So we've got a long flashback here. I hope you guys don't mind ;) As always, thank you for you reviews. They keep me going and make me want to write more and more with each one I receive. You're awesome! 3
Chapter Ten
Mickey Sullivan had been a staple in my life since the time I was six. He was the one who had taught me to kick a football on the cobbled stone sidewalk outside my house, taught me how to swear, taught me how to spit…taught me how to kiss…
He was my first love. The boy I dreamt of in my girlhood room with the canopied bed, the one my heart wept for when he was drafted into the army only a week after the war began and the one that ultimately caused me the greatest heartache I would ever know.
In the late summer of 1914 I stood with him on the dock in down town Dublin, dressed practically in a dark blue skirt and cream colored blouse. Our housekeeper, Mrs. Roark had thought to throw a knitted shawl over my shoulders before I walked out the door an hour before and as an icy breeze swept over me from the water, I was thankful for it. I watched Mickey say goodbye to his family. His mother, father and four sisters and younger brother. They wept over him, leaving stains of tears on his new brown army uniform, but I doubted he cared. When he was able to pull away from them, he finally made his way over to me. Mrs. Roark told me "the boy is the blackest of Irish" and I noted several times she may have been onto something. His hair was jet black, far darker than my own and his eyes were soft, warm chocolate pools. They were full of emotion then, holding back the tears I knew he wanted to shed.
He took my hand into his and held it tightly. It was as close to contact as we were allowed with his family so close by.
"I don't want to go." He said in a voice so quiet it was nearly a whisper.
"No one does." I replied sadly.
"It doesn't even affect us yet because the damn English is fighting, so do we."
"I'll write you." I said in a soft tone, attempting to change the subject so I wouldn't start crying myself. The area was thick with emotions and I was beginning to feel sick. It seemed to do the trick and he smiled down at me. Though it was frowned upon for two unmarried people to touch in anyway but a hand hold, he pulled me against his tall form and squeezed before parting us once more.
"You'll wait for me then?" he then asked.
I stood there for a moment, startled. Waiting for him? It didn't just mean waiting, it meant being here for him when he came back, for him to marry. It was a proposal for a proposal. And for reasons I couldn't explain, I nodded. "Yes."
He kissed me on the cheek. A quick peck that I realized later had little emotion behind it and gave me a small smile before he threw his bag over a shoulder and started for the ship.
I went home by myself, hailing a cab back to my house in Sutton. Mrs. Roark greeted me at the door, having never gone back to bed when I had left earlier. She was a woman in her mid forties, nearly my mother's age, but she shouldered so much more responsibility. She took my shawl and hung it up on the stand near the door, silently instructing me to wipe my muddy boots on the mat. "Did he get off then?"
I nodded.
"Did he propose?"
I looked sharply up at her and she nearly laughed. "That's what young folks do before they part isn't it?"
"He asked me to wait for him."
"Well that's nearly the same thing isn't it?"
"Mama won't approve."
She shook her head. My mother most certainly wouldn't. She wouldn't say it directly, but I knew she had higher aspirations for me than Mickey, whose father was a mere shop owner.
"Is she awake yet?" I asked, following her further into the house, noting the roaring fire in the sitting room and the scent of toast from the kitchen.
"I expect them down any moment. Go freshen up while I see to your father's coffee."
Four years later, Mrs. Roark was again the one who saw me out the door on the way to the docks. There was no need for a shawl that time, it was hot and sunny out and happy kind of weather that put an extra spring in my step. He was coming home. Home! Finally! Again I took the cab down town, paying the driver with a smile on my face and racing down the steps, holding my straw bonnet tightly to my head as I did so. I waited with the other girls, wives and mothers for the gates to the ship to open, which seemed to have been docked for some time already. It took me only a moment to spot him in the crowd that began to disperse down the gang plank and I was running towards him and was in front of him before his foot had barely set foot on dry land.
"Mickey!" the three years had passed slowly, but had taken with them the old worlds propriety and so I jumped into his arms without any hesitation. I pulled back to look at him and quickly felt my heart sink. The gaze on his face that greeted me was older, darker and sadder than the one that had left me. His cheeks were sunken, there were deep bags under his eyes that showed a great deal of time without decent rest. There was no smile upon his lips to greet my own, not even a forced one. "Mickey..." I said his name again. Why? I couldn't say, maybe to make sure it was actually him. He set me down.
"Kathleen."
"Mickey?"
"Michael." He was stiff and proper when he spoke and it felt like a sharp stab to my core. His letters, though few and far between in the past years, had never given me any indication that this is what would greet me when he finally came home. And it wasn't temporary. He'd risen to the rank of Sergeant in the Army. Spent three years fighting battles all over France and it had hardened him, made him into a man I didn't recognize. I tried my hardest to see passed it, but every moment spent in his presence became painful and uncomfortable and I began to drift farther away from him. He never spoke of our future again and eventually took up with some less than savory folks whose only common interest was their intense hatred of the English. I pulled further away from him and began doing my own thing. My father hired me as his secretary in the bank. Something that started me on my own path. It wasn't until January of 1919 that he came around again, at my parent's funeral.
The mourners had been invited to the house after church and though there was not a family member to be found from either side, the large house I had grown up in was still crowded. Mrs. Roark and some other women from the neighborhood had put out numerous platters on the dining room table and allowed people to help themselves rather than put the burden of being a hostess on my 21 year old shoulders. Michael found me in my father's study, slouching in his desk chair, numb and exhausted from the last thirty-six hours.
"My condolensences." He spoke from the doorway.
I nodded in his direction, but said nothing. He came into the room further, shutting the door behind him and came to lean against the desk next to me. I shifted uneasily in his presence, but again kept silent.
"I was thinking…well that we should revisit the idea of marrying."
At that I did look up, bewildered for certain. "I'm sorry?"
"You're alone. Your parents are dead, your father's brother is dead. There is no one to look after you."
His words brought on a fresh round of tears. "If you're trying to make me feel better, you're failing."
"I'm trying to reason with you. Marriage makes sense. I could take care of you. My father pays me well at the shop and we could live here."
"What?"
"There's plenty of room for children."
"Children?"
"There'll be time enough to talk about that, Kathleen." He reached for me, but I pulled away.
"I don't want to marry you." I said. "I don't love you."
If my words hurt him at all, he didn't show it. "Love doesn't mean much. My parents didn't marry for love."
"Well mine did."
At that he snorted in laughter. "They must have. There's no way a Irishman would marry and English whore just because."
His remark was rewarded with a hard slap across the face from me. "How dare you!"
"Come now, Kathleen the woman hated me." He rubbed his jaw, but seemed otherwise unfazed by my actions. "She shooed me off of the doorstep enough times for me to figure that out."
"That gives you the right to refer to her like that? She didn't hate you! She worried about me, nothing more!"
His face went dark then, "I take it you never told her about your first kiss then did you? I hope you remember it as fondly as I do." The words seethed from his lips and in a quick moment he was in front of me, his hands clamping down on my arms as tight as a vice. "You remember that don't you?"
When I didn't answer directly, petrified by fear he shook me and said louder "Don't you?!"
I swallowed back. "Yes."
"What is the meaning of this?" The sound of Mrs. Roark's voice pulled Mickey back to earth and he immediately released me and turned to her, shame written all over his face. He paused for a moment before fleeing the room, rushing passed my angry housekeeper in fear. From that day on I avoided him. I hated him and blamed not only the war, but the group of men he was surrounding himself with.
That was why I had blown up at Tom. That was why for a mere moment I wanted to hate him. Mickey was now the very basis of my nightmares, not just for that moment after my parent's death, but for others that I couldn't even think of without being overwrought with guilt and devastation. But when Tom kissed me there on the bench, the bright moonlight cascading down upon us I found relief I had sought for years and I forgot all of it. I wanted to open my heart to him. I wanted to tell him why some men of the IRA made me sick to my stomach, who David was, how much I loved him and how he was ripped from my arms by a petty jealous boy.
I couldn't though. I was forbidden to do any of that. Instead I let him kiss me and then let him sit with his arm around me for a long moment after, my head resting on his shoulder. Eventually we lost track of the time and Tom spoke up.
"We should go back inside."
As we approached the house I noticed that the doors we had come out of had been closed. He opened one for me and allowed me to step back into the library first, however it wasn't until he stepped in after me and shut the door did I notice Lord Grantham standing near one of the sofa's, poker faced and staring directly at us.
"Ms. Byrne, I believe my daughter was looking for you." His voice was cool and immediately set the guilt afire within me. I looked at Tom who was standing straight and tall next to me, his eyes almost challenging his father in law. I said nothing more and went to the door, feeling like I should apologize, but didn't. Tom was still in his place when I turned around to shut the door behind me, seemingly ready for battle.