Jean Grainger Box Set: So Much Owed, Shadow of a Century, Under Heaven's Shining Stars

by Jean Grainger

  ‘Mary, I have been thinking and here is something I want to ask you, and I am trusting you that it will go no further than between ourselves.’

  Mary’s heart thumped loudly. While Mrs Grant had always been a kind employer, and she trusted her well enough to discuss political issues, they had never had an intimate conversation.

  ‘Yes, Ma’am, of course,’ she half whispered.

  ‘Why did you do what you did yesterday?’ She fixed Mary with a direct gaze.

  ‘Well, Ma’am, I don’t know,’ Mary was unsure of what to say next. Perhaps she had misjudged the situation earlier and Mrs Grant was not as understanding as she first seemed. ‘It just seems wrong, I suppose. Those men and women, fathers and mothers, weren’t giving their children away on a whim. They have to, and well... they were so frightened I just had to help them. None of this is their fault.’

  ‘And what do you think about the situation here? Politically I mean.’

  Mary knew she was being tested. Eileen had warned her about this. Mr Grant was a hard employer at his textile company and notorious throughout the city, but his wife was her own woman underneath it all. One time Mary had questioned the cook on the volume of stew she was making for Mr and Mrs Grant, and Mrs Kearns told her that the mistress instructed her to give food out at the kitchen door to anyone who needed it. As time went on, Mary noticed that the household regularly over ordered from the grocer and butcher. Mr Grant paid all the bills and never questioned them, so it was his wife’s way of helping the destitute of the city.

  ‘I don’t know much about it really, but I suppose I think that each country should have control of their own destiny and not be dictated to by anyone else.’ She knew if Rory heard her, he would have been proud. The thought emboldened her to continue. ‘I only know what I read, but it seems that if this situation with the workers locked out continues, things are going to get even worse than they are now.’

  Mrs. Grant smiled. ‘Quite.’ She looked at Mary for a long moment, as if weighing up what she was going to say next.

  ‘Mary, I am a member of an organisation, an organisation of women who have dedicated themselves to the Irish cause. We support the Irish Volunteers, and while we are an independent group, we seek, through force of arms if necessary, to free Ireland of slavery, Irish men and Irish women.’

  Mary didn’t know what to say. Clearly Mr Grant knew nothing of his wife’s allegiance to this group.

  ‘The young man with you yesterday, when you were arrested, do you know him?’ Mrs Grant’s question was direct but gentle.

  ‘Yes, Ma’am. That was, is, Rory. Rory O’Dwyer, Eileen’s brother. He met us when we went to Kingstown because he works in the Royal Marine Hotel.’ Mary was anxious that Mrs Grant realise there was nothing untoward going on. Fraternising with the opposite sex while in service in a respectable house usually meant instant dismissal. Sister Margaret had warned her of that.

  ‘Yes indeed, but what you may not know is that he is also an active member of the Volunteers. It is young men like your friend Rory that will hopefully free this country. My father, who has long since passed, was in the Land League and fought against the oppression of the tenant farmers by rack rent landlords, something I didn’t feel it was necessary to disclose to my husband when we married, and now I’m afraid we rather find ourselves at opposite sides of the political debate. As you may have gathered, there is no love or even passing affection between the master and me. When I met him, at a dance in Galway, he seemed so sophisticated. He was my ticket out of the countryside and up to the city. My father was away in England while we were courting, and my mother was anxious for the match, given he was so wealthy, so she encouraged it. I foolishly thought we could grow to feel something for each other, but he just wanted a son, which I am seemingly incapable of producing, and so there is nothing between us. He cares only for profit, not for people, not for me. Anyway, you must be wondering why I’ve brought you up here, and divulged so much to you.’

  She paused, composing carefully what she was going to say next, ‘You see, to my mind, the strike, the Lock-out, all of it, is a sign, a portent of things to come. At long last the Irish are saying ‘Enough is enough’. We will be treated as sub-human no longer. But we need manpower, and women power too. We can do it if we unite. I need my husband’s money and influence to help the cause, but of course discretion is paramount. If he were to find out my activities, then it would have very serious consequences. He is not known for compassion. I have plans, big plans to relieve my husband of some of his wealth and, shall we say, redirect it into channels more deserving. I need someone to be my right hand woman, someone I can trust to communicate with others, to represent me when I cannot be there. And Mary, due to the bravery and tenacity you showed yesterday, combined with what I know of you since you’ve been with us, I want you to consider being that person.’

  Mary was nonplussed. This whole conversation was outlandish. Mrs Grant revealing the details of her problematic marriage to a maid was shocking enough, but all this about the Volunteers and Irish freedom and the like, Mary was amazed. Earlier she had been expecting, at best, a severe reprimand for having got herself arrested and drawing the Grant household into disrepute, or at worst to be instantly dismissed. But it seemed Mrs Grant was asking her to get involved in something she knew nothing about, but seemed very dangerous.

  ‘Ma’am, you see the thing is, I only did what anyone would have yesterday. The little children were being crushed by the crowds and they were terrified. I didn’t do it for any other reason...’ Mary was at a loss as to how to respond.

  Mrs. Grant smiled. ‘Mary my dear, this is all highly irregular, I know. You’ve had a very sheltered upbringing, and while you’ve been taught well how to be of service and your manners and demeanour are impeccable and entirely fitting for a maid, I imagine your experience or knowledge of the world outside of the convent is minimal.’

  Mary remained silent, but nodded slightly.

  ‘As I thought.’ Mrs Grant sat forward and held both of Mary’s hands. ‘Mary my dear, we are living in very interesting times. Very interesting, but also very dangerous. This country of ours has been oppressed for far too long. Britain has had a stranglehold of Ireland for so long, and they have created a horrifically repressive society where even Irishmen, such as my husband, feel it is in some way justified to reduce those worse off than themselves to still further depths of poverty and deprivation. And do you know why they do it? Why men like my husband and William Martin Murphy bleed the workers white? It is so we can live like this,’ Mrs Grant waved her hand around the sumptuous room, ‘and you and your class can slave and enjoy no such quality of life. I may have been born into a different class to you, Mary, but I hate everything about it. In my eyes, we are all born equal and we should die that way. No one is better or worse than anyone else. We, the Volunteers and the women who support them, are seeking not simply to solve the problems of poverty and oppression. No, we want more than that. But Mary, what we seek has eluded our ancestors for centuries. We seek the total removal of Britain from Irish affairs. We want a republic where we, and we alone, Irish men and women, are the sole masters of our fate. Answerable to nobody but ourselves. We want to live in a country where the dignity of every man, woman and child of our state is respected and protected. A country where every child born under the Irish flag, irrespective of the economic circumstances of his or her parents, is cherished and protected. But we need help, and we need it from every part of society on the island. Will you help, Mary?’

  Mrs. Grant’s eyes glistened with emotion and determination. Mary sensed the deep conviction in the woman and was moved by it. The ideas that Mrs Grant had, about people being equal and it not being fair the way some people were so well off while others suffered, had never really occurred to her until she came to Dublin. She found herself thinking of all the children that grew up in the convent. From the moment they could understand, they knew they were worth much less than a c
hild with parents, with a home of their own. She herself thought she was so lucky to have a job in a nice house like this, but the idea that she could, in theory at least, be a mistress of such a house was inconceivable. The poverty in Dublin was unbearable to watch. Women wearily walking the streets with scraps of infants too weak even to cry, children barefoot and barely clothed despite the bitter cold, shoved aside on the footpath to make way for ladies and gentlemen in their finery. Mrs Grant was right, it wasn’t fair. Suddenly Rory came to her mind. He spoke with the same conviction that day on the pier, before all the drama with the protests.

  Mrs. Grant waited silently for her answer. On one level Mary was terrified, but her employer was asking something of her and she really couldn’t refuse. She thought about her life so far, how she had never envisaged a future beyond mere survival before, but now, here were people like Mrs Grant, like Rory, telling her things could be different. The one night she had spent in prison was terrifying, and if she were to involve herself in anything that was to challenge the regime, the consequences could be much worse. She had witnessed first-hand the ferocity of the Dublin Metropolitan Police on the pier at Kingstown, and from reading the papers she knew the British would tolerate nothing even resembling dissent.

  ‘I’ll do it.’ She spoke quietly but without fear. ‘I don’t know if I’ll be good enough, but I’ll try to help you, whatever way I can.’

  Chapter 12

  The day following her visit to the old lady in Richmond Hill, Scarlett found herself thinking about the flag… How strange that the last time she heard the name Boland’s Mills was years before. she doubted she would have remembered the name of it if anyone had asked her.

  She began by researching Boland’s Mills. The first entry on the Google search gave a Wikipedia entry. It was in Dublin, the capital city of Ireland, and the mill was one of the locations of the 1916 Easter Rising. It was claimed by Eamon de Valera, one of the leaders of the Rising for the Irish Republic, and de Valera's forces had occupied the mill at the start of the rebellion. The location was selected in order to cover the south-eastern approaches to the city.

  Ok, she surmised, Dan did make the right connection, at least with this Eamon de Valera guy. She remembered thinking as a kid how the name sounded more Spanish or Italian than Irish. Scarlett read for hours, refreshing her memory of Irish history, learning that after centuries of oppression of the Irish by the English and several failed attempts at liberation, a group of disparate agitators, from shopkeepers, to poets, communists to Catholics, decided to strike once more for Irish freedom. They were called the Irish Volunteers, and on Easter Monday 1916 they, along with the socialist Irish Citizen’s Army and Cumann na mBan mobilised into an army which would take over the General Post Office in the centre of Dublin, as well as other strategic locations, and declare Ireland free of Britain. The timing was better than previous attempts due to the pressure placed on England, which was by then heavily embroiled in the First World War. A Proclamation of Independence was issued, and the British forces in the city reacted with brutal outrage at the revolutionaries’ audacity. The fighting went on for a week. The city was destroyed and the death toll rose rapidly. Eventually the leaders had no option but to surrender. They were outnumbered, and they were no match for the resources of the largest and most powerful empire the world had ever seen. They surrendered to the British and emerged into the streets outside the various garrisons they had commandeered during the ill-fated rising.

  Scarlett quickly trawled through the various websites dedicated to the Irish struggle for independence and realised just how much she didn’t know. She found the subject interesting, and she never ceased to marvel at the conviction felt by those who, despite all the odds, take on those who oppress them. She’d read about it in the former Soviet states as they seceded from the stranglehold of the Soviet Union one by one. And she’d watched with fascination the revolutions of recent years in North Africa. The plight of woefully mismatched Palestinians as they took on the might of Israel with its powerful and wealthy friends, even when it wasn’t politically expedient to do so, was something that touched her deeply. The passion of those who fight against injustice, even paying the ultimate price, always stirred her, and those feelings began to emerge as she read about those Irish who believed that they had right on their side and cared enough, not just for themselves, but for the future generations.

  Eileen had been so tired and drained when she was with her, so Scarlett didn’t press her for the story, but she was intrigued by the flag and what it meant. She trawled the websites for mention of a flag. She didn’t know how old Eileen was, possibly ninety or thereabouts, and this flag had been owned by her mother in Dublin in 1916, almost a hundred years ago.

  She would call her during the morning to check if she was ok. She couldn’t explain why she had taken this old lady to her heart, but she had. She had cleaned up her kitchen and put things right in her house as best she could, and promised to drive her to purchase replacements for the items that had been stolen.

  Her phone rang, Lorena. Scarlett groaned and pressed ‘answer’ on the screen.

  ‘Hi Mom.’

  ‘Scarlett, I’ve been going out of my mind! Where are you? Fr Ennio and I were waiting for you last night to do the novena to St. Jude. Don’t go crazy now, but we were thinking that maybe your recent behaviour could be explained by demons?’ Lorena’s voice was rushed, breathy.

  ‘Er... demons. Really?’ Scarlett sighed.

  ‘Yes Scarlett, demons. Just because the younger generation like to think that hell and demons don’t exist doesn’t mean that it’s true. The devil makes work for idle hands, you know. He is moving among us, urging us to commit the most grievous sins, and sometimes we are powerless in the face of such demonic pressure. Fr Ennio and I are planning to go to Mexico actually, to pray for strength to be God’s army on earth against these forces of evil. I mean, why else would a good, God fearing girl decide to become an adulterer, succumbing to carnal lust with a married man, married in front of our Lord...’

  Scarlett let her rant on about demonic influences without interruption. She was scrolling through the website of the Irish military archives, reading first hand reports of the Irish Revolution, or ‘Rising,’ as it was known. There might be a great story to be told about Eileen and her flag, maybe something that would kick start her career again. In the run up to the centenary of the Easter Rising, there was huge interest in the United States about all things Irish.

  ‘Scarlett! Scarlett! Are you listening to me?’ Lorena’s tone changed.

  ‘Yes, yes I am.’ Scarlett answered resignedly.

  So? Will you do it?’ Lorena was belligerent.

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Oh for Goodness sake, Scarlett, will you allow Fr Ennio to exorcise the demons from your body, cleansing your soul of this most terrible sin?’

  ‘Ah, I’m not sure I can fit that in, Mom. I have to help this old lady whose house was burglarized...’

  ‘And that’s more important than your soul burning in hell for all eternity, is it? Well that’s fine. You are coming here for lunch next Sunday anyway. We arranged that, so I’ll arrange for Fr Ennio to come too. He can perform the rite then and there, and then we can all have a nice lunch. I’ll make my chicken Creole. You love that.’ Lorena sounded pleased with herself.

  Before Scarlett had time to object to the bizarre Sunday afternoon activity, Lorena had hung up.

  She sat with her phone in her hand for a moment, thinking about her mother. She admitted she had given Lorena a wide berth for the last few years, focusing on her career. Then the whole thing with Charlie was so all consuming, and Lorena would never have understood. Maybe it was time to pay a bit more attention to her. She was clearly getting into the religion thing in a really big way.

  Lorena loved all the dramatics of Catholicism. It appealed to her fanciful nature, and Scarlett was almost grateful to the church for keeping her mother so occupied. Just lately,
though, she was coming out with some really odd things, even for her. This Fr Ennio guy was featuring very heavily too. Scarlett had never met him, but perhaps it was time she did. The prospect of a lunch with her mother and her pet priest was awful, and to have some weird ritual added in for good measure filled her with dread, but she decided she better go and see what was going on with Lorena. How is it, she thought guiltily, that she could feel such affection for Eileen, whom she’d only just met, and yet she seemed to want to avoid her own mother like the plague.

  Chapter 13

  Scarlett sat in her sunny kitchen savouring the old familiar feeling of getting to the bottom of a story. She couldn’t explain it but she just had a feeling about this flag thing. Initially she had only gone to see Eileen to keep Artie off her case, and to fill the long empty days. But, since she met Eileen and saw the flag, she managed to go five minutes without thinking of Charlie. She missed him like a physical pain, and checked every text promptly in case it was from him. It still hurt like hell if she thought about the whole mess, but this with Eileen was something she could do, something to get her teeth into. He had called last night, briefly, to tell her that he was moving off the political scene for a while, and was taking his family on an extended vacation to get out of the media spotlight. The mention of his family sent a stab to her heart. She was silent as he explained his plans.

  ‘You understand, don’t you, Red?’ he said, using his pet name for her. ‘You know I’d rather be with you but I have to try to clear this up. Julia wants to have a bit of normality for the kids, and show the country a united front.’