Women of Courage

by Tim Vicary

  Ireland was thus blessed with two governments, each of which had politicians, soldiers, and tax collectors. The Irish Republican Army (IRA) was led by Michael Collins. His men began to kill policemen, particularly intelligence officers. They were very good at it. Not surprisingly, the British government wanted to capture Michael Collins, dead or alive. But it was not easy. No one knew where Collins lived, or even what he looked like. And his agents were getting more and more successful.

  That is where this story begins.

  I see His blood upon the rose

  And in the stars the glory of His eyes.

  His body gleams amid eternal snows

  His tears fall from the skies

  Joseph Mary Plunkett,

  written in Kilmainham Jail, Dublin, 1916

  I have been told the new policy and plan, and I am satisfied, though I doubt its ultimate success in the main particular – the stamping out of terrorism by secret murder.

  A letter from C. Prescott Decie, newly appointed commander of the Royal Irish Constabulary, to the Assistant Under-Secretary at Dublin Castle, 1st June 1920.

  1. Assassin

  THE POLICEMAN cycled slowly along the road from Ashtown Station. He was a burly man - too big for the bike, really - and his knees stuck out sideways as he pedalled. He was frowning; partly because of the concentration needed to avoid the potholes in the unmetalled road, and partly because of the importance of the task his sergeant had given him.

  As he approached the pub, the Halfway House, a motor car swept round the corner towards him. It was a big car - a huge, gleaming, armour-plated limousine, with a little Union flag fluttering from the bonnet - and it confirmed all the constable’s worries about the importance of what was to happen that morning. Awkwardly, he raised his hand to salute. But the car was going very fast, and as it came nearer it swerved into the middle of the road, to avoid the potholes. This flustered him. As he saluted with his right hand he turned the handlebars sideways with his left, and put his front wheel straight into a pothole. The bicycle tipped him forwards, and he grabbed the handlebars and floundered desperately with his legs to stop himself falling into the deep, muddy ditch that gurgled along beside the country lane.

  A derisive cheer completed his embarrassment. The armour-plated limousine had rushed past, and behind it came an army lorry, a Crossley tender, with half a dozen tin-helmeted Tommies sitting high up on the back of it. They had had an excellent view of what happened, and roared their appreciation.

  ‘Go on, Paddy, go for a swim!’

  ‘Get off and milk it, flatfoot!’

  Flushed with annoyance, the policeman shook his fist at them, and then hurriedly raised his hand in salute again as a third vehicle followed them down the lane. This was another big, armour-plated limousine, going slightly more sedately. Like the first, it was empty apart from the chauffeur, who raised a gloved finger casually from the wheel to acknowledge the constable’s salute.

  The constable watched them go a couple of hundred yards down the road and over the level crossing to the little country railway station. It was a warm, clear December day, and the wheels threw up a little cloud of dust that irritated his eyes. Through it, he saw them park outside the station, where his sergeant greeted them. An officer got down from the lorry and began to post sentries where they would get a clear view of anyone approaching or leaving the station. Then he went inside, and the soldiers began to chat and smoke, settling in for a long wait.

  Cursing the Tommies under his breath, the constable dragged his front wheel out of the pothole and began to pedal on towards the police station at Ashtown Gate, as the sergeant had told him.

  Ashtown Gate was one of the northern entrances to Phoenix Park, Dublin, where the Viceroy of Ireland, Field Marshal Sir John French, had his residence. It was the constable’s job to guard that gate, and keep it clear of all obstructions when the Viceregal limousine approached it.

  Already, looking ahead, he could see that some clod of a farmer had chosen this time of all times to park his horse and cart in the middle of the road. It looked as if the wretched man was getting out a nosebag for his horse, and settling down to have his lunch, right there in the path the Viceroy’s car would take!

  Swearing softly, the constable stuck out his knees sideways and began to pedal faster.

  Outside the Halfway House, Sean Brennan leaned against the wall reading his newspaper. He read with deep interest, hardly glancing up when the military convoy swept past, and apparently not noticing the policeman at all. And so the constable saw only a young man in an old coat and cloth cap, with a half-empty glass of beer on the wall beside him, studiously reading.

  Perhaps if he had seen the title of the newspaper, he might have worried. An tOglach - The Volunteer - was the journal of the Irish Volunteers, who had now come to call themselves the Irish Republican Army. On 31 January 1919 An tOglach had declared that a state of war existed between England and Ireland, and that Irish Volunteers were justified in ‘treating the armed forces of the enemy exactly as the National Army would treat the members of an invading army’. And, as the constable knew, policemen like himself were included in the category of ‘armed forces of the enemy’. On 21 January 1919, the day on which the elected Sinn Fein MPs had met in the Mansion House in Dublin and declared themselves the Dail, or Parliament, of an Irish Republic, two police constables - ordinary Irish family men, just like himself - had been ambushed and shot dead while escorting a load of dynamite to a quarry.

  Between then and the date on Sean Brennan’s new copy of An tOglach - 19 December 1919 - eighteen policemen had been shot dead by the IRA. Some of them ordinary police constables, some of them detectives, trying to penetrate the organization of the IRA.

  Today, however, Sean was after a bigger target. He waited until the constable had cycled laboriously past, then folded his newspaper quickly and slipped into the pub.

  Inside, seven other young men like himself were waiting. Three more, Sean knew, were further up the road, with the horse and cart. Those in the pub were sitting around casually, drinking and talking. They looked like several unconnected groups of friends who had taken advantage of today’s fine weather to cycle out the two miles from Dublin in the crisp December air. He joined two of them at the end of the bar, and nodded imperceptibly.

  ‘They’ve come,’ he murmured. ‘Just as we thought. Two cars and a tender. The constable’s gone up the road.’

  The man he had spoken to glanced at his watch. ‘Another ten minutes then,’ he said. He glanced around the room, conscious that conversation had died, and that many eyes were watching him. Only a group of four farm labourers in the corner carried on happily with some uproarious story about a cow. ‘Best get back outside, Sean. Let us know when the train’s in sight.’

  Sean shook his head. ‘I can’t see it well from the road,’ he said. ‘I might not know until it had come. But there’s a ladder round the back. If I got up there I could see, I think. Then I could signal, if someone else were outside.’

  The other man frowned. ‘What would you be doing up the ladder, if anyone asks?’

  ‘Mending the thatch, maybe. It looks pretty leaky up there.’

  ‘All right.’ He glanced at the third man in the group, a young lad like Sean. ‘Martin, you go with him. I’ll stay by the window. We don’t want more than two of us where we can be seen.’ He left them, and wandered over to join the other two groups.

  Outside, the two young men propped the ladder against the back of the house. Sean climbed it, while Martin stood with his foot on the bottom rung. At the top, Sean glanced over his shoulder. He could see the two big cars outside the station, and soldiers lounging in the back of the lorry. He thought one of them looked his way for a moment, and he pretended to busy himself with the thatched roof, examining the reeds. As he faced the wall to do that he could still look to the right, where the railway line disappeared into the green countryside to the west. He could see clearly here, over the deep banks and hedges that
bordered the country roads. At first he found it a little hard to make out the line of the railway. There were a number of bare trees in the way, and the railway, too, seemed sunk in a cutting behind hedges.

  But then a young horse bolted in a field about half a mile away. Sean watched it, and saw something that brought a tense, boyish smile to his lips. Despite himself he felt his hands clutch the sides of the ladder convulsively. A plume of white smoke was rising into the air above the trees, and moving steadily closer, towards the station.

  In the train, Catherine Maeve O’Connell-Gort was hugely embarrassed.

  A slim, dark-haired young woman of nineteen, she sat by the window and sulked. The rest of the carriage was full of men, and all of them had tried, in turn, to be gallant and polite with her, but she had rebuffed the lot. She was furious with them all, especially her father, who had tricked her.

  When they had left their family home in Galway early that morning to catch a train to Dublin, he had not said there was anything unusual about the train. To Catherine, one train was much like another; she never thought about them. Her father had seemed a little agitated when their car had been blocked on the roads by several donkey carts and then two herds of cows in quick - or rather slow - succession, but there was nothing abnormal about that. People did get agitated when rushing for a train. They caught the train at Galway, and it was only when they reached Athlone, and her father had insisted that they get off, that she had begun to smell a rat. On the platform, the stationmaster had appeared in his best uniform to fuss around them and order porters to carry their bags. He had conducted them to another platform which was roped off so that she and her father were the only passengers on it. Then the wretched stationmaster had actually drawn himself up to salute the train which was steaming in there. It was a quite different train from the one they had left. There were little flags fluttering from either side of the locomotive, and there were only two coaches. Two coaches gleaming with bright paint and the imperial coat of arms on every door.

  ‘There you are, Cathy! How’s that for a surprise, eh?’ Her father had smiled, full of this ridiculous, tasteless joke, and she had wanted to scream. So this was why he had put on his best uniform this morning! But she was too shocked, too well brought up, to let him down at once in public. So he had handed her into the train, and she had curtsied politely to the short, white-haired old soldier with twinkling blue eyes and military moustache who met her. The arch-enemy himself, Field Marshal Sir John Denton Pinkstone French, KGB, KCMG, Viscount of Ypres and High Lake, Viceroy and Lord Lieutenant of His Majesty’s Kingdom of Ireland.

  ‘So this is the young lady! Welcome aboard, my dear. I ordered your father to join me this morning, and he said he would not be parted from you on any account. Now I see why. Come in, do. Roger, take the young lady’s coat, and get her a drink, will you!’

  It all seemed a terrible, nightmarish trick. Instead of being in an ordinary train compartment rubbing shoulders with the common people of Ireland, she was welcomed into a room with comfortable armchairs and chesterfields, low tables, curtains, pictures on the walls. And standing politely in front of the chairs, boots and belts gleaming with polish, the staff officers of Ireland’s enemy!

  ‘Tea, my lady? Or something stronger?’ A waiter had bowed in front of her and she had felt ashamed of the practical blue dress and bob hat she had chosen that morning; clothes that would not pick her out among a crowd.

  ‘Yes, thank you. Tea will be fine.’ She sat in one of the big armchairs, and her father and Lord French sat opposite. She saw the proud, anxious smile on her father’s face, and hated it.

  ‘So. What do you do in Dublin, my dear?’

  ‘I am a student. A medical student.’

  ‘I see.’ A frown of surprise, perhaps disapproval, crossed the little field marshal’s face. ‘Going to earn your living, then, as a doctor, what? Lady sawbones, eh?’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps. There are the examinations, first.’

  ‘Quite. Bit unladylike, that sort of thing, don’t you find?’

  ‘No. I like it.’

  She could not believe it. Here was she, a girl who longed to identify herself fully with Ireland’s struggle for freedom, sitting opposite this crusty old fool who was the epitome of everything that stood in its way. The man who, at the age of sixty-six, had been appointed commander in chief of the British Expeditionary Force in France, and had had the ultimate responsibility for the fruitless blood bath of Ypres, in which her eldest brother, Richard, had lost his life. The man who had wanted to introduce conscription to Ireland, and had actively recruited thousands of young Irishmen to be slaughtered in the trenches of Flanders. The man who had arrested seventy-three prominent Irish men and women because he thought they were plotting to land German soldiers in Ireland by submarine. The man who had constantly asked for an extension of martial law to suppress and imprison the Sinn Fein volunteers whom Catherine so admired.

  ‘Did I not receive you at the Castle last year, my dear?’

  ‘No, my lord. I’m not a debutante.’

  ‘Really? Why not? You’re of an age, surely?’

  ‘Well …’ To her intense annoyance, Catherine actually found herself blushing. Her father rescued her with a lie.

  ‘It was an illness, my lord. We thought perhaps this year, if there is to be a ceremony.’

  ‘Hope so. Can’t be sure. Depends on these damn Shinners, you know. Ideal time for potshots. But I don’t want to disappoint the girls.’

  Catherine remembered the long, bitter wrangles at home last year, when she had refused to be presented as a debutante at the Viceroy’s court. She would have had to parade in Dublin Castle in an elaborate, bridal dress, curtsy to this stupid old man on his foreign throne, and let him kiss her.

  It was not the kiss that Catherine would have hated, but what it stood for. It was a sign, she thought, not only of the power of all men over women, but of this man, the representative of the King of England, over all the defenceless women of Ireland. Both droit de seigneur, and the rule of the English. Over the past few years, she had come to hate both of those things.

  And here she was in front of him, making ridiculous polite conversation. What would her heroine, Constance Markievicz, have done? Something, at least. I shall never have such an opportunity again, she thought. I must strike my blow for Ireland - here, now!

  For a wild moment she thought of snatching a revolver from one of the officers, and shooting him. That was what a Sinn Feiner would do, if he could. But it was absurd - she was a good shot, but all the revolvers were safely buttoned down in the holsters of big, strong men. No; she would have to use words instead.

  For the first time she forced herself to look directly into the eyes of the white-haired old soldier. He looked surprised and pleased; charmed, almost. French was well known to be fond of women but he had been about to give up hope of extracting any conversation from this dark-eyed, rather sulky young girl. The gallant gleam in his eyes annoyed her intensely.

  ‘Viscount French, why don’t you leave Ireland?’

  ‘What?’ Lord French looked startled. A ripple of interest spread to the officers sitting nearby, rattling their teacups.

  ‘Why don’t you leave Ireland and go home? Leave us all in peace?’

  French coughed, and sat up in his chair. ‘Well, er, as to that, my dear, I couldn’t leave Ireland and go home. I have my own estates here, as you know. In the County Roscommon. My family have lived here for generations, as yours have, I believe. At Castle French in Galway. I have just come from there now.’

  ‘You know what I mean. You are an Englishman, you represent the English king, the British Empire. You have no right to be here now, to hold the land in slavery. There has been a free election and the people have voted for a republic, for Sinn Fein. You are an invader in a foreign land!’

  It was harder than she had thought. She felt tears in her eyes - partly from the strength of her own feeling, but also from a consciousness of the helple
ssness and absurdity of her own position. An officer at the end of the carriage neighed with laughter. She glanced briefly at her father’s face, saw it was bright red, and looked resolutely away again.

  French looked embarrassed; amused and annoyed at once. ‘Nonsense, young woman. Who the devil’s been filling your head with such drivel? This is my country, just as much as it is yours and your father’s. Surely you’ve been brought up to know that?’

  ‘I was brought up to know it, yes. But I’ve taught myself better. We’ve been stealing from the people for hundreds of years. That’s why there’s so much poverty everywhere - why so many had to go overseas in the Famine! That’s why people like you and father are rich and have big houses and estates here - because we stole the land from the people!’

  ‘Catherine!’ Her father put his hand on her arm. ‘Please - stop now! At once!’

  ‘No! I’m sorry, Father. You know how I feel - why shouldn’t I say it? I don’t want to live the rest of my life like a rich thief, stealing the land from the poor! I’m going to be a doctor, work for the people, serve them! And just because I was born into the same . . . class . . . as this man, it doesn’t mean I support the terror he’s waging against the people of Ireland. Arresting them, shooting and torturing them - just because they have voted for freedom!’

  French had risen to his feet. His face was bright red and his hands were clasped behind him. He would have stood ramrod stiff, but the train was going over a bumpy patch of line, so he stood with his legs a little apart, rocking slightly to keep his balance. His voice was sharp, hard. It was clear he felt his hospitality had been grievously insulted.

  ‘I do not shoot men and there is no torture that I am aware of. My job is to ensure that the law of this country is upheld - no more and no less. Give me one example of unprovoked shooting or torture, young woman, if you please. One, go on - just one!’