She was disallowed into the world of the gentry, except as a commodity. Even in her intimacy with Lady Temple Wythe there had never been a trace of equality.
At Madam Blanche's she realized she was a lady in limbo between opposite ends of the cultural and social spectrum. For the gentlemen patrons of the Salon, Shelley was a lady to be propositioned but never to be taken seriously.
The game was always on with offers consisting of long weekends at a hunting lodge or in the manor house while the madam was off on a continental spree, or as the occupant of that little nest in town or up along the coast. At best, a cruise or holiday. Most girls of her background and station considered it an ultimate honor to be selected as a mistress. Shelley demurred. At least the men were honest in their lust in the Shankill. Moreover, the gentry spilled over with bores.
A few times she chanced an affair out of sheer loneliness. They were always with attractive and rather decent chaps but she wouldn't play the mistress game. She retained total independence, accepted no prizes, made no demands, created no scenes. She made love because that was what she wanted to do and she counseled herself to get the best that each brief encounter had to offer.
It didn't work. There was always a sobering dawn, frustration, and a deeper plunge into herself, alone. She wanted to have Blanche Hemmings' frivolous cynicism at times but she couldn't play.
Her station was fixed as though by mathematical law and after a few brief burnings she became more and more of a recluse in the only place she had known warmth, the home of her father, and with her brother close at hand.
One day the Kimberleys came into the Salon. David was a different sort, an extremely gentle man with an overpowering need for compassion. She went into it because she was weary of the game and needed warmth herself. She breached the unwritten law of becoming serious with a married man and they established a sanctuary where they could find respite against the daily battering and the damning hells of loneliness.
Shelley knew his position was impossible from the outset. He was the scion of a banking family, fully married and deeply into his caste. The marriage had been loveless from the beginning, he and his wife remaining strangers under the same roof but keeping up a decade-long public facade.
David followed the family tradition of a tour of government service in Dublin Castle as an administrator in Ulster affairs, with half his time spent in Belfast. His wife almost always remained in Dublin or was in London.
Morgan MacLeod could never accept Shelley's conceptions of morality. Yet the clashes were faint stuff, for he realized his daughter was as much her own woman as he was his own man. He swallowed his own sense of righteousness and Sorrowed that his daughter would have only half a life at best. Shelley needed her place within his walls, particularly on that day when the affair should find its inevitable end.
Morgan's own marriage to Nell MacGuire became a cementing force of what was right about family. A saint like woman, she made up for most of the unhappiness his children had suffered in growing. The houses, side by side on Tobergill Road, became the visible monument of his life's achievement.
All that was prayed for now was for Shelley to grow out of David Kimberley. For Shelley it was better to have those hours with David than surrender at some point along the middling path for security and accompanying dullness.
*
The flat in Stranmillis Gardens held almost five years of memories, a sharing of the best one could give the other under the circumstances. There had been warm evenings, tender nights, relief from the pain outside. It all seemed so somber and sterile now.
David Kimberley looked paler, more helpless, handsomer than ever as he sat like a condemned man, arms limply in lap and head bowed. He uttered a long, half mumbled soliloquy of remorse, an outpouring of guilt, an epic of confusion, self-condemnation and self-pity. He had treated her rottenly, he wept, spent her youth, kept her working as a shop girl been too gutless to face up to his family and wife.
Shelley listened as she always listened to David, with consummate patience, then sat at his feet and put her head on his lap and kissed his hands. When he had spoken himself out of words, she arose and took that determined stance of hers.
"It's not been like that at all. No one forced me and I haven't a single regret. I've wanted to be with you every time we've been together."
"You see, that's the trouble," he lamented, "you've been too decent. You've never made demands. Perhaps I could have coped with the family better if you had made demands."
"David, David. We both needed a safe harbor. We've had that. I want to sail beyond the harbor now."
A sense of desperation swelled in him as he cast about for something to cling to. "Do you love me?"
"Everything I've ever known or felt as a woman has been with you, here, in this room. But we've had our go and it's passed. What I needed is past for me. You've got to tell me it's right for me to go and that you want me to go . . ."
"Did you ever love me?"
"David, don't ask."
"But I am. How much did I really mean except as some sort of buffer?"
"All we've ever shared," she said, "is a room, a bed and a little time. We've never shared the sunlight or the wind or the feel of rain. When we were together it was always so temporary we never had time to be ourselves. Love can't mature in one room. It has to come out of the full sharing of everything: joys, aspirations, downfalls, all of it. That's the only real path to love."
He trembled to his feet, frightened by her cool and rational approach. "What happened?"
She smiled smally. "One night," she said, "I found myself laughing. I laughed and laughed until I had tears and pains in my side. Nothing like that had ever happened to me before. The next morning I awoke feeling quite strange. I went to the Salon and I talked to Blanche and I told her about all the peculiar sensations I was going through and I asked her what was wrong with me. She said, "My God, Shelley, you're just happy, that's all."
The defeat of David Kimberley was on him now. Lord, it was true. He had never really made her happy. He had given her pleasure from time to time, but what they had really shared was flight from mutual disenchantment. Within their relationship they had found some carnal desperation but never happiness.
"Strange," Shelley said, "feeling happiness for the first time in your life and not even knowing what it is."
"This . . . this chap. Are you in love with him?"
"I want to be. We may or we may not. I just know I have to make a try. I can't let it go by."
"I'll wait. Have your go. I'll wait," he said.
"No, David. I've got to stop one thing before I start another. It would be indecent to all of us," she said firmly.
"Does he know about me?"
"Yes."
"I see. Has he made love to you?" his voice cracked out unevenly.
Shelley didn't answer.
"I said, has he made love to you?"
"There's no purpose in torturing yourself."
"I demand to know!"
"All right, we've slept together."
He slapped her face. Shelley accepted the blow with no other reaction than that of pity. David Kimberley sobbed and fell to his knees and held onto her.
"I didn't mean it. I'm sorry. Please forgive me."
"I know it must be awful for you," she said.
A hundred waves of desperation spent themselves. No outburst, no implorations, no promises would save it. The time had come. Perhaps it would even be a relief because the guilt would be finished. She had been so fair about it all, given him so much. He begged himself to act like a man, got to his feet, flopped his arms about, then turned to her.
"I hope your happiness continues and grows. God knows you deserve it," he rasped.
"And I hope you find some for yourself."
He shook his head. "I'm afraid I don't have your courage to make the break or make the plunge. Well, anyhow, among other beautiful things, you've always spared me scenes. I'm sorry I couldn't spare you one. I t
hank you for everything. I mean that. Come to me as a friend if you ever need me."
She brushed his cheek. "I'm sorry for this pain and I'll weep for you, man."
*
Conor studied the barber's work in the mirror, complimented and paid the man, then made up to the hotel lobby.
Shelley entered the hotel breathlessly, looked about with a sudden touch of desperation at not seeing Conor right off. They spotted each other over a vast lobby and came together . . . happy.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
He was pensive. His right eye was a broken rainbow of awful colors, slitted near closed from yesterday's game. He had played extremely hard to prove they'd made no mistake on him and, largely because of it, the Boilermakers turned in their first victory of the season.
Shelley ran her finger over the battered eye, trying to heal it with a magic touch. The Saturday game had always been a MacLeod family affair. Shelley attended from time to time out of duty to her brother but otherwise thought it a rough, dirty sport. It never really affected her until she saw Conor crumble to the ground and lie terribly still.
She fled from her seat, hid beneath the stands, and wept as a flush of fright came on without warning or ability to control. Until that moment the Midlands tour had meant little except her sympathy for Matthew and Lucy. Now it struck down that Conor would be gone for twelve terrible weeks.
Shelley lay back lovely on the grass, her red hair all floating in and out of deep green blades and the sun making her skin whiten to near translucence. Conor propped on an elbow and kissed her cheek and forehead and the tip of her nose and her eyes. "Did I ever tell you how glad I am to have made your acquaintance, lady?"
"Oh no, never," she answered.
"Well, let me tell you then. I've walked through crowds of crowds all my life. I've seen the faces of the women in the church and heard the listless priest intone. I've seen the men come down from the fields and be felled to their knees at the angelus. I've seen the hard cities. And all the time I looked past sterile eyes into sterile hearts. Then one time I looked and it was different than all the other times and I told myself I'd have to be the worst kind of fool to recognize something had happened and not do something about it."
Tears moistened in her eye. "Of all the luck," she whispered, "finding myself a bard. You people have a way with words."
"Aye, we're a canny and clever lot, for words is all we've had. But they're only your own thoughts coming back to you. You make me say things I no longer care to hide and I have no fear of hearing my own voice saying them."
Shelley rolled away from him, sat and shook the grass from her hair and dress, then lay her cheek on her knees and hummed softly.
"’Dusty Bluebells,’" Conor said.
"Aye. I sang it to myself when I was a little girl skipping rope or just to myself alone. I dreamed a lot," she said.
"What does your family think about us? Do they think you've gone from the pan into the fire?"
"I don't believe so. They see how happy I am. I think as long as they know that, then all the rest will take care of itself. At the bottom of things, behind then: holy facade, there's a great deal of love in them. Besides, Conor, it wouldn't matter what they thought."
"You say that but it's not true. The MacLeods have a fierceness for one another you don't even realize yourself. You're into each other's lives very deeply."
A burst of warmth flowed over her as the sun came from behind a cloud. She lay back on the grass again and stretched and moaned out her contentment.
"Talk smutty to me, Conor. I go wild when you say filthy things into my ear."
He laughed and scratched his head and gazed down on her. "Well, let me tell you right off that you're a reasonable fuck for a Protestant."
"On with you. I hear the Catholic girls have ground up glass between their legs."
"Don't go kidding yourself about that, lass. There's a lot of wild Catholic mares in heat out in the pasture who haven't heard a word the priest said. Besides, I didn't have that particular comparison in mind. I was thinking more of some of the girls I ran across during my sailing days."
"Like whom," she snapped.
"Well, for instance, the ones in Bali. Ah, yes, the ones in Bali."
"And what's so bloody great about them?"
"Well, first there's the hospitality. And the attitude. And the dress, or lack of it. And the brown skin. It's a quality of satin one doesn't find beyond those islands. They've been raised in the service of man and that is how it should be. From girlhood on they've developed a sensuousness, a delicacy, a mood, a way of fondling that entirely escapes the Western female. Oh, I tell you it bends my mind just thinking about it. Fantastic! Utterly fantastic. And no shyness, you know. When two or more are involved, especially sisters . . ."
She leaped on him and he fell to his back and she tickled him in his vulnerable spots.
"Come on now," he begged, you're much too strong for me."
Shelley sighed and shook her hair. "You know what's so great?"
"I can't imagine."
"When we start. Those times you close in and roll me over on my tummy and play those subtle games all over my body. Your touch is so delicate, it's maddening, and you make the transitions from softness to firmness and back to softness and you find every single little spot to perfection."
"All I'm doing is following the messages you send. It's you who's telling me what to do."
"Really?" she said earnestly.
"That's a fact."
"Isn't that a miracle. Oh, look at me, man. I'm turning into a wild woman. I walk down the street and I say to myself, I'm a wild woman, and when lads look me over I think, You'd lose your mind, boy, if you knew how wild I am. You know, and I may blush saying it, I spend the day long thinking about what I'm going to do with you that night. I adore doing them!"
"You're absolutely disgusting."
"I know, isn't it wonderful? Do you think it will ever stop getting better every time?"
"Not for a few days, anyhow."
"Man, it was dull before I met you. Here I thought I was the greatest lover in the world. How did I survive? Conor, do you know what's a pity?"
"I haven't the slightest notion at this point."
"You'll never know what it's like to be loved by you. That's a terrible shame. You'll never know what it's like to have all that power pouring into you."
They held their cheeks together. "I was lying," he whispered, you're better than any girl in Bali."
"Oh, man, wherever did you learn to make love?"
He dwelt in her eyes. "There's making love and there's making love to Shelley. It's two entirely different things. I learned it from you."
They sat and held hands and just that suddenly Conor seemed to drift. It came back to him. It always came back. It was always there, when making love, playing rugby, at the forge. It was always hovering. Sooner or later he would have to tell her the meaning behind those years at sea. Sooner or later his search for the Brotherhood would have to come out. For now, he wanted desperately to have more of her and to shove the rest into a corner. There was too much rapture to stop the carrousel but it always came back to Long Dan Sweeney and tender cars and guns.
"Hey there," she said.
"What?"
"You left me."
"Just thinking of the tour and going off."
Shelley stood suddenly and walked to the brink of the hill to where it dropped abruptly down to the shrouded city, then spun around as she sensed him coming up behind her. Her look and her voice stiffened to someone who was not quite Shelley.
"Do you know what happened here on Cave Hill?" she said.
"They say they're the lairs of the ancient Celtic king, MacArt …”
"No, not that. What happened might have happened on this very spot. Theobald Wolfe Tone stood here before his journey to America in 1795 with his United Irishmen around him and he vowed to return to liberate Ireland."
Conor was unnerved. "What made you say that!"
br /> "You don't have exclusive rights to Irish history."
"What made you say it, Shelley?"
"I'm not a fool any more than you are. Don't you think I know where your mind wanders? Don't you think I've some notions about the work you're in? I just don't want it to come between us any more than I would let my family come between us."
"It won't," he said. He took her and held her. "It won't." They began down the path. "We've reached that place, you and I," he said.
"We were there the first night we met. It's taken this time to decide to go after it. You gave me poetry and music and Conor. I'm ready, man, and I mean to give it all."
He stopped and his great hand purred over her hair and the fierceness of her look ran clear through him. Until that moment he had never returned such a look.
"We've a week's holiday at the end of the tour," he said. "Let's find a place in England or Scotland. A wild, lonely, brooding place with the light of a fire at night."
"I'll be there," she answered.
He put his hands beneath her arms and lifted her off her feet so they were eye to eye, with him holding her in mid-air. He wrapped her inside his arms and kissed her.
"I love you, lass," he said, "I love you."
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The location had changed as Sweeney had predicted. It had changed but in fact it was very much the same as the room on Shandon Lane and the one in Dublin. Deep in the Catholic Ballymurphy District, he would be harder to find.
"We still haven't got a hell of a lot to go on with O'Hurley and Hanly," Long Dan said, gangling about. "There was always a lot of Fenian activity in their home town and between Tipperary and Limerick, but we can find nothing to connect them directly with republican sentiments. They were simply remembered as a wild railroading team until Sir Frederick Weed took them north. Have you picked up any information?"
"Nothing really," Conor said.