‘Shall we order some more coffee?’ she asked.
‘You have some,’ he replied. ‘Bit coffee’d out, me.’
‘Coffee’d out?’ she repeated, looking puzzled.
‘Ah, yes, army expression. It means I’ve had sufficient.’
‘Oh. Well, I won’t bother either then. We might have a cocktail, though, don’t you think? Since we’ve nothing to do but sit. Cocktails are quite the thing these days, aren’t they? Do you like cocktails?’
‘Sure. What’s not to like?’
As he said it he could hear the phrase clanging about in the wrong century like a great big throbbing verbal sore thumb. Coffee’d out? What’s not to like? Why was he suddenly talking like a twenty-first-century teenager?
‘What’s not to like?’ she asked looking puzzled.
She looked so pretty when she was puzzled. It made the middle bit of her brow wrinkle slightly, just above her nose.
‘Sorry. Mess-room slang again,’ he said. ‘Certainly I like cocktails. As long as they’re very dry.’
‘I like sweet ones, with cherries and grenadine, or dark vermouth. Have you heard of a Manhattan? I’ve just discovered them.’
‘Yes, I’ve heard of it. Although I’m a Martini man myself, if I’m mixing.’
‘Well, I must say, that’s better.’
‘What’s better?’ Stanton asked.
‘You smiling. You looked awfully serious before.’
‘Did I?’
‘Yes, with your newspaper. I noticed. You know, when you weren’t watching me? I wasn’t watching you, and you were frowning all the time. I thought you might be very fierce.’
‘Oh, no, I’m not fierce at all. I suppose it’s just that the newspaper was pretty dull and … well …’
‘I’m not.’
‘No. You’re certainly not dull.’
He was smiling. He could feel it. The corners of his mouth exploring muscle shapes that had seen little use since he’d lost his family.
It occurred to Stanton that he was having fun.
When could he last have said that?
Not for a very long time. But quite suddenly, sitting on the Sarajevo to Zagreb express, a steam-powered express, opposite a captivating Suffragette, in her violet hobble skirt and straw boater with its matching ribbon, he was suddenly overcome by the intense romance of the situation. A steam train, and a pretty girl, on his way to Vienna, in 1914. It was like some beautiful dream, and yet it was real.
Was it all right to have fun? Was it a betrayal?
‘You’re frowning again,’ Bernadette said. ‘Have I become dull already?’
‘No!’ he exclaimed, slightly too loudly. ‘No way! I mean definitely not.’
‘Good.’
What would Cassie think?
She wouldn’t think anything; he loved her with all his heart but she had existed in another universe.
‘So,’ he said, ‘you first. What’s your story?’
‘What’s my story? What a nice expression. I don’t think that one can be army. Do you mean from the beginning?’
‘Well, yes, certainly. Although I actually meant why are you on your way to Zagreb?’
‘Vienna,’ Bernadette replied. ‘I’m going through to Vienna.’
‘Really? I’m going to Vienna too.’
‘Then isn’t it lucky we got chatting?’
For a moment her eyes met his.
‘I’m on a bit of a tour really,’ she went on. ‘I came out to Hungary last year for the Seventh Congress of the International Women’s Suffrage Alliance in Budapest. Perhaps you’ve heard of it.’
‘’Fraid not, sounds pretty heavy.’
‘Heavy?’
‘I mean fascinating.’
Stanton was acutely aware that this was the first conversation of any length he’d had since he’d uncovered McCluskey’s betrayal a month earlier. He was out of practice. And in a different century.
‘It must have been fascinating.’
‘It was. Extremely. I stayed on in Budapest till last Easter.’
‘Long congress. Lots to talk about, eh?’
‘There was … uhm, a friend,’ she said, reddening a little at the cheeks. ‘Anyway I finally left last month and took a little holiday, wanted to get away, from myself as much as anything. I’ve been doing a bit of a tour of antiquity. I read classics at Trinity, you see.’
‘Trinity? I went to Trinity.’
‘Dublin?’
‘No, Cambridge.’
‘Thought so. Where of course they don’t allow women. More fool them. Dublin has since 1904. I was one of the first. You wouldn’t have thought Dublin would be more progressive than Cambridge, would you? It’s 16 per cent women now. Pretty good progress, eh? Only 34 per cent to go. Anyway, I’ve been mooching about in Greece and Crete for the last two months or so and now I’m on my way back to rejoin the struggles.’
‘Struggles in the plural?’
‘Obviously. Votes for women and Independence for Ireland. What other struggles are there?’
‘Ah yes. Of course.’
The two great dividing issues of British life that had been tearing the country apart for the last decade. What other struggles indeed? There were none. Not any more. Not now Archduke Franz Ferdinand was alive and well on 29 June. Britain could carry on fighting with itself.
‘So you’re a Fenian?’ Stanton asked. ‘I thought you said your brother was a soldier.’
‘He is. We don’t speak.’
‘But you’re speaking to me.’
‘I’m not a bigot. I don’t hate soldiers per se. I don’t speak to my brother because he’s with Carson and the Ulstermen. All my family are staunch Unionists, except me. I don’t speak to any of them.’
‘But you’re Southern Irish, surely?’
‘We’re colonial Irish. We’re not of it, we just own quite a lot of it. We’re English and occupy a large part of County Wicklow. Have done since Cromwell. I was brought up there, though, so as far as I’m concerned I’m Irish.’
‘Right down to the accent, eh?’
He said it to tease her. Because he wanted to see her blush again. He was pretty certain that Anglo-Irish landowners wouldn’t have spoken with Irish accents, and whatever girls’ school Bernadette Burdette had gone to would certainly have sweated it out of her if she had.
‘Well, all right,’ she admitted. ‘I did put it on a bit at first. Just because it made the family so angry. But I’m used to it now. I do it without thinking. It suits me.’
‘It certainly does.’
They talked for a while about the Irish Question. And more particularly Ulster. The issue that had brought Britain to the brink of civil war in the previous year and still threatened to. Bernadette, of course, felt passionate about it.
‘They talk about loyalty to the Crown,’ she said angrily, ‘but when it comes to abiding by the Crown’s laws then as far as Ulster’s concerned loyalty can go to hell. You can’t have democracy if people only agree to abide by the laws that suit them.’
‘Well, what about the Suffragettes?’ Stanton asked. ‘And your campaign of civil disobedience and direct action? Isn’t that the same thing? Taking arms against the law because you don’t like it?’
‘Civil disobedience and direct action,’ she said, chewing over the words. ‘Good phrase that. I shall write it down. You have a way with words, you know. And since you ask, no, it’s not the same thing at all. We’re not inciting the army to mutiny, are we? Civil disobedience, as you call it, is a very different thing to running in a hundred thousand rifles at dead of night and trying to start a civil war. But more importantly than that … I thought we were going to have a cocktail.’
Stanton laughed and called the waiter. He ordered a Manhattan and a gin Martini and asked to see the lunch menu.
‘My treat,’ he said. ‘I insist.’