After the Rising

by Orna Ross

  I walk to the end of the beach on the eastern side, where an outpost of rock crooks towards the sea like a long bony finger, barring my way, then I turn, follow my own footprints back. By the time I’m back at The Causeway, darkness has seeped across the sky and along the sea. I am warm and more than a little tired after being up all last night wrangling with Rory. I should go home, but instead I look up to the sky and find what I hope to find: a moon, dull-yellow, but there. And rising. I turn left, away from the village, out towards Coolanagh.

  The tide is in and the waves rush past me in a hurry to get to the shore. I lengthen my stride, walk purposefully up and down the dips in the path, like somebody late for work. About halfway out, the barbed-wire fencing and warning signs that mark off Coolanagh sands begin: WARNING! they shout. DANGER! The Sands on this side of The Causeway are Unstable and Unsafe. Do not Diverge from the Path.

  All the way out to Coolanagh I go, along the narrow neck where the sand turns to grass, then to rock, up the steep shelf that leads to the outer path around the island. The moon is now full-bellied white to light my way. I am going to walk all the way to the far side of the island, where the waves lash against hard rocks, exploding spray and spume. Only serious walkers and the occasional boater go out this far. Out there, on its far side, the island is granite hard, a completely different landscape to the flat land and sea around the village.

  When I reach the plateau at the most southerly edge, I stop and sit on a rock, breathing hard from the climb. Below the cliffs, the water boils and bursts against the rocks. I sit, letting the noises of the ocean and the night settle around me. I know how not to be afraid. I know the trick is to close your eyes, not to peer into the dark, imagining what might be there, but to rely on your other senses. I let my ears and nose and skin tell me I am safe.

  When I was a kid, afraid of what lurked in the dark, I knew the way to deal with it was get out of the bed and face those monsters down. Going after them was the only way to make them disappear, but I wasn’t strong enough. Often, I lay rigid with terror in the bed, making myself say the Rosary, the longest, most tedious prayer. I knew how Maeve – happily asleep in the bedroom next door – would jeer me if she knew. Monsters! A part of me, and not a small part, knew they weren’t real but that made them more powerful, not less.

  And now? Now I pride myself on sitting alone on Coolanagh in the dark, refusing to be frightened of figments.

  * * *

  “This is a fine time of the night to be coming in.”

  Mrs D. is not asleep, though it’s 2.43 a.m. unless the clock is wrong. She’s been sitting in the fireside chair and waiting through all these hours since she finished work at twelve, chasing thoughts that have stirred her to high temper and the disgust that’s now spilling out her eyes. Sex is what’s there. Her daughter, out God knows where, doing God knows what with God knows whom. Loathsome.

  And if she is wrong about this particular night, she is not wrong in general. I have been having the sex that so disgusts her, it has led where she always feared it would. Inside me is her worst imagining, alive and growing. Maybe that is why, tonight, I finally speak.

  “I’m eighteen now,” I say. “When Maeve was eighteen, she used to come home this late.”

  “You can leave your sister out of this. I always knew where Maeve was. Maeve could be trusted.”

  “Good old St Maeve!”

  “That’s enough now. Your sister has nothing to do with this.”

  “Except that what was OK for her is not OK for me.”

  “If you’re trying to imply favouritism, Miss…”

  “I’m not implying, I’m saying. That’s what it is. That’s what it always is.”

  “You’ll find anything you want if you go looking for it, Siobhán. But if you weren’t always, and only, thinking of yourself, you’d see that—”

  “I don’t see why I can’t stay out late if I want, that’s all. What do you think happens when I’m in Dublin?”

  “I don’t want to even think about what happens in Dublin.”

  “Why? Are you jealous?”

  “What sort of nonsense is that?”

  A bitter red stain tracks up from her throat and I find myself feeling sorry for her. As Granny Peg is always pointing out, Mrs D. has had a hard life, full of bad things done to her. And I’m afraid, though I’m not quite sure of what. Of her withdrawing her love? Of the weight of the guilt if I went too far?

  Knocking my corners off, Mrs D. calls it, when she snaps or slaps. She is the opposite of those mothers who compensate for their own hardships by striving to give their children what they never had. She wants to toughen us up, because life is hard and we might as well know it now and get used to it. “What is that silly comment supposed to mean?” she says, nostrils flaring, face ablaze.

  Here goes. “I might as well tell you one of the things I ‘get up to’,” I say. “I’m going out with Rory O’Donovan.”

  “Rory who?”

  “You know who I mean. Rory, John O’Donovan’s son.”

  “No!”

  “Oh yes, I—” But I don’t have time to say any more. Her hand, clenched into a fist, swipes towards me. I duck to avoid it but it’s too late: her knuckles catch the upper part of my cheek, just under the eye. I hear the crunch of bone on bone, then a wave of shock jounces through my face, ringing pain.

  She has punched me. Not just one of her slaps, a punch. A punch in the face. Now an acid rage sears through my centre, flares into my head in flashing, hot thoughts. I’ll box her back, I swear it. Box her face. She is smaller than me and old and I can punch harder…I can…

  I want to brand all that she knows and does not know into her body with bruises.

  …I will do it. It would give me pleasure. I can do it…I can. I will…

  But I can’t. I don’t. No sound comes out except tears gurgling in my throat.

  She has shocked herself. Her hand, her punching hand, is covering her mouth and guilty words bluster through her fingers. “What have you made me do? Dear God…What…”

  I hold my swelling cheek with both hands. I want to tell her the rest, tell her the worst, but I can’t even do that.

  The door opens. We start and turn, like illicit lovers. It’s Granny Peg in her dressing gown, her grey hair down.

  “Máirín! Jo! I thought I heard…Good God, what’s happening here?”

  Mrs D. tucks her fists under her arms and when I see her face as she turns to Gran, my fury chills, congeals. I allow words to shape what my body has held close for so long. I speak to the side of her face, softly, as if I have just discovered it: “You hate me.”

  My mother’s eyes swivel back to me.

  “Jo!” cries Granny Peg.

  I ignore her.

  “You do, don’t you? But you know what, Mrs D.?” I linger on the name that distances her from me, my first time to say it to her face. “You know what? It’s all right. You can let it out now. Because I hate you too.”

  In that moment, it is almost true.

  “Jo!” Granny Peg’s eyes are as widely round as her glasses. “Jo, stop it. Stop. What are you saying?”

  I take down my hand to reveal my face. Such pain must surely show? Shock jolts Gran when she sees it. She turns to Mrs D., back to me. She is a question mark, spinning between us.

  “Ask her what she’s been doing!” my mother babbles. “Go on! Ask her!”

  Poor, poor Gran, who doesn’t deserve any of this.

  Mrs D. shouts, “No, she has nothing to say for herself now, has she? Oh, no. She’s too ashamed to say it, and well she might be. Let me, then, be the one to tell you: she’s only gone and taken up with young O’Donovan.”

  “O’Donovan. You mean…?”

  “Yes. Yes! Him! Yes!”

  “Oh, Jo. No.”

  “She picked it…” Mrs D. is turning hysterical. “She picked the thing that would hurt me most…Went out of her way to do this to me…”

  “Now, Máirín, stop that. Stop. O
f course she didn’t. These things happen. Jo doesn’t know…” She shoots her a look, a warning: Don’t say too much. And that finishes everything off. It’s a trapdoor opening under me, that look, and down I plunge. Forever.

  Mrs D. starts to cry, fingers splayed across her face.

  “No, no, Máirín pet, don’t cry.” Gran encloses her in loving arms. “Come here. Don’t cry.”

  And there’s nothing for me to do but leave them to each other, wrapped around their precious, protected secret.

  1923

  Diary 10th January, near on midnight.

  It was I who had to tell them. Daddy was in the bottling store and when he saw me come in, the state of me with tears running down my face, he just stood up from his work with the bottle still in his hand, and waited.

  I didn’t know how to say it so I just blurted it out. “Barney’s dead,” I said. “Shot in an ambush.”

  For a long, long minute he just stood there holding onto the bottle like a child asked to mind something without knowing why. Then he said: “I knew. I knew this was how it would end.”

  He got down onto his knees and began to pray. I couldn’t just go and leave him to it, though I felt we should be telling Mammy, so I crossed myself along with him but couldn’t pray for wondering how long he’d be.

  After an Our Father and three Hail Marys, he got back up and said, “Have you told your mother?” and asked me to do the deed, saying he wouldn’t be able. I didn’t know if I’d be able myself.

  She was out the back, coat and hat and scarf on, sitting on the bench she set up years ago under the apple tree, facing the sea. It was drizzling. She heard me coming and, when I got close, she spoke without opening her eyes. “I know you’re going to tell me it’s starting to rain and to come in,” she said. “And I will in a minute when it starts in earnest, but it’s so good to feel that wind in my face.”

  “I’ve bad news to tell you, Mammy,” I began. She opened her eyes and made a short nod. I told her. She took it brave, not a word or a sound out of her. After a long while of a wait, with me not knowing what to be saying or doing, she spoke. “Leave me now, Peg, for a bit.”

  I said to her to come inside, that the rain was getting heavier, but again she told me to go and in such a way that I felt I had to obey. I went in and she sat on, under the tree, while the weather worsened and turned to a downpour.

  Out I went out again and begged her this time but no. Daddy tried then but she refused him too.

  Next, the military called to give us the news. When they saw we knew already, they didn’t stay long. They’ve brought him to the barracks as they have to do a post-mortem. There will be an inquest to determine exactly what happened.

  Then the word was out. People started to flood to the house, one after another, offering their sympathies. Father John came and, to his credit, didn’t give any of his spiel against the Republic but just offered comfort and prayers and asked about arrangements. I sent him out, thinking he’d be the one to make her come in. I was really worried when he failed. The rain hadn’t stopped and it would be bad for anybody to be out in it that long, but for her….

  Lord, it was hard to watch her.

  Tipsy left the column to come by again, at no little danger to himself. He says all the boys are broken-hearted. They are all talking of how brave Barney was, saying he died so the rest of them might escape to fight again. According to him, it was Dan who fired the shot that killed Barney. That he’d like it to be so is clear from his response when I challenged how he knew it.

  Remembering how lenient Dan was on us that day in Dunore, I truly doubt the truth of this. I know we’ve all got more bitter since then, but shoot his best friend dead? I could never believe that of him. It’s as well there will be an inquest because the tongues that can’t wait to be wagging around here would love nothing more than to have that one to pass on.

  Tipsy was trying so hard to be a comfort, I found it hard to get rid of him, so he was there in the kitchen when Mammy walked back in, hair streaming around her face. “It is a glorious thing that happened today,” she said. “The name of Barney Parle will go down with that of Pearse and Emmet and Tone. Greater love hath no man.”

  I ran for a towel and dried her hair as best I could. After a long time and the helpful persuasion of Lil Hayes, I got her into bed, shivering like a grounded bird. Dr Martin came over and gave her a sleeping draught. How we’ll get her through the next few days, I just don’t know.

  I’m so tired. There’s the wake to arrange and then the funeral. Daddy’s distraught and it makes him worse to see Mammy the way she is. If only Norah was here.

  Norah.

  Holy God, what will it do to Norah when she finds out?

  * * *

  Diary 11th January

  We had the inquest today and it was horrendous, listening to their soldiers, their lawyers and that doctor with his horrible medical voice giving details of what took Barney out of this life – “a large wound in the front of the abdomen with a knuckle bowel protruding. Death caused by laceration of the bowel and kidneys, haemorrhage and shock.” More words to add to the torture in my head.

  And Dan in the witness box, never looking at us once. Our solicitor, Mr Nolan, submitted that no-one was giving any evidence of how Barney was shot or who did the deed. Surely some of the soldiers must have seen him fall or come out of the outhouse? Dan replied that in the mêlée, with both sides firing for upward of ten minutes, it would have been hard to distinguish any particular man falling, let alone say who delivered the fatal shot.

  According to him, when his troops had the house surrounded and he knocked on the door of the stable to take the surrender, Barney said “Wait until we put on our clothes” and then, a minute or so later, started to take shots at them.

  Tipsy and the boys swear that what Barney shouted was “Surrender we never will!” And that the Staters were the first to fire. Barney hung back, they say, keeping up a defensive fire that allowed others to escape, until he made a break for the wall.

  At which point Dan was seen by more than one person to have taken aim right at him.

  I’m so confused. Dan was awful convincing, especially when he spoke of Barney being his neighbour and good friend. He said he had assured Barney from the outset that it was himself who was in charge and that, if they came out, he would see to it that they were protected.

  He also made little of our solicitor’s objections to the class of bullets used by the Staters, those ones that explode inside a body, like small bombs. Barney might have had a chance if it had been a fair fight, Mr Nolan said. If the Army used similar weaponry and ammunition to that used by the flying column, Barney Parle might be alive today.

  The army used the equipment it was supplied with, Dan answered. Neither he, nor anyone in his command, had any choice in such matters.

  The verdict came as no surprise. A Free State court with a Free State judge and the Free State Army giving the evidence were hardly going to bring a jury round to convicting one of their own. And so it was: the jury pronounced themselves satisfied that Barney had been shot by National Troops “in the course of their duty”.

  Mammy stood up then, saying she considered it a “poor specimen of a national army when it was a case of fifty to one”. She had seen the troops going past the house and there were more than fourteen of them, for sure. And they had used guns and bullets that were infamous throughout Europe for the excessive wounding they inflicted.

  Dan rose to respond, and in a manner as superior as any English commandant, made a public spectacle of her, not caring an ounce for her grief. “Do the Republicans claim the sole right to carry on?” he intoned. “Are we to go to war as they wish? Are we only to send out three or four soldiers? Are we to use inferior ammunition? That is all bunkum, my dear woman.”

  Oh, God, thoughts wrestle each other in my head, throwing each other about without taking me any closer to knowing.

  Is this a just punishment for what we did, Barney and I, at
Donore? For making another family feel the way we Parles feel this day?

  This is the real question, the one that won’t let me go.

  Weakness, Mammy calls this. Understandable weakness, but to be transcended. She’s asked me to write something to keep Barney’s memory alive. The Free State would like to make it as if men like Barney Parle died for nothing. Whatever the rights and wrongs of it all, whatever confusions and remorse I might carry, that cannot be allowed. So yes, I will write a ballad.

  1995

  “If it weren’t for the warning signs and the barbed-wire fence, you’d never know, would you?”

  Rory is bent over a camera lens, looking out across Coolanagh. He has lived beside this place all his life, apart from his college years in Dublin, but he knows almost nothing about it.

  We are out together in daylight in Mucknamore, for the first time ever. Walking out along The Causeway, we both felt exposed to the windows of the village staring into our backs, but out here, we’re beyond view, in the dip behind the dunes that faces Coolanagh called Lovers’ Hollow.

  Oh yes, the irony is not lost on me. And as I look around at the wide flat expanse of sand and sea and sky, I get a strange, hall-of-mirrors feeling. I imagine Gran out here with his great-uncle Dan, and feel like their movements in the mirror are what is moving us.

  He says, “You’d expect there’d be some sign, wouldn’t you?”

  “Sign?”

  “That they were sinking sands?”

  “I think maybe it’s darker in colour?” I stand and point. “There?” He comes across to look at where I’m pointing.