Mary was delighted that her friend was enthusiastic. She wanted Rory to be proud of them when he got out, that they hadn’t just sat and waited but had kept up the fight.
‘Why don’t we go up to Dublin, see if we can meet with the Countess and ask her what we should do next?’ Eileen’s face lit up with enthusiasm.
‘We could even try to see Mrs Kearns and Mrs Grant. Oh Eileen, I’d love to, do you think we could?’
Eileen was pensive. ‘The only problem might be Mam and Dad. They’ve gone through so much already, maybe they will be against us getting involved again, and I suppose we can’t blame them, but still, I think we should put it to them anyway. We’ll wait until tonight when the small ones are in bed and we can talk to them together, what do you think?
Mary knew that Peg would hate the idea of them being involved politically again, after everything the family had been through, but John would understand, and he would, in his own gentle way, talk his wife round. He was deeply proud of his children and of Mary too, and he felt, if anything, even more passionately that the struggles of Easter Week and the ground that had been gained must not be lost due to complacency. Last night over dinner he was voicing his opinion that the war in Europe couldn’t go on forever, and if there was to be another strike for independence, it would have to be sooner rather than later. Peg had looked disapprovingly at him and quietened him with a delicious bread and butter pudding.
The girls walked back to the yard through the fields, the milking done for another day, all misery forgotten. It was like they were themselves again, chatting, confiding and laughing as they did in Dublin.
‘What would Teddy make of you being involved again?’ Mary asked, glancing sideways at her friend. Despite his best efforts to progress their relationship after the good news of Rory’s relative safety, Eileen seemed reluctant. Mary couldn’t figure it out. Teddy was handsome and kind and funny, he was a fine hurler, and Eileen loved hurling, and he clearly adored Eileen. He would be a great husband, and wouldn’t try to stifle Eileen’s natural exuberance.
‘What would he have any opinion about it at all for? Sure what business is it of his what I do?’ Eileen was adamant.
‘Ah Eileen, come on, this is me you’re talking to. I know he’s mad about you and surely you have feelings for him too? What’s stopping you?’
Eileen sighed and shook her head. ‘He’s great, and I do really like him. I don’t know how I would have coped without him when we thought Rory was dead, and he’s nice looking and all that, but…’
‘But what?’ Mary probed
‘Well, I’m not sure he fully agrees with the struggle. He thinks we’re are grand as we are, under England, and that Home Rule would have been enough. He didn’t say it out just like that, but I just get the impression that’s the way he thinks and if that is the case, then we have no future together.’ Mary heard the regret in her friend’s voice.
‘But why don’t you just ask him? Then at least you’d know?’ Mary understood that for a marriage to work there had to be agreement on the big things. She and Rory were absolutely on the same side and they understood each other. The passion and the commitment the Volunteers showed during Easter week were infectious, and even now that they were away from all of it, her dedication to the cause remained just as strong.
‘I’m afraid to, that’s the truth. What if I’m right and he does feel like the struggle is a waste of time, or worse, that the Volunteers were nothing but troublemakers, wreaking havoc for no reason? I don’t know what I’d do then. I have always liked him. You know, when we were kids, he was always there, playing hurling with Rory and the other lads, but I knew he had an eye for me. Before I went up to Dublin, Mam and Dad would have thought I was too young to have any notions about boys. But when I was working in Carmodys, he used to write to me, and over time he starting saying things like he liked me and was looking forward to seeing me when I came home. I never told Rory because he’d have given me an awful time with the slagging and teasing, you know the way he is, but I was delighted really. Him and Rory were the two that all the girls round here fancied, and sure you know that Rory is a desperate flirt, but Teddy was different. I remember when I used to take the kids down to the pitch, when we used to go and watch them playing hurling, and all the girls wanted to be friends with me, just so that they could be talking to Rory. And when the match was over they’d crowd around him, but Teddy always spoke to me.’
‘What would you tell me to do if it was me in that situation?’ Mary asked her friend reasonably. There was a time when tales of Rory and local girls would have worried her, but she was happily secure in their love now. She knew exactly what Eileen meant when she said he was a flirt. Rory just loved people and loved making them laugh. She could easily see why all the girls were mad about him but she trusted him completely, and when he said she was the one for him, she believed him completely.
‘I’d tell you to talk to him, have it out and decide then, Miss Know-it-all.’ She punched Mary playfully.
‘So you know what you need to do then, don’t you?’ Mary smiled.
‘Speaking of young men and their romantic notions, have you heard from my brother recently?”
Mary smiled. The O’Dwyers were so good, for whenever a letter came for her from Rory, Peg just put it on her bed and never asked her anything about it. It was like they respected their privacy, and while they shared all his news at the family dinner table the evening a family letter arrived, they allowed her privacy with hers.
‘I got a letter the day before yesterday. He’s talking about Michael Collins being in charge in the prison and organising them into leagues for a football championship. Reading between the lines, I think they are gearing up for the next round. He’s reading a lot, history books no doubt. I got the impression that putting them all in there together and having very little surveillance of what they’re getting up to might be a bit of a stupid move on the part of the British. Collins, what little I know of him, is not the kind to let them sit around all day being lazy. No, I’d say they are getting ready to strike again, and I think we should be getting ready too.’
‘Really? that’s interesting. He doesn’t say anything about that in his letters to us, but then he wouldn’t want them worrying about him. Still though, ten years is a long time, and who knows what kind of world they’ll come out to?’ Eileen was circumspect.
‘Maybe it won’t be ten years, that’s what I’m hoping anyhow.’ Mary sighed. ‘I miss him so much. I’d love to see him, even through the bars or from a distance. I know he’s fine, but until I see him with my own eyes, I won’t believe it.’
Eileen gave her friend’s arm a quick squeeze as they entered the farmyard.
‘Speak of the devil!’ Mary murmured, spotting Teddy’s bike leaning against the wall. ‘Now’s your chance to talk to him.’
Teddy emerged from the kitchen carrying a large box.
‘Your Mam is having a clear out, for the station mass next week, and I arrived just in time to be the donkey.’ He chuckled as he pretended to buckle under the weight.
‘Teddy Lane, I’ve fed you enough dinners in your life for you to be strong enough to lift a little box of ornaments and things, so no whinging out of you! This house is going to be shining from head to toe before we have the whole parish in here for mass next week, and if we have to stay up all night to do it, then so be it. Besides, don’t you love showing off to these ladies how gallant you are?’ Peg was joking.
‘I only came up because my own mother is on the warpath about whitewashing the outhouses so I thought I’d escape. Little did I know ‘twas going to be out of the frying pan and into the fire! Anyway, I was wondering if you wanted to go to the dance on Saturday, both of you I mean,’ he spoke from behind the big box. ‘It’s a fund raiser for the GAA club and they’ve a band coming from Galway so it should be a bit of craic? I’ll collect ye in the car and leave ye home safe after?’
Mary smiled at Teddy’s e
nthusiastic smile. He really was trying so hard with Eileen, and he was so nice. She hoped her friend was wrong about his political convictions. He would be a perfect match for Eileen, hardworking and well off as well. She’d never have to scrimp and save and work her fingers to the bone like most wives and mothers. He was one of the few people round there with a car, though he preferred the bike, he said, for day to day travelling. He brought his elderly mother and his sisters to mass every Sunday morning in the car, and Mrs Lane nearly burst with pride when all the neighbours admired it. He had said he was going to build a brand new house on the farm, and leave his mother and his sister and her family to live in the home place, the unspoken part being, when he himself married. A lot of men would expect a new wife to come into the farm house where her mother-in-law already ruled the roost, but Teddy knew Eileen’s fiery nature wouldn’t stand for that, so he was willing to do anything to make her happy.
Mary made her excuses that she had to help Peg with the big clear out, leaving Eileen alone with Teddy. As she stood at the kitchen sink she saw them walking up the lane, deep in conversation. She prayed that Teddy would be on their side and see how important the work of the cause was.
‘Are they a match, do you think?’ Peg asked Mary as she dried a precious piece of Waterford crystal she had since she married.
Mary wondered what she should say. Peg was a clever woman and knew her daughter well, but Mary valued Eileen’s friendship and would never go behind her back.
‘He’s very nice and she likes him a lot, I know that.’ Mary replied
‘Ah, but I suppose she wants a young hot head who wants to die for Ireland, not a steady man with a fine farm who’d give her security and comfort her whole life?’ Peg smiled wryly.
Mary caught her eye and smiled. ‘Like Rory, you mean?’
‘Oh sure, my Rory is a law unto himself. You can’t lead nor drive him, never could, even when he was a small lad. He has a way of getting what he wants. He’s an awful rogue, you know? But he has a heart as big as the sun. Eileen’s the same, she’s a great girl, and there’s more than Teddy Lane admiring her. I like him though, and he’d be very good to her. But love is love and if ’tis there, ’tis there, and if not… well there’s plenty round here who married for reasons other than love and sure the most of them worked out grand, but I was lucky with John, and I’d not wish anything less for my children. My boy loves you, I know that much, and you love him too, so please God they’ll leave him out and ye can marry, but I’m not afraid to say it, Mary, there’s a part of me wants him to stay over there in that place, because I sleep easy in my bed knowing he’s safe. If they leave them out, and there’s talk of I,t you know, then he’ll get stuck right back into it all again and maybe he won’t be so lucky the next time.’
Mary nodded. ‘That’s exactly what he’ll do, Peg, and like you, a part of me wishes he wouldn’t and we could be safe, but we are so close now. We really rattled them last time and the mood in the country has changed. People are behind us now in a way they never were. Rory doesn’t want to be fighting, just for the glory of it or anything. He dreams of a peaceful Ireland where our children, if God blesses us, can grow up safe and happy and proud of being Irish. And I want that too.’
‘Ye’re well met so.’ Peg smiled, but there was sadness in her eyes.
Chapter 34
‘Well as I live and breathe, is it yourself?’ Mrs Kearns wiped her hands on her apron and stared in amazement at the sight of Mary in front of her. ‘I’d almost given up on you ever turning up again! Come in here till I have a look at you. Well, the life is good to you wherever you were then, and a fine colour in your cheeks and a bit of meat on them skinny auld bones of yours. Well, you’re a sight for sore eyes and no mistake. The mistress will be over the moon to see you so she will. We were always wondering what became of you.’
Mrs Kearns turned her around in the middle of the kitchen, admiring her as Mary giggled with delight at being home.
‘Well tis me right enough. I was in Limerick, with Eileen and her family. We promised Rory that we’d get out of Dublin straight away, and we left that night they brought us into the gaol.’
Tears came to Mrs Kearns eyes,.‘Rory, what a boy he was, God rest him. Ye were fierce fond of each other…’
‘Oh Lord, I never told you. I should have written but I just...But that’s just it, Mrs Kearns, Rory is alive. We thought he had been executed with the others, but for some reason the governor in Kilmainham decided that he was to be imprisoned instead, so he’s in Frongoch with Michael Collins and the rest of them.’
‘Ah Mary! Really? Oh thank God, I used to pray for him every night along with Mr Pearse and Mr Connolly and the rest of them. Rory alive! That’s the best news I’ve heard in months, honest to God it is. I guessed you were with Eileen. Mrs Carmody told us that you stayed in her house one night, so meself and the mistress figured it out that ye were together and that gave us a bit of comfort anyway. We got the postcard so we knew ye hadn’t been picked up at least. We wanted so much to get in touch with you, to write or something, but we were afraid to, in case it got you into trouble or led the police to you or something.’
‘How is Mrs Grant? Will I call her to come down? I’m dying to see her too.’ Mary looked towards the door that separated the kitchen from the rest of the house, recalling how many times she went through it carrying trays. The mistress would always be her employer, but after everything they went through together on Easter Week, she felt comfortable asking to see her.
‘Poor Mrs Grant won’t be able to come down, Mary, I’m afraid. She’s alright, but she’s not as you remember her. Sit down child till I tell you, better that you won’t get a shock when you see her. I don’t know if you know, but the night Eileen came looking here for you to go up to the gaol with her, the master was at home. Mary, this is going to be a bit of a shock for you, but he was the reason Rory was put in with them that were to be shot. He used his influence with someone high up, and after ye left, I waited up. I couldn’t sleep a wink for worrying anyway, and then in the middle of the night I heard desperate racket from upstairs. First it was that Johnson from the Castle and he was livid over something. I only heard bits of it, but he was absolutely raging and it was over the thing they had going with the uniforms, something had gone badly wrong for them, and Johnson was blaming Grant. He left then and then ‘twas himself, Grant, and he roaring at the mistress like a bull and then crashing furniture. She was screaming and as you know she wasn’t a bit well at that stage, only out of the hospital after the gunshot wound she got Easter Week. He was after finding out about what we did, the jewellery and art and the rest of it. Don’t ask me how, we were so careful, but he knew anyway. On top of that, someone was after him threatening to expose the swindle he had going with your man Johnson, with the uniforms. That’s why Johnson was like a demon. If the army found out what he was up to he was finished.
‘Well I didn’t know what to do. I was going to get the police but sure they’d do nothing so I sent Jimmy over to Moore Street. I knew some of the Volunteers that weren’t rounded up were staying there, in a house owned by a woman I know from the markets, and I told him to tell one of the boys that Mrs Grant was in trouble and to come quick. Then I got my heavy rolling pin, you know the marble one I use for pastry, and I crept up the back stairs.
‘Oh Mary, the things he was calling her, and the kicking and the belting he was doing. He was like a madman.
‘I’ll teach you,’ says he, ‘to be disgracing me in front of the whole city,’ He accused her of having something going on with someone in the movement and that’s why she was involved, and he had a hold of her by the hair and he kicking her around the room. Then he boasted ’twas him got Rory arrested, and that he would see to it that he was shot and he’d make sure you came to a bad end as well. He never forgave you for stopping him the last time he had attacked her.’
Mary was trying unsuccessfully to hold back the tears. The poor Mistress, they�
��d witnessed his violence once before, but the way Mrs Kearns described it, this one was much worse. Mary put her hand on the old housekeepers arm, urging her to finish the story.
‘Wel,l I was standing in the doorway, and he was after ripping her dress off and she screaming at him to stop, and I could see the wound bleeding a lot from her leg, and may God forgive me, I thought he was going to kill her there and then, in front of my eyes. So I just ran at him and I gave him one savage belt across the back of his head with the rolling pin. He didn’t see me or hear me come into the room, you see. I was sure I’d killed him because he just went down like a bag of spuds on the carpet. I ran to the mistress and tried to calm her. She was shaking so badly she couldn’t even talk. I wrapped a blanket around her and gave her a big glass of brandy and there we sat, the two of us, just looking at him and not saying a word. I don’t know how long we were there, maybe fifteen or twenty minutes when I heard voices and up the stairs came two men with Jimmy. I recognised one of them from the GPO, but I never seen the other one before. They turned Grant over and he groaned, so he was still alive. They told us not to say a bit to anyone about what happened, that they’d organise a doctor to come round to look at the mistress, and then they dragged him downstairs and took him away.’
Mary was struggling to take it all in. ‘But how did he find out about the jewellery, and the paintings and things?’
Mrs Kearns shrugged. ‘Hard to know, but he found out somehow. He was like a demon, so he was. He’d hate to admit that he had been swindled by his wife and a cook and a maid, though. That probably angered him more than the money really.’
Mary nodded. Mrs Kearns was right. The master would never admit to being robbed in his own household, under his nose. ‘And so a doctor came?’
‘Yes, a lovely man from Westmoreland Street, and two ladies from Cumann na mBan as well. They obviously knew the whole story, so they helped me to get the mistress settled, and when the doctor examined her he said she’d have to go into the hospital straight away. She had lost so much blood and the bone that had been set was shattered, along with some other bones. He did for her good and proper, so he did.’
Jean Grainger Box Set: So Much Owed, Shadow of a Century, Under Heaven's Shining Stars Page 64
