The Convictions of John Delahunt (27 page)

I realized that a student in the second row on the far left was looking at me over his shoulder. He had wavy brown hair oddly parted just off-centre, and straight eyebrows that met at the bridge of his nose. I didn’t recognize him, but when I held his gaze he dipped his head once, then returned his attention to Lloyd.

The Professor was casually referring to physical laws and mathematical equations I had never heard of, but my classmates weren’t perplexed; one fellow was nodding his head along to the lecture, as if his own findings were being confirmed.

I shifted in my bench and leaned forward. I wasn’t paying close enough attention. It would take a while to regain the concentration necessary to follow such advanced teaching. Lloyd spoke of optical axes and the propagation of light along crystal lattices; he spoke of rays incidental and rays tangential. He unfolded his left arm again and held up one finger. ‘And then, of course, we shall encounter conical refraction.’ He smiled and said, ‘The radiant stranger.’

Several in the class laughed, apparently familiar with the reference. I was at a loss. I looked to see if the man who had peered back at me was amused, but he was busy writing in his notebook.

Over the next several minutes my interest wavered. I scraped my dry nib over the tabletop. It was quite easy to leave a mark, so I inscribed a J into the wood. The curve of the D was more difficult, so I left my initials unfinished as ‘JI’, placed the pen in my satchel and got up to leave. The aisle descended through the middle of the lecture hall, and all the students turned at the sound of my footsteps. Professor Lloyd’s voice trailed off for a moment. When he saw me move towards the door he said, ‘Usually, gentlemen manage to make it to lunch hour.’

Rain fell in a fine mist as I picked my way over slippery cobbles in Library Square. The grey buildings provided scant protection from a crosswind that caused the Union flag above Regent House to snap. I waited beneath the arched portico at the front entrance of the college for the rain to ease, looking out at the traffic on College Green, and down the length of Dame Street towards the Castle, which was hidden from view.

‘John Delahunt.’

The student who had been observing me in class stood by my side. One of his straight eyebrows lifted at an angle. ‘Do you remember me?’

I searched his face. His features weren’t familiar.

‘Because I remember you. You were a friend of James O’Neill.’

He smiled at my reaction to the name.

‘And you refused to testify against him when he was tried for assaulting that policeman. He thought highly of you.’

‘That was a year and a half ago.’

‘I know, I was just a junior freshman, but I saw you once or twice in the Eagle with James and Arthur Stokes. I’m Michael Corcoran.’

‘Is O’Neill still in Trinity?’

Corcoran shook his head. ‘He was expelled when convicted, which meant he couldn’t go to King’s Inns either. But his father has connections in America, and he’s going to complete his degree in Philadelphia. He’ll be leaving Ireland soon.’

‘That’s a shame.’

‘I was surprised to see you this morning. I’d no idea you were to repeat your final year. The rumour was you had married the Stokes daughter.’

‘I did marry Helen.’

‘Oh.’ He apologized and enquired after her health.

‘She’s convalescing at present.’ I could have left it at that. ‘A miscarriage.’

He frowned, looked down at the ground and said he was sorry for my loss.

‘It couldn’t be helped.’

He hadn’t meant to pry.

I allowed the silence between us to grow uncomfortable as he fixed a button on the cuff of his coat.

How did he know what O’Neill thought of me?

‘Well, James was a founder member of the Repeal Society in the college. I attended its early meetings.’

‘There’s a Repeal Society in Trinity?’ I was surprised to learn this. It had been my belief that the university didn’t allow the expression of radical opinion in the debating clubs.

Corcoran said there was, and that he was now the secretary. ‘We have a room overlooking Botany Bay. Perhaps you’d like to come up?’

I allowed my gaze to drift down Dame Street once more. Corcoran seemed to think I needed more convincing.

‘The fire will be lit, and there may be some wine.’

I pretended that settled it. ‘In that case,’ I said, ‘lead on.’

Helen didn’t lift her head from the pillow when I came in. I threw my satchel in the corner and placed my jacket on the bare hook. She was wearing her coat beneath the covers again. I leaned over the bed and looked into her face. She was awake, and I waited for her eye to meet mine. Her pupils suddenly narrowed as if a flaring match was held against them. After another moment her eyelids widened, and I wondered if she was aware of me at all.

I spoke her name.

She gave two languid blinks, and the ghost of a smile appeared. ‘How did it go?’

I continued to look at her in silence to see if she would drift away again, but she remained focused, and her brow creased.

‘The classes were difficult to follow, I’ll need to do some more reading. But I met someone who used to know your brother.’ Her lips tightened. ‘He invited me to join a society for the radicals, which I did. I’m sure the Department will want to know about them. It could be a nice source of money.’

‘That’s good.’ She reached out and brushed my cheek.

What had she done during the day?

‘Not much. A bit of writing.’

How much laudanum did she take?

She took her hand away from my face. ‘I didn’t take any.’

I looked over at the cold hearth. ‘I’ll start a fire to make dinner.’

She pulled the blankets up to her chin and said she wasn’t hungry.

The bottle of laudanum remained on the mantelpiece, its label turned against the wall, just as it was the day before. Had she carefully positioned it so it would appear untouched? It was about a third full. With my thumbnail, I made a small mark in the label, just at the level of the liquid.

The first few weeks of the term drifted by. Helen was at her most coherent in the morning, though more often than not she remained in bed while I got ready for college. I would pause at the threshold and wish her a good day, closing the door over in the ensuing silence. I stopped attending lectures so spent most of my day in the common room of the Repeal Society. By all appearances, I was its most ardent member, though I never took part in the few conversations relating to politics, or volunteered for any of their weekly debates.

There were always books and newspapers strewn about the neglected billiard table, and I would take one and read in the corner, with a bearing that indicated I didn’t wish to be disturbed. The other members seemed to tolerate my brooding, dishevelled presence. They would nod to me or greet me by name as I entered, and enquire if I wished for coffee whenever it was brewed. They believed that I had been a close confidant of the club’s founder, James O’Neill, and that I had sought to protect his liberty by remaining stony-faced during his trial. Furthermore, there was a certain cachet to the fact that I’d eloped with a sought-after debutante, and that we lived together shamelessly in a one-roomed garret near the city’s northern limit.

But Helen remained in a state of lethargy throughout October. One afternoon, I decided to sort out the mess on her writing desk, which was cluttered with strewn papers, stained pens and one dried inkpot with its lid removed. I had never been curious about Helen’s novel before, but that day I picked it up to have a look. Her handwriting had become very spidery and smudged. The paragraphs were numbered, but not sequentially, and some of them were struck through with a line from the bottom left corner to the top right.

It had been my belief that Helen was writing a novel set during the Congress of Vienna, which took place after the Napoleonic Wars, a tale full of intrigue and romance.

From what I could piece together from stray paragraphs and fragments of chapters, her newest text was about a character named Gideon, who had been committed to an asylum on a desolate island off the Scottish coast. His main interaction was with the institution’s governor, a man called Dr Lucian. Helen seemed to make no delineation between Gideon’s speech and the jumble of thoughts spoken only in his own fervid mind. The asylum was populated with a cast of grotesques, and Helen described each of them and their low habits in disturbing detail. Other long passages seemed to recount bizarre nightmares and hallucinations witnessed by Gideon: bedclothes that became swarms of insects; faces of children ageing and decaying in a matter of seconds; buboes in his armpits and groin with gaping, grinning mouths. Was this what she saw when she stared about with vacant eyes, or when she whimpered in her sleep? She shifted under the covers, and I hurriedly replaced the sheaf on the table, as if I had been caught reading her diary.

I was convinced she was taking extra doses of laudanum, so I checked the amount against the mark I had scratched in the bottle’s label a few weeks before. The level of liquid was still as high as the notch.

I was perplexed. If she wasn’t misusing the tonic then she had to be suffering from some other illness. I went to sit on the bed and pulled the blanket down from her face. My knuckles rested against her chin, and her uneven breath tickled the top of my hand.

She hadn’t been eating properly for weeks; her sleep was erratic. For several hours a day she was left on her own in the tenement, and she hardly ever took fresh air. She began to shiver so I took off my coat and laid it on top of the bedclothes. I brushed a lock of hair over her ear. A strand caught in my fingernail and came away.

I recalled how she had looked at her coming-out ball: the gown she wore, pearl-white in the warm drawing-room light, the topaz crystals in her hair, the flash in her eye. When I sat beside her that night, our knees had touched, and we both pretended not to notice. When she spoke into my ear, I had felt her breath brush against my cheek.

She stirred in the bed, slowly blinked and studied me for a moment. Then she rose into a sitting position, placed a hand on her forehead and spoke in a mumble. ‘I must write to Arthur.’ She began to push the bedclothes down. ‘I promised him I’d write.’

I hushed her and said she was only dreaming. With a small amount of pressure, I eased her back on to the pillow.

Throughout our time in Grenville Street, no matter our circumstances, Helen always maintained certain standards. She never allowed unwashed dishes to build up on the sideboard. She swept the room and cleared the cinders from the hearth each morning. Though washing clothes was a nuisance – for once immersed they tended to remain damp for days – she always insisted we change our attire each week.

Fetching and heating enough water for the bath-tub was laborious and we only made the effort once a month. But each Saturday, Helen washed her hair over the basin, dragging it in front of the fire during cold weather. She would kneel and gather her hair forward, soak and lather the tresses with a bar of soap, and squeeze suds through her fingers. Then she’d rinse, by pouring water over her head from a bowl that she dipped in the larger basin. Her neck bent forward so the knoll at the top of her spine protruded. Slim, bare arms emerged from her white sleeveless shift. She was all elbows throughout, but in a way strangely graceful. The water would cascade down and burble into the washbasin, the ends of her hair floating on the frothy surface.

She was no longer able to do that, so I took it upon myself to clean her clothes. A small amount of washing soda remained in a burlap pouch on the shelf. I wasn’t sure how much was needed so I tipped in all of it. I swirled my hand in the basin to distribute the salts, then went to open Helen’s trunk. An array of soiled clothes were bundled beneath the lid. I held my breath, gathered two armfuls and brought them to the basin. I washed the garments in batches, vigorously scrubbing folds of stockings, petticoats and dresses against each other, as if rubbing sticks to start a fire. I wrung them out as best I could, and draped them from the clothes line that spanned the room. Helen remained asleep throughout.

The water in the basin had become cloudy. I frowned at red blotches that appeared on my palms and admired the gleaming whites of my fingernails. Helen’s trunk was almost empty. The dresses that remained were of high-quality velvet and muslin, which she hadn’t worn in over a year. There was also another nightdress folded up which smelled clean, so I took it over to Helen and gently shook her awake. She squinted up at me.

I said, ‘Change into this, and I’ll wash the one you’re wearing.’

She regarded the lace gown in my hand for a moment, then looked over at the basin beside the fireplace, and the laundry suspended from the line.

I dragged back the covers. ‘Come along. This one’s cleaner.’

I helped her out of bed, but she just stood there, bare feet on the floorboards, with her head bowed.

‘Will you hurry up?’

When she made no movement I reached over and undid a string on her nightdress. She drew away from my touch, and crossed her hands over her shoulders. I thought she intended to remain like that, but then she tugged at the short sleeves of the nightdress and allowed it to slip on to the floor.

I held out the clean gown. Already she had begun to shiver, and her gaunt shoulders stooped. She kept her arms folded in front.

‘Take it,’ I said.

Helen’s skin had a yellow tinge, her rib-cage was visible, and two hollows dipped behind jutting collarbones.

‘You’ll catch cold.’

She remained still. I was about to pull the gown over her head myself, but then she turned her face towards mine and stared at me between the parting of her hair. She held my eye as she reached across to take the dress, and I looked away as she put it on. Then I bent down to her feet.

‘Mind,’ I said.

She stepped out of the crumple of linen on the floor and I picked it up. The stained nightgown was still warm. When I threw it into the basin it floated on top for a moment, until the water saturated the cloth and it sank into the murk.