Only with Blood

by Therese Down

  The vet saw the sadness beneath Jack’s features. As both a veterinarian and a man, he could not remain stoical in these circumstances, although he had served such notices many times. And he never underestimated the impact such news had on these hardworking men, whose herds were their lives. “Are your cattle insured against TB, Mr Flynn?” he asked kindly. Jack sighed heavily and nodded. The market value compensation for each cow he would receive, though, would hardly make up for the backbreaking, heart-wrenching business of milking his herd of twelve cows twice a day for three weeks, the loss of the calves the four tubercular cows were carrying, the untold gallons of milk he had watched run into the drain and would continue to watch run into the drain until he got the “all clear”; the loss of revenue that the sudden destruction of a third of his milking herd would mean, and the feed he had lavished on the four pregnant, infected cows to keep them well nourished. And then there was the genuine grief at having to destroy animals he cared for.

  The cows were all grazing peacefully as the three men approached the first field. It was a crisp fine day, though the sun was indistinct in the pale sky. Some animals lifted their heads to inspect the men as they came through the gate, and their ears moved back and forward as if they were trying to make sense of the departure from routine. It was not milking time. The vet had a clipboard, attached to which was a piece of paper bearing the typed ear tag numbers of the diseased cows. Jack carried a large can of kerosene, as instructed by the vet. Jack moved among his cows, soothing them, stroking their hides as he passed them, keeping them as calm as possible. Some became skittish and lunged away from the herd but then trotted back. Mainly, though, they were compliant, for they knew Jack and had no reason to fear him. He quickly identified the infected cows, slipping a rope halter over one near to him, while pointing out another for the vet to rope.

  In about fifteen minutes the four cows had been led away from the herd and taken through a gate at the bottom of the field into a separate, fallow field. Here they were tied to a fence.

  “I suggest you bring one animal at a time to me,” he said. “I’ll stand over there, away from the fence or any trees. When it’s done, you’ll need to burn them. Have you the kerosene?”

  Jack pointed to the can where it rested against the fence.

  “Right. I’ll need to see the fire set before I leave. Let’s get this over and done with, shall we?” And he reached out, gently squeezed Jack’s right upper arm, walked away, and took up position. “OK,” shouted the vet, having loaded his gun and reached a suitable spot for the slaughter. “Let’s have the first one.” Jack untied the first heifer and led her towards the vet. The dull report of the gun at such close range was even more shocking than he had anticipated. The cow’s legs gave way and she crashed to the ground, tongue lolling. He had some trouble leading the second cow after that. She fought him, eyes rolling, chucking her head back repeatedly. The scent of blood, the sharp report of the gun, the tension and unease of the man leading her, as well as the irregularity of the whole proceeding, was frightening her.

  “Come on, there, girl; come on, now,” said Flynn, coaxing the heifer gently. His hand trembled on the lead rope. The sense that he was betraying the animal was overwhelming. At last, it was done. The four cows lay in variously grotesque positions close to or even partially on top of each other. The grass beneath and around them was slippery with their blood. The vet looked sombre and pale. He put the safety catch on his gun and replaced it in a holster he had tied around his waist.

  “Get the kerosene, Mr Flynn,” he instructed softly. Jack fetched the fuel. “Now, douse them all well and as evenly as you can.” Sergeant Locke had walked back to the road and leaned on the gate of the first field. This was a sorry business. He had no desire to witness it at close range. Jack poured the kerosene over his cows and tried to ignore the small movements beneath their hides as their calves kicked. Then, hand shaking so that it was difficult to do – and it took a few attempts – he struck a match and let it fall, then ran backwards quickly as the kerosene ignited. Within seconds, the fire was an inferno. The men watched it consume the cattle for a moment, and then the vet said, “I need blood samples from the remaining cows. Can you bring them to the milking parlour?” Jack had not spoken a word since the slaughter began and still, without answer, he strode away from the vet, pushed open the gate between the fields, and began herding his remaining cows towards the road.

  The vet walked with the sergeant. Jack, weary past expression, drove his cows ahead of them. His chest was threatening to erupt in a coughing fit and he was glad at how fast the day was darkening so no one would see the blood he coughed up. He quickly pulled a huge handkerchief from his pocket in readiness. The horror of leading his cows to such wasteful slaughter and the death throes of their calves had affected him terribly. The gunshots had brought back to sharp relief memories of a night over twenty years ago, when he and several other men in a Tipperary flying column had ambushed a gardai and Black and Tan barracks, firing bullets into the darkness where men lay sleeping and unable to defend themselves.

  Once in the milking parlour the cows went to their stalls and waited to be milked. The four empty stalls were recriminations. As he turned the handle of a crude generator the milking parlour was lit with unsteady, dim light, created by huge batteries at a few points on shelves along two walls. He started to cough and cough as he turned the handle, covering his mouth as best he could with his free hand, but at last he had to stop turning and lean against the milking parlour wall. The vet looked towards Jack intermittently as he drew blood from a cow’s neck, withdrew the syringe, and squirted the blood into a sample bottle. As he pulled a pen from behind his ear and wrote the ear tag number on the bottle label, he shouted over the noise of the generator and the lowing cows, “You will need to get yourself checked, Mr Flynn. Have you had that cough for long?”

  Jack pushed himself away from the wall and turned towards the vet, making a dismissive, waving gesture. The sergeant, who had been leaning against a wall in the parlour, stepped outside. When at last he could speak, Jack made a monumental effort to breathe evenly, ignore the pain. He stuffed his filthy handkerchief deeply into his pocket.

  “No, no,” he said, “’tis the kerosene and the smoke – and I’ve had a bit of flu, like.”

  “Nonetheless,” insisted the vet, “please see a doctor, Mr Flynn. Can’t be too careful. There’s a high chance you’ve been drinking tubercular milk.”

  Sergeant Locke said he should be getting off, if that was OK. Nodding, the vet thanked him for his help. Of all the duties he had to perform as a Tipperary town police officer, the Bord na Bainne official business was the worst. It was boring, upsetting, and very possibly hazardous to health. He wasn’t sure how you caught TB but he was taking no chances. The vet smiled to himself as he dropped a used hypodermic syringe into a tin, removed another from a sterile package, attached a new needle, and inserted it into another cow’s neck. The chances of bovine TB contamination other than by repeated ingestion of infected milk or frequent intimate contact with a diseased person were minimal, and in all his years of practice, he had never heard of a vet contracting TB by testing for it or associating with farmers. But he had no more need of the gard.

  Back in the kitchen, Jack signed papers. The vet explained that the test results for the blood he had just taken would be through in two weeks’ time. Provided the remaining animals were now infection free, he would have to come back and re-test the cows in two months’ time. If they were still free of infection, then the herd would get its TB free status back and Jack could start selling milk to the dairy again. If, however, any more became infected, Jack might like to consider slaughtering all eight remaining cows and starting again, rather than waiting for re-test after re-test, milking twice a day for no income, and bringing calves to birth which would immediately be destroyed.

  For a less well-off farmer, such news might have spelt ruin. But for Jack, the only child of a single man and single himself ti
ll now, he had enough saved to cushion him from this blow. If need be, he would slaughter his cows and use the compensation to buy another herd. In the meantime, he would manage. The five hundred pounds he had promised Spillane, however, now seemed a great deal of money. He would need to take urgent stock of his assets if he was going to keep Caitlin Spillane.

  Donal Kelly returned to Cashmel a few days after Christmas 1941. Reinstalled in his new digs above O’Hallorahan’s bar, he was glad to be away from the harsh life of his father’s farm and it was a luxury he never failed to appreciate, waking in clean sheets at eight o’clock each morning. Particularly decadent was New Year’s Day. He was so tired from dancing and carousing into the small hours and so hung-over that he had slept in till ten o’clock, awakened by Molly’s banging and clattering of glasses as she prepared to open the bar.

  “Well,” she said, blowing a stray curl out of her eyes and pausing in her rolling of an ale barrel to its position beneath a pump. “The dead arose and appeared to many!”

  “Stop,” said Donal. “I’ve never slept as long in my life.” He looked genuinely ashamed.

  “Well, no harm once in a while, eh? And it was great New Year’s Eve craic, wasn’t it? Give us a hand with this barrel now you’re here – it needs to be lifted onto that stool so the hose can reach the pump.”

  Once the new barrel was set up, the glasses and tankards arranged on the shelves behind the bar, Molly went into the kitchen and filled the kettle, shouting back to Donal as she did so that if he wanted breakfast he could get it himself. There was plenty of bread and jam in; she had cooked for her husband before he left for the depot in Cashmel and she was not going to cook again. But Donal wasn’t listening to her. He was reading with mounting fury an article in that morning’s paper, which Desmond Corcoran had left on the bar for whoever might want it when the pub opened.

  In a column towards the bottom right, on the front page, was a report that de Valera had issued an Emergency Powers Order, effective thirtieth of December 1941. This allowed, even retrospectively, that a military court had the power to discard the ordinary laws of evidence binding a civil court, which prevented retrial on previously submitted but rescinded evidence and “if a statement was made voluntarily, lawfully… then at any stage of the trial the prosecution may read such a statement as evidence”.

  “No!” shouted Donal. “He can’t do that!”

  “What’s that?” shouted Molly from the kitchen, turning off a tap so she could hear him. When there was no answer, she came through to the bar, wiping her hands on a tea towel. Seeing Donal white with fury and gripping the paper before his face, she frowned in concern. “What’s the matter, Donal?”

  “De Valera! That…” Remembering his host, he tempered his language. He looked at Molly with such passion, she feared he would cry.

  “What’s he done? What?”

  “He’s passed some…” Donal struggled to articulate concisely the effect of the Order and get her to understand its obvious implications for George Plant. “Here,” he said, passing her the paper and stabbing the article with a forefinger. “Read it, Molly.” He jumped from his bar stool and swept past her then up the stairs to his room, grabbed his coat from a hook on the back of the door, and immediately turned around and down the stairs again, two at a time. In the bar, Molly was still trying to read the article and work out why Donal was quite so moved as he flew past her, drew the bolt on the outside door, and flung it open. He was gone before she could comprehend anything much.

  Joseph Morgan and Donal had become friends of sorts, and once or twice on a Sunday afternoon, after a lunchtime pint, Donal had walked into town with Joe as far as the latter’s house, then on into the countryside outside Cashmel. Donal still missed the fresh air and tranquillity of open land, and the freedom he enjoyed now that he was not confined by college walls and duties meant he could walk for miles whenever the weather permitted. Now, he ran through the streets of Cashmel to the small house on the town’s outskirts, where Joe Morgan lived alone. Beyond the huddle of terraced houses on Joe’s road, the only source of light or warmth apart from the sun was kerosene and batteries, but Joe’s house was connected to the town’s electricity grid. As the older man opened his front door, yellow electric light in a dingy hallway made the vapid January morning seem vibrant and healthy by comparison. Somewhere in the house, a radio broadcast a man’s voice, sententious and grave in effect, and cigarette smoke groped for release at the open door.

  “Donal!” Joe was not unpleasantly surprised to see the young man on his doorstep.

  “Can I come in, Joe?”

  Morgan stood aside and Donal noted with private amusement the big man’s shabby slippers and the diamond patterns on his socks.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Joe, noting Donal’s agitation.

  “Have you seen today’s paper?”

  “I have.”

  “Well, what do you think?”

  “Of what, precisely?” Joe was suspicious of Donal’s sudden political fervour but the look in his eye was more interested than aggressive.

  “Of de Valera’s Emergency Powers Order!” shouted Donal. “Sure he’s going to use it to nail Plant and Davern and Walsh, isn’t he?”

  Joe stared at Donal – the way he bit his lip and how his chest heaved with emotion. He had to be certain, though.

  “What’s it to you?”

  “What?” Donal’s tone was incredulous. He ran both hands through his hair, half turned as if looking for something in the room, then looked back at Joe, almost desperately. “What do you mean, Joe? Don’t you care? I thought you of all people would care! I thought you…” When still Joe stared at him, unmoving, Donal made a noise which indicated his incredulity. Shaking his head, he said simply, “I thought it was a big deal; I thought you would, too.”

  At last Joe spoke. “It is – and I do. Come into the kitchen. I have it on the radio.” As they entered the dingy kitchen an announcement was being read by the man whose voice Donal had heard earlier. Joe raised his hand as if anticipating an interruption by Donal:

  … will give military courts the jurisdiction under the Order, amending the 1939 Emergency Powers Act, and enables a military court to reconsider trial evidence – even retrospectively – if it believes such action is justified in the defence of Ireland’s sovereignty. The new order, stated President de Valera, is constitutional under Article 28:3:3 which grants the state special powers “in time of war or armed rebellion”. President de Valera added that the rejection of a Habeas Corpus defence by George Plant’s legal team is also constitutional, according to Article 40:4:5, which provides that a military court may override a Habeas Corpus defence in “a state of war or military rebellion”, where the release of a prisoner might endanger the state. He reminded the Dail of the statement he made when suing for America’s support in the establishment of a Free State, following World War I, that the sovereign Irish Republic was founded in 1919 “… not by poison gas and bombing planes and liquid fire and tanks and all the implements of modern warfare, but functioning by the will of the people…”

  “How is this justice?” sneered Donal. “Sure, when was disregard of the double jeopardy defence justice in any democratic nation, can you tell me? Dress it up how you like.” Shaking his head, Joe looked sadly into Donal’s earnest and intelligent face. He was struck by its youth and the passion in his eyes. He had seen it many times and long ago, most often in a mirror.

  “De Valera is fierce clever, you know,” he said slowly. “A mathematician, like yourself.” Donal frowned and shrugged at the extraneous nature of the comment; he knew that. “He knows fine well what he’s doing. He will stop at nothing to get rid of the IRA and keep Ireland neutral in this war – even if it means temporary martial law. He’s prepared to go that far, believe me.”

  “How do you know, Joe?” asked Donal, then wondered if the question were insulting, assuming as it did that Joe must be uneducated. He coloured, stammered something like an apology.
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br />   “No offence taken,” said Joe. “I know how I seem – one of the local lads, cap and a pint? And I am, true enough. But I wasn’t always a warehouse supervisor in Cashmel. Sit down.” Joe indicated a chair at his kitchen table. He sat down with Donal, smiled at him. “I had a good education – like yourself. But I got involved in politics, read Marx on my own terms – not filtered by academics with Catholic agendas. I hooked up with some anti-treaty fellas in the twenties…” Here he paused, looked meaningfully at Donal, and continued, “De Valera was on the right side, then, boy.” Donal did not respond, swallowed hard. “Have a cup of tea.” Joe got up, filled and plugged in an electric kettle, then reached for a packet of cigarettes, lit one, and inhaled deeply. He leaned against the sink while he waited for the kettle to boil, crossed one leg in front of the other and began to outline a political career spanning almost two decades, at which Donal was astounded.

  “When Dev first came to power in 1918, he was President of Sinn Fein, not Fianna Fail. The IRA was the official army of the Republic, ratified by the first Dail in 1919, and Michael Collins was Minister for Finance. They were my heroes, boy!” Joe’s face lit with fond remembrance, his tone buoyant. His words and thoughts came fluently, astonishingly at odds with the laconic, wary persona he presented nightly at O’Hallorahan’s bar. “When Dev went to America in 1919 to whip up USA support and recognition for a free and democratic Ireland, I was right behind him – though I was just a kid of eighteen or so.” He smiled at Donal, continuing, “In a way, I followed him – literally, I think – sort of retraced his steps almost in a pilgrimage, once I’d found a way to get to America a few years later.”