She shrugged her shoulders.

  ‘It must be a great relief to find yourself mistaken.’ For a few seconds she endured his reproachful eyes, then burst out: ‘Would it please you better if I wept … said we were cowards? That we’d spend our lives regretting what wouldn’t come again?’

  ‘Yes,’ he murmured at last, ‘I would like that better.’

  Thinking him about to embrace her, the memory of their first kiss burned Theresa like a great thirst. She held out her hands to him, but he paced restlessly to the window.

  ‘This house … it’s like being at the bottom of a river.’

  ‘Let’s leave it for a while.’

  He took her arm eagerly.

  ‘There’s a trap in the stables. Let’s hope the wheels stay on.’

  Hurrying after him, Theresa no longer even remembered the resolution she had so lamentably failed to carry through.

  Sitting perched next to Theresa in the high two-wheeler with the reins in his hands, Clinton relished their aloneness. The bare hills by their very isolation seemed to bring them closer; their smallness shared under the grey immensity of the sky. His eyes strayed from the curve of her cheek to a fold in the hills that repeated it, from the red ribbon of her hat to the scarlet rose hips in the hedges.

  Through the sleeve of her coat, he could feel the shape of her arm linked through his; and there, resting just above the wrist, was her neat chamois leather glove. He stared with resigned astonishment at this very ordinary glove, as if unable to understand how it came to be placed on his arm, and then put his own hand over it. Again and again in her company he had an uncanny sense of the suspension of normal time and logic, as though he had arrived at a point ahead of where he expected to be. She smiled at him and said:

  ‘If from a glove you take the letter G,

  Then glove is love, and that I send to thee.’

  He laughed.

  ‘Am I supposed to reply in verse?’

  ‘Heavens no. A few months ago I was sent a glove with that message … by an elderly man called Page who used to drive me mad by coming to watch me every night in the same box. Poor man. If from Page you take the letter P, Then page is age, and that won’t do for me.’

  ‘You sent him that?’

  ‘Of course. Wouldn’t you if you’d thought of it?’

  ‘Who wouldn’t?’

  ‘I sent the glove back too. I never keep anything, though with rings it’s tempting. I once had one that came with a note saying that if I wore it on my right hand during the first act, the sender would know that I’d meet him afterwards.’

  ‘So you wore it on the left?’

  ‘I changed it from hand to hand.’ She looked across the fields at some cows sheltering from the wind under the lee of a leafless hedge. ‘I can’t think why I told you that. I’m usually very kind. Pure nervousness.’

  ‘You nervous?’

  ‘If you only knew,’ she murmured; her words barely audible above the creak of the springs and the thud of the horse’s hoofs.

  Had they not at that moment been approaching a man and a woman carrying bundles of hay on their backs, he would have stopped the trap and embraced her. Then a little later they passed a girl driving a dozen or so geese ahead of her towards the town of Clonmore.

  ‘Must be market day,’ said Clinton, as they came up with more people on the road: an old woman with a single pig and a bare-footed boy driving two heifers.

  ‘Could we go there?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s not much of a place.’

  But her eagerness overcame his slight misgivings. There had been few reports of trouble in this part of Mayo.

  At first when they reached the small town, Clinton was glad that they had come. Fairs, markets and local races were the only diversions, which brought a little life to places usually devoid of any interest. By the statue of O’Connell a juggler was performing, varying his act by breaking stones against his chest. Men stood in groups outside the doors of spirits and grocery shops, talking, laughing, arguing. In a number of pens in the centre of the square, sheep and cows were being bought and sold, the farmers prodding them with sticks and haggling with each other. The wind was thick with tobacco smoke and the smell of fresh dung. All around the edges of the square were carts and donkeys.

  They left the horse and trap with a boy outside the one hotel in the town and then set out on foot to look around. Very soon Theresa was disconcerted by the covert looks directed at them: a mixture of curiosity, deference and hostility. Though she was sure that Clinton was perfectly aware of these eddies of resentment, he seemed utterly indifferent to them, but talked to her as unconcernedly as if they were walking down Bond Street or St James’s. Though Clinton was wearing an old riding coat, its cut, and the sheen on his top boots, as well as the clearness of his complexion, made him look like a man from another planet, among this crowd of weather-worn faces and coats of frieze and corduroy. As though describing the habits of Africans, Clinton told her why the people sold their calves early instead of keeping them through the winter to get a better price in the spring. Because of the number of their own children, they often could not afford to spare enough milk to feed the new calves. He showed her blocks of the coarse bread made with Indian corn which they ate until the new crop of potatoes, and pointed out some women buying this corn in exchange for eggs.

  ‘But why,’ she asked, ‘don’t they eat the eggs themselves?’

  ‘For a week’s supply of eggs, they can buy enough corn to last three.’

  ‘How awful,’ she murmured, ‘not to be able to eat their own eggs.’

  ‘They should grow more corn,’ he replied with a brusqueness that shocked her a little, but then she was unaware that, since reaching the centre of the square, Clinton had sensed that they were being shadowed. Neither wanting to scare Theresa, nor let anyone else know he was alarmed, he assumed an air of indifference. But he stopped deliberately at the corn merchant’s window to be able to look back as if unsuspecting; and then he was no longer in any doubt. One of the men, as he had at first guessed, was McMahon; and from the way his companions were walking, it was clear that they were drunk. To avenge his recent loss of face, McMahon would very likely have been spreading rumours about a new campaign of evictions.

  Being reasonably sure that McMahon and his cronies were still the only people in the square to know his identity, Clinton was determined to leave before they shared their knowledge with many others. To get back to the trap without being seen would involve doubling behind the stalls on the far side of the square and running; and though this might take McMahon by surprise, it would undoubtedly attract other attention. Without telling Theresa that anything was wrong, Clinton suggested that they should be getting back. Then taking her by the arm, he walked straight towards the small group of pursuers. With a few yards dividing them, McMahon suddenly knelt down and shouted:

  ‘Down on your knees, boys, when his lordship passes.’

  Without turning his head to see whether the rest had followed McMahon’s inflammatory example, Clinton walked past, tightening his hold on Theresa’s arm.

  ‘Who are these men?’ she asked, shakily.

  ‘Keep walking,’ was all he said.

  No effort was made to stop them reaching the trap, but when they were both seated in the vehicle, Clinton saw that MacMahon and a dozen others stood spread out in a semi-circle some ten yards away. With a shout to Theresa to get behind the dashboard, Clinton brought down his whip and launched the trap at the waiting men. As one jumped forward to seize the bridle, Clinton lashed out with the whip. Theresa screamed as she saw the plaited leather curl round the man’s bare arm, tearing away the skin. She hid her face and a second later heard another sharp crack and a roar of pain. The light carriage was swaying and jolting terrifyingly and she was deafened by angry shouts. A stone struck the tailboard and another crashed against the back of the box, but when she raised her head she could see across the horse’s haunches that the way was clear. A few people scattered, dropping baskets and packages, but Clinton did nothing to slacken the horse’s pace. Dazed with shock and bruised where she had been flung against the dashboard, Theresa was amazed to hear Clinton laughing. When they were clear of the streets, she turned on him furiously.

  ‘You’re mad. We might have been killed.’

  ‘Nothing of the sort,’ he replied, checking the horse’s pace to a brisk trot. ‘We might have been knocked about a bit if we’d stayed.’

  ‘You treated them like animals.’

  ‘You think I should have tried gentle persuasion?’

  ‘Yes,’ she cried, ‘I do.’

  ‘The discussion might have been rather one-sided.’

  Again he was smiling, more with relief than amusement, but Theresa was in no mood to draw distinctions.

  ‘What if you’d blinded one of them? Or crushed a man under the wheels?’

  He tried to take her hand but she pulled it away. He said softly:

  ‘The one who knelt down … remember him? He tried to shoot me the day I went to …’

  ‘Shoot you?’ she stammered. ‘You never as much as …’ She broke off in confusion. ‘He should be arrested.’

  ‘And tried at the next assizes?’ asked Clinton with a wry smile. ‘On my evidence alone? Imagine my mother’s joy. If most of her tenants weren’t Fenians when the trial started, they would be by the time it finished.’

  After a silence she said in a low unhappy voice:

  ‘He might try again …’

  ‘Not a chance. I made a mull of things and he lost his head.’

  ‘And just now?’

  ‘Drunken bravado. Imagine you’d been humiliated, and suddenly out of the blue comes the man who did it to you. You’re with some friends so you put on a show.’ He sighed and twisted the reins in his hands. ‘I was mad to have agreed to go there. People come twenty miles to a market, and McMahon lives just over the hill … I wasn’t thinking.’

  His sudden contrition dismayed her; in all probability his speed of reaction had saved them from a gruesome ordeal, but far from thanking him or showing any relief at their escape, she had made him regret the whole expedition, turning what might have been the bond of a shared adventure into cause for dissension and reproach. A bank of low dark cloud was sweeping in from the west, submerging the whole landscape in shadow. The shrill cry of the redshank overhead and the sound of the wind in the thin-leaved poplars filled her with sadness. She felt that if they were to speak to each other now, it would merely be for something to say: courtesies exchanged between strangers. He would return to his barracks and his men, and she to her old life, with or without Esmond. Perhaps all the time she had been reaching for something beyond her: happiness, that old delusion, forever slipping away into the blue distance. She thought of the flippant anecdotes she had told him before they went to Clonmore. Small wonder if he thought her an empty flirtatious woman. She wished she had told him about her childhood, her marriage, anything but what she had said.

  A little later when it started to rain she was surprised that he took the trouble to cover her with a rug. The drops were at first isolated, driven hard by the gusting wind, but soon settling into a downpour of dense slanting rain, that made the road ahead glisten and raised clouds of steam from the panting horse’s back. They drove on another half-mile till Clinton saw some farm buildings and swung the trap into the muddy yard. He jumped down and banged on the door of the cabin intending to ask if they could shelter there till the rain slackened. Getting no answer, he tried the door, which proved to be locked. Leaving the horse under the partial shelter of an oak, he ran with Theresa to the nearest barn. As they entered, some hens ran squawking past them out into the sheeting rain. Inside it was dark and smelled of hay and dung. Theresa could hear the rain trickling through the thatch; outside it came down with a steady hissing sound, forming large puddles in the yard. She was cold from the tips of her fingers to the pit of her stomach. His silence made her want to scream; it might rain for hours and all that time would she have to endure this silence?

  He was leaning against the wall of the barn with his hands on his hips and a lock of wet hair across his forehead, a picture of debonair insouciance, but young, so young, in the pale white light that slanted through the long opening between the barn doors. To a girl of twenty he would seem perfect in his maturity. Looking at him Theresa found it hard to believe that he had lashed out savagely with his whip so short a time before. When she had resigned herself to his absorbed contemplation of the rain, he turned to her sadly:

  ‘Was it because I laughed? Did that make you angry?’

  ‘Laughed?’ she asked, not understanding him at all. Amazed by a submissive note in his voice.

  ‘Laughed when we’d driven through those fools … You thought me brutal … Don’t you ever laugh without knowing why? Hadn’t we got away? And their faces … didn’t you see them? The way one of them crossed himself as if he’d seen the devil.’ Her silence baffled him.

  ‘In China,’ he said harshly, ‘they tied our hands together with wetted cords which tightened as they dried … stopping the flow of blood; making fingers split and blacken. When they searched me they didn’t take my signet ring. My jailor saw it and wanted it but my fingers were too swollen. He cut off my cords to restore the circulation and rubbed my fingers till he could get the thing off. That’s why I’m here; the rest in that cell got gangrene in their hands. Weeks later I laughed about that.’

  ‘I was never angry,’ she murmured.

  ‘Then why treat me like this?’ he shouted. ‘Could I help what happened? If you answer me with clever words and lowered lids … Instead you look at me with amazement. What do you feel, if you feel at all?’ He came towards her and roughly took her hand, forcing open the fingers and placing her palm under his coat against the heart. The fast thumping beat made her feel faint. When he kissed her on the lips, her body seemed to become as flowing and amenable as rain. He tipped back her hat where the brim got in his way, and kissed her again with soft light kisses on her eyelids, cheeks and throat, as though to verify what he had seen with his eyes. Feeling his arms tighten around her shoulders, she let her head tilt back with a shuddering sigh. Her lips resisted a little until his tongue parted them; her mouth imperceptibly moulding itself to his, spreading through her whole body a voluptuous glow of pleasure—docile at first, but soon sharpening to desire, catching her breath, drawing her fingers to his hair and neck; and all the time their bodies pressing harder together. His hands moved to her breasts and then round her waist, seeking to unlace her bodice, which she did for him, shivering at the cold damp air.

  Lying beside him on the damp hay, kissing again while his hands searched under her clothes, she helped him, lifting her skirts, not caring what was torn under them. He had loosened his trousers and she could see his erect member jutting from his flat stomach as he leant across her to place his coat under her head; she touched it with her cold hands as he parted her thighs; his hands were icy too against her skin, but desire made her shiver more than any cold. A frenzied longing swept her: to possess and be possessed. As he entered her she cared only for the wonder of that moment when she felt him moving in her; his face was buried in her neck, yet she seemed to see him standing aloofly against the barn wall, as the first sharp cries of pleasure broke from her.

  ‘Kiss me, my love. Kiss me,’ she moaned, pulling his face to her, as he thrust for the last time, gripping her hips, and then slipping down on an elbow at her side, breathing hard, pressing her to him. And still it rained, but more softly now, the sky a pale white through the doors, spreading its light in wan rays like a gentle fan.

  *

  As they drove back to Kilkreen across the wet countryside, torn rags of blue appeared in the pewter sky. The sun shone briefly as they passed a roofless hovel with one of its walls burnt black where the hearth had been. The horse’s hoofs threw up lumps of mud that thudded heavily against the dashboard. Though Clinton’s arm was round her waist, she sensed his apprehension.

  ‘I expected nothing from you,’ she said gently. ‘Nothing afterwards.’ She felt his arm tighten round her.

  ‘But I want you to. I want that very much,’ he replied without moving his eyes from the road ahead.

  ‘Want me to?’

  ‘Want you to know I’ll suffer when I leave here.’

  On his face the same brooding unhappiness.

  ‘Are you ashamed?’ she asked hesitantly. ‘Because if you’d thought me a lady …?’

  ‘I loved a baronet’s wife. We didn’t hold hands together when we were alone. I’d be ashamed to compromise an unmarried girl. But what’s that to us?’ He studied the handle of his whip. ‘If you leave Esmond because of me, I’ll make what restitution I can.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that,’ she cried. ‘I didn’t want you to feel guilt. That was all. You owe me no obligation.’

  ‘If you love me, how can you say that?’

  ‘Esmond loves me; and see how I treat that obligation.’ She looked at him beseechingly. ‘Don’t speak of obligations … your duties to my love. What about my duties? Your love?’

  ‘What should I do to prove it? Esmond can ruin me. Isn’t that enough?’

  ‘Say it to me … I want no other proof.’

  ‘I love you,’ he murmured, ‘want you with me; want you …’ Pulling on the reins he stopped the trap and kissed her fiercely, pressing his palms against her cheeks.

  ‘Dear God,’ she moaned, breathing heavily as they parted. ‘You tell me this and you’re going.’

  ‘There’s no help for it.’

  ‘Would they shoot you if you stayed away a few days more? Would your men die of grief?’

  ‘Do you think I’d stay to see you with him? I couldn’t.’

  ‘Not one more day?’

  ‘If there was some woman with me, would you say the same?’

  She shook her head and looked down at the rain-flattened grass by the roadside.

  ‘What can I do?’

  ‘Love me. Be patient. My regiment moves to Dublin in two months. I’ll take a house there.’