care or his suspicion. In his place, I would have done the same.
Of course, as Des had suggested, the presence of Rose was proof against perfidy. Dermot was simply doing his job. It did occur to me, though, that the Provisionals had not always been so finicky when it came to civilian casualties, collateral to a target of opportunity. They had a name for the slaughter of innocents, in the wrong place at the wrong time, and perhaps the Londonderry boy was thinking along those lines.
In the event, he reported back to Des that it was safe, for now, a respectable venue, and all the exits covered.
Young Tim had come to the door of the saloon. He and Des looked each other over with the belligerence of predators who’ve met accidentally at a water hole and scattered the available game. I thought Des Morrissey’s hostility a little too studied, however, an actor overplaying an underwritten part.
Rose, on the other hand, gave her role the exact notes of a Catherine Cornell or the Lunts. She was chilly, but without giving offense. Neither deferential, nor overtly rude. She had a kind of majestic impudence, and I found it enthralling.
I wasn’t alone. She was playing to an audience of one. Dermot and I had faded back into the wallpaper, only occasional furniture, and Des himself seemed to realize he was no more than a secondary character---Claudius, not Hamlet.
Rose and Young Tim were the leads. It was a drama of their own making, and for all I knew, they’d rehearsed it beforehand.
“So, how do you suggest we begin?” she asked him.
“We began, already, with an invitation,” he said, showing her to a chair with a grave and somewhat awkward courtesy, hovering, but not making actual physical contact, so she was free to use the support of his arm if she chose---which she was careful not to---and then he moved a quarter-turn around the table, so he wouldn’t be sitting opposite her. “You’ve done me the compliment of accepting.” He glanced up at Des, waiting for him to take his place.
Des sat down across from his daughter, so the Morrisseys were bracketing Young Tim when he took his own seat. It was an interesting arrangement, to separate Des and Rose, putting Young Tim something in the position of an adjudicator.
“Artful, that,” Dermot murmured to me, under his breath.
We’d placed ourselves far enough away for good manners, but not out of hearing.
Des opened with belligerence. “Well, we’ve answered your summons,” he announced, settling his weight heavily and planting his elbows on the table. “What is it you hope to gain?”
Young Tim was at pains not to rise to the bait. “An accomodation,” he replied. He said this to Rose, and not to her father. His tone of voice was frank, not insinuating.
The tavern owner, Timilty, appeared out of the shadows with a jug of Tullamore Dew and put it on the table. He set out a carafe of water and two tumblers, and then, after a moment’s hesitation, a third glass for Rose. He retreated again, keeping his doubts to himself.
Young Tim poured a drop for each of the three of them, and offered the carafe of water to Rose. She declined, smiling, and raised her glass. She and Young Tim clicked rims.
Des looked on in astonishment. He’d all too obviously been blind-sided, and was trying to recover.
“What do you make of this charade?” I asked Dermot.
“I think Desmond Morrissey has realized, somewhat too late, that he’s been outmaneuvered by the fires of youth,” he said.
“You knew,” I said.
“How not?”
“You approve?”
“It’s not my place to sit in judgment,” he remarked.
“No, only to mete out sentence.”
He looked at me sharply.
“And what of your masters?” I asked him.
He shrugged. “That’s neither here nor there,” he said.
“Perhaps not,” I said, “but the Provisionals have certainly undertaken and then discarded many a marriage of convenience.”
“And that’s what you’d consider this?”
“I was thinking more along the lines of Sinn Fein accepting German money and guns during the last war,” I said.
“The first war, too, come to that.”
“Which led me to another line of thought, namely, that your principals would take comfort from any available quarter.”
“It’s a line of thought that could lead you astray,” Dermot said, narrowing his eyes.
“I was wondering about Bunny D’Oench,” I said. “If he were able to broker this arrangement between Young Tim and Rose, might he not have brokered a further arrangement, which I’ll not put into words.”
Dermot chose an indirect reply. “What kind of name is that for a grown man?” he asked.
“It’s one of those nicknames that attach to you at college, or perhaps in boarding school,” I said.
“A totem of privilege,” he suggested.
“Dermot, old son, the children of privilege differ from the likes of you and me,” I told him.
“In kind? I think not. Only in their condescension.”
Frankie the Lie had characterized D’Oench much the same way, I recalled. Bunny was beginning to sound like somebody I’d sooner not encounter, but there was no help for it.
Young Tim was helping Rose Morrissey to her feet. Des kept his seat, and his truculent expression, but he now knew himself for a man helpless in the grip of events. The conversation between Young Tim Hannah and his daughter had been delicate and oddly ceremonial, but there was no mistaking the intimacy they shared, one they were free to pursue in private or in public, as they thought best, without fear of intrusion.
“Des looks a beaten man,” I said to Dermot.
“As well he might.”
“But you’ve already cast your lot with Rose,” I said.
“Des Morrissey’s a creature of the past,” he said.
“Meaning that he’s outlived his usefulness?”
“A habit of thought can become an impediment.”
“Nursing old grievances? I thought Sinn Fein’s strong suit had always been a careful misreading of history.”
“It’s the Irish disease,” Dermot said, smiling. “We forget everything but our injuries.”
“Des Morrissey’s unlikely to forgive or forget this injury, a life’s work put aside for an expedient.”
“Politics is expediency. Des understands his position.”
“Does he, indeed? Does he understand yours?”
“He understands the need for discipline.”
“You’re a harder man than I took you for, Dermot,” I said.
“You’re a hard man, yourself, Mickey,” he said. “I respect you for it.”
“I intended no compliment,” I told him.
He tipped his head. “I’ll take what I can get,” he said.
You’ll take whatever portion I mete out, I thought.
What was I missing? Something obvious, although obviously not something readily apparent. In hindsight, of course, it was all too easily seen. We’re often blind to what’s before us.
I thought, of course, that I’d boxed the compass, that I’d at least reconnoitered the ground, and seen where my advantage lay. I said nothing to Young Tim, because his purpose and mine were at odds. He’d secured his standing with Rose Morrissey; my own thankless task was to save him from himself, if necessary.
But it wasn’t to be.
I’m an early riser, and first thing next morning I was having corned beef hash with a couple of poached eggs on top at one of my usual haunts, the Greek’s on Twelth. It was just past five-thirty, and the place was already crowded with dock workers on their way to the shape-up, where the shop stewards made their picks for the upcoming day shift.
An odd buzz started up among the men, some news, a rumor, and the place got quiet as word went around, the usual rowdy talk stilled, conversations dropping to a murmur, all good humor suddenly absent. And the joint emptied out, not by twos and threes, but all at once, like a f
ire drill. I was sitting there by myself. Abandoned at the counter were unfinished mugs of coffee, still steaming, plates of scrambled eggs and hash browns and bacon, French toast and sausages, bowls of hot cereal.
I left my breakfast and followed the crowd. There were more of them, now, men from up and down the waterfront, silent, not jostling each other, moving steadily but without unseemly hurry, as if it were a procession. They led the way to Pier 86, and their uneasy silence was premonitory.
It was a cold morning, still only half-lit, the promise of warmth, like the sun, on the horizon, just touching the far side of Manhattan. Here on the West Side, by the Hudson, we were in shadow. There was a breeze, brisk and raw, lifting a layer of fog off the water, and the river currents, dark and oily, sucked at the pilings.
The freighter from Abidjan was tilted down at the bow, her foredecks awash, listing some fifteen degrees to port. Only the thick hawsers kept her from turning turtle in the slip.
“Swamped,” a man near me said, not much above a whisper.
“Scuttled,” the man next to him said, even softer.
“Anybody aboard?” the first man asked, his voice husky.
“They say the night watch got off in time, but not the crew boss and his men. They were belowdecks.”
He meant the longshoremen who worked the graveyard shift, preparing cargoes for off-load when daylight came. I understood the previous heavy silence. Not mournful, enraged. It could have been any of them. There was an undercurrent of angry muttering, now, but there seemed to be no easy outlet for their anger. The MP’s and their young officer looked nervous, all the same. The crowd around them was in an ugly mood.
“Just like the