From the window in the kitchen I could see Finbarr walking over the hill, Alby at his heels. The boy and dog with matching strides, at once purposeful and carefree. There was no conscription; Finbarr joined the British Forces with his parents’ blessing because that’s what patriotism meant in those days, to a certain kind of person. Britons never, never, never shall be slaves and Come and do your bit. My Uncle Jack would join, too, once the efforts were underway. But we didn’t know that yet. For now war was a young man’s business.
‘Go on out,’ Aunt Rosie said, when she caught me watching through the window. This time she didn’t send Seamus with me. She knew what Finbarr had come to say. We make special dispensations for soldiers, even when it comes to girls.
‘I’m sorry to leave,’ Finbarr said. His voice was sombre but the lightness hadn’t left him. None of this was real. War was nothing but a ruined summer. ‘This wasn’t how I imagined things would go.’
Tears clouded my eyes. At first this embarrassed me but Finbarr reached out and took my hand.
‘Are you frightened?’ I asked.
‘Sure, I think I am. Though I don’t quite know what to be frightened of. I can’t hardly imagine what it’ll be like.’ The world around us stood green and untroubled. ‘Do you know what I can imagine? After it all. The war won’t take long. Six months tops and it’ll all be over. And you’ll come to Ireland to stay, and we’ll have a farm of our own, and I’ll train dogs, and you’ll write books.’
My face broke open into a smile that nearly cracked my body in two. He hadn’t said the word, married, I was too young for that, but everything else he’d said spelled it out, didn’t it? I could marry Finbarr. I could marry Ireland. My future was sealed, just one quick war to get out of the way.
‘Will you pray for me?’ Finbarr asked.
My father had left his religion when he left Ireland. I had never prayed in my life, not even when I went to church with Rosie and Jack, but I promised I would.
‘May I have a picture of you?’ he said, another soldierly request.
‘I don’t have one here.’ My parents had exactly one picture of me, with my three sisters, taken and framed years ago. ‘But I’ll get one made. I’ll send it to you. I promise.’
Finbarr gathered me in his arms and held me a long while. He didn’t rock or sway or move. He just stood, his arms tight, our bodies together. I wished we could stay inside that stillness. No moving forward into the future, nor ever leaving that precise spot. Finbarr’s lips rested in the curve of my neck. I could feel Aunt Rosie watching from the window but I didn’t care, not even when Finbarr finally pulled away and kissed me a long time, until Rosie knocked on the window loud enough for us to hear and pull apart.
‘You’re my girl,’ he said, holding me by the shoulders. ‘Isn’t that the truth, Nan?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It is.’
He pulled a Claddagh from his pocket and slipped it onto my right ring finger, crown pointing towards me. I was taken. There was a tiny emerald in the crown, no bigger than a crumb from a slice of soda bread. Terrible to admit, the main emotion I felt was joy, crackling through my body. How many girls that summer felt the same callow happiness, a boy admitting his love and bestowing a ring before walking off to war? We didn’t know what it meant. None of us did.
The Disappearance
Last Day Seen
Friday, 3 December 1926
SOMETIMES A LIFE is so entirely disrupted, on such a large and ungraspable scale, all one can do is face the ruined day. After Archie drove away, Agatha tried to pull herself together. Briefly, she placed her hands on the keys of her typewriter then gave up at once. Nothing she wrote would be any good. Nothing she did would be any good until she could sort things out with Archie – until she could rectify this mess. She would find a way to do this today and then she would write tomorrow.