After the Rising

by Orna Ross

  “At a moment’s notice…this country produced…the finest politicians and soldiers, drawn from all walks of life. Six years ago they were nothing but they…they came to command the admiration of the world. Why?” Her finger poked the counterpane. “Why? Because they stood on the side of right…that’s why. They had a principle…Now, the talk is of giving up that principle…or of watering it down but…principles can’t be watered down.”

  We agreed with her, of course; you might as well argue with a goat on the charge and she wasn’t able to keep it up for too long. Afterwards, back downstairs, Barney asked me straight if it was only a matter of time with her and I told him the truth: that it was.

  “And how is Daddy about it?”

  “Still pretending it’s not happening.”

  “What are we at, Peg?” He gave a sigh I didn’t want to understand. “What are we at, at all?”

  “Don’t say things like that, now. If we lose faith, we’re surely doomed.”

  He let his head fall into his hands and I knew nothing I might say would reach him. It was like he had been to another country and come back to find he couldn’t describe it to me because the mountains and fields there were nothing like ours.

  And I had yet to tell him about Norah. I took a deep breath and did it.

  “Gone away to Dublin?” he said. “That can’t be right. She’d never do that without telling us.”

  “That’s what I said. But she is gone, Barney. I’ve been up there, asking after her.”

  “And…?”

  “If there was anything to tell, it’s not me who’d be told it, you know that.”

  When he was leaving, I told him I’d see if I could talk to young Martin, Norah’s little brother. He might give away some information. “I’ll get a message to you tomorrow at the Colonel’s,” I promised, “one way or the other.”

  Diary 10th January

  What a morning. Tipsy arrived before the dawn, with a letter from Barney marked “private and confidential”, which he was told to put directly into my hands and no other. Dear diary, I was never more surprised than I am after reading this letter.

  I hadn’t time to think properly about it because I had to bring Mammy up her breakfast and, next thing, while I was up there, four lorry-loads of Army boys went honking up through the village in the direction of Colonel Taylor’s, making sure to slow down as they went past here, and to hoot their horns at us.

  Mammy shook her fist at the window and shouted after them. “Go on out of that, you might be good for taunting women — but our boys will soon silence your hoots.”

  It’s been months since she had a shout in her. It’s Barney’s visit yesterday that’s given her the lift. Honest to God, if she knew how he was thinking, I do believe it would kill her.

  Derriestown

  * * *

  9th January 1923

  Dear Peg,

  I’m writing this shortly after saying goodbye to you. It’s for your eyes only, this letter. Destroy it when you’ve read it. You’ll see why.

  I hope you’ll soon have news of Norah for me. You know as well as I do that something must be up. We’ll get to the bottom of it, never fear, and soonest. To think of her having to sneak off without telling us is killing me.

  And so I’m writing because I want you to face the truth. I hate having to say this to you, Peg, you who has done more than anyone. More than most of the women, because you’ve been in the fight itself, and are now living with all that goes with that. And more than me or any other man whose name is known, because the food, clothes, tobacco and all the rest of it from the home front might not be as heroic, but in the end matters as much or more.

  When everybody else deserted us, you were there, facing the danger, shoulder to shoulder. Don’t think what I’m about to write now means I don’t know it. Don’t think it will ever be forgotten.

  But dear old Peg, I have to tell you, it’s all up with us. It’s only a matter of time before surrender is called. I know this is not something you want to hear and I didn’t go through it with you today because our time was so short, but that’s the truth of it, believe me. We are going through several kinds of hell with this fight, and continuing it is nothing but a spillage of blood.

  When we were fighting Black-and-Tans it didn’t matter that we were outnumbered, for they could hardly tell one of us from the other. We had the advantage of surprise, the ability to melt back into the countryside. All that is changed. The Enemy now knows every man of us. They know what we’re planning to do before we know ourselves. They have all our areas overran and there’s so many of them that killing a few of their side does not count. They can easily be replaced. Not so us. We’re completely outnumbered.

  Then there’s the lack of money. Our arms are a joke; we have hardly any ammunition. Joe Sills asks HQ constantly for supplies but we get nothing. They’re broke and anything they do manage to requisition gets sent down Cork and Kerry way, never to Wexford. Three of the lads who escaped an ambush last week had to leave their boots behind and have been going barefoot since.

  I can’t talk the truth of this around here. All the talk among these boys is as strong as ever for the Republic. They think if we destroy a railway line, we’ve won a major battle. They think if they’re brave enough and stubborn enough that it will all come good in the end. Well, it won’t. And it won’t be too long now until it’s all over and – I have to tell you the truth, Peg, I have to tell it to someone for keeping it to myself is driving me half insane – I’m glad, so I am. Surrender can’t come soon enough for me.

  What exactly will happen to me, I’m not sure. Prison, maybe, for a while but as soon as we can, Norah and I will get a nice little house and get married. That’s all I think about now. It’s not a lot to ask, is it? Other people seem to manage it without great difficulty. I will find her, wherever she is, if you haven’t found her first, and tell her that whatever has happened, she shouldn’t have run away from us. I will persuade her that the time for secrets is over and show her there’s no need to be afraid. There is nothing anybody can do to her, not when I’m there to mind her.

  Her family won’t like it, of course, but if we have to, we’ll go away. I’d give up the pub and the shop if I had to, or anything else. Anything. It wouldn’t matter. And if there’s no work in Ireland, then I’ll take us to England or maybe even to America. We won’t need much. We’ll manage.

  It was good to see you today, Peg, to see you so well and full of hope. It did my heart good. You’re a great survivor. Look after Mammy and Daddy during the coming weeks. What they would do without you, God alone knows.

  Like I said, burn this when you’re finished reading. You can imagine the trouble if it fell into the wrong hands (which is anybody’s but your own). God bless you and keep you safe.

  Your brother,

  Barney

  * * *

  Diary 10th January 1923

  Was it only this morning I got Barney’s letter and wrote the above about Mammy jeering the Army?

  That entry reads to me now like it was written by someone else. I was someone else then. From this day forward, I’ll be a new person, a smaller person, trying to live the same life.

  It was Tipsy who brought the news to me, and he was that upset I was hardly able to get out of him what he had come to say. When it dawned on me what he was getting at, I let out a big scream. “No, Tipsy. No. You’ve made a mistake. No. You’re not right.”

  But at the same time as I was denying what he said, I was starting to cry, admitting with my tears that I knew it was no mistake, that it was true. I’m crying again now as I write this, harsh out-loud crying that gets on my own nerves to hear.

  Barney is dead, may the Lord have mercy on his soul. My brother Barney is dead.

  Dead. No matter how often I say it and write it I can’t get myself to believe it.

  Barney is dead. We always knew it could happen but I’ve learned this morning the wide ocean of difference between imagining something
and the real living of it.

  Barney is dead and they’re saying it was his one-time best friend Dan O’Donovan who fired the shot that killed him. God help us. How in the name of all that’s holy are we supposed to bear this?

  Crest

  1975

  “Rory, I’ve something to tell you.”

  The way I say it makes him put down his fork. “Ah no, Jo.” How can he tell from what I have said? Is it in my voice or my face that he reads it?

  We are supposed to be celebrating. It is my birthday tomorrow, my eighteenth. I am officially an adult at last and we are here, at the Granada Restaurant, at a candlelit table with linen napkins and a bottle of wine like a proper pair of adults. Soup finished, waiting for our steaks, which will be followed by Black Forest gateau.

  Rory’s treat, from his bar wages, and a fine treat for two impoverished students. Or it would be, if only…

  “Yes,” I say. “I’m afraid so. Yes.”

  “Jesus. Oh God, Jo. I don’t believe it. Fuck!”

  “That’s what did it, all right.”

  He lashes me a that’s-not-funny look. “But I thought you were on the pill,” he says.

  “Apparently, the pill is only ninety-nine point nine per cent effective. I – exceptional as ever – am one of the point one per cent.”

  Why am I talking in this strange, flippant way?

  “Jesus!” he says again. “Fuck!”

  “Will you stop saying that?”

  “Sorry.” He pushes away his plate. “What do you want me to say?”

  “Maybe something like, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll be OK’?”

  “We will…but…just give me a minute, Jo. You’ve had time to think about this. I am really shocked. I just don’t believe it. Jesus!”

  Anybody would think he didn’t know the facts of life. But how can I blame him? To me too, it seems impossible that our molten nights have anything to do with this cold, daytime reality. And I have had the connection pounded into me all my female life.

  “You seem so calm,” he says.

  “I am anything but calm.”

  “Have you thought about what you want to do?”

  What I want to do. Not we. “I only found out for sure this afternoon,” I say.

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “What about you?” I hand the question back to him. “What do you think?”

  “I asked first.”

  “Well…None of the options exactly thrill me…” I say, holding him off, while I take a clear look at what he is not saying. What he wants is there in the set of his mouth, oozing out from behind the shock in his eyes. He wants me to take it away, rewind the tape, make it like it never was. He won’t say it, though, the ugly word. He just sits there, looking at me like I’ve suddenly become the opposition.

  So I say it for him in my breeziest voice. “I suppose the old boat to England is the best of a bad lot.”

  He doesn’t bother to hide his relief. “Are you sure?”

  “I think so. Yes.”

  And maybe I am. Me, a mother? Eighteen years old, convent-educated, as immature as eighteen can be, with a degree to finish, a world to see, a self to find. A mother, me? How?

  This is what I tell myself, and what I tell myself is true, but underneath I know another truth: that I would do it. I would follow my love into marriage and parenthood if he was willing. If he would come away with me – because the one thing I could never, ever do is bring this news home to Mrs D. – we could leave our families and their stupid quarrel behind and start over, somewhere else. The two of us. Then the three of us. Make our own family.

  But such a thought isn’t his. Not even for the tiniest sliver of a second.

  And he’s probably right. What he wants is what I too have thought, during fearful, sleepless nights, might be best: best for him, for me, for the baby-not-to-be. Neither of our families would forgive us, we would be on our own and what sort of life would it (she? he?) have with two cast-off, impoverished teenage parents, reluctantly and prematurely bound? This is what I have said to myself.

  I’m sorry, I find myself thinking, addressing the beginning-to-live thing inside me. So sorry. Please don’t blame me. How stupid.

  Rory reaches for my hand. “What else can we do?” His fingers are bony.

  “Nothing,” I say.

  “Nothing,” he repeats, taking my word and setting it in certainty.

  I say it again, his way: “Nothing.”

  Decision made. The boat it is.

  Decision made, the tears come. What shakes me – what makes me get up from the table and hurry out to the ladies’ room, to spurt my tears into a fistful of toilet tissue, to scowl at my crying face in the mirror and wrap my arms around my head – is not just the knowledge of what I – we – are about to do.

  I didn’t understand it then, but I was also grieving another thing that had just died. Our love. It was insufficient. It was not what I thought.

  Next day is Saturday, my birthday. I travel down to Mucknamore by train to spend a night with my family.

  At the station, I get into my mother’s car, feeling I must emit clues like a stench. She looks me over in the usual way, seeing nothing but this student version of me that she detests. Her mouth creases against the good intentions she brought with her down to the station. It’s my birthday, she wants to be nice to me but my clothes (skirt short and tight, Doc Marten boots), my eye make-up (black and heavy) and my hair (pulled high into a knot at my crown) won’t let her.

  “Did anybody we know see you on the train?”

  I shrug the question back at her.

  “I don’t think Mucknamore is ready for this latest get-up.”

  Back at the house, a cake with eighteen candles and Happy Birthday Siobhán across the top waits for me and an envelope of money beside it, from Granny Peg and Auntie Norah. It’s my birthday, my eighteenth. I try to care, try to be grateful.

  Gran asks, “Are you all right, Jo?”

  “I’m all right. Just a bit tired.”

  “Overdoing the celebrations, I suppose.” She grins at me, her lovely old-lady grin. Could I tell her? But why would I do that to her? In a little while, it will all be gone. My tender breasts will return to normal, my morning nausea will dissolve.

  Mrs D. is going through one of her phases so she heads to the sitting room with Auntie Norah. They have their television timetable worked out for the night. Our Great Nation. Starsky and Hutch. The Late Late Show. Gran is left with the washing-up and I volunteer to help, brushing away protests about it being my birthday.

  As she washes the dishes and I dry them with a tea-towel, we chat. Her news from the village, my news from college. She wheedles out of me that I have a boyfriend. “Is he kind to you?” she asks.

  I tell her he is.

  “Good,” she says. “Good, that’s all that matters. The rest of it is nothing.”

  She wipes down the sink with her cloth. Could I tell her? Could I?

  “Auntie Norah seems in good form,” I say.

  “They have a new doctor above and he’s put her on different tablets. He said they’d suit her better and I think they do.”

  “She seems more alert.”

  “Definitely. Those other pills used to knock her out of it altogether.”

  “When did she get these ones?” Gran likes us to care about Auntie Norah, to ask.

  “A few months back. It took her a while to settle onto them, mind. At first, she began the night-walking again, like she used to do years ago. She had your mother and myself shattered from broken sleep.”

  Gran tilts the basin as she talks and the plughole glugs down the sudsy water. Lifting the draining-board, she wipes down the sink underneath, then the counter-top, then the taps. “It brought us right back, I can tell you. She used to be a divil for that at one time, the night-walking. She couldn’t be kept in the bed.”

  “I don’t remember that.”

  “No, it was a long time ago. Anyway, your mammy and I
put up with it for two weeks this time, until the three of us were near killing each other and it couldn’t go on. I brought her back to the doctor and he fixed her up a stronger dose. And not a bit of bother since, thank God.”

  “That’s great,” I say, because I think that’s what she wants to hear.

  “I don’t know. Sometimes I wonder which problems are caused by the thing itself and which by the side effects from those old pills.” She folds the dishcloth over the tap, sighs. “But we can’t manage her without them, that’s the truth of it.”

  I put the last plate in the cupboard, hang up the damp towel on its peg. Our chore is done.

  “Old lady complaints, Jo,” she says. “Don’t mind me, all’s grand really.”

  I smile.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  I keep smiling, hard.

  “It’s not easy being young either, love, I do remember that. We move too fast when we’re young, we don’t stop long enough to hear the voice of God in ourselves. That led me very wrong onetime.”

  She drops her voice, low and gentle. “He only ever speaks to us in whispers, Jo, more’s the pity. But He does speak.”

  This God talk is making me edgy. I nod and step away.

  “Are you coming inside to watch telly?” she asks.

  She would like me to, I know. It would brighten her night to have my company in a fireside chair beside her and Mrs D and Auntie Norah, sharing The Late Late Show with them, having a cup of tea at the ads. But I can’t endure Gay Byrne’s smug patter tonight, or Gran’s patient explanations to Auntie Norah about what’s happening on the screen. Not tonight.

  “Later,” I say, hanging up my tea towel. “I think I’ll take a walk first. It’s a lovely evening.”

  On the beach, cool air fans my hot cheeks. The sun dips towards the western horizon, throwing long shadows. No tourists yet, it’s too early in the season. I walk by the edge of the water, the soles of my boots clinging to the sand, each step lifting with a small, wet smack. White-winged commotions of seabirds flap up, up and away as I approach, settle again further down the sands. I plough on, ignoring their flurries.