powerful, so completely present, and so lovely.
‘But it’s spring now,’ she said, as if this had been the sum of her difficulty in speaking.
‘It’s early spring,’ I said. ‘We could be married in April.’
I had no idea what she was thinking then. She certainly didn’t say. Had she intended to go back to England and resume her teaching? Or join her brother in his practice in Roscommon?
I suddenly felt this was a hand I could not win. I could see the horses massing at the starting gates, they were under starter’s orders, they were off, and my poor nag was surely that broken-backed creature toiling at the rear, falling away at every stride, the loser not only of the race but of every furlong of it. A pit of misery opened its trap door under me. I knew it, I knew it, I was going to lose her. My confidence ludicrously misplaced. Her vulnerability laughably misdiagnosed.
‘Alright,’ she said.
Like a jolt of electricity.
‘I’m sorry if I seem sad,’ she said, looking at me, smiling, ‘I can’t seem to help it. You’re so kind to me, Jack. And I do love you.’
‘April then,’ I said, laughing.
‘April,’ she said.
‘Marry for love,’ Pappy used to say when we were children, ‘or you’ll live your life on Standalone Point and be buried in Melancholy Lane.’ These were actual places in Sligo, one a sandy spit jutting out onto the sloblands of the Garvoge river, the other somewhere in the eastern end of town.
Chapter Eight
Just as night fell, I had two visitors, an officer and a constable of the transitional police force – so, I suppose, in being between two things, suitable people to appear in the twilight. One was a whiteman, sweating profusely, but a handsome individual all the same, the other one of those very severe-looking, very dark-skinned lads, mostly Nigerians, that dominate the rank and file. Just like in the old days in Ireland, when Eneas would be posted anywhere but his native Sligo, they prefer to have strangers policing strangers, because a local man will have too many ties among his own people.
The ‘new’ police don’t have a particularly good name in Accra, certainly not in Tom Quaye’s reckoning, and indeed he was just leaving as they arrived, and I watched the three of them from the porch window, talking for a few moments on the dry dust of the compound, Tom’s attitude and angle of body speaking eloquently of reluctance and fear.
The black constable at any rate was plain and forthright in his roughness and hostility, and it appeared Tom was now obliged to return to the house in their company, because in he came, quite apologetically, trailing the policemen.
‘These two men are here talking to you, major,’ he said.
‘Well,’ I said.
The white officer strode in just as a visiting friend might, at his ease, master of the moment. He enjoyed the rank of inspector, to judge by his cap insignia.
‘McNulty?’ he said. ‘J. C. McNulty?’
‘That’s right,’ I said.
‘A few questions, if I may,’ he said. I was thinking his accent was Irish, but North of the border, Belfast maybe.
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Will I ask Tom to make some tea for us?’
The inspector didn’t look at his constable but declined for both of them. He waved me into one of my own cane chairs, then seated himself opposite on the chair I usually reserve for my feet. The constable stayed looming where he was, and Tom hovered at the door, hoping for a quick dismissal.
‘So what brings you to see me, inspector?’ I said.
Before the inspector could answer, the constable suddenly spoke very fast and confidently to Tom in what must have been Hausa, not Ewe at any rate. Tom replied with one brief syllable, which might have been yes or no, I couldn’t say.
‘The constable is just establishing that your houseboy was in your company when the fracas occurred,’ said the inspector. He had shaved with perfect meticulousness except for a miniature moustache just under his nostrils where the razor hadn’t been able to reach, due to the overhang of his nose.
‘What fracas?’
‘The fracas which occurred in Osu on Friday night.’
‘I don’t honestly recall any fracas,’ I said.
‘Perhaps you recall that a man, Kofi Genfi, was injured?’
‘No.’ I was genuinely surprised, but at the same time, playing back through my muddled memories of the evening, there did seem to be some mysterious elements floating about, such as me being sat on, or something of the kind. And then there was the equally vague memory of my amorousness.
‘We are questioning everyone who attended, but in particular the group you were in. You caused quite a stir apparently. Are you in the habit of going dancing with your houseboy?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘I was especially hoping you would remember the incident. The people here are not as a rule inclined to be open with us but I thought that as a European you might be more obliging.’
‘I’m afraid the truth is I was very drunk.’
Thus far he didn’t seem to mind any of my answers, one way or another. He remained perfectly affable. A very good policeman I thought. I had no way of knowing what he was thinking.
‘Your full name is John Charles McNulty, is it not? You were in the sappers in the war and subsequently were with the UN here and in Togoland?’
‘Yes. Here in Accra, mostly.’
‘But you were in Togo, were you not, during the time of the plebiscite?’
‘Yes, I was.’
‘And what keeps you here in Accra, Mr McNulty?’
What indeed?
‘I am just – pausing, I think, before I go back to Ireland. I am writing a little,’ I said, regretting saying it, but at the same time unexpectedly proud of my strange activity.
‘Oh?’ he said.
I waved towards the table, and the discarded minute-book, as if that said everything that needed to be said.
‘May I take a look?’ he said. And before I could say yea or nay in any language, he scraped back his chair and went over to the table and took up this book. He opened it and for some reason read aloud the first sentence he saw there, random, and mysterious: ‘When I started to bring her almost weekly to the cinema in Galway I realised the pictures were something of a religion for her – I don’t understand,’ he said.
‘It’s just a sort of memoir, I suppose,’ I said, as embarrassed now as I had been proud. ‘My wife died some years ago. It is a memoir about her, I suppose. Jottings.’
‘Do you think I could take it?’ he said.
‘It’s just a personal, very personal account of things. It has no relevance to anyone except myself, and even then, I am not sure why I am writing it. By the way, I didn’t catch your name.’
He was still scanning through the pages.
‘Is it a diary?’ he said.
‘No, I don?
??t believe so. I didn’t catch your name, inspector.’
He seemed to have become briefly deaf. I devoutly did not wish him to take the book away. I knew if he took it away I would not be able to go on with it, illogical as that was.
But much to my relief he seemed to lose interest in the book, and placed it back down where he had found it, and returned to the chair. Then he sat for a half-minute saying nothing, but looking at me quietly.
‘What was interesting to us when your name came up was not that you were drinking in Osu, or even that Mr Genfi was so badly injured. It was that, when I brought your name to Mr Oko, your landlord, and he spoke of your service in the UN, I contacted them, and was told the reason you were let go.’
He let this sink in a little, and I smiled, not knowing what else to do.
‘Do you want to say anything about that?’ he said.
‘I think there might be a certain confidentiality attached to it,’ I said.
I felt I knew now what was coming. That unpleasantness in Ho was going to haunt me. The Swede, Emmanuel Heyst, and his mad schemes. I had been duped by him, and his promises of easy money. There is no such thing.
‘Oh?’ he said. ‘Gunrunning, wasn’t it? Do you see, Ghana is still a volatile entity as I’m sure you appreciate. Certain aspects of things still festering . . . And we are very interested in the reason you have remained here in Accra, with this implication hanging over you of gunrunning in the past.’ Then he said, in the next breath, as if the two things were connected, ‘You might be amused to know that I served for some years in the Ulster Constabulary. There is a long association between Ireland and the police force here, in one form or another.’
‘Oh?’ I said.
Gunrunning. That word ringing in my ears.
‘Well, what may one say about that?’ he said, smiling.
‘About what?’
‘Your activities.’
‘There were no activities. It was a misunderstanding. There is no record of me gunrunning in Togo or anywhere else. The official in the UN was quite wrong to say so. I was friendly with a man there, a Swede, who did indeed turn out to be supplying guns to rebels, rebels who, I may add, never had occasion to rebel, in the upshot, because the plebiscite was successful. And the Swede, Emmanuel Heyst, as I am sure you know, was arrested and prosecuted.’
‘He was, of course, yes,’ said the inspector. Then he stood up. ‘This visit is by way of warning. Do you understand? I didn’t come through Ireland and Palestine only to be fucked around by the likes of you.’
I could only look at him quizzically, neutrally.
‘If we were to find that you were engaged in a similar activity – and if you are it will come to light, as sure as night follows day – we would bring the full force of the law down on you, and you will be dealt with definitively and thoroughly.’
Now he was not so calm, or calm in a different way, rather austere and proud-looking, like the matador driving in his thin sword.
‘You are not an entirely desirable person here. My advice to you would be to go home as soon as you can. You have absolutely no role to play here in Ghana. If you are up to no good, you will find you have made a terrible mistake in thinking you could get away with it.’
He had made his point, and knew it. I was filled suddenly with foreboding and misery. Not just because of what he had said. Something less concrete, something deep under everything, some alteration in the ground of myself, a little earthquake. Why had I stayed in Accra? Why was I here, with Tom, on the wrong side of the Atlantic Ocean? It was the question I had not been able to answer, and having been asked it again by this policeman, still could find no answer, for him or for me.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘Good evening.’
I nodded to him, not able to find a decent response. The constable, who of course had not said a word to me throughout but had stood there looking as fierce as a Malay god, followed his inspector out into the full darkness of the night.
I just sat there for a while, and Tom stayed where he was too.
‘Policemen are not good people,’ he said then.
‘What happened to Genfi,’ I said, ‘this Kofi Genfi?’
‘You kissed his woman and you had a fight and then he sat on you and then someone pulled him off because he was wanting to kill you and then he went out to kill his woman and her brother stopped him with a great blow and he is in the hospital.’
‘This is why I swore off drinking, this is why I will never drink again.’
‘It was these policemen killed my friends during the veterans’ march. Arrested us, and tortured us. They say it is a different force but they are the same.’
‘Never, never again, so help me God.’
‘Amen,’ said Tom.
Chapter Nine
1926. Our marriage. On the one side of the church, the rather elegant and choice individuals who had travelled to see Mai wed, her aunt Maria Sheridan from Cavan, the one with the connection to Collins, encased in a brocaded day dress, giving her a slightly ironclad look, but very smart. Mai’s other aunts from Roscommon, Cavan and Leitrim, glinting in the holy gloom of the chapel, with small dots of gold and ruby light playing on old rings and necklaces and bracelets. And chief before all, her resplendent brother, Jack, the doctor from Roscommon, lofty, silk-hatted, confident, and silent. He was a man Mai adored, and he was said to adore her, even if he was a rare visitor, being devoted to fishing the rivers of Roscommon, and shooting at the wildlife there. He was six foot six in his stockings, I knew, and in every way he was as impressive to me as her father had been, and I prayed he would approve of me.
All of these souls sitting on their side with the easy, rather solemn, occupying air that in other circumstances would have put me in suspicion that they were actually Protestants.
On the other side, my side, my very dapper brother Tom, in his best suit, tailored by my father of course, and no tailor in Dublin could have made a better one, even if it was a few years out of date, strictly speaking, but, if he looked provincial, nevertheless it was provincial with a touch of pleasing swagger about it. Then there was my father, Old Tom, who had decided to retrieve a straw boater from some dark corner of his bedroom. And he had fashioned for himself a set of tails and black trousers, to some degree let down by an old grey coat, an item he never attempted as a tailor, and so was shop-bought. He sat very still on the pew, with his eyes closed, so that he looked like one of those old photographs of executed train robbers in America, put out somewhere as a warning to the frontier populace.
Beside him sat my mother and something in the day had undone her intentions somewhat because it is probably true to say that her attire was not quite right. She wore her old cloth hat and her plain, black, severe little dress that, unlike Maria Sheridan’s, which was also severe, had not cost too much in the first place, because my mother didn’t care about such things.
Mai herself, then, coming in on the arm of Nicholas Sheridan, Maria’s husband, in her wedding dress, a long brushmark of silk.
Now I was beside Mai, staring forward at the priest. He spoke the question to me, and I answered him, ‘I do,’ he fixing me with his eyes, keeping my eyes on his with a fierce effort, as if for a crazy moment I were marrying him, and then he put the same question to Mai, and there was a silence, that begged to be filled with her voice, with her assenting, and yet there was nothing, I hardly dared look sideways at her, now I was getting a little angry, angry at this bloody silence, you wouldn’t treat a dog like that, a man in a wedding suit tailored by his own father, with a fine little buttonhole, my mother’s face now in the furthest reach of my sight whitened by fright, as perhaps my own was – ‘I do,’ she said.
We signed the Register of Marriages in the porch of the church, a huddle of varied souls, my mother, elated, on the edge of dancing, you might think, my father smiling and innocently pleased, the boater knocked back on his head. He shook Mai’s hand with fervour after she signed her name beside my own in the old book, and she kissed
him on the cheek, leaning down to him a little. Then she kissed my mother and her own many aunts and cousins. Then her brother shook my hand and I thanked him for his kind offices of the day. There was a moment of peace. All was right, everything in its place, a consummation so far of my life, the logical and just outcome of my love for Mai. It was Nicholas who had paid for the little reception in the Great Southern Hotel, and it was my mother had put together the stupendous cake. It was Tom who had bought the train tickets to Dublin and arranged the few nights in Barry’s Hotel. The priest, having finished his performance, had all the ease of the actor released from his work. The rainy light, shouldering into the porch from the great door, seemed the light of goodness and promise.
Mai was gone so quickly that when I went out into the narrow street there was no sign of her. But down beside the old church was her veil, like a spider’s web cleaned out of God’s mansion, that gave all the signs of having been wrenched from her head and discarded. It was pelting with rain and I had no coat, but I thought if I made a dash along Buttermilk Walk I might catch her. As I rounded the corner into St Augustine Street, a little girl was standing there, looking at the palm of her hand, where I could see a gold band, Mai’s wedding ring. Fifty yards along was Mai, a white ghost in the sheeting rain, hurrying away towards the river.
In the distance the rain was dropping in dozens of huge, grey curtains, frittered and torn, across the vista of small houses. Although it was early afternoon, there was a darkness everywhere caused by the very solidity of the countless raindrops. In the midst of this, like a pulsing white heart, was Mai’s diminishing figure.
She will be crossing Wolfe Tone Bridge in a second, I thought. Then she would be scudding along the edge of the Claddagh. Where was she going? What was she thinking of? I crossed the bridge in her wake, I skirted along the Claddagh, keeping her within view. The spring tide had risen and the sea wind was noisily throwing the tide at the dry-harbours and sea-walls, so that spouts of water were pirouetting and twisting into the air, drenching anyone who passed. Now I reached the Grattan Road, where the violent-looking sea crowded the bay, it looked like.