Cronin, bleary-eyed, looked up into the face of the woman—Helen, it was—who brought Gavigan his tea. He was on his back and when he tried to move he found one arm, his good arm, bound at the wrist with his belt, the other end of which was tied around a leg of the desk.
“For your own good,” Helen said. “And for mine.”
She had sliced his jacket from cuff to shoulder, then scissored off the bloody sleeve. Now she squeezed a cloth into a basin of water and dabbed at the wound, then knelt with one knee on the palm of his hand.
“Hold still,” she said. “I think this time will do the trick.”
Almost as an afterthought, she placed a rolled bit of cloth between Cronin’s teeth, then leaned in close. She probed the wound with what looked like a pair of tongs, the sort used to remove a sugar cube from a bowl. If he had felt a jolt before, this was the whole power station wired through his shoulder. He tried to turn toward the pain, like a bird with a broken wing, but the leather strap held and her weight kept his hand and the rest of the arm immobile.
“Steady, you big baby,” she said, and then, “Aha!” She withdrew the tongs and waved in front of his eyes the slug she had harvested from his flesh. “Nasty piece of damage that was, but it could have been worse. For you, I mean. I don’t think there was much more you could have done to them.”
She took her knee off his hand and sat back on the floor, rearranging the folds of her long skirt. He flexed, and while there was a crackle, it was nothing like the raw pulse he had felt when the bullet was still lodged in his arm. She wiped her forehead, where a streak of his blood colored her hairline.
“I’m not going to ask who shot first,” she said, “but I have my suspicions. Now hold still. I have some sewing to do.”
She first swabbed his shoulder with iodine, then deftly threaded a curved needle and set to work. Again and again, the needle went in and the needle came out.
The needle was nothing compared to those tongs, but to keep himself steady Cronin stared at the ceiling. He’d sat beneath it for years but had never paid it any mind. It was pressed tin with some sort of scrolling, filigreed pattern repeated in each panel. Lying there, trying not to think about his shoulder and Helen’s efforts to repair it and the possibility that he might actually walk out of here—to the farm? into a police car?—he stared hard at that ceiling, and as the pain faded and his eyes regained focus, he saw finally that the curlicues were shamrocks, thousands of them.
What was it about the American-born Irish that made them embrace so fiercely the slogans and symbols of the Old Country? This room, with its shamrocks, its death mask, its tricolor, its Easter Proclamation and all its medals and badges: these were the trinkets of revolution, all purchased with the blood of people Cronin had once considered brothers, sisters, comrades. He would bet that none of them—none who survived—had so many trophies in their homes, but here, far from the action, was a triumphant museum constructed by a man who had never risked the reprisals that came with every ambush: towns put to the torch, men killed in their beds, women and children turned out of their homes by the army, the Black and Tans, the Auxiliaries. Irish Americans sang their songs and drank their beer and wept for Mother Ireland. They lined up for the Body and the Blood and they marched on St. Patrick’s Day. All of them believed they were descended from Irish kings, and that gave them the right to insist that the actual Irish had to keep up the struggle, forever and ever, amen. Struggle kept the men strong and brave, the women pure and chaste, and everyone poor and scared and fretful for the future.
“I heard him say you had a family.” Helen had nearly finished her stitching. “Tell me: Are you good to them?”
Cronin looked right at her. He couldn’t find the words to fit her question.
“Do you knock ’em around? Your wife, the children? There’s plenty of men who don’t see a thing wrong with it.”
He shook his head. Their faces flared before him, and again he felt that sob welling in his chest. “I’ve never raised a hand.”
“And what about when you’ve been drinking? You could put away your share and then some, if I remember right.”
“I gave it up. After I left this place.”
“You see that it stays that way. I’m not fixing you up so you can add to someone else’s misery.”
“You have my word,” he said.
“Words are liars, Mr. Cronin.” She twice looped the needle through the thread, tying off the knot. “Now tell me,” she said, “how old are your wee ones?”
“The boy is five. Five and a half, is what he’d say. And the baby’s not yet a year.”
“Five and a half? Then he’s not yours, is he? Unless you were keeping secrets from us.”
“His own father left him,” Cronin said. “But he’s a fine boy. The best there is.”
On hands and knees she scuttled across the floor to the desk, where she untied one end of the belt. Cronin shook his wrist free of the other end, and with her help was able to sit, then to stand.
“It’s good to see that your time here didn’t ruin you,” she said. “Not completely. God knows it’s done that and worse to plenty of others.”
Both of them looked at Jamie, then at Gavigan. Jamie’s face was a mask, a waxwork version of the living man. Gavigan’s neck was torn apart, his shirt was soaked in black blood, and his mouth hung open in an empty roar. The room was hot, and for the first time the smell of it hit Cronin full in the face.
“Wait in the hallway,” Helen said. “I’m going to fetch you a clean shirt, though I can’t guarantee a good fit. And you might be out of luck for a jacket.”
“It’s no bother.” He looked at the desk, where the telephone receiver lay. “You’re not calling the police, then?”
“I am,” she said. “As soon as I have you packed up and out the door.”
“You didn’t happen to hear any news on the radio, did you? Anything from the fair?”
“Now, where would I find time for that?” she said. “Don’t I have my hands full cleaning up after you?”
THE WORLD’S FAIR
ONCE MARTIN WAS AT last off the train, he faced a queue to enter the fair that seemed to stretch for miles. It could take an hour, he reckoned, to get inside. His whole head felt like a cracked tooth, raw and exposed, and he bounced on the balls of his feet like a desperate sprinter preparing for a race he knows he can’t win.
To the left of the main gate was an entrance marked OFFICIAL BUSINESS ONLY, and Martin knew he had to risk it. He was Fitzwilliam MacFarquhar, wasn’t he? Surely there was some official business—saving the life of the king and such—that required his immediate attention. He strode toward the gate, the picture of nonchalance, looking neither right nor left. Just as he reached the opening, a man in a uniform emblazoned with a Trylon and Perisphere patch put out a hand to bar his way. Martin grabbed the hand and gave it a hearty shake.