The 13th Apostle: A Novel of a Dublin Family, Michael Collins, and the Irish Uprising
Page 39
“Now, honey, don’t do anything rash.”
“Remember the last November 22 like this?”
There was quiet at the other end of the line. “Forty-three years ago,” said Róisín.
“To the day.”
“You’re thinking of McKee and Clancy.”
“I hate this fucking world,” said Eoin, and Róisín couldn’t argue with him.
Eoin marched through St. Stephen’s Green and continued up Lower Leeson Street. He crossed the banks of the Grand Canal and found 5 Mespil Road. He turned the key in the door and, as a precaution, pulled out his gun. He found Collins in the office, quietly reading the papers, his Colt revolver on the desk in front of him.
“I figured you would be here,” said Eoin.
“A fookin’ catastrophe,” Collins replied. “They got fourteen in Croke Park at the match yesterday afternoon. I tried to call it off, but it was too late.”
After what Tobin had told him, Eoin expected to find Collins in one of his frenzies, ready to strike out, but he was calm, as if it were any other morning of the revolution.
“And we got our fourteen,” replied Eoin.
“How did it go with the Sheik?”
“Quick.”
“Who did the shooting?”
“Vinny. And I made sure.” Collins nodded. Eoin took the paper from Collins and read about his exploits:
SHOT IN COLD BLOOD
OFFICERS KILLED IN THER BEDROOMS
ATTACKERS ESCAPE
“What happens now?” asked Eoin.
“We wait.”
“Wait?”
“To see what London wants to do.”
“Liam says McKee and Clancy are missing.”
“They must have them at the Castle,” said Collins. “Rumor has it they were lifted very early Sunday morning.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I have our two G-men looking for them. Until then, I have a wedding to go to.”
“Don’t be a bloody fool,” snapped Eoin. “Do you want to end up like McKee and Clancy?”
“What does it matter?” Collins looked at his young acolyte. “Anyway, I promised I’d be there.”
“For fook’s sake,” Eoin swore, red in the face, as he turned and went to the kitchen to wet some tea. He returned in a few minutes with two cups. “Who’s getting married?”
“Michael O’Brien.”
“Where?”
“Tenenure.”
“I’m joining you.”
“You’re not.”
“If you want to get yourself killed, I’m going to be at your side.”
“Please yourself,” surrendered Collins.
They traveled to Tenenure by taxicab, and when they arrived, Eoin was relieved to see that Gearoid O’Sullivan, Collins’s cousin and a commandant-general himself in the IRA, was also a member of the wedding party.
When it was time for the wedding photograph to be taken in the backyard, Collins told Eoin to call Tobin and find out the latest on McKee and Clancy. Eoin dialed Crow Street: “Himself wants to know if there’s any word on Fergus and Peadar?”
“We found them,” replied Tobin.
“Good.”
“Dead. In Dublin Castle.”
The guests were lining up for the photographer when Eoin signaled to Collins, who excused himself and joined the huddle with Eoin and O’Sullivan. “They’re dead. Dublin Castle.”
Collins pursed his lips and turned to his cousin. “We’d better take that picture.”
Eoin watched as Collins and O’Sullivan took their place in the back row, Collins second from the left and O’Sullivan next to him. As the photographer said, “Watch the birdie!” Collins turned his head down and to the left, showing not much more than the top of his head to the camera. Even in his grief, Collins was determined to best the British.
With the photograph done, Collins and O’Sullivan walked over to Eoin. “What now?” asked O’Sullivan.
“The task at hand,” said Collins, “is our fallen comrades. Eoin, get some lower-ranking types and send them to Dublin Castle for the bodies. Work it out with Boynton and Broy if you need to. Bring the bodies to me at the Pro-Cathedral. I’ll handle it from there.”
Collins rejoined the wedding party as they prepared a toast to the success of the newly pledged nuptials. Eoin watched as Collins mingled and laughed, and he marveled at how Collins could compartmentalize his emotions—yesterday was war, today is a wedding, tomorrow are the funerals—as he mourned his friends, McKee and Clancy.
122
The Prime Minister stood alone in the conference room at 10 Downing Street and stared at the headlines of the same morning papers that had stunned Eoin Kavanagh. “Not a pretty picture,” interrupted Winston Churchill, as he entered the room.
“Just awful,” responded the PM. “So much for your Derek of Suez.” Lloyd George laughed before turning back to the newspapers spread on the conference table. “Your Auxiliaries also did a bang-up job at the Croke Park, Winston. Or was it Henry Wilson’s Tans, as the Irish call them, who did the filthy job?”
Churchill ignored the PM’s jabs. “State funeral on Thursday for Gough-Coxe at Westminster Abbey,” said Churchill, as he studied the Prime Minister, who was meticulously perusing the papers. “You’re expected to attend. Honoring our martyred dead and all that.” Churchill paused. “I imagine this puts the tin hat on any negotiations, at least for a while.”
“Not at all, Winston. They got what they deserved—beaten by counter-jumpers.” Even at 10 Downing Street, no one loves a loser.
“Talk like that will upset Henry Wilson. He’s very proud of his modern-day Hessians, you know.”
“Hessians,” muttered Lloyd George. He raised his eyebrows and grunted. “Too bad,” he said.
The two wiliest British politicians of the twentieth century had a symbiotic relationship. Whenever Churchill should have been sacked from a cabinet post because of his adventurism, Lloyd George could always find him a job. Right now, he was Secretary of State for War, and his war was in Ireland.
Both were cunning, cutthroat realists. What separated them was Churchill’s sense of morality. It may not have been perfect, but it was there, albeit sometimes only in vapor form. The 1930s did not see Winston Spencer Churchill traveling to Berchtesgaden, hat in hand, to bathe in the glow of the Nazi Führer, as David Lloyd George did. As he aged, Churchill progressed; Lloyd George retrogressed.
Although Churchill owed a chunk of his career to Lloyd George, it did not keep his sharp wit from savaging the Prime Minister. (After they both left office, Lloyd George and Churchill were out one night. “Can you lend me a penny so I can phone a friend?” the former PM asked.
“Here’s tuppence,” replied Churchill, “call all your friends!”)
“I want you to get in touch with Arthur Griffith,” said the Prime Minister to his Secretary of State for War.
“That should be no problem,” said Churchill. “We’ve just arrested him.”
“Why? What were they thinking?” snapped Lloyd George. “We’ll get nowhere without Griffith’s help. He’s our back door. This can’t go on indefinitely. Ireland is tired of it, and this country—more importantly—is tired of it. I’m tired of it. Hell, I’ll talk to anyone to get out of this mess.”
“Anyone?”
“Anyone.”
“De Valera—or maybe even Collins?”
“Collins,” sniffed the Prime Minister. “You mean the Irish Houdini? I thought you said that £10,000 would deliver his body to us.” Churchill looked at the floor. “You were wrong, Winston. The Irish are not like us—they take care of their own.” The situation was now desperate in Ireland. And the two architects of that failed policy had been painted into a corner.
Churchill thought it was time to pique the Prime Minister. “You have your choice—the Irish pontiff, or the Fenian devil.”
“I’ll take the Fenian devil any day,” responded the Welshman, as he brushed his long, white hair beh
ind his ear. “I never did like Rome, you know. Too self-important.” Narcissus couldn’t have put it better.
It must take a pontiff, thought Churchill, to know a pontiff. His Holiness, Pope Lloyd George I. He suppressed a smile as the Prime Minister turned and left the room.
123
Eoin returned from the wedding in Tenenure, and, as soon as he walked in the door of Crow Street, Liam Tobin could see that he was distressed. “How’s Mick?”
“Quiet.”
Tobin smiled. “If he’s so quiet, why do you look so downhearted?”
Eoin looked at his boss and shook his head. “You know what happens when the quiet ends?”
“There will be a hell of an explosion.”
“If we’re not careful, Mick will end up in a box like McKee and Clancy. You know how he is.”
Tobin opened the bottom drawer of his desk and pulled out a shoulder holster. “I have a gift for you. Let’s see how it fits.” Eoin took his coat off and tried on the contraption. He looped the strap around his back, under his necktie, and fastened it. He took his Webley out of his coat pocket and stuffed it in the gift holster, where it found a snug fit. “I finally got rid of that thing,” said Tobin. “We don’t have a lot of lefthanders in the intelligence division.”
“I like it,” said Eoin, as he put his jacket back on. “I have a feeling it may turn out to be useful in the next couple of days.”
Tobin sat on the edge of Eoin’s desk and spoke quietly to his young colleague. “Now, what exactly did Mick say to you?”
“He wants me to get a couple of low-ranking Volunteers and go get McKee and Clancy’s bodies from Dublin Castle and bring them to him at the Pro-Cathedral.”
“I see.”
“I was thinking that we have a few men down at the City Morgue in Store Street who could help.”
“I don’t think so,” said Tobin.
“Why not?”
“Don’t you think they just might be a wee bit busy today?”
“Oh, yes,” said Eoin, realizing the irony. “I didn’t think about that.”
Tobin gave one of his lugubrious smiles. “We’re not going to put anyone at risk on this caper.”
“How can we avoid that?”
“We’re going to let Fanagan’s of Aungier Street handle this,” Tobin said, speaking of the undertakers.
“I know them,” said Eoin. “They took my whole family up to Glasnevin.” Tobin thought Eoin had a strange way of talking about the funerals of his brother, mother, and father. It sounded like a family holiday excursion. “I’ll make the call.” After talking to Boynton at the Castle, Eoin called the people at Fanagan’s. They agreed to take the bodies from Dublin Castle and hand them over to Eoin at their Aungier Street premises, just across the street from the building his father had died in.
Eoin was sick to the bone of dealing with dead Volunteers. He had dressed enough of them, including his own Da, and he wondered when it would all end. He was so tired and depressed that his brain had turned to tepid porridge, a skull of mush that couldn’t think straight anymore. He wanted to take Róisín and get the hell out of Dublin—get the hell out of Ireland. But he couldn’t. As long as Mick Collins stood fast, he would stand right behind him.
They didn’t tell Eoin about the extra body. He was sitting in Fanagan’s offices, looking out the window at his father’s old shop across the way, when he was interrupted by one of the undertakers. “We have three,” he said.
“Three?”
“McKee, Clancy, and Clune.”
“Who’s Clune?”
“I don’t know, but the British were insistent I should take ‘the little shite,’ as they called him.”
Eoin picked up the phone and called Tobin. “I have three,” he said.
“Three what?”
“Bodies.”
There was silence on Tobin’s end of the line. “What’s his name?” he finally asked.
“Conor Clune.”
“Never heard of him.”
“Taken at Vaughan’s.”
“Sit tight.”
Fifteen minutes later, the phone rang at Fanagan’s. “Christy Harte says he’s a Gaelic Leaguer from Clare.” Tobin paused. “Let Fanagan’s pack him up and send him home.”
In a strange way, Eoin Kavanagh envied his newfound ward, the late Conor Clune, Gaelic scholar from County Clare.
124
It took nearly thirty-six hours, but Eoin managed to get the three bodies to Fanagan’s without being pinched by the British. Eoin left Conor Clune at Fanagan’s, while he took McKee’s and Clancy’s coffins to the Pro-Cathedral in a lorry late on Wednesday evening. They parked in Cathedral Street and brought the boxes in by the side entrance. The church was eerily quiet and empty, except for several Volunteers.
Collins was waiting, the scowl on his face showing his disposition. “About time,” he snapped at Eoin.
Kavanagh looked Collins straight in the eye and replied, “Yes, Commandant-General.” Collins stared at his young lieutenant. Whenever Eoin referred to him as “Commandant-General,” Collins knew that the needle was being applied, either in humor or as a jeer.
“Let’s get to work,” said Collins, as the coffins were carried to the mortuary chapel.
By now, the British propaganda machine was in high gear. If you believed everything in the papers, all fourteen British agents were choir boys who spent their spare time looking for old ladies to help cross Sackville Street like the good Boy Scouts they were. And of course, McKee, Clancy, and Clune—now part of a legendary, historical Fenian Trinity—were psychotic murderers whom they were reluctantly forced to shoot.
“Open the boxes,” commanded Collins. The coffins were opened, and, at once, it was obvious from the battered faces that there was more to it than a mere “shot while trying to escape” going on here. “Strip them,” said Collins. Eoin helped remove the clothes from Clancy and McKee, revealing bullet holes and bayonet jabs.
“Jaysus,” whispered Eoin, shocked.
“Jaysus indeed,” echoed Collins. “Enough. Let’s get them properly dressed.” Two Volunteer uniforms were brought out, and the time-consuming work of dressing the two corpses began. “Let’s leave the coffins open for all the world to see,” said Collins.
“No,” said Eoin, “don’t do that.”
“And why not?” snapped Collins. “Why shouldn’t the world see what the British did to these brave soldiers?”
“Think of their families,” said Eoin, softly. “If they were your brothers, would you want to see them this way? Let’s remember them at their best.”
Collins knew Eoin was right. “Alright, close them up!” Eoin helped Collins place two tricolours on the caskets.
Eoin was exhausted. He had barely slept for the past three days. But he had no time for fatigue now—he knew how important these days were to the survival of the fledging Republic. He watched as Collins knelt in front of the two boxes and prayed. Finally the Big Fellow got up and took a seat in a nearby pew. Eoin went over and sat down next to his boss. Collins ignored him and stared straight ahead. “Time to get some sleep?” Eoin finally asked.
“Not tonight,” replied Collins.
“You have to sleep.”
“Not tonight. They can’t be alone. I must keep watch.”
“Well,” said Eoin, “I’ll keep watch with you.”
Collins turned to Kavanagh. “Please yourself.” Not another word was said between the two of them until sleep finally took them where they sat.
In the morning Eoin, felt the terror reach all the way to his groin—his Parnell retreated into its foreskin shelter, while his balls hid snugly inside him. He didn’t dare stick his head out the front door of the cathedral into Marlborough Street, for fear of being seen by one of the G-men. As they prepared to wheel the caskets from the mortuary chapel back into the cathedral for the funeral mass, Eoin pulled out his Webley and checked to see that it was in working order. If they tried to take Collins, he would be ready.
At the end of the funeral mass, Collins got up and advanced on the coffins. Eoin saw him pin a note on the lead box, McKee’s. Later he would learn that it read: “In memory of two good friends—Dick and Peadar—and two of Ireland’s best soldiers.”—Mícheál ó Coileáin. They then wheeled the caskets down the aisle towards the front door. To Eoin’s amazement, Collins hoisted McKee’s coffin on his shoulder and started marching out of the cathedral.
Eoin leapt ahead of him and shoved his left hand inside his jacket, ready to pull his Webley out if necessary. Right in front, at the bottom of the cathedral steps, there was a brilliant flash and an explosion. At first Eoin thought someone had fired at Collins. But before he pulled his gun, Eoin saw that it was only a photographer from the Evening Herald. Eoin moved in his direction, but before he could collar him, the squirt dashed away, going full-blast, camera in hand, in the direction of Abbey Street. “Curse of God on ya,” spat Eoin. He wanted to get the photo man, but Collins’s safety was his first priority.
The crowd was packed around the cathedral gates. It was a dangerous situation. There were many of the locals from the Kips and Summerhill. This was great entertainment to them—a celebrity funeral. Eoin knew that somewhere in the crowd, hidden by the local Dicey Reillys, were G-men and touts. He was right. Shankers Ryan was hiding behind that stout one over there to the right.
Eoin pushed his back against the crowd, trying to hold them back. Paddy Daly was doing the same on the opposite side. Collins was front and center, his vision still blinded by the bright explosion of the photographer’s flash. “BeJaysus, look,” said one of the ould ones from the neighborhood, “there’s Mick Collins!”
Collins jerked his head away from McKee’s coffin, caught the woman’s eye, and through the rictus that had become his mouth said, “You bloody bitch!”