The Lambs Read online

  ‘It’s payday soon,’ answered Mary, forcing a smile. His tongue made another reptilian pass over his lips as he stepped closer.

  ‘That may as well be but you’re already late and there are plenty of people about who’d pay good money and on time for rooms like these,’ he replied. He was closer still, wraithlike in the firelight, his cloying breath warm on her cheek. She stepped back, unhappy at his proximity, his violation of her space. ‘You should count yourself lucky I’ve let you keep the roof over your head so far. After all, people like you aren’t very popular these days,’ he added, baring his crooked, stained teeth.

  ‘What exactly do you mean, people like me, Mr Daiken?’ snapped Mary, barely keeping her temper.

  ‘Why, Irish, of course. Sadly, most people hereabouts think you are all just a bunch of troublesome Micks; drunken bog-trotters with your harsh accents and clacking worry beads,’ he said, glancing at the crucifix on the wall by the window. ‘They said I was asking for trouble, taking in Irish.’

  ‘Asking for trouble? You were happy enough to take my money! I’ve a brother and an uncle in the army, you know!’ she snapped indignantly.

  ‘That may well be, Miss Gallagher, but you know how people are, especially with all the recent unpleasantness. Anyway, talking of money, what are we to do?’ He made her uncomfortable and, worse still, he knew it. His tongue darted once more as his eyes drifted from her face. ‘I think we could come to some sort of arrangement.’ She looked at him, puzzled. He stepped closer, seizing her breasts with his thin, bony hands and squeezing them hard. She lashed out, her hand slashing his sallow cheek with a resounding thwack that brought a semblance of colour to his face. He grabbed her wrist, twisting her arm, deceptively strong for all his frail appearance.

  ‘What sort of woman do you take me for?’ she demanded. He laughed, pulling her closer so that his repugnant face hovered mere inches from hers. For an awful moment she thought he was going to try and kiss her.

  ‘What sort of woman do I take you for? Why, the sort that is far from home; the sort that is short of money; the sort that is quite alone. That, Miss Gallagher, is the sort of woman I take you for and believe me I intend to take you! No one can help you, Miss Gallagher, no one but me. So what kind of woman do I take you for, Miss Gallagher? One who needs to think long and hard,’ he emphasized the words lasciviously ‘about my generous offer. The streets of London are dangerous, especially after dark. It would be a terrible shame for someone so young and pretty to end up on them. Wouldn’t you agree, Miss Gallagher?’ He patted her cheek and stepped back. She felt sick. He hovered by the door as if expecting some sort of reply, then realizing he’d get none stepped back onto the landing. ‘You’ve got till Friday.’

  Mary shut the door, leaving Daiken’s words in the hallway. Then she cried. He was right. She was alone.

  Even sleep abandoned her. It was raining when the sun came up, groping cautiously through the threadbare curtain. After she washed, she crept downstairs, eager to be away. There were letters by the front door in ramshackle piles on the sideboard. Then she recognized Flynn’s unruly scrawl: a letter! It was battered, stained, its flap worried as if someone had tried to open it, but it lifted her spirits. She pocketed it quickly; she would read it later. She sensed Daiken’s eyes on her but resisted the temptation to turn, denying him the satisfaction. ‘Good morning, Miss Gallagher,’ he said from the end of the hall.

  She stepped outside, the morning air wet on her skin. They’d call it a soft day back home, the sort that got wetter as the day grew long. She paused at the corner where she and Flynn had joked about chips, sparing the house a quick glance. The curtain twitched. He was watching; waiting; biding his time like a spider in his web. Then she smiled.

  ‘Bog trotter, am I, Mr Daiken? Just you try and lay a finger on me again and you’ll see just what sort of woman I am,’ she said to herself as the rain thickened, threatening to overwhelm her umbrella, and for a moment she wondered if it was raining in the trenches. She ran her fingers along the stiff length of Flynn’s letter as she walked, anticipating the pleasures within. She knew it would be trivia – the censors saw to that – but it was Flynn’s trivia and she kept it all in a box under the bed. Sometimes, when she read them she could almost hear his voice and that comforted her as she lay alone in her bed at night. At least he was alive. By the time she reached the sprawling Woolwich Arsenal, she was soaked through despite her umbrella and she spent the next twelve hours sniffling and coughing through her shift.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked one of the girls who sat next to her during her tea break: a birdlike Londoner called Maureen, who was a nodding acquaintance.

  ‘It’s a letter from my fella at the front,’ she announced proudly, emphasizing her Irish brogue, attracting the passing attention of one or two other girls.

  ‘My old man’s in the army too but he don’t write much. He never was much good at school. Too busy getting into trouble,’ replied Maureen, craning to see what was written on the rain-smudged page. ‘What’s your fella say?’

  ‘Only that I shouldn’t worry.’

  ‘Easier said than done, dearie!’ squawked Maureen.

  ‘And that there’s plenty of food,’ Mary said. The censors made sure that there wasn’t much else except a few lines about Gallagher being his usual cheery self. Gallagher was a bit like Maureen’s husband; he didn’t write much so she had to rely on Flynn to keep her informed. Satisfied, she put the letter back in her pocket. She would read it again later, when she was alone.

  By the time her shift was over, the sun had long set. She was used to that as well as the gloomy, claustrophobic streets beneath the guttering streetlamps. She thought she could hear distant thunder; it could have been the echo of guns over in France. They said you could hear them sometimes. She took her time. She was in no hurry to get back to her lodgings. There was nothing there for her now except Daiken and she was certainly in no hurry to see him. The clatter of hoofs on the cobbles disturbed her thoughts as a cab trundled by. She liked the streets at night. She turned the corner at the end of her street and fumbled for her key. A shape loomed from the shadows, tall and dark.

  ‘Bit late to be out on your own.’ She stopped, startled. The shadow stepped closer. ‘Who knows what could happen?’ Fear raised the hairs on the back of her neck. She gripped the key in her fist so that it poked between her index and middle fingers, ready to gouge it into the man’s face if necessary. He was wearing a uniform, the peak of his cap low over his eyes. He was smiling, his teeth glinting in the lamplight. ‘Jaysus, Mary, do you not know me?’ asked the shadow, and then it dawned on her that the man was Irish: a Dubliner like herself.

  ‘Rory?’ She stepped closer. ‘Is that yourself?’

  ‘So it is! Some fella in your house said you didn’t live there any more but I could tell the oily little shite was lying so I thought I’d hang about and see for myself.’

  She looked him up and down. It was Rory all right, she could see that now; a bit taller and filled out but her brother all the same. It was the uniform that puzzled her. ‘That’ll be my landlord. Anyway, I thought you were unfit for the army.’

  Rory grinned. He reminded her of Gallagher; they had the same impish grin.

  ‘Ah well, now that’s a bit of a tale, so best we get inside and get the kettle on so I can tell you all about it!’ he said, flinging his arm protectively round his sister’s shoulder. ‘I could murder a cup of tea!’ The curtain twitched. Daiken was still up, she suspected awaiting her return. As usual the mildewed hallway was unlit, the stair carpet musty, but her rooms seemed less unwelcoming with her brother there. They drank the last of the tea. He told her how he’d gone to Cork and lied through his teeth to get into the Royal Army Medical Corps.

  ‘At least Mammy’s glad I’m not in the infantry like Terry,’ he said and Mary agreed, relieved that at least Rory wouldn’t be doing any fighting. ‘So what’s happening?’ he asked, so she told him everything: about Daiken, about his propositio
n, everything, until the colour drained from his amiable face.

  ‘Where are you going?’ she asked as he sprung up.

  ‘To have a word with your man downstairs,’ he replied. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t kill him if that’s what you’re afraid of.’ She felt guilty. Her attempt to stop him was a token effort and she couldn’t help secretly looking forward to her brother giving the slimy old lech a good old-fashioned thrashing.

  Rory hammered on Daiken’s door.

  ‘D-do you know what time it is?’ stammered Daiken, opening the door a crack, his eyes darting from Rory to Mary over the chain. ‘Clear off or I’ll call the police,’ he snapped, feeling braver behind his makeshift barricade.

  ‘You’ll be sorry for this!’ Rory snarled, driving his hobnailed boot into the door, sending it crashing into Daiken’s face, splitting his lip, before grabbing him by the throat and slamming him into the wall, sending his lank comb-over billowing.

  ‘You’re in serious trouble now, sonny,’ squealed Daiken. ‘That’s assault and criminal damage—’ Rory’s knee in his groin cut him short, driving him up the wall and rolling his eyes into the back of his head. Then he went limp, like a rag doll in Rory’s fist. Mary had never seen her brother like this before. Daiken moaned. Blood dribbled down his chin. Rory squeezed his cheeks, holding his face close to his own.

  ‘You don’t frighten me, you wee gobshite. Now you’re going to listen and I’m going to speak. I’ll do it slow so your little brain will cope. If you so much as look at me sister again, let alone try and lay one of your filthy little hands on her, I’m gonna tear your bollocks off and feed them to you. Nod if you understand,’ he snarled. Daiken nodded, his eyes wide in terror as a dark stain spread across his crotch.

  ‘And just in case you think you’ll be safe when I’m gone there’s a lot of us Irish in this shitty city – friends of mine and some of them really aren’t as nice as I am.’ He patted Daiken’s cheek, letting him fall. He wiped his hands, as if he’d just handled something deeply unpleasant. ‘There, I don’t think you’ll be getting any more trouble from him,’ said Rory.

  He didn’t hear the Zeppelin, nor did Mary, as it ghosted over Woolwich high above the cloud. Nor did they hear the bomb as it crashed through the roof of the house, nor the blast as it tore through the ramshackle brick. All Mary saw was Rory’s smile, then darkness.

  CHAPTER 14

  British rear area, Hulluch, north-west France

  Gallagher poured him a glass of pale white wine. Most of them struggled calling it ‘vin blanc’ so the locals had got used to hearing British soldiers ask for plonk to go with their egg and chips.

  ‘Won’t that put hairs on your chest?’ declared Gallagher, pouring a second glass. They preferred it to the local pale gassy beer.

  ‘Either that or take the enamel off your teeth,’ spluttered Flynn, struggling to keep it down. Then he leant back to drink in the scene, making out familiar faces in the smoky haze. The estaminet was rough and cheap, like its wine, its food and especially its women but at least the food was hot and besides it was better than mooching around camp waiting to go back into the line. There would be trouble later, there always was when you mixed squaddies with drink, but Flynn didn’t care. Doyle staggered away to the toilets to ‘ease springs’ just as a peroxide blonde wearing too few clothes and too much rouge plonked herself on his lap, wriggling and smiling as she waved to one of the waitresses for another bottle of wine. Although she may have been only twenty, her eyes were much older. Her English was as poor as Flynn’s French but he got the gist of what she said and shook his head. She pouted, looking professionally disappointed before casting her eye around his companions.

  Fitzpatrick had slumped across the table, snoring gently, after too much wine and too little sleep in the trenches. Gallagher winked, flashing her a cheery smile as he chased the debris of his meal around his plate with a chunk of bread, then he belched, flecking the back of Fitzpatrick’s head with fragments of food. Devlin was with them too, ignoring her as he tapped his hand on the table in time to the tune kerplunking from a knackered old piano and drunken caterwauling. Docherty sat nursing a mug of gassy beer, already half cut, whilst Carolan avoided the girl’s eye, acutely conscious that his wife, Elizabeth, wouldn’t be impressed. Flynn didn’t think Mary would approve either. Only the Duke didn’t seem embarrassed by the girl’s lack of subtlety. He didn’t care. She took his hand and led him to the stairs in the corner, lasciviously swinging her hips as she went.

  ‘Want not, waste not!’ said Gallagher as he relieved the Duke’s abandoned plate of its last chips. He farted loudly, chortling to himself as he declared, ‘Better out than in.’

  ‘Christ, you need pulling through,’ spluttered Devlin, unimpressed. Gallagher beamed, revelling in his schoolboy delight in flatulence. Flynn poured another glass of wine. It was something to do and better than being back in the trenches. Maybe it would help him sleep.

  ‘Fecking Yank never could take his drink,’ said Gallagher, helping himself to Fitzpatrick’s glass as the American unconsciously snuffled the table. Doyle sat back down, picking up the nearest glass and draining it. There was a raucous cheer from one of the tables as two drunken soldiers lurched up onto it, wobbling precariously as they attempted to perform ‘the dance of the flaming arseholes’. Flynn knew it wouldn’t be long before fists began to fly as alcohol-sodden tempers frayed. He noticed Fallon a few tables away deep in conversation with his cronies – discussing the fate of Ireland, no doubt – and resisted the urge to walk over and punch him. He didn’t like Fallon. He knew the feeling was mutual. He was pretty sure that it was Fallon who’d tried to push him under a train back in London. It wouldn’t surprise him if he’d had something to do with his missing gas mask too but without evidence there was nothing he could do. He noticed Fallon was watching him, not too obviously, but every time he looked up he just saw the weaselly little man’s rat-like eyes flick away.

  ‘Is there any news of Cronin?’ Flynn finally asked Devlin. It was the elephant in the room, the subject they had all avoided ever since they’d discovered that he was really a she. He still found it hard to think of Cronin as a woman, making him realize that even after a year and a half he knew nothing about her. To be honest he knew very little about the others either; only what they let slip. He knew Devlin was married but knew nothing of his family, nor Mahon’s. Even Carolan said little of his domestic life except he missed what little of it he’d had.

  ‘He … er … I mean, she, is in a field hospital down the road, last I heard,’ replied Devlin without looking at Flynn. ‘The captain says she’ll be fine, just a blighty, that’s all. It’s not right a girl being as good with a rifle as she was,’ he added, before upending the last of his drink down his throat.

  ‘Doesn’t it make sense though,’ slurred Fallon, suddenly leering drunkenly over them with Collins, ‘that the best soldier in your platoon was a fecking girl!’ Without so much as a backwards glance, Gallagher drove his elbow hard into Fallon’s groin, poleaxing him face first into the table, sending glasses and plates flying. Fitzpatrick woke with a start. Someone caught Collins with an almighty haymaker. Then the dam burst. Fists began to fly, fighting flaring across the bar like wildfire. There would be black eyes and sore heads in the morning.

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ suggested Gallagher, sloughing away Fallon’s groaning form. The military police had arrived, in red caps with shrieking whistles, flailing truncheons.

  None of them needed convincing and together they ploughed through the fray, heading for the back exit. The Duke would have to fend for himself. Their way was barred by a snarling highlander with a face like a bad day in the Gorbals but Gallagher dropped him with a well-aimed headbutt to his broken nose. Flynn ducked a wine bottle. It smashed into the back of some unknown squaddie’s head and then they were out, safe in the garbage-strewn alleyway behind the estaminet. ‘Quick, before the monkeys get here,’ said Gallagher, relieved that the MPs had forgotten to seal off
their escape. Then they ran.

  News of the fight in town had reached the camp before them – rumours were funny like that – and as they staggered through the gate the orderly sergeant, Mahon, turned a blind eye. By the time they found their tents they were sober and grinning like fools. Spud did his best to ignore them, curled down on Carolan’s bunk, whilst Gallagher retold dropping Fallon for the umpteenth time until the epic tale had become embellished like a legend of old. On the other hand, Fallon wasn’t quite so lucky and spent the night under arrest, confined to an old barn with a dozen or so other unfortunates picked up by the MPs.

  The next morning Sergeant Major Clee came looking for Devlin and the others.

  ‘Corporal Gallagher, Captain Murphy wants to see you,’ snapped Clee, throwing back the tent flap, letting the morning sunlight flood in. Gallagher squinted up from his bunk, unsure what was happening. ‘Now!’ barked Clee. He was up in an instant and doubling smartly towards company HQ. Devlin thought it best to go with him especially as Murphy didn’t look pleased to see him when Clee marched him in.

  ‘Lance Corporal Gallagher,’ said Murphy from his makeshift biscuit-box desk. ‘Private Fallon has made a serious allegation. He says that you assaulted him and started a riot. Striking a subordinate is a very serious offence, Corporal, so what do you have to say?’

  ‘The thing is sir … the thing is …’ Gallagher began to say, squirming uncomfortably, guilt plastered across his guileless features.

  ‘The thing is, sir, Private Fallon is lying, sir,’ interrupted Devlin, his face deadpan. Clee scowled. Murphy raised a sceptical eyebrow but the Ulsterman was adroit at making sure officers only knew what they needed to know.