The City of Strangers. Michael Russell

her arm round Tom; then she put the hat on her head.

      ‘So what do you think?’

      As Valerie and her children walked down the track through the woods, Stefan turned towards the farm with Tom and Harry. The boys climbed over the fence into the field and walked on. He realised he hadn’t explained anything at all to her yet. He called out in the near darkness.

      ‘I’m leaving for New York tomorrow!’

      ‘How long will you be?’

      ‘Five days, six. I’m flying.’

      ‘What? You still haven’t told me why.’

      ‘I’ll catch you in the morning, Valerie!’

      ‘I don’t know what I’m doing tomorrow. I’ll see what –’

      She was gone from sight; her voice had gone too, fading into the trees. He wasn’t sure how much she had heard but when he clambered over the fence it was clear Tom had heard enough. He stood with a look of bewilderment and awe on his face, waiting for his father; it was a look shared by Harry Lawlor too. The Mississippi had disappeared from view.

       5. Inns Quay

      That evening, after tea, Tom Gillespie brought down the newspaper cuttings he had collected earlier in the year about the flying boats that had just taken to the air, flying out of Ireland, across the Atlantic, to America. It was a wonder that no one could have dreamt of, even a few years ago. There were photographs of the planes, gigantic yet graceful; a great, wide, heavy wing of engines and propellers, with the sleek lines of a ship hanging underneath, cutting down into the waters of the River Shannon as they landed at Foynes. There were men in the navy-like uniforms of Pan American Airways and Imperial Airways, names that on their own conjured up for Tom all the vastness of the earth. There was a map that showed the route the flying boats would take, from Southampton Water on the English Channel across England and Wales, across the Irish sea and all of Ireland to Foynes on the Shannon Estuary; from Foynes over the whole of the North Atlantic, the longest, barely imaginable leg of the journey, to Botwood in Newfoundland; then across the Gulf of St Lawrence and down through Canada and New England to New York, the city of skyscrapers that Tom had only seen in newsreels; a city that felt like it was on another planet.

      The atlas was pulled out to join the cuttings, and for more than an hour the farmhouse on the western edge of the Wicklow Mountains was open to the skies and the oceans and a light that seemed to shine on all the distance in the tiny maps and make it almost tangible. David and Helena too were swept up in the adventure that filled their grandson’s head, and when Tom finally went up to bed he had exhausted them all with his excitement. He felt as if he was going too.

      For a moment even Tom’s father had forgotten that the man he was going to bring back from New York, on the return leg of that great adventure, might be coming home to meet the English hangman.

      And the hangman was still English. Despite the fact that two years earlier, in Éamon de Valera’s new constitution, the Irish Free State had officially been renamed Éire, Ireland, and that it considered itself now, for all practical purposes, a republic, there was still one job no Irishman would ever be asked to do in Ireland. So when that job did need doing it was the English hangman, Thomas Pierrepoint, who took the boat train from Euston, the mail boat from Holyhead, and a taxi from Dún Laoghaire to Mountjoy Prison.

      Stefan was thinking about what his journey meant now, as his mother and father washed up. He folded up his son’s newspaper cuttings and put them away in the Cadbury’s chocolate box that had a picture of a flying boat pasted on it; he closed the box and put it aside to go back to Tom’s room.

      As he returned to the kitchen the telephone rang. It was Valerie Lessingham, her voice bright as always, pushing away what was in his mind.

      ‘Stefan, I only got a bit of what you said. How long are you away?’

      ‘It’s not even a week.’

      ‘I have to be in Dublin tomorrow. So I’m going up there anyway. I thought I might drive you. You said you’d be staying the night. I could too.’

      In a relationship that largely revolved around their children, the time Stefan and Valerie had actually spent alone together didn’t amount to much. When the chance did arise, Valerie dealt with it simply enough. Where Stefan approached it all with caution, she just got on with it.

      He laughed. ‘Well, I suppose if you’re going anyway.’

      It was unlikely she had been going anyway but, like the practical woman she was, there would, naturally, be things she had to do in Dublin.

      As he walked back into the kitchen the last dishes were being dried and put away. His father and mother looked round. In a household where the telephone was still a novelty, an explanation was always expected. Stefan would rather it hadn’t been expected right now. It was an area of his life where the less said, especially as far as his mother was concerned, the better.

      ‘Valerie Lessingham’s got to be in Dublin tomorrow. She’s going to give me a lift up.’

      David Gillespie nodded and turned to put a cup in the press. Helena’s pursed lips told another story. Open skies were forgotten.

      ‘Well, as usual, there’s nothing much happens here that Mrs Lessingham doesn’t want a part in. I suppose we should be used to it.’

      David shot a warning glance at his wife, but she took no notice.

      ‘Normally it’s Tom of course.’

      ‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’ said Stefan. His irritation was defensive; he wanted to tell her to mind her own business. His father shot him the same warning glance he had shot Helena, and it had the same effect. ‘Leave it alone, Ma. You know no one could be kinder to Tom.’

      ‘And what does he think about that?’

      ‘What?’

      Helena turned to the range, taking off her apron and folding it very purposefully, several times, before she hung it over the rail to dry.

      ‘Think about what? You know what he thinks. He loves being at Whitehall Grove, and he loves it when Jane and Alex come here. They have a grand time, don’t they? Leave it at that!’ He knew perfectly well why she wouldn’t leave it at that, at least he thought he did. ‘Valerie gives him more time than anyone outside this house. He thinks the world of her! Why not?’

      His mother still had her back to him.

      ‘Why not indeed? I’m sure she’s an angel come among us!’

      Even David Gillespie thought this was unnecessary.

      ‘Helena, will you come on? That’s enough.’

      She turned, smiling now, but it wasn’t a smile of agreement. It was a smile that said she had more to say, and obviously no one wanted to hear it.

      ‘Probably it is. Trust me to blow out the candle when it’s burning so bright.’ She walked across to Stefan and kissed his cheek. ‘You’ll need an early night, son. You’ve a lot to do. I’m sure there’s more to all that travelling than they say. It’s still a long way, however quickly you get there.’

      She walked out and went upstairs.

      Stefan sat down at the table. He looked down at the picture of the flying boat. There had been times, more times recently, even before the call to Dublin, when he had felt he needed to get away. It had nothing to do with Valerie Lessingham, or with his mother’s tight-lipped disapproval, or even the slow repetitiveness of his life; it had nothing to do with his family really. It was the feeling that sometimes the mountains around him closed in, watching him grow older, watching his son grow up as he did no more than mark time.

      David Gillespie went to the press and brought out two bottles of beer. He stood pouring them,