Maybe that boiling cauldron is finally ready to overflow. In the December general elections, Sinn Féin candidates won seventy-three of the 105 Irish seats in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom. None of the seventy-three will take their seats at Westminster. In accordance with the manifesto signed by each member of Sinn Féin in 1918, Ireland will form her own government, the first Dáil Éireann.
Mick has been organizing breakouts for political prisoners, smuggling in files to cut through bars, throwing rope ladders over walls, and pretending the spoons in their coat pockets were revolvers to scare off the warders. He couldn’t stop laughing when he described the Mountjoy jail breakout and the fact that they got twenty prisoners instead of three.
“O’Reilly was waiting outside the jail with three bicycles!” he howled. “He came in here shouting that the whole jail was loose.”
Mick broke Eamon de Valera, the newly elected president of the Irish Republic, out of Lincoln Prison in February only to discover de Valera has plans to go to America to raise money and support for Irish independence. No estimates as to how long he’ll be there. I’ve never seen Mick so flabbergasted. He feels abandoned, and I can hardly blame him. The load on his shoulders is enormous. He sleeps even less than I do. He’s ready for all-out war, but de Valera says the public is not.
I’ve had very little time for collecting information. Influenza has broken out all over Europe, and my little corner of Ireland has not been spared. I hardly know what day it is most of the time, and I’ve tried to stay far away from Eoin and Brigid to protect them from the disease that must cling to my skin and clothes. When I’m able to come home at all, I remove my clothes in the barn and have bathed in the lough more times than I can count.
I’ve seen Pierce Sheehan and Martin Carrigan on the lake a time or two when I rowed across to check on the O’Briens. I know they’re bringing guns from Sligo’s docks. Where they go when they leave the lake, I don’t know. If they’ve seen me, they pretend not to; I suppose it’s safer that way, for all of us.
Peader and Polly O’Brien’s grandson, Willie, passed away from influenza last week. He wasn’t much older than Eoin. Eoin will miss the lad. They played together a few times. Peader insisted on spreading the boy’s ashes on the lake. Cremation has become preferable to stop the spread of the disease. Peader’s boat turned up on the Dromahair side of the lake day before last. Eamon Donnelly found it, but sadly, Peader wasn’t in it. He hasn’t come home, and we fear the lough has taken him. Now poor Polly is all alone. Too much sadness all around.
T. S.
8
THE MASK
I would but find what’s there to find,
Love or deceit.
It was the mask engaged your mind,
And after set your heart to beat,
Not what’s behind.
—W. B. Yeats
I wasn’t sure if Thomas sent Brigid or if she’d taken it upon herself, but she’d stomped into my room two days later and declared it time I was up and dressed. “When you didn’t come back from Dublin, I put your things in the chest there. I kept Declan’s belongings.” Her voice caught, and she finished in a rush. “I’m sure you’ll recognize your clothes. It isn’t much. The doctor is seeing patients in Sligo today. He said he’d take you to the shops for the other things you’re in need of.”
I nodded eagerly, climbing gingerly from my bed. I was healing, but it would be a while before I could move without pain.
“You look like a gypsy with that hair,” Brigid snapped, eyeing me. “You’ll need to cut it or pin it up. People will think you’ve escaped from an asylum. But that’s what you want them to think, isn’t it? If people think you’re crazy, you won’t have to explain yourself.”
I tried to smooth my dark curls, embarrassed. I couldn’t imagine myself with the Gibson Girl updo Brigid wore. I didn’t know if it was the fashion of the day, but I wouldn’t be adhering to it. Anne’s hair had been jaw-length in one of her photos, her hair curling softly around her face. I couldn’t imagine myself in that style either. My hair was too curly. With no weight from its length to hold it down, it would be enormous. As for Brigid’s assertion of craziness, it wasn’t a terrible idea. If people thought I was deranged, they would keep their distance.
Brigid continued, muttering bitterly as though I weren’t in the room. “You turn up out of nowhere—with a gunshot wound, no less—wearing men’s clothes, and you expect us to welcome you with open arms.”
“I expected no such thing,” I answered, but she ignored me, unlocking the chest beneath the front window with a small key she withdrew from her apron pocket. She lifted the top and, satisfied that the chest contained the items she remembered, turned to leave the room.
“I think it would be best if you let Eoin be. He doesn’t remember you, and you’ll only upset him with your forgetfulness,” she demanded, tossing the order over her shoulder.
“I can’t do that.” I spoke before I realized the words were even on my tongue.
She spun to look at me, her mouth tight, her hands pressed to the apron she wore. “Ya can. And ya will,” she insisted, so cold and adamant I almost backed down.
“I won’t, Brigid,” I said quietly. “I am going to spend as much time with him as I can. Don’t attempt to keep him away. Don’t do it. I know you love him. But I’m here now. Please don’t try to keep us apart.”
Her face became granite, her eyes glacial, her lips clamped so tight no softness remained.
“You have loved him so well. He is so beautiful, Brigid. Thank you for all you have done. I will never be able to express the depth of my gratitude,” I said, and supplication quivered in my voice. But she turned, seemingly unmoved, and swished from the room.
Her anger was a physical thing, her hurt and resentment as present and real as the wound in my side. I would have to keep reminding myself that her anger, though directed at me, was not my burden.
I padded down the hallway to the bathroom, washed my face, and brushed my teeth and hair before returning to my room and the chest that awaited. I rifled through the contents, eager to be free of the nightgown and to clothe myself and leave the room I’d languished in for ten days.
I stepped into a long dark skirt and tried to fasten it. The waistband was too small, or I was still too swollen. I stepped out of the garment and searched the chest for underthings. The panties I’d been wearing when Thomas pulled me out of the lake were damp from the scrubbing I’d given them the day before in the bathroom sink. The rest of my clothes were folded neatly on the upper shelf of the small wardrobe, the bullet holes expertly mended. I’d considered donning them even before today but knew the oddness of that attire would inspire more scrutiny and encourage questions better left tucked away. I unearthed a thigh-length jacket with a thick band around the waist, a wide collar, and three big buttons marching down the front. A matching ankle-length skirt of the drabbest brown I’d ever seen was beneath it. I found a brown silk hat adorned with a wilted brown ribbon inside a tattered hatbox and guessed the items had all been worn together.
A pair of low-heeled boots, worn in the toes and soles, were wedged beneath the hatbox. I managed to stuff my feet into them, pleased that they fit well enough that I wouldn’t be going barefoot. However, bending to lace them was out of the question. I stepped out of the boots and continued exploring.
I pulled out a contraption that could only be a corset; the boning and ties and hanging buckles had me shuddering in horror and fascination. I slipped it around my midsection, where it sat, gaping like a wide bracelet, its ends not quite touching. At the top it widened slightly, providing a ledge for my breasts to rest on, the crumpled clump of ribbon sitting like a rosebud between them.
The corset hung lower in the front and back and rose slightly on the sides, freeing my hips for movement. Clearly the jangling straps in front and back were designed to attach to long stockings. But what did women wear beneath? The juxtaposition of wearing something as old-fashioned and confining as a corset and simultaneously being naked where it counted most was hilarious to me, and I giggled while trying to force the two silk-covered sides together. Most women in Ireland did not have personal maids—I was convinced of that. So how in the world did they fasten the damned things? I succeeded in connecting the top two hooks beneath my breasts before, breathless and aching, I abandoned the contraption. Corsets and gunshot wounds to the abdomen, however minor, did not mix. I turned back to the chest in hopes of finding something I could actually wear.
A white blouse—wide-collared and long-sleeved, horribly wrinkled, and slightly yellowed in places—fit well enough. The sleeves were a hair too short, but the overall style was forgiving and voluminous, and the three-quarter-length sleeve looked almost deliberate. The brown jacket and skirt fit, but the wool smelled of damp places and mothballs, and the thought of wearing the garment for any length of time was distasteful. I looked like Mary Poppins’s dowdy sister and wondered why the first Anne Gallagher had picked a color that wouldn’t have looked any better on her, considering I was her doppelganger.
I took off the suit and blouse and went on to the next thing.
A white sheath, the neckline square and unadorned except for some bits of lace at the hem and down the center, looked promising. Another piece, embroidered with the same lace, was clearly designed to be worn over the sheath. It had slim elbow-length sleeves and sides that hung open to reveal the dress beneath. A thick sash was banded around the two garments, and I pulled the sheath over my head, donned the thin overdress, and tied the sash loosely around my waist, the bow in back. It needed to be pressed and hung almost to my ankles, but it fit. I stared at my image in the long oval mirror and realized with a start that it was the dress my great-grandmother had worn in the picture with Declan and Thomas. In the photograph, my great-grandmother had worn a round-brimmed white hat wreathed in flowers. The dress was too pretty for everyday wear, but I was relieved to have something I could call my own. I pulled my hair off my face and tried to knot it at my nape.
A soft knock at the door had me abandoning my hair and curling my bare toes nervously against the wood floors.
“Come in,” I called, kicking the corset across the floor. It slid under the bed, a buckle peeping out accusingly.
“You found your things, then,” Thomas said, his mouth soft and his eyes sad.
It felt like yet another lie to admit to a previous ownership, so I drew attention to the wrinkles in the linen. “It needs to be pressed.”
“Yes . . . well, it’s been in that chest a long time,” he said.
I nodded and smoothed it self-consciously.
“Is there anything else in there you can wear?” he asked, his voice pained.
“A few things,” I hedged. I would need to sell my ring and the diamond studs in my ears. I couldn’t get by with the contents of the chest. Thomas clearly agreed.