Chapter One Hundred And Twenty Seven
Skerries Road
A short while later, their train slowed and then crawled to a halt at the single platform of the deserted, wayside station at Skerries Road. Surrounded by a grove of ash and oak trees, the station stood in a small clearing. Glancing up, Sybil saw that beneath the cracked, dull, misted glass of its face, the hands of the station clock showed a quarter to three.
"Well, we're here... almost" said Tom, his seeming nonchalance betrayed by the hint of nervousness in his voice. Filtered by the leaves of the surrounding trees, dappled sunlight streamed in through the window of the carriage door catching the glint of gold in Tom's hair. Sybil patted and squeezed his thigh by way of re-assurance; smiled encouragingly at him.
"Together, my darling. We do this together. As always". She grinned at him again and this time found herself rewarded by the singular warmth of her husband's smile.
"Sybil, darlin', I do love you so very much" said Tom softly.
"I told you once before, Mr. Branson, you could charm the very angels out of Heaven with all of your Irish blarney!"
"And why should I be doing that, when I have you here beside me?" laughed Tom.
"Why indeed?" asked Sybil with a broad smile.
Here, with Tom sitting beside her, midst the peace and quiet of rural County Cork, it was so very easy to forget what had happened earlier down at the station on Albert Quay, let alone the singular unpleasantness which they had both witnessed back at Kinsale Junction.
Tom grinned, stood up and lowered the droplight. Leaning out of the window, through a swirling fug of smoke and steam from the engine he looked for Maeve. But in vain. He turned back to Sybil.
"I can't see any sight nor sign of her love. I thought she'd be here on the platform to meet us from off the train". He put his head out of the window once again. Behind him, Sybil frowned. It was odd, but something in Tom's tone suggested to her that he was rather more relieved than worried that Maeve was not yet there to meet them. The singular awkwardness of the moment passed directly.
"Never mind, Tom. I'm sure she'll be here soon".
With Danny nestling contentedly in her arms, now turning from Tom and looking out of the carriage window, Sybil found herself enchanted by the tranquil beauty of the soft green countryside of her immediate surroundings. From somewhere close at hand came the soft murmur of running water and, looking out of the window Sybil now saw that beside the station, babbling its way between moss-grown rocks, there flowed a small stream, which splashed down into a small fern-fringed pool, while high above her head a pair of skylarks swooped and sang. Except for the birdsong and the trill of the babbling brook, everything was all sunlight and silence.
It was probably no more than the combination of both sunlight and the sound of running water, although perhaps, to be truthful, the skylarks played their part too, which now put Sybil in mind of another day, just before Tom and she were married. Then, shortly before their wedding, arm in arm, they had walked across the fields to the Rainbow Pool, a place out on the edge of Ciaran's farm on the Clontarf Castle Estate; a spot which held special boyhood memories for Tom and which, after what happened there on that sunny afternoon, now held special memories for them both.
As the skylark soared on the wing ever higher into the azure blue of the summer sky, arm in arm, Tom and Sybil ambled gently across the close-cropped turf, past where a herd of black cattle grazed contentedly, towards the far side of the field where a stile provided access through to the open countryside beyond. Tom scrambled lightly over it, turned, and waited attentively for Sybil to do the same.
"Of course, I don't suppose it will seem half as magical to you as it did to me when I was a boy" said Tom ruefully, holding out his hand to her from the other side of the stile.
"Well, even if it doesn't, it obviously still means a very great deal to you, Tom, and I would love to see it all the same" retorted Sybil. "It's part of your past".
"And the past is myself" said Tom softly. He smiled, and then paused. In the silence that followed, Sybil saw that once again Tom was staring off into the distance, over her left shoulder;on his face she saw the same strange, faraway look which she had seen several times before.
A short while later they emerged from beneath the shade of the sheltering trees onto a short stretch of open greensward. Ahead of them, almost lost to sight in a dense brake of hawthorn was a low, grey, ivy clad cliff, perhaps twenty or so feet high, over which the stream spilled in a foaming waterfall, swiftly tumbling through a jumble of moss-grown rocks to splash into an almost circular pool fringed with fern; thereafter to trill over a rocky lip and wend its way onwards down the valley up which they had walked. Sunlight glinted off the foaming fall of water producing an iridescent kaleidoscopic wealth of many coloured hues which, thought Sybil, must be why they called it the Rainbow Pool.
I'd ask you to come with me, but the last time we were here, the track ... down to the steps ... well, it was frightfully overgrown!"
"Go on, off with you".
"Wait for me?" asked Tom with a merry twinkle in his eyes.
"Of course" laughed Sybil. "What else have I to do except wait for you? Although, come to think of it, I might just try and do a sketch of this place while you're exploring. Mind you, I doubt I will do justice to it".
Later…
Although by now it was late afternoon, the sun was still high and warm on the back of her neck. Sybil could hear Tom coming back through the trees towards her. She yawned; lay back on his jacket, breathing in his scent, linking her hands behind her head. A moment or two later and Tom emerged from out of the thicket of holly and mountain ash and dropped down on the short turf beside her.
"Miss me?" he asked with a self-satisfied grin. He leaned in for a kiss to which she readily responded."What do you think?" asked Sybil when they broke apart. "Tom, your hair's all damp!"
"It's only spray from the waterfall" said Tom.
"Did you manage to get down to the ledge? I suppose I ... I must have dozed off ... in the sun".
"You know me", chuckled Tom. He nodded. "No sketch of the pool then?"
"Of the pool? No". Sybil shook her head. She smiled broadly at him.
"Pity. Well, never mind. They'll be other opportunities to draw this place I'm sure", said Tom.
"I'm sure there will", echoed Sybil.
"You ready to set off back?" Tom held out his hand toward her, helped her up to her feet, then reached down, and retrieved his jacket, swinging it nonchalantly back over his left shoulder. Then, arm in arm, they set off along the path towards the distant farm.
Something, thought Sybil, must now have stirred the same memory in Tom for it was in the act of pulling down their two cases from out of the luggage rack, that he paused, turned, looked out of the window and cocked an ear. He chuckled, grinned at Sybil and then made a quick diving movement with his hands. Sybil smiled and nodded her head. She looked down at Danny still fast asleep in her arms and then back at Tom. How far they had travelled together, the two of them, since that other long gone summer's day, in August 1914, just before the whole world went mad.
And Sybil was not thinking in terms of geographic distance.
The lady and the chauffeur; for she knew, that was still how some saw them.
Not that she cared a fig if they did.
For, as much as Tom loved Ireland, as much as Sybil loved Downton Abbey, each would have vouchsafed to the other, indeed had done just that, in freely admitting that it was not until they had owned the true nature of their feelings for each other, that they had come to realise that there had always been something missing in each of their lives.
And now that Irish chauffeur so smartly turned out in his uniform and the young aristocratic lady so carefree in her sprig print muslin dress, standing beside each other at the garden party held in the grounds of Downton Abbey, no longer even existed; had been replaced long ere since by Tom and Sybil Branson, two people who, like the opposite sides of the same coin, complemented each other perfectly and joined together formed one entire whole.
Sybil did indeed make a sketch that day out at the farm. It now reposed safely at the bottom of her trunk at the end of their bed in Clontarf, but the drawing had not been of the pool.
Tom was gazing directly in Sybil's direction, over to where she had been sitting when he had left her, believing her to have fallen asleep; unaware of course, that to avoid the full glare of the afternoon sun she had, albeit temporarily, moved back under the fringe of the sheltering trees. In no sense was the portrait posed. After all, how could it have been, when Tom had been so singularly unaware that Sybil was sketching him from her covert vantage point? And it was the total lack of self-consciousness on his part, which gave the sketch of him such a rare vitality.
She had caught him naked, seated on the rocky ledge from where but a short time earlier he must have dived into the pool below; absent-mindedly absorbed in drying his tousled hair with his flannel vest, his arm outstretched. Drops of water glistened on his pale skin. Tom looked radiant, carefree, glowing with both health and happiness.
There was now a moment of utter stillness.
Tom busied himself and reached down their cases from out the luggage rack above their heads. Having gathered his few possessions together, including his hockey stick, the young dark-haired lad, probably no more than sixteen years old, who had sprung so lithely into their compartment at Farrangalway, shouldered his rucksack and stood up.
"Excuse me please" he said.
He squeezed himself past Tom, moved to the door, reached through the open window, turned the handle and stepped out onto the platform.
At which point all hell broke loose, when, seemingly, from out of nowhere, a sudden hailstorm of bullets peppered the side of the train nearest the station. Fired from the immediate vicinity of the small, stone built station building, several of the bullets hit the young man, one of them in the head, smashing through his skull, killing him instantly, spattering the compartment and its other occupants with his blood and brains. Another bullet caught Tom in the left arm, a second in the shoulder, the force of the two impacts spinning him round, while the force of the fusillade catapulted the young man's now bloodied lifeless body backwards, catching Tom off-balance and knocking him to the floor already sticky with blood and other detritus.
"Christ! My feckin arm!" yelled Tom clutching his upper left arm with his right hand, blood oozing, pulsing red between his fingers, before he dropped like a stone.
Buzzing like angry hornets a furious storm of bullets now erupted from somewhere outside, ricocheted noisily off brass door handles or else slamming into the wooden sides of the carriage in which they were seated. Others smashed light fittings and dove into the upholstery. The crack and rattle of small arms fire from the low hillside overlooking the station and the railway intensified. Above the deafening cacophony of gunfire, Sybil could hear screams coming from other compartments in the same carriage as well as from other coaches further down the train.
The blistering, murderous hail of bullets continued unabated from behind a series of hastily improvised but effective barricades formed out of benches, barrels, and sacks of flour and grain in and around the station building. The bullets raked the carriages of the train from end to end, shattering windows, splintering woodwork, ricocheted off the internal partitions of the crowded compartments, rounds ripping into flesh and bone causing both death and inflicting terrible wounds among the passengers, both civilian and military alike.
When the shooting had begun, for one brief instant, Sybil had sat stock-still, horrified, shocked and stunned, unable to comprehend what was happening all about them. Then seeing Tom shot and fall to the floor, she had screamed aloud.
"Tom! Oh God, no! Tom!"
Instinctively shielding Danny with her own body, ducking down, Sybil wedged herself in the narrow gap between the seats next to where Tom had fallen, covering their heads with their suitcases which she dragged with her from off the seats. It was not much of a refuge but it was the only place that afforded all three some kind of protection from what was now taking place about them.
Awoken by all the noise, sensing his mother's distress, spattered with his father's blood, Danny mewed like a frightened kitten, whimpered and then began to cry inconsolably.
Author's Note:
The sad truth is that, during the Irish War of Independence (1919-21) and the Irish Civil War (1922-23) which followed it, there were many attacks mounted on the railways and on trains, especially in the south of Ireland. Some were extremely bloody affairs, resulting in both civilian and military casualties.