To Kingdom Come

22

The next day was a busy one for me. While Maire was out shopping, I had primers to buy, glycerin to obtain, and satchels to purchase. My first stop was an industrial supply company where I obtained thirty fuse caps, a large spool of wire, and numerous other articles necessary for the infernal device-building process. Their purchase required identification, and I was glad of the false papers and business cards they had provided me in Liverpool. Afterward, I had everything sent to the Gare du Nord.

There was a chemical supply store in the rue de la Grande Armee, where I explained that I needed supplies for my company, and there was no better place to get them than Paris. I flashed my business cards and talked explosives with the clerk, whose entire life, both waking and sleeping, seemed devoted to the art of destruction. I was able to procure gallons of glycerin, some fulminate of mercury for the detonation process, and all the other chemicals necessary for the making of infernal devices.

So now I was to build bombs for the Irish Republican Brotherhood, though they were not to be functioning ones. Barker and I had discussed it. Since Niall Garrity was the only one who knew how to build bombs and he would be in Dublin, we could build inert devices, though all the parts would be there.

“Transportez le paquet a la Gare du Nord, s’il vous plait,” I told the clerk.

“Oui, Monsieur Beaton.”

I stepped out into the street. All I needed now was thirty satchels and a like number of timepieces. Oh, and the pistols, of course. Thirty of them, to be used to detonate the bombs. That was going to be tricky.

I met Maire back at the hotel. The room showed evidence that I had not been the only one shopping. There were close to a dozen packages on a table by the window. My pretty companion was trying hard not to smile, which resulted in a dimple in each cheek.

“What have you been up to?”

“Why, nothing,” she said, all innocence. “Whatever do you mean?”

“That money was earmarked for the poor,” I said, wagging a finger at her in imitation of Dunleavy.

“If you’d taken a look in my wardrobe lately, you’d have seen who was poor. All these nice traveling dresses I’ve been wearing I’ve borrowed from friends. I promised I’d bring them back some French lace and gloves. You wouldn’t have me be ungrateful, would you? Besides, if I know Mr. Dunleavy, the money would have gone to his tailor or a drink.”

“Did you buy your dress?” I asked.

She couldn’t help herself. She hopped up and down a time or two and clapped her hands. “I did.”

“Excellent. And I suppose you bought some nice shoes and some perfume and powders and such.”

“Well, if you can go to a chemist, I don’t see why I cannot,” she maintained.

“Of course,” I said. “Are you hungry?”

“Famished. Shopping gives me an appetite.”

After lunch, we took in more sights. We visited the cathedral of Notre-Dame, where Maire went in and prayed. Then we shook our heads in wonder at the beauty of the Jardin des Tuileries and strolled about the gardens.

“I know this is all pretend and we’re not really on our honeymoon, Thomas, but I want you to know I’m having the best time of my life.”

“I am, as well,” I told her.

“I haven’t always had an easy life,” she continued. “It hasn’t turned out the way I could have wished, so far. Certainly, I never expected to be strolling in a French garden with a handsome fellow my own age. It would be too much to hope for. Oh, I’ve made you blush again! You’d make a poor spy, Thomas. All your emotions are on your sleeve!”

“What do you mean by that?” I asked. Had I betrayed myself? As far as I knew, there had been nothing in my conduct that had revealed who I really was.

“I mean you’re as open as a book. You need to spend more time in Paris, among all these suave boulevardiers.”

“Oh, I like that,” I protested. “Thank you very much. And to think I bought you lunch. I wonder how you dare be seen in Paris with an oaf like me.”

She laughed and took my hand. “You’re not an oaf, Thomas. You are a dear. And I shall always cherish this time in Paris with you.”

She kissed me then. For a moment, I felt as if all subterfuge was gone. Names and affiliations did not matter. It was just the two of us.

“Shall we go to the opera tonight?” I queried.

“Oh, yes, let’s!”

I wasn’t prepared for the sight of Maire in her new evening dress. It was a masterpiece of gold and silver with a bustle, but it showed far more of her neck and bosom than I was comfortable with. She was brave to put it on, but balked at the last minute.

“Is it too much?” she asked, closing a matching mantle over it. “Or rather, too little? The seamstress assured me it was la mode this year. Everyone shall be dressing this way.”

“Very well,” I said. “But you must hide that dress from your brother, or he will kill me.”

“Oh, don’t mind Eamon. I’ve got the boy wrapped around my finger.”

“Really? And which finger have you got reserved for me?” I wondered aloud.

I found out after the opera. The performance was Manon, a very tragic story. Our eyes were glued to the stage throughout the entire production. She wept openly at the end, and even I had a lump in my throat. We were rather subdued in the carriage ride back to the hotel.

I began preparing the chaise longue for the night while she changed.

“I feel dreadful, your sleeping on this chaise here,” she said.

“I’m used to it.”

She came out from behind the screen, wearing only her nightdress. It was unbuttoned. I saw the gap, the long, thin gap of ivory-colored flesh, all the way to the floor.

“It is very cold in a marriage bed, all alone,” she murmured, her hand stroking my cheek. She pulled me over onto the bed. She was wearing a new French perfume that made my head spin. Her soft lips pressed urgently against my own. I was intoxicated. I could feel my own passion begin to ignite. However, I had been training for months in the production of explosives, and I knew what kind of chemical reaction would happen if things went too far.

“No!” I said, pulling myself away, off the bed.

“What is wrong?” she asked in a low voice. “Have I displeased you? I only wished to show you how I feel about you.” The latter came out almost petulantly. She pulled the corner of a blanket over her bare limbs.

I sat down on the edge of the bed. My shirt was suddenly damp; my heart was pounding. “I care for you, as well,” I said. “More than you know. But I cannot accept what you … offer. It is not mine to take. It belongs to your future husband.”

“But what if you are my future husband?” she countered, looking me in the eyes.

“Then I should have it after we are married. Not now.”

She slowly pulled the blanket up over her head. I heard her sniff back a tear.

“I’ve been a fool,” she said from inside her makeshift cave. “You must think me terribly wanton. I’ve never done anything like this before in my life.”

“I believe you,” I said. “And I’d never think you a fool.”

“I don’t know what it is about you, Thomas Penrith,” she continued. “You’ve got me thinking the maddest thoughts and doing the wildest things. I’m not like this, you know. I’m a sensible girl.”

“I know. I’ve been thinking the same thoughts about you, Maire.” I brought her hand to my lips and kissed it. She came out from beneath the blanket, which had disheveled her beautiful auburn hair.

“I’ve been seduced by Paris and the pretty clothes and the opera,” she said. “And by you, or at least the thought of you. You aren’t like anyone I’ve ever met.”

“I was worried that Willie might have had a prior claim on you,” I told her.

“Willie,” she said with a sad smile. “Willie is wonderful and handsome and a man of great talent, but he is not a-a lover. You are a lover, Thomas. You smolder.”

Smolder, eh? She said I smoldered. I had the absurd desire to go down to the street and inform passersby that I smoldered. Me, Thomas Llewelyn. Or was it Thomas Penrith? Or Charles Beaton? No matter. No woman had ever told me that before.

“I’m sorry,” I muttered. “I care for you too much to allow this to happen. Part of me is mad for it, but another part will not allow it. I cannot stay here. I need some fresh air.”

I threw on a jacket and was about to quit the room.

“Stay,” she demanded, seizing my wrist.

“I cannot. I must clear my head.”

“No, I mean come to stay in Dublin when this is all over. Stay with me.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know what I’ll be doing.”

“Stay, or take me with you.”

My head was suddenly swollen with millions of thoughts. They were far too heavy for my weary shoulders.

“Perhaps,” I said, as I dashed out into the hall. Having escaped the scene, I leaned my shoulders on the other side of the door and breathed in cooler, less electrically charged air. I heard a sob, almost a wail in the room behind me. My hand reached toward the knob, but I mastered myself. I ran through the hallway and down the stairs.

In the street, a sound escaped my throat, a more masculine version of Maire’s wail. I could feel my heart thumping, shooting blood too quickly through my limbs and head. I lurched like a drunkard until I found a bench, where I collapsed and buried my head in my arms. When I’d taken this case, I hadn’t meant to fall in love.

Was it love? Barker told me once that women were my weakness, and I tended to agree with him. I had not known Maire for more than a few weeks, but how long did a man need to know a woman before falling in love? There is such a thing as love at first sight. Certainly, Maire was a woman any man could fall for. I could picture going home to her after a day’s work, her fussing over me, looking at her by the fire. What had Thomas Hardy said, in Far from the Madding Crowd? “Whenever you look up, there I shall be-and whenever I look up, there will be you.”

I madly combed my fingers through my hair. Who was I trying to fool? Did I really expect to go home from our offices in Craig’s Court to an I.R.B. princess? Would Barker allow it? Would she? Would I contemplate leaving my position as assistant to go build bombs for the Irish and become a traitor to England? Of course not. As Barker had told me, the minute she found out I was a spy, Maire would hate me with as much passion as she had almost just loved me.

I got up, pulled my jacket collar up over my open shirt, and stuffed my hands in my pockets. I had hurt her. I hadn’t meant to, but I had done it, anyway. It was not her fault that she had been caught up in this. Damn her brother for involving an innocent girl in this dangerous business. And damn me for breaking her heart, because it was inevitable that I would. I was not going to leave Barker’s employ, and I would never build another bomb after this case, not if I had anything to say about it. So I found myself desiring Maire, yet not allowing myself to have her, wanting to go with her but forcing myself to follow the path I had promised Mr. Anderson and Sir Watkin-aye, and my own employer-that I would follow. In the end, if all went according to plan, the English would triumph, the Irish would be imprisoned, and poor Maire would be left behind to bear the brunt of my handiwork. By doing that which I believed to be right, I would make myself the lowest of bounders. There was no satisfactory solution.

Mercifully, she was asleep when I got back. I crawled into my makeshift bed on the chaise longue, and soon was asleep myself.

I awoke the next morning as she moved past my bed. A polar wind came with her. It was no less than I deserved, I thought, and I bore it stoically. I got up and threw on my clothes, leaving her to her toilette.

“Why don’t you try the little cafe on the corner this morning?” she suggested. “I shall be down in a while.”

Had she suggested a cafe in the middle of the Gobi, I would have found a way to get there. Anything to please her. I couldn’t bear her glacial coldness, and I felt I had behaved like a cad the night before, though I would have been a worse cad had I allowed myself … It was simply a matter of choosing the lesser evil.

So it was that I was seated at a picturesque cafe in the middle of Paris, sipping a strong cup of coffee and spreading preserves over a warm croissant when Maire O’Casey came over to my table. She was wearing another new dress, an aniline-dyed cobalt blue that fit her like a glove. From somewhere in the city, she had purchased a rouge pot, and her lips were the color of cherries. With her hair pulled back loosely, she looked fresh out of one of the paintings by the fellow Renoir, who obviously had a passion for redheads. No man watching her-and, believe me, every man in the street was watching her-would have taken her for an Irishwoman. She looked like a Parisian society woman.

I dropped my knife on the table. This was the vision from my dream, down to the last detail: the coffee, the preserves, the woman in the blue dress. She moved slowly through the crowd, leaned over me, and whispered in my ear. “I forgive you.”

A jolt of electricity ran down my spine as if I were a tree trunk split in half. I don’t know if it was her breath on my ear or the memory of my dream.

“Good,” I said, when I could finally breathe again.

“But you are cold as a mackerel to have turned down the offer I made you last night.”

I seized her hand. “Do you think it was easy? I would sooner cut my throat than do it again.”

“Do not worry. The offer shall not be given again.” She ordered coffee and fussed over the menu, flustering the slavish waiter who groveled beside her. It was as if a knife were twisting in the area of my heart. She had worn the dress and painted herself so on purpose.

“You are still angry with me,” I stated. “I deserve it. I beg your forgiveness, Maire, for hurting you in any way.”

“I said I forgive you. You are a man, after all. What else were you made for but to break my heart?”

“Oh, please, Maire!”

This went on for some time. She was good at it, torturing me. Perhaps all women are. I was reminded how Barker could take hold of my collar and elbow and flip me in a way I hadn’t anticipated, and then get me in some hold where I would be writhing in pain if I didn’t give up. Maire did the same thing, only with words. At the end of fifteen minutes, I felt as if I’d been grappling for several hours and had come out the loser every time.

“What shall we do today?” I begged.

“Oh, I don’t know. I’m not much in a mood for seeing sights. Have you collected all you need?”

“Everything but the satchels. I believe they have a good selection at the Paris Market in the Eighteenth arrondissement. It is a street market. You are a little overdressed, but you might enjoy yourself. If you’re feeling better, we could then see the Bois de Boulogne.”

“I didn’t say I was feeling poorly,” she bristled.

“Of course not! As you say.”

There is something engrossing about a street market. It is like treasure hunting. Somewhere amid these piles of civilization’s refuse are treasures, one keeps telling oneself. It is as addictive as gambling. One keeps moving from one booth to another, convinced Marie-Antoinette’s hand mirror or Napoleon’s walking stick are in the next bin.

As I purchased three dozen used satchels of all sizes and descriptions, I kept an eye on Maire. She was inclined to be aloof, but slowly the booths drew her in. She played with a small parasol that matched her dress, looking every inch a princess, and picked among the items in the booths with a listless air.

“Madame is out of sorts this morning,” a voice said in French behind me. It was a woman of some fifty years, who ran a booth. She had a sharp nose in the middle of a round face.

“Oui,” I responded. “Madame is very much out of sorts this morning.”

“Naturellement,” the woman responded. “Now you must buy your way out of it. Get her something extravagant. Reassure her that you still care.”

“What would you suggest?”

“A necklace, perhaps, or a pair of earrings. I have a nice cross set with sapphires that might go with that dress.”

“Show me.”

I looked at the cross. It was small but elegant, very French. It consisted of four sapphires in a row, with one more on each side. Maire’s throat was bare, I noticed. The necklace would sparkle like the dress.

“How much?”

She named a price. It always sounded like a fortune when one said it in francs, but when I converted it in my head, it was merely expensive. I gave in with a shrug.

“Avez-vous une boite?”

I couldn’t resist giving her the box in the carriage on the way to the Tuileries. The gamble worked. She was delighted. She kissed me, forgave everything, and was the perfect companion the rest of the day. The icicle she had thrust between my ribs up into my heart melted away in the warm Parisian afternoon sun.