Women of Courage

by Tim Vicary

  Or sometimes a pig, he thought gloomily. Today it was three sheep. The job he had been given was the meat run. With a driver, Private Garside, and a gunner, Corporal MacNair, he had to drive to the Corporation Abattoir to pick up the day’s meat ration. It was typical, he thought: the bloody Irish were so disaffected and incompetent that they couldn’t even be trusted to deliver a load of mutton to the barracks without an armoured car to carry it.

  It annoyed Lieutenant Wilson particularly because he was proud of the Tin Annie. His father had owned a garage, and had worked hard to put his son through a minor public school. Young Alan had always been fascinated by things mechanical, and had volunteered for the motorized armour division because of it. All the three vehicles under his command were serviced once a week, kept in faultless mechanical condition and spotlessly clean. Yet the back of this one, despite all his efforts, stank like a butcher’s van. It humiliated him. And so, to show his disgust for the whole performance, he picked his teeth and yawned.

  It was raining, and although the massive bonnet of the car was heavily armoured in steel plate, the driver and the Lieutenant sat with their heads open to the elements. There was a bullet-proof screen that they could pull down in front of them, but they normally drove with it lifted up to increase visibility. Both wore capes, and the rain pinged on their tin helmets noisily, adding to Lieutenant Wilson’s misery and sense of humiliation. Not even an Irish gunman would be dim enough to attack a vehicle like this, he was sure, yet regulations insisted they take all necessary precautions.

  Behind and above them was an armoured turret with a Browning machine gun in it. Young Corporal MacNair swivelled it enthusiastically from side to side, aiming at anyone who might look remotely suspicious. At the last road junction he had shocked the life out of a group of middle-aged men and women, who had found themselves staring down the barrel at five yards’ range. They had scurried off down a side street, shaking their fists and shouting incomprehensibly.

  And why not? the Lieutenant thought vindictively. It was their children who threw stones and horse dung at the car every day on patrol - it was people like them who had caused the army to be here in the first place, instead of lying on a beach in Egypt, or driving along the shores of the Red Sea. It was people like them who forced him to drive back to the barracks every day with animal carcasses in the flatbed part of the car behind the turret, where troops and equipment were usually carried. He had been tempted, more than once, to dress up the carcasses to look like dead Irishmen, and would have done it, too, if his CO had had more of a sense of humour.

  They reached the abattoir, swung into the yard, and parked. Lieutenant Wilson climbed out of his seat and stretched, wrinkling his nose at the appalling stench, as he always did. Leaving the private and the corporal in the car, he tramped through the puddles towards the office, the rain streaming off his cape. The windows of the office were steamed up, but there was a welcome glow of light from a fire inside. He opened the door and went in.

  The manager, Ryan, stood behind the desk with one of his assistants. Both looked as pale as their aprons and had smiles on their faces; rather stiff, cracked smiles, Wilson thought. But all the Irish were cracked; he had no desire to understand them. He fumbled with his hand under his cape to bring out the order.

  Something prodded him in the back. A voice said: ‘I’d leave that, boyo, if I were you.’

  He turned to look behind him, but before he could succeed his arms were seized and he was propelled forward against a wall. His tin helmet banged against the plaster and tilted back over his head. His arms were forced up painfully behind his back. Something very narrow and hard prodded him under his right ear.

  A voice said: ‘Stand still, Tommy, and you won’t be killed.’

  Someone reached around his waist and took his pistol out of its holster. Then a voice said: ‘Stay facing the wall. Start getting undressed.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard. Take the helmet and cape off first. Then the rest of it.’ His arms were released slowly. ‘Any monkey business and we’ll undress you ourselves. But I’ll put a hole in your head before I start.’

  Shaking with shock and humiliation, he did as he was told. Stupidly, he said: ‘You won’t get away with this. There’s an armoured car and a machine gun outside.’ As soon as he’d said, it, he felt a fool.

  ‘Is that so, sorr? And there was me after thinking you fetched the meat on a bike.’

  When he was down to his underwear, someone seized his wrists and tied them together behind his back. Then he was made to sit down on a chair and his hands were tied to the strut between the back legs, too, so that he had to sit up stiff and upright. He was still facing he wall. He heard the door open and close behind him. Any minute now it’ll happen, he thought. MacNair will open up with the Browning and these bastards will be unstitched all over the pavement.

  But instead there was a shout and a single revolver shot. Then the door opened again, and he heard heavy breathing and curses as several people came in.

  He risked a glance behind him over his shoulder. His driver, Private Garside, was shoved into the middle of the room with his helmet knocked sideways. Wilson noticed the manager and his assistant, still standing with those sheet-white faces, and he realized their hands were tied behind them. They must have been like that when he came in, and he hadn’t noticed. The same voice that had spoken to him told Garside to face the wall and strip.

  Another voice said: ‘What happened?’

  ‘We carried the meat out like you said but the stupid sod in the turret wouldn’t get down to help me. He started swivelling the bloody gun around so I got up on the car and shot him.’

  ‘All right. Lug his body out of the car. Then Seamus’ll put these clothes on and we’ll get going.’

  A couple of minutes later Garside was tied to a chair as well. Lieutenant Wilson heard the engine of the armoured car start up, and then a horrible grinding and clashing of gears. When he thought of what driving like that would do to the gearbox, and what the whole episode would do to his army career, Lieutenant Wilson felt a horrible cold empty feeling rise inside him, as though he were about to cry.

  A little way along the North Circular Road, the armoured car pulled into a side road and stopped. Paddy Daly, in the full uniform of a major of the 1st Wiltshire Regiment, stepped out of a house, smiling.

  ‘Well done, me boys - just what the doctor ordered. Now, you’ve got ten minutes to get inside and smarten up. Then we’ll have a full inspection. Come on, you ‘orrible shower - jump to it!’

  He slapped his swagger stick against his boot, grinning broadly. Then he swung himself casually up into the turret of the armoured car, and began to examine the machine gun. He did not intend to use it, but there was no harm in having it ready. Also, he could cover the street with it if by ill luck a British army patrol should come down here while the boys were preparing.

  His stomach crawled inside him as the minutes ticked by.

  At last ten minutes had gone, and the four men reappeared on the pavement. They stood stiffly to attention, and he climbed down and examined them critically. This was no routine inspection. Any one of a host of tiny details, invisible to the casual civilian, could easily blare a warning to the military mind. Daly himself had never been in the British Army, and he had spent most of yesterday alternately observing the Wiltshires in the street outside the Royal Barracks, and trying to read up on details of cap badges and uniform in the city library.

  Seamus Kelly and Brendan O’Reardan were wearing the uniforms stripped from the lieutenant and private at the abattoir, so at least the details of them should be all right. O’Reardan had obviously had considerable trouble squeezing his 44-inch chest inside the battledress blouse, but it would do, at a glance. The lieutenant’s uniform appeared to fit Kelly perfectly. The other two wore bits and pieces assembled from stores that the Squad happened to have. One was impersonating a private, one a corporal. Daly could see no difference between them and the
others, but …

  He could wait no longer. Time was another vital detail. Kelly had locked the two soldiers, the manager and his assistant in their office, and the other men in the abattoir had been tipped off to take no notice, but they would work their way free eventually. Then the soldiers would ring the Royal Barracks, and a search would begin. Not yet, probably, but soon.

  ‘Right, you lads,’ he said. ‘Climb on board.’ He spent a few more precious minutes in the turret, pointing out to Kelly and O’Reardan things he had noticed about the Browning. Daly would have dearly loved to operate the thing himself, if need be; but none of the armoured cars he had observed around the city had had anyone of the rank of major in the turret. Anyway, his was the more important job, of carrying the bluff through. He squeezed himself into the front seat beside Kelly and the driver, Clancy.

  ‘Right, Tom,’ he muttered. ‘Mountjoy Prison it is.’

  There was no trouble at the gates. By the time they had reached them, Clancy had managed three gear changes in a row without turning every head in the street, and the mere sight of an armoured car sent one of the two sentries scurrying to open the heavy iron-studded gates. The other one saluted Daly smartly.

  ‘Escort party from the Castle, come to pick up prisoner Brennan,’ Daly said, in his best English accent. He pulled some papers casually from his front pocket and handed them over.

  This is the first test, he thought. He drummed his fingers casually on the flap of his revolver holster.

  The sentry gave the papers a cursory glance, handed them back, and saluted again.

  ‘Very good, sir. Go straight ahead.’

  So that’s the first step, Daly thought.

  Clancy let the car into gear with an unfortunate jerk, and drove through the open gates into the prison yard. Where the hell do we park? Daly wondered. He scanned the yard quickly. The most obvious entrance seemed to be straight ahead of them, slightly to the left. ‘Swing it round to face the exit,’ he said to Clancy quietly. ‘We don’t want any fancy manoeuvres on the way out.’

  There was no sentry at all outside this entrance. Is it the right one? Daly thought. I don’t want to make a fool of myself and walk into the kitchens. But there seemed to be no other choice.

  As planned, Clancy and Kelly stayed in the car; one to drive it, one to lounge in the machine-gun turret and give them a chance of beating off any attack. The other two, without a word, got down and followed Daly in.

  Inside the door there was a corridor and an office, with two prison warders in it. Daly marched up to them smartly.

  ‘Detail to take prisoner Brennan to Dublin Castle,’ he said. ‘Can you fetch him for me, please?’ He handed over the folded order with the official stamp of Dublin Castle.

  One of the warders took it and examined it gravely. Then he handed it back, taking in Daly’s badges of rank as he did so.

  ‘Right, Major. You’ll have to take this to the governor’s office to get it stamped. We’ll bring the prisoner there, too. I’ll show you the way.’

  Suppressing all signs of hesitation, the three IRA men marched smartly behind him, into the heart of the prison.

  Sean was annoyed. He had asked for pencil and paper so that he could write a reply to Catherine, and he had been given one single sheet. For two hours he had written nothing, trying out phrase after phrase in his mind and then discarding it. When he had finally begun, he had seen after a few lines that he had struck the wrong tone - still too proud, too full of self-justification. But he had no rubber and no more paper, so he began again on the back.

  The cell door opened and two warders stood there.

  ‘Brennan. Out!’

  He folded the paper and stuffed it into his shirt pocket, together with the pencil. He walked out onto the landing, holding out his wrists to be handcuffed. I am like a trained animal, he thought.

  To his surprise they did not turn left at the foot of the steel staircase. ‘Where are we going?’ he asked.

  ‘Governor’s office,’ said one of the warders shortly.

  It’ll be the lawyer, he thought. They’ve got a lawyer for me and they’re going to try to persuade me to accept him. I won’t.

  He was taken up a flight of stone stairs and shown into a large room with carpets on the floor and books and pictures on the walls. A grey-haired man in civilian clothes was sitting behind a large desk, studying a piece of paper. Facing him was a British army officer and two soldiers.

  The governor glanced up briefly as Sean came in. Then he spoke to the army officer.

  ‘Signed by Captain Smythe, I see,’ he said in a conversational tone. ‘I thought all this was being handled by the DMP and Inspector Kee?’

  ‘I don’t know anything about that, sir,’ the Major answered. ‘My orders are just to come and get him.’

  ‘Quite.’ The governor perused the order again. ‘I’d have thought if a captain in the intelligence service wanted to interview someone, he’d have come and got him himself, rather than sending a major to do his dirty work for him, wouldn’t you?’

  Daly hadn’t thought of that. Damn the bloody British Army and its hierarchies. He said: ‘I thought so too, sir, but I didn’t like the idea of putting anyone else in charge of my armoured cars. The streets are pretty dangerous now and most of these intelligence wallahs have no experience of how to actually handle men in combat.’

  ‘Wallahs’ was a good touch, despite the residual traces of a Dublin accent. The Wiltshires had been in India; Daly had checked.

  ‘Maybe not,’ said the governor. He inked a rubber stamp, pressed it firmly on to both copies of the forged order, handed one back, and dropped the other into a tray. ‘Though the sooner we get you fellows off the streets the better, I say. Anyway, there he is. He’s all yours.’

  The short conversation had given Sean a few precious seconds to adjust to the shock of hearing Daly’s voice. When Daly and the other two turned towards him Sean gave them a swift glance and then stared straight past them, up at the wall over the governor’s head where there was a wooden plaque with the gold-inscribed names of previous governors. He felt the muscles of his face twitching desperately and bit the insides of his lips to control them.

  The warder beside him unlocked his handcuffs and the soldiers took Sean’s arms and propelled him through the door. Outside, a warder coughed discreetly.

  ‘No handcuffs, Major?’ he asked, looking at Sean pointedly.

  ‘What?’ That’s the second mistake, Daly thought. He gave what he hoped was a calm smile. ‘No, no need. I’ve got four men and they’re all armed. There’ll be no trouble.’

  ‘He may look pretty, but he is charged with murdering a policeman and trying to put a bomb under the Viceroy, you know, sir.’

  ‘I’m well aware of that, thank you.’ Daly unbuttoned his holster, took out a Webley revolver, and cocked it. It made him feel much more comfortable. He pointed it at Sean, but it could just as easily cover the prison warders. ‘One false move out of him, and I’ll save the hangman a job.’

  The warder appeared satisfied. They marched, six of them - Sean, three soldiers, two warders - down the stone staircase and along a corridor. The sound of their boots echoed around them. There was a large closed door at the end of the corridor. Sean concentrated all his attention on it, willing it to open.

  They reached the door and halted. The warder spoke to his colleague at the reception desk. The three soldiers and their captive stood unmoving. Almost like statues, if statues could have a pulse that beat like thunder in their throats.

  The warder unlocked the door. The detail marched through. There was an armoured car outside. One of the soldiers got into the front seat beside the driver, tugging Sean in beside him. There was just room for Daly on the outside.

  Daly saluted the prison warder, and then got in beside Sean. The warder stood on the steps, watching them, frowning as though something was wrong.

  Clancy turned the keys of the armoured car. It wouldn’t start. He tried again. Still nothing.
The warder came slowly down the steps towards the front of the car.

  ‘Give it some choke!’ Daly hissed out of the side of his mouth. Clancy pulled out the choke and tried again. The engine fired. He let the gears in with a sharp jerk and the car lurched bumpily across the yard towards the gate.

  Sean saw the warder open his mouth as though to say something, then change his mind and step out of the way.

  The warders at the main gate saluted as they went out. Clancy turned left into the traffic, narrowly missing a pony and trap. Nobody said a word. After about fifty yards Daly craned his neck round to shout to Kelly and O’Reardan in the machine-gun turret.

  ‘What’re they doing?’ he yelled.

  ‘Closing the gates, Commandant!’ Kelly yelled. ‘They just saluted and closed the gates behind us!’

  ‘We did it!’

  A great yell of triumph erupted from every man in the car simultaneously. Daly grabbed Sean by the hand and thumped him on the back, the other man pummelled him in the stomach, and Clancy, the driver, reached across to ruffle his hair. Kelly and O’Reardan burst into a full-throated verse of the ‘Soldier’s Song’:

  ‘I’ll sing you a song, a soldier’s song

  With a rousing cheering chorus …’

  Daly shouted at them to be quiet, but as they lurched along the Phibsborough Road towards the city centre he found it hard to imagine that any other armoured car in the city was crewed by men with such broad, triumphant grins on their faces.

  30. An Unsuitable Proposal

  CATHERINE LAY in the bath and thought of her mother. The three bathrooms on the first floor at Killrath had been fully equipped and installed at the turn of the century under the orders of her mother, who was then in her early thirties. The bath Catherine was in was a massive iron tub eight feet long and nearly three feet deep, which had been specially commissioned from an ironworks in Belfast. It had feet like lion’s claws, and a fitted shower cabinet made of teak and brass at the tap end, with its own special mirror, taps, and a shower head a foot wide at the top. The rest of the room was of matching magnificence. There was an equally massive washbasin, cork matting on the floor, bamboo and cane easy chairs, a large mirror decorated with twining stained-glass leaves and flowers, and a sculptured ceiling where dolphins and mermaids could be seen sporting gaily.