No Peace for Amelia

by Siobhán Parkinson

  Amelia turned to Mary Ann to share her irritation with her friend, but Mary Ann had her hand at her throat and her mouth was twisted as if she was trying not to gasp or cry out.

  ‘Why, Mary Ann! What ever is the matter?’ Amelia tried to take her friend’s arm. But Mary Ann shook Amelia off and twisted her head away to hide the expression on her face.

  The little party that had set out so cheerily that morning with their hampers and umbrellas and coats and camera and their holiday high spirits trudged wearily home all the way from the station, carrying the picnic luggage in the gathering gloom of the evening.

  They met people at every corner, each of whom had a slightly different story about what was up. Some said it was just a handful of men with guns – Amelia tried to catch Mary Ann’s eye, but Mary Ann was in clear distress and wasn’t in any state to exchange glances with Amelia – in the GPO and that it would be all over in a matter of hours, when the army moved in. The army! Amelia thought first of Frederick, then of the jolly soldier boy on the poster at the station, and finally of the soldiers who had raided their house. She didn’t know whether she wanted the army to move in or not. Other people had a more dramatic version of the story. They said the streets of central Dublin were ablaze and the Imperial Hotel had been shelled. Why would anyone do that? They said that Mr Pearse had taken over the country and declared a republic. That meant it would not be part of the United Kingdom any more, no more king, no more union flag, no more war with Germany if it came to that. (Maybe Frederick could come home.)

  So this is what Mary Ann had meant when she said that Countess Markievicz and her friends were planning a rebellion. It had happened now it seemed. And those guns that the small band of the Citizen Army had been carrying that morning when Amelia and Mary Ann had seen them were now being used, to shoot people. Who were they going to shoot? The Lord Lieutenant? The police? The army? Ordinary foot soldiers, like Frederick Goodbody? And what good was it going to do? What was it all for? If you shot a policeman in Sackville Street, did that make the king agree to Home Rule? Or did you need to shoot a dozen policemen? How many before the king gave in?

  Could Mr Pearse and his men really take over the running of the country? From the GPO? Maybe they didn’t want the people to be able to buy any more stamps with the king’s head on them. Maybe they were all in there now busily painting out the king’s head and replacing it with – what? Mr Pearse’s head? But what difference would it make to her, Amelia Pim, one way or another whose head was on the stamps? Surely it must all be about something more than that. But what, exactly, what?

  A Man in the Garden

  Immediately she heard that no tram cars were plying the roads and that there were rumours of trouble in town, Mary Ann knew what had happened. She couldn’t understand it, and she didn’t know what to think about it. Her mind was all confusion and contradictions. She was sure that message in the paper yesterday had called it all off, but she must have misunderstood. She didn’t know how she could have, but she must have been mistaken. So there she was, gallivanting off to Bray with a light heart, and all the time they were shooting in the streets. For all she knew, her brother might be lying in a gutter with a bullet through his heart. Oh lawny, she thought, oh God tonight!

  Amelia gave Mary Ann some strange looks on the evening of Easter Monday. She must have been remembering that Mary Ann had predicted a rebellion the morning they saw the Citizen Army on the streets. But she didn’t say anything. She didn’t accuse Mary Ann of anything in any case. Otherwise, no-one else in the household paid much attention to the goings-on of the Volunteers and the counter-attack by the army that week, though Amelia’s mother did follow the story in the papers, and sometimes Mary Ann heard her clicking her tongue as she read, but whether in sympathy with the rebels or in disapproval of their methods she didn’t know. She read the papers herself too, checking for reports of deaths, injuries, arrests. But though there were plenty of incidents reported, skirmishes on bridges and buildings being shelled from gunboats and shops and offices going up in flames and soldiers and army trucks patrolling the streets and piles of rubble smouldering on the pavements, the papers didn’t mention many names, except those of the leaders, the names already known to Mary Ann – Mr Pearse, Mr McDonagh and Mr Clarke.

  Apart from the daily bulletins carried in the press, you could quite easily believe the Rising wasn’t happening at all, or that it was happening somewhere as remote as the muddy plains of Flanders rather than two miles away in the middle of Sackville Street. Once or twice, Mary Ann fancied she heard shelling, but it might have been her imagination. Everyone kept well clear of the city, but otherwise people more or less ignored what was going on. They went about their daily business, unbelievably taking their children to the green at Harold’s Cross to soak up the unexpected spring sunshine, nonchalantly going to the butcher’s to buy their meat and to the grocer’s to buy their sugar and cooked ham and oatmeal and to the baker’s to buy little marzipan Easter cakelets, going to work, even, if they didn’t work right in the centre of the city, callously eating and drinking and telling each other jokes and polishing their boots and weeding their gardens and exchanging their library books and worming their dogs and picking up dropped stitches in their knitting and making yachts out of old newspapers to sail on the pond in Palmerston Park, and starching their linen with pure white Robin starch powder dissolved in a cup of water, just as if Ireland hadn’t been proclaimed a republic at all and the country was just rolling along as usual under the old regime.

  Mary Ann couldn’t understand how people could be so untouched by it all. She wanted to shake them and shout into their faces that something wonderful and terrible was happening in their midst, and that her brother might be dead for all she knew, and demand to know what they thought of it all. But of course she didn’t, she couldn’t. She hardly knew what she thought of it herself anyway. When the initial shock had worn off, a feeling of elation, albeit mixed with apprehension, had started to grow in her. She convinced herself that Patrick was safe, or she would have heard, it would have been in the papers, and once she allowed herself to believe that, she began to get excited by the idea that it was all happening, that Ireland really was at last doing something to assert her independence. But every now and then a cold wave of fear would pass through her, and she would toss aside her feelings of excitement and reprimand herself for having been secretly pleased and tell herself the whole undertaking was foolish if not wicked. And then those negative feelings too would pass, and she would revert to being charmed by the idea that Patrick might be revered as a hero, and that the action he was involved in might bring about enormous historical changes in her country.

  All this time she said nothing to Amelia about what was on her mind. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Amelia, but she knew they had different outlooks about these things. Not that Amelia had any strong political convictions, but Mary Ann knew her heart belonged to a soldier of the Crown. And anyway she couldn’t argue with her friend while she was still so busy arguing with herself.

  A few days later, events took an unexpected turn. Unusually, the family was all out; even the old lady and Edmund were enjoying the sustained sunshine. Mary Ann was attending to her afternoon chores and getting ready for the evening and the main meal of the day. She was peeling potatoes at the sink, with a newspaper spread out to catch the skins, when she heard a scuffling in the garden. The neighbour children sometimes scaled the wall to retrieve a ball, and she would look out when she heard the crack of their soles on the yard as they jumped down, and give them a wave to show them it was all right, she didn’t mind. So this afternoon she looked up too, but not to wave, as she was just gouging out the eye of a potato with a sharp vegetable knife.

  The person slithering over the wall wasn’t a neighbour child after all. It was a fully grown man, dressed in dark clothes and somehow awkward in his movements. Mary Ann stood and watched him for a moment, not too bothered by this intrusion. After all, anyone could throw a ball
over a wall, not just a child. Men played football too. It didn’t occur to her that it might be a burglar, for anyone with ill intent wouldn’t be so foolish as to go climbing walls in broad daylight. Perhaps it was a neighbour who had locked himself out and was trying to break into his own house. But then, what was he doing in this garden? It didn’t make sense. Was it somebody playing some prank, fulfilling a dare, or just trying to surprise Mary Ann? She thought afterwards that really she had been terribly innocent. Here she was in a city at war, calmly watching while a strange man slithered over the garden wall. He could have had a gun or a bomb or anything. But at the time, she just wondered vaguely what he was doing.

  The man had his back to Mary Ann, and she stood and waited for him to turn around and see her watching him, so that she could catch his eye and give him a grin. He leant the length of his body against the wall he had just come over, as if he was getting his breath back. He mustn’t be used to climbing garden walls. The man didn’t turn around as she expected. He continued to lean right into the wall, almost as if he was lying on it standing up, if such a thing were possible. He looked as if he was hugging the brickwork.

  There was something wrong. This man wasn’t just catching his breath. He was ill, or hurt, or confused, or something. Mary Ann put down her potato and knife, wiped her hands quickly on her apron and hurried out the back door and into the little garden. The man was only a few feet from her. With a couple of strides she was at his side and she could hear his breath, coming in gulps. Perhaps he was only winded after all. Just as she put out her hand to touch him, before he turned his head, she knew him. How could she not have recognised him instantly, what had possessed her? It was her brother, Patrick.

  Her first thought was Thank God! Her next thought was Oh, my God!

  Patrick smiled a sidelong smile at her, his stubbled cheek still leaning on the garden wall, as if it were a pillow.

  ‘There y’are, Mary Ann,’ he said, and made an effort to stand up straight.

  Then she saw that the reason his movements had been so awkward was that his arm was hurt. It was restricted by a makeshift sling, made, ludicrously, out of a woman’s silk headscarf, and there were bloodstains, dried ones, on his sleeve.

  Mary Ann drew her hand back, and she stared at him.

  He grinned at her again. ‘Do you not know me?’ he asked, his voice little above a whisper.

  ‘By God, I know you all right, Patrick Maloney, and would you look at the cut of you! Blood streaks everywhere, and you haven’t shaved for a week. What are you doing here?’

  Patrick shook his head and laughed a low laugh at Mary Ann. Here was her brother, safe and well, if a bit beaten about looking, mysteriously appearing in her employers’ back garden, she didn’t know where he had come from or where he was bound or how many days it was since he had eaten and what he had been involved in, and all Mary Ann could think to do was comment on how dishevelled he looked. Clearly she was pleased to see him.

  ‘Would you not think to offer me a cup of tea, girl?’ said Patrick. ‘I haven’t eaten all day.’

  ‘Tea? Is it tea you came for?’

  Mary Ann was in two minds. On the one hand, she wanted to fling herself joyously on Patrick and sob with relief that he was alive; on the other hand, she wanted him out of here, quickly. She didn’t want him near this house, not after that business with the guns and the raid. She had sworn she would bring no more trouble to this house.

  Patrick nodded.

  Still, a cup of tea wouldn’t hurt.

  ‘Come on, so,’ said Mary Ann, and turned back towards the house. ‘Just a quick cup, and then I want you out of here, Patrick Maloney. Anyway, it’s a hospital you should be going to.

  ‘No, no. I have to go to Ashbourne.’

  Patrick stumbled after Mary Ann, spluttering out the words. At the sound of his faltering steps, Mary Ann turned and offered him her arm. He said nothing but leant heavily on it, and so the brother and sister shuffled to the door.

  Mary Ann made the tea extra strong, as though she thought there was more nourishment in strong tea.

  ‘What are you going to Ashbourne for?’ she asked.

  Patrick explained that he had been ‘out in the Rising’ as he put it, with Mr de Valera in Boland’s flour mills.

  ‘Boland’s! What a place to have a rebellion in!’

  ‘Well, it’s not the only place.’

  ‘And Mr Who-did-you-say?’ asked Mary Ann. ‘That’s a very foreign-sounding name.’

  ‘I think he’s half-American,’ said Patrick.

  ‘I didn’t think the Americans had names like that all the same,’ said Mary Ann. ‘They speak English in America.’

  ‘Anyway,’ said Patrick, ‘can I get on with my story?’

  ‘Oh yes, yes,’ said Mary Ann, frying up some thick slices of bread for her brother.

  It turned out that the rebels were just about to surrender. A woman had come to the flour mills that morning with a message from the GPO, where the main leaders of the Rising were. The message was that they were to surrender the next day. She was supposed to go on from there to Thomas Ashe, who was in charge of the Rising out in the village of Ashbourne in County Meath, with the surrender message, but she had been caught in sniper fire and had barely made it to Boland’s. So Mr de Valera kept her there and sent Patrick in her place to Ashbourne. Patrick had set off that morning, but then he too had been shot.

  ‘De Valera chose me to carry the message. He felt I might have a better chance of survival out of that place. He said it was an important part of the work of the Rising to carry messages, but I know he sent me because I was the youngest.’

  ‘I’m sure it is important work,’ said Mary Ann.

  ‘Pah!’ spat Patrick bitterly. ‘Women’s work.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with women’s work,’ said Mary Ann, stoutly.

  ‘Hmmph,’ said Patrick. ‘Anyway, de Valera said he wanted somebody who’d been there to remain alive to be able to tell the story afterwards.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ said Mary Ann lamely.

  ‘Oh very nice,’ said Patrick. ‘First I’m to do women’s work, then the message I am to carry is a shabby one, telling our people to surrender, and finally, I’m to stay alive when all my comrades-in-arms are dead. Very nice, I’m sure. I wanted to stay and die for Ireland with the rest of them.’

  ‘Patrick! They wouldn’t kill them!’

  ‘Of course they will. Traitors they are, we all are, according to the law.’

  ‘And what about you? How did you get hurt?’

  ‘Well, I escaped, as I was ordered to do, this morning, and I took a gun with me for protection. I was creeping along in the shadows of the buildings, trying to make my way out of the city, when a soldier on patrol spotted me. I think he panicked when he saw I was armed, and he shot me.’

  ‘Oh lawny! Did you shoot him back?’

  ‘No. I was afraid I would kill him, and I didn’t want a man’s blood on my hands, so I fired in the air to scare him off and then I ran like the clappers.’

  Some soldier! thought Mary Ann. Doesn’t shoot back in case he kills somebody! Aw, she thought, and touched her brother’s arm tenderly.

  ‘What happened your gun?’ she asked.

  ‘After that, I decided the gun was only a liability, if I wasn’t going to use it. Anyone who saw I was armed was going to go for me. So I thought I’d be better off trying to pass myself off as a civilian. I tossed it into the Liffey the first chance I got.’

  ‘But what are you doing here? Why didn’t you go to Ashbourne?’

  ‘I – don’t know,’ said Patrick, haltingly.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I think – I think maybe – well, when I got shot, I can’t remember. I think maybe I must have passed out for a while, because I can’t remember much after throwing the gun away. The next thing I remember was wondering what way to go. I couldn’t remember the directions I got, and it was afternoon, I knew by the sun. So I thought I’d c
ome and find you, and you could give me something to eat, and maybe I’d be better going to Ashbourne after dark.’

  This was a strange story, but looking at his face, Mary Ann could well believe that he had missed out a chunk of the day and was dazed from his experience. How well he remembered her address all the same. But what did he mean about after dark? What was he going to do between now and nightfall?

  ‘What about your wound? Is the bullet still in it?’

  ‘Ah no. It was only a graze. I found this old scarf hanging on a tree, and I made a sling, because it’s sore and it needs rest. That’s all.’

  ‘You want to stay here till dark, till it’s safer to travel?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But, Patrick, I can’t let you stay here. Suppose you’re caught or they find out about it? I don’t want to get these people into trouble again.’

  ‘I won’t stay in the house. If you’ll get me a few old sacks or something, Mary Ann, I’ll make myself up a bit of a cot in that shed in the garden, and I’ll try to get a few hours of sleep before I move on.’

  ‘No, Patrick. You get out of here now, and get yourself to a hospital, and get that wound seen to.’

  ‘Ah, no, the ould arm is sound enough. Let me stay Mary Ann. It’s only for a few hours. I couldn’t go to a hospital anyway, I’d only be arrested.’

  Mary Ann looked at her brother. His face was drawn and his eyes were tired-looking. How could she turn him out onto the streets? He might be spotted by another soldier. If they saw he was wounded, they would know he had been involved in the fighting. This time he might be killed. Maybe it would be no harm to let him stay for a few hours. Then after a bit of a rest and in the cool of the evening he could make a dash for Ashbourne.

  So she sighed and agreed, but with a heavy heart. She went upstairs to her attic room and took a blanket off her own bed, and one of her pillows, and then the brother and sister made a mattress out of sacks they found in the shed. Patrick tried to make himself as comfortable as he could despite his wounded arm while Mary Ann went back into the house to wash up the tea things and get on with making the dinner, her mind in a whirl.