by Orna Ross
“You talk too much, woman. Has anyone ever told you that?” He said that bit loud, too loud, so others might hear. But he was smiling. “So out with it then, what sweet nothings have you for me?”
Sniggers seemed to rise behind the blank faces around them. Seeing her discomfort, Tipsy jumped in. “Don’t mind him, Peg. He’s had one too many.”
“Mind him?” She crowed a disdainful laugh. “I’d as soon mind one of the little boys in school.”
“Well, you’re always saying how fond you are of those children.” He leaned back on his heels, killed her with a slow grin. “Does this mean there’s hope for me yet?”
While the others were laughing at that, he slid her a look that nobody else saw, that seemed to pierce through her skin to the sadness she’d wound her hopes around.
“Are you not listening to Gregg?” He inclined his head towards the parlour. “I thought you loved that auld banshee music.”
“It’s too sad for the night that’s in it. With Johnny going so far away from us.”
“Ah, yes. Johnny.”
“I’ve known Johnny all my life,” she said, tongue tripping over dry teeth. “No one would expect you to feel it the same.”
He ignored this jibe. “Is Barney not coming down tonight?”
“He’s working. He’ll be along soon, I’d say.”
A pause.
“What about Norah?” she asked. “I was expecting her to be here before me.”
“Norah’s not coming.”
“She told me she was.”
“Well, she’s not.”
And that was it. He turned away from her then without so much as a goodbye and headed back into the parlour. Back inside, to Agnes Whitty.
At two in the morning they were all still there. “The night’s young yet,” Jem Fortune kept saying, every time anyone looked like they might be thinking about taking their leave. Some, like Barney, had come along late, after the pub closed, and were only now getting into their swing. Others were too drunk to know where their homes were. Young Johnny had passed out on the floor and some wag had put his mother’s hat, the one with the peacock feather, on his head. He’d be sick tomorrow for his travels but maybe that was as well.
The sing-song was starting up and Peg was still dancing and making merry with the best of them, smiling, smiling. Lama kicked off the proceedings with ‘Kelly the Boy from Killane’. Lama had a voice like an old jackdaw, but to his own ears he sounded good. Enniscorthy’s in flames, he crowed, and old Wexford is won, the veins standing out in his high, balding forehead as he reached higher and louder. By the time he’d finished, he’d moved himself close to tears.
“Good man, Up Wexford.”
“Let’s have another Wexford one. What about ‘The Boys of Wexford’? Come on, Denis.”
That song was known to be Denis Mernagh’s and he began it suddenly from where he stood, one elbow angled against the shelf. ‘We are the boys of Wexford/ Who fought with heart and hand/ To burst in twain, the galling chain/ And free our native land…’
Peg sang ‘The West’s Awake’ and when the turn was Dan’s, whose singing was no better than his dancing, he gave his recitation, ‘Dangerous Dan McGrew’. It was new to some here and even if you’d heard it before, as Peg had, you’d enjoy again the way he performed it, speaking loud and soft, sometimes going fast, sometimes slow, pulling them in like a fisherman with a reel. At the end of each verse, all joined in the last line and the laughs and yelps increased as the silly story went on.
By the time he was finished, laughter was all over the room. Agnes Whitty’s face was creased with pride as she joined in the applause, nearly clapping the hands off herself, looking up into his face as if she were his mother. “B’God,” said old Nick Cummins, wiping his eye, “that was better than a play.”
After the applause died, Peg called on Tipsy. “What about one of your Percy French’s, Tipsy? The one about the motor car?”
She smiled across at him and, to her horror, saw him glance from her to Dan. He knew. Somehow Tipsy knew, though she had done everything right all night, talking, singing, dancing and smiling, smiling, smiling until the back of her throat was sore.
And if Tipsy – a semi-eejit who didn’t know what was what half the time – knew, that must mean everybody else did too. Behind her back, were she and Dan all the talk?
She should never have said anything about him to anyone. For so long, she had kept the thing quiet, then when he came back from prison, after all that waiting, he became too big for her to keep inside herself, so she told Norah more than she should and also some things, not as much, to Cat and even – God alive! What was she thinking? – a bit to Molly, knowing surely that if Molly Redmond had it, half the country would be in the know. All for the small pleasure of having his name in her mouth.
She was so tangled in thought that she barely heard what Tipsy had begun to sing, aware only that it wasn’t a Percy French. Slowly, the atmosphere of the room began to penetrate, drawing her out of the gnarls of her mind. Faces all round around the room were tightening at what Tipsy was singing in his fine tenor voice, with greater gusto than usual:
…’Tis traitors vile who damn our Isle
Prolonging here the tyrant’s sway
They’ve taken up the Saxon game
And keep its dirty rules in play…
These were new words to an old tune, indicting those who supported the Treaty. Such songs had been doing the rounds, whispered between those you could be sure were true Republicans but not, until now, sung out in this way. Sung into the faces of those who were known to favour the Treaty.
Dan and Agnes were by no means the only people with a leaning that way, but both had gone public: Dan in persuading the Mucknamore Brass Band to go into Wexford for the coming visit of Michael Collins to the town, Agnes in setting up this alternative women’s auxiliary. So it was to the two of them that everyone turned, the whites of their eyes showing.
Dan was sitting forward in his seat, frowning. Miss Whitty looked like a turkey, Peg thought, her neck red-swollen with indignation.
…For filthy English lucre
They’ve sold their race and sod…
At this Dan jumped up. “You’re going too far now, Tipsy,” he shouted across the song. “You’d want to watch yourself there.”
But Tipsy kept on singing to the end of the verse:
…They play the role that Judas played
When he betrayed his God.
When he finished, nobody clapped and the tick of the clock on the parlour mantelshelf could be heard.
Dead fury lined every letter of Dan’s words when he finally spoke. “Who are you calling a traitor?”
“Ah, now, Dan, old pal,” Jem Fortune said. “Take it easy there.”
“It’s only a song,” someone else said.
A few other voices joined in the persuasion, telling him to calm himself, that no offence was intended but others, those who’d quite welcome a fight to finish off the evening’s entertainment, said nothing. Tipsy’s eyes were locked onto Dan’s and not a sign of apology on him. Peg couldn’t believe it of him. Usually Tipsy didn’t know what to think, never mind what to do, until someone told him.
Agnes Whitty leaned across and tried to whisper in Dan’s ear but he pulled away. “I’m not letting any fucker call me a traitor,” he shouted and he jumped out of his seat at Tipsy and made a go at him. It was a drunken, half-hearted effort and easy for the other boys to hold him back.
“Let him go, lads,” cried Tipsy, putting up his fists. “Let him go and let’s have it out.”
Dan pulled himself free of the hands gripping his clothes. “Twenty to one, is it?” he asked, looking into the faces gathered around him. He swivelled round to face Tipsy again. “When there was English soldiers to be fought, you weren’t so quick off the mark.”
Most of the room was already on Tipsy’s side and this remark of Dan’s put more over.
Barney said, “Steady on there, Dan.”
But he was beyond calming. “That’s it, back-clap each other. That’s about all ye’re good for around here.” He blundered across the room away from them. In his anger, his Cork accent was very strong. “If you’re all such great Republicans, how come when HQ had a job to do in Wexford, it had to be given to outsiders to do?”
“God, are you ever going to let go of that?” Barney said. “Just because the job went to a Corkman. We’ve heard you tell that one twenty times over.”
“And I’ve not heard you answer it once. It’s ye that are the traitors and ye haven’t even the wit to see it.”
Peg had to speak then, though her voice was shaking through the interjection. “Now look here, there are no Irish traitors in this room. You’re right Dan, more could have been done – we can always do better – but even if we were not as active as fellows further west, we’re every bit as keen…and is it not –”
“Keen now. Now it’s too late. Now the fighting’s finished.”
“Ah, hold on. Wasn’t Wexford one of very few counties outside Dublin which turned out for the Easter Rising in 1916?” she said.
That got a cheer from around the room. She could go on. She could ask him where the Cork boys were for that rebellion. Or go a bit further back and remind him of all the Boys of Wexford who died for Ireland in 1798. No county did better than Wexford in that revolt. Instead she said, in what she hoped was a unifying way. “We’re all Republicans, Dan. That’s what matters. Let’s not allow ourselves to be divided.”
She knew what others didn’t. That he was not as defiant as he sounded. That he had been delighted by the turn of events in the past year, the opportunity that finally saw him accepted around here. He didn’t want to be an outsider, though you wouldn’t know it to look at him now, his face hopping out of his neck with belligerence.
He made a noise, something between a snarl and a sigh and then he turned and stalked off, leaving the door swinging open behind him. Every piece of her yearned to follow but instead it was Agnes Whitty who got up and click-clicked across the floor after him in her hard-nosed boots.
They left behind a second of pure silence, then Jem Fortune, with face and voice deadpan, said: “Who’s been eating his porridge?”
Tipsy guffawed. Guilty laughter spread around the room. There was still no love lost for Dan among these people, her people. It wasn’t only the politics. For some, it was probably no more than the fact that he was from County Cork, an outsider with a funny accent and a different way of looking at life, but not everybody was that closed-minded. Mainly it was that he didn’t bother with the few soft words that made all the difference to people. He was a big man and he made smaller people feel their size.
It was like looking at the same scene painted by two different artists. Yesterday she saw people looking up to Dan, as a fighting man, as a man who made things happen; today she could see how that regard was tinged with hostility for many. Nobody had it in for him exactly, but nobody, not one person, not even Barney, was sorry to see him challenged. In the unity of the room Peg felt something close in around her, and she gave way to it, let it enfold her like a prickly blanket on a cold night, comforting and irritating, both at once. She thought of her bedroom, her bed with its white coverlet, her pillow soft and warm.
She said, “I think it’s time we called it a night.”
“I’ll go with you,” Molly said.
But Jem Fortune wouldn’t let them. “No, no, no,” he said. “The night’s young, only a pup. You can’t be going home yet, not until we get this bad taste out of our mouths. Tipsy, give us an encore there. Something a bit lighter this time. Something that won’t drive any more guests down the road.”
Tipsy started on ‘Are You Right There, Michael?’, Percy French’s song about the West Clare railway. So Peg sat put for a while longer, thinking. She would pretend they fell out over Ireland. Tipsy’s performance, by bringing that question out in the open, made it easier for her. Maybe he even did it on purpose? He’d love to play her Sir Galahad, she knew that. But he’d hardly have the wit to work it out, would he?
From across the room, he smiled at her through his song and she didn’t know whether she should smile back or not. She hoped he wouldn’t start mooning over her again, like he used to before Dan came on the scene. Fatigue was pouring through her limbs, hot and sticky, and she didn’t know what was the right thing to do anymore. It was as much as she could manage to sit there and sing along with the silly chorus of Tipsy’s silly song – “Are you right there, Michael, are you right?”
* * *
Diary 25th May 1922
I never got such a fright as I did this evening with Norah. We spent the evening locked together in the grocery, having sneaked into the shop after it closed. She’d told her parents she was working late, which wasn’t quite a lie – she was working, though not at her job in Furlong’s department store as they would presume. Instead, she laboured for the cause we both hold dear, helping me to collate the new election leaflets that arrived in two big cardboard boxes this afternoon.
From the minute she arrived, she was jumpy, all “ssh” and “keep your voice down” and “Your mammy might hear”. Neither Mammy nor Daddy would dream of betraying her but she is more apprehensive than ever. In the pre-Truce days, when Dan – the old Dan, the loyal Dan – went public about his volunteer involvement, it led to the most dramatic fights in the O’Donovan house, the sort of hostility gentle Norah finds unbearable. Her dedication to Ireland’s freedom was earnest but she kept it hidden in the shadows of Dan’s rebellion. Now Dan is no longer of the same mind and she is going to have to make a stand for herself or give up altogether.
All those pre-Truce arguments her father had with Dan are now forgotten, “as if they never happened”, she said. He’s taken up the Free State cause as he once supported the Irish Party who kept things constitutional – which is to say, achieved little or nothing — for thirty years before the rising. Of course, his politics are really only self-interest, driven now as then by fears that instability might affect farm incomes. He’s hardly alone in that. Most of those on the pro-Treaty side are thinking about commerce, jobs and the like.
Mrs O’Donovan is so delighted to see her husband and son getting on again that she’s falling in with everything that’s said and, with none of the younger children old enough to understand or care, poor Norah is isolated. She has to endure her father reciting the latest statement from Michael Collins like it’s the word of God, when he once called him a guttersnipe and a corner-boy. Or, worse, quoting the latest opinion of her brother at her.
“I’m afraid I might explode into argument with him some day at the table.”
“Maybe that would be the best thing you could do,” I said. “You’re twenty-two years old, Norah, not a child. You’re entitled to your own mind.”
“’Honour thy father and thy mother’,” she said. “Isn’t that what the priests say?”
“Oh, the priests. The priests say more than their prayers these days.”
The hierarchy has spoken out against us again, urging the people to support the provisional government, until the outcome of the election is decided.
“Sooner or later, if you’re determined to keep up your involvement, they’ll come to know. All I’m saying is that sooner will be easier, for them as well as yourself.”
As we talked, we collated leaflets into piles for delivery. We’ve been waiting for days for this new material to come from Dublin, ever since Michael Collins and Mr de Valera agreed the electoral pact. With this last minute agreement, Mr Collins has finally redeemed himself. Both pro- and anti- candidates will put themselves forward as Sinn Féin nominees, forming a coalition panel of candidates for the election who will form a coalition government afterwards. It’s a sound move that will prevent the division that was setting into our ranks and we’ve had to rush through new leaflets that tell the people what to do.
The intention was that the latest leaflet should replace the first,
but Mammy suggested we might as well distribute both together. The boys are also on election duty, going round the same houses with their guns on show, giving people a little “persuasion” in doing the right thing on voting day.
“Daddy says the pact is biased towards Republicans.”
Oh, he would. You can be sure he won’t be saying too much about the dirty dealings of the other side, refusing to update the electoral register that leaves me, and Norah, and Barney without a vote. No woman under thirty on it and no boy who attained his majority since the last register was drawn up. We were sick of talking about this unfairness and now we have a new grievance.
“Had he anything to say about them not publishing the Constitution of the new State yet, with the election nearly upon us? It looks like we’ll be voting on a document we haven’t even seen. Did he have anything —”
“I’m not arguing with you, Peg,” Norah interrupted. “I’m not defending Daddy and of course it’s all wrong about the Constitution. As wrong as anything.”
The tone of her voice snapped my mouth shut. I had been shouting without realising it and what was I shouting at poor Norah for? She was gripping the folded leaflet so tight her knuckles jutted out white. None of this was easy for her, especially confiding in me about her family.
“I know it’s easier for me, Norah,” I said, sifting out the words, as gentle as I could make them. “Our own father has never been too keen on our activities but – ” I hurried on as I saw she was about to speak – “Barney and I have never had to face Daddy down because we’ve had Mammy to do it for us. Still and all though, I think you’re going to have to face up to them. Don’t misunderstand me, Norah. I know that’s not easily done. We’re girls, for God’s sake, trained from the minute we’re born to do what we’re told. But I also know that doing what is right – no, don’t look so stony-faced – doing what’s right has a habit of making the unexpected happen. Look at what we have gained so far. We can gain much, much more if we hold onto our courage. I’m sure of it.”
I did pause at that stage to let her respond. When she didn’t, I went on. (Oh how I went on!) “The old have had it all their own way in Ireland for too long, Norah. That’s why this country was so low for decades – the young people either having to emigrate or else be bullied by the older people into submission. All that is changing now. We’ve changed it, our generation. And we can change a lot more, if we hold onto what we know to be right.”
