by Orna Ross
Under the mattress, out of its ripped-open envelope, lying flat and open. One sheet only, writing on one side. Blue ink. I take it to the bathroom, lock the door, sit on the lid of the toilet seat. For a minute I am blind, unable to see. Blackness floods in through my eyes, turning me cold all over. I shiver and my vision rights; I can read again.
It has no address or telephone number at the top. It says:
Dear Máirín,
You’re to stop sending people after me because it will do no good. How you found out where I was, I don’t know, but we can get lost again if that’s what we have to do, go to Coventry or London or some place where there will be no tracking us down. We’ll change our names if necessary.
What I’m saying to you is, sending people to see me will not change my mind and only wastes your money.
You must know by now that I took nothing with me. Everything I left behind is yours, for you and the girls. I hope some day you’ll tell them I did that.
This is for the best, Máirín. You mightn’t think so now but I’d say you will come to see it that way eventually.
Yours sincerely,
Christy Devereux
I read it and read it and read it again, until the words have parted from sense. Then I slip it, letter and envelope, back under the mattress just as I found them.
The knowledge of the letter follows me around all the time, summoning me to look again. Next day, while Mammy is in the shop, I take a chance and scurry up to her room, slide my hand into the chink beneath the soft mattress again. It is back inside its envelope, telling me that she too had had it out for another look. I read it again and find I know it, word for word, off by heart.
Next time I return, it’s gone. My hand pats and rummages and feels around but comes out empty. For weeks afterwards I search the house, trying to find its new hiding place. If Mammy moved it because she suspected my investigations, she gives no sign. I search and search but turn up nothing. It’s as if it never arrived, except for the words that are branded in my brain.
1922
Jig music skittered out the open windows and doors of Fortune’s farmhouse, the tum-te-tum of Dandy Rowe’s accordion chased by a couple of fiddles. The sounds came jumping down Rathmeelin lane to meet Peg, enticing her forward from the stillness she had stopped to savour. On either side of the lane, two hedges of shrubs and trees were coming into their spring flowering and the evening air was cool on her face and hands. A balm. She could feel something in her rising to meet its sweet solace.
For a moment she was confused by conflicting urges – to stop? To walk on? – then it came to her that she was in the middle of a perfect moment. She had the delights of presence here in the lane, with the ash and the sycamore and the yellow ribbons of primroses all along the hedge, their hearts yawning open. And ahead, the delights of anticipation.
For Dan had sent her a message by Molly Redmond, saying he hoped she’d be coming along to Johnny’s shindig tonight. This, surely, was the sign she’d been waiting for, that they could now go public.
In Mucknamore, all the young people kept their love affairs hidden for as long as possible. In Mucknamore, love was a joke, a fever of delusion requiring vigilance from those who were not ailing. Otherwise it would surely lose the run of itself. Jeering and mockery was what awaited any couple revealing a fancy for each other, so a relationship had to be firm established before you admitted to it.
Norah and Barney had told nobody yet either. Barney would shout it from the chapel steeple if he was let but Norah, like her brother, was more set on keeping it quiet. Maybe it was a family thing?
But now, it looked like Dan was ready to make a statement. Peg surely was, now more than ever, what with all the political talk going around, arguments springing up, everywhere. If she and Dan were out as a couple, then Norah would surely follow and the four of them would be able to go where they wanted, at last. No more sneaking around or pretending. And politics kept in its place.
It was nearly a week since she’d seen him. Last Saturday night, he’d sent Barney up to her room to get her at two o’clock in the morning. She had snapped awake and, against her better self, dressed and gone, boots in hand, stockinged feet whispering across the creaky floorboards outside her parents’ room, excitement cutting through her fug of sleep. Months it had been since she’d done anything like that. Life just hadn’t been the same while he was away in that prison.
They’d walked out The Causeway to Lovers’ Hollow, the spot on the Coolanagh side where there was a dip, like a giant hand had taken a scoop out of the earth. There, she’d let him kiss her. Her face hotted up now at the thoughts of it, the sour tang of stout on his mouth and the things she let him do…And, worse, that thing she did herself, without him even asking, without her even knowing such a thing could be done.
“Ohahh!” she groaned aloud, into the quiet of the lane-way, waggling her head to try and cast the memory out.
Tonight, she’d put everything right, so she would. She’d be full of possession, in charge of herself and so on, and he’d be impressed by her dignity. It was going to be a great night, so it was. The primroses were heralds to that. She could feel their own living essence, their nearness. “Glory be to God,” she murmured, making the sign of the cross on herself and kissing her thumbnail. Then she skipped on to meet her evening.
The crowd was already spilling out of Fortune’s house into the yard; their parlour, one of the biggest in the neighbourhood though it was, too small to hold all who had come for Johnny’s American wake. Peg passed through the group, greeting as she went — “Hello Miley…Hello Cat…Lovely evening…Isn’t it splendid…? Hello Jack…” — on through the kitchen, where Mrs Fortune sat weeping, surrounded by female relations and friends.
The big table was pushed to the side and all the chairs of the house were arranged in a circle around the edges of the room. On a high stool in the corner, Patsy Cogley played his squeezebox high on his chest, with Tipsy Delaney and Johnjo Gregg on two upside-down crates at his feet, bows bouncing across their fiddles.
Mrs Fortune and her girls were great cooks and they had gone all out for Johnny. A big ham in the centre of the kitchen table and, around it, plates of white and brown soda bread spread stacked into towers. On a side table set up for the occasion batches of square scones dotted with sultanas and the warm seedy cake that was Johnny’s favourite, spicing the air so that everyone who passed commented on it. Dishes of butter and blackberry jam occupied the spaces between the plates. Also flowing was a plentiful supply of snuff and tobacco and, of course, drink. Stout and whiskey for most of the men and some of the women. For the others, the children and the Pioneers who’d taken the pledge of no drink, bottles of minerals and cups of tea.
The set was just finishing and the musicians were putting down their instruments for a few moments’ rest. When he saw she’d come in, Tipsy Delaney stood up on his beer-crate and asked for a bit of hush. When they’d quietened down, he said, “Thank you ladies and gentlemen and now I’d like you to put your hands together, please, for this composition from our very own Peg Parle.”
And what did they do only start up ‘The Boys Are Coming Home’, the ballad poem she had written when Dan and Barney were released from prison at Christmas, set to the tune of The Ballad of Father Grey. She couldn’t have been more surprised, especially to see some of the others in the room who were reciting along, knowing all the words. They must have cut it out of the paper when it was published at Christmastime.
Hear the rousing cheers around us
For the boys are coming home
Mothers, sisters, sweethearts greet them
The dear boys now coming home!
And Erin’s bitter story
Of her fight so long and gory
Ends in sunburst of bright glory
For the boys are coming home!
That homecoming night was the last time the whole village of Mucknamore had turned out for each other. A very different night from this: black
dark and bitter cold, with frosted stars and a swollen moon dangling low over the railway station. She’d never forget that night, not if she lived to be a hundred. She could still smell the burning crackle and spit of the tar barrel and see the tricolour flags of green, white and gold hanging from windows and gables and lampposts all over the village, dancing in the orange light of the flames and making it feel like a different place, a brighter and altogether better place than their old Mucknamore.
Nothing showed how matters had changed in Ireland more than the show of support that night. When the light of the train carrying Dan and Barney had appeared under the bridge…oh, the entire crowd had gone wild, jumping and cuffing the air, waving little flags and hats and handkerchiefs, banging kettles and tins with spoons.
Sentiment had begun to change in the village after the 1916 uprisings in Dublin and Enniscorthy and had gathered more steam, especially among the young, during the Conscription crisis of 1918. But, even as late as this time last year, when Barney and Dan were convicted for their “crimes” of drilling volunteers, even as recent as that, you had plenty in the village who turned their backs. So many stopped coming into the shop that Daddy had worried for a time about the effect on business. Then all changed forever with the Truce.
“None of them ever thought that boys the likes of Barney Parle or Dan O’Donovan could bring the Great British Empire to its knees,” Mammy had said. Well, it was hard to blame them, when the Parles could hardly believe it themselves. Wasn’t it a miracle that a band of ordinary Irish boys with a stash of rusty guns were able to bring the greatest power on earth to a Treaty?
So the night they came home, even the elders turned out to honour that miracle. Even Mossie Whelan was there holding up a large framed picture of the Easter Rising men of 1916 and Mrs Whelan beside him holding a framed copy of their Proclamation: Irishmen and Irishwomen, In the Name of God and of the dead generations from which she received her old traditions of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom…And Mammy’s friend, Lil, her apron on over her coat, unfurling a banner she’d been working on for weeks: “Welcome home to the Mucknamore prisoners” in green writing decorated with harps and shamrocks.
Oh, what a night. The verses they were reciting now in this room brought it all back. Dan and Barney up on the shoulders of the crowd, the band belting out ‘A Nation Once Again’ and everyone elbowing everyone else out of the way to stretch up and shake their hands. And herself going across to them and being welcomed like nobody else, Barney saying, “Here she is.” And Dan giving her his grin, and calling her “the woman herself’” as she stepped between the two of them.
She had taken that central place not as Barney’s sister, certainly not as Dan O’Donovan’s sweetheart, but as president of Mucknamore Cumann na mBan. It was respect for the job that fine organisation of women had done, in supporting Mucknamore IRA Company, that had them all listening to her on that night, gathered in a great circle around her.
“Before we go into the pub to celebrate,” she’d said, “I’d just like to recite a short poem I made up for us to honour this occasion tonight. It’s called ‘The Boys Are Coming Home’ and it goes like this…”
And it was the same respect that had them singing along those very words now, as Tipsy led them through it, all seven verses.
Then it was back to the dance music. As she made her way towards the food, she saw him up on the floor. Dan. Dan, who by his own admission had a pair of left feet, who never once could be coaxed up to dance with her, was there with a girl…with Miss Agnes Whitty, no less. Nothing untoward was passing between them. He was attempting to follow her directions for the dance and both were laughing as he exaggerated his blunders for her amusement. Oh, but Agnes Whitty, of all people. He surely knew that she was over the Wexford branch of the new women’s organisation, and that she had written a letter to the paper condemning what she called the “wild and unwomanly ways” of Cumann na mBan.
Where was Norah? She needed Norah. No sign of her but Molly was waving from the far side of the room. She skirted around the edge to her, bypassing the food table but, as she approached, the zeal on her friend’s face made her want to turn back. It was too late, so she allowed her arm to be pulled, endured the wet hiss of Molly’s questions in her ear. Had she seen? What was he playing at? Agnes Whitty? What about him and Peg? Had they had a fight? Peg waved her hand to dismiss it all, trying furiously to remember how much she had said to Molly before. “I don’t know what you mean. We’re nothing to each other this long while now.” She stretched her mouth wide into what she hoped was a smile.
“Oh, really?” said Molly.
“Yes. We never went back the same way after he was inside.”
“So what was he doing sending you messages, then?”
“I don’t know. Pulling the wool over your eyes, maybe?”
Molly looked indignant at this attempt to turn the tables. “You looked fairly surprised when you saw him with Her Nibs.”
“Surprised?” said Peg. “Not at all. She might do for a bit of dancing but he’ll find she and her like are not much use when it comes to the fight.”
“A crowd of milksops,” laughed Molly. “All Cumann na Saoirse girls are the same.”
Peg had pulled her smile so wide she didn’t know what to do with it. “Is Norah about?” she asked.
“She’s not. I haven’t seen her anyhow. But tell me—”
“Did you see Mrs Fortune on the way in? Isn’t she in an awful state?”
Molly set upon on that subject as Peg hoped she would. “Oh, Lord, the poor woman. I was in the kitchen earlier. She’s broken-hearted, broken-hearted. I don’t think she’ll ever get over it.”
Johnny was his mother’s favourite – everyone knew it – but even allowing for that, Mrs Fortune’s distress over his going was considered excessive. For weeks now, she had been cracking into tears in front of anyone and everyone. Nobody knew what to be saying to her, for tomorrow, Johnny would be gone. He would take the train to Cork, then to Cobh, where he would board a ship, leaving behind this farmhouse and a future as flat and firm as a future could be, to switch to a new life, unimaginably different. His mother would probably never see him again but he had to go, even she knew that. The farm was Jem’s, the eldest boy’s, and there was no living for any of the other five sons. Pat, the second, was already at the seminary in St Peter’s but the priesthood held no attractions for Johnny.
Hard to imagine him in big, bad New York all the same. It was said the winters there would freeze your blood to ice. That the tenements were worse crowded than the worst of Dublin’s, with the Irish huddled together close as rats in a nest. That in the noise and rush, the poorest got trampled to death. Not that Johnny would be reduced to that level. Mary, his sister, who left four years ago, had sent across his passage money and had a job and a bed lined up for him. With that kind of assistance, Johnny could make something of himself over there.
Given the choice, here was where he’d stay, they all knew that. He wasn’t one of those who were driven to get out, get up, get on. A few acres and his own girl and he’d be happy for life. All of which made the letting go of him harder. And so, an emigration wake, to honour their sorrow and their good wishes for his future.
“Miss Parle!” A booming voice behind interrupted them and Peg felt her back being slapped. “A cure for sore eyes to see you. We knew our humble festivities were lacking but now our evening is complete.”
It was Jem Fortune, Johnny’s eldest brother, a boy so smooth he’d plamás the teeth off a saw. Enjoyable to play along with, you’d never take him serious.
“He said the same to me earlier,” said Molly.
“Ladies, ladies. Don’t be getting particular on me. What’s this I see? An empty fist, Miss Parle? Have those strawboy brothers of mine been neglecting you?”
This was Jem’s way of asking would she like a drink. “I’ve only just got here, Jem. Have you a lemon soda?”
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“Don’t budge from where you’re standing. It will be with you before you knew you wanted it.”
The music stopped again to allow the musicians to take refreshment. Agnes and Dan retreated to the side. Peg could see them out of the side of her eye. Dan never looked her way once but Agnes, flushed with exercise and triumph, kept throwing looks over and one or two reached their mark.
Jem came back with the drink as Johnjo stretched out the squeezebox on a new tune, a reel. “Would you do me the honour of stepping it out?” Jem asked her. So she did, playing at smiling and laughing all through, as if she was having a great old time. When that set was over, Dandy took out his French fiddle and started up the plaintive old tune, ‘Mary Browne’s Favorite’ by Carolan, usually a favorite with Peg too. But, tonight the melancholy pull of bow across string was like salt in a sore to her.
Her eyes went on a furtive search for him and found Isla Moriarty, from the town, talking to Agnes Whitty and Dan gone, nowhere to be seen. Gone out the kitchen door, probably, or else she’d have seen him go. And now that she thought of it, couldn’t she do with a snack? One of Mrs F’s nice seedy-buns?
She got up and edged her way towards the kitchen and, as she came in one door, he was nudging his way through those gathered at the other. Meant to happen. Looking backwards, crossways, any way but right at him, she made her way across through the clumps of bodies and only when he was almost flat up against her did she turn to face him. She tried to pack surprise, friendliness and nonchalance all into the one smile.
“The woman herself,” he said. That was a good start, anyway.
“I need to talk to you,” she heard herself say.
