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circled overhead, flying low, unexpected and alien, watching the crowd, like pterodactyls over prey. The mourning of the crowd rose toward them. “Mother of Perpetual Succor help us,” the women cried. “Mother of Perpetual Succor help us.” The Tommies stood motionless, bayonets fixed, eyes straight ahead. Most of them were very young. Conn moved among the people, shoulders hunched against the early chill, hands deep in his pockets.
Bad morning for Kevin Barry. Good morning for the cause
, he thought.
Whenever things looked grim for a free Ireland, the British would pitch in and supply another martyr
.
    There was a warrant out for Conn. The RIC had captured one of the men from Hollyford, and beaten information from him. So Conn was assigned to IRA headquarters to recuperate. He had few duties as he got well. He attended planning meetings, acrimonious night-long discussions of revolutionary theory. The arguments made him restless. Revolution for Conn was a night on the barracks roof at Hollyford, not extended analysis of Foch’s principles. During most ofthe planning he thought about Hadley. He lived from house to house, never more than two or three nights. Everywhere he went he carried two guns, the big Webley and a Browning automatic. Everywhere he went he was watchful and thought about Hadley. Days he sat in St. Stephen’s Green, among the orderly flower beds, where nursemaids pushed prams, and shabby undersized men with narrow faces sat on benches and looked at nothing. He watched the people, and kept an eye out for peelers, and mused on Hadley’s thighs and the smooth small slope of her stomach. Sometimes he went to the National Gallery and stared at the paintings hung on high white walls above polished floors in echoing rooms under distant ceilings. He thought of the sounds she made during lovemaking. Sometimes he read in the National Library. Always he was careful. Always he thought about Hadley. He saw her as often as she could get away.
    On a soft evening when the spring had flowered into summer, they ate together in the dining room at the Shelbourne Hotel. They sat by one of the high windows that looked out across the traffic at St. Stephen’s Green. Lorries rumbled past with British troops standing on the sides. Armored cars with mobile turrets moved along the north side of the Green. Occasionally one would swerve in toward the sidewalk. People would scatter, and the car would resume course. The Auxies walked in groups. People gave way to them. They were professional fighters, tough and arrogant in their dull bottle-green tunics, tam-o’-shanter caps at an angle. Some Auxies paused to look in at the diners. Conn looked back at them. One of the Auxies, a thick-bodied man with an eye patch, saw Conn looking and stared back at him. They held eachother’s stare and then the Auxie tossed his head contemptuously, and they moved on. Conn laughed.
    “Stared him down, did you?” Hadley said.
    Around them carefully dressed older people were eating dinner. The waiters, in black coats and white aprons, moved humbly among them, never making eye contact, bowing and murmuring and backing away.
The Irish make terrible subjects
. Conn thought,
but they might make grand slaves
.
    “Yes,” Conn said. “But I had more eyes than he did.”
    He laughed again and Hadley laughed with him.
    “Ah, Conn,” Hadley said in a stage Irish accent, “you darling boy. Look at you, with your curly black hair and your big smile and a strapping lad you be.”
    “A credit to me race,” Conn said.
    “And carrying two guns and stare down any Auxie,” she said. “You’re like a poster Irishman.”
    “Faith and begorrah,” Conn said, and put his hand on top of hers.
    The Shelbourne was dangerous for both of them. Hadley’s husband was well known among the Ascendancy Irish who often dined there, and Conn, were he recognized, would be shot on sight by any of the British officers billeted in the hotel.
    “Where shall we go after