That was the most difficult question.
Ursula would always be grateful to Elsie Lester for her kindness. It was she who quietly, tactfully, explained the situation to her husband. If Seán Lester was shocked, his reaction never filtered down to Ursula. He was sympathetic and serious but not judgemental.
“You can continue to work as long as you feel like it,” he assured her. “When is the…ah…”
Ursula smiled at his embarrassment. “May, I believe.”
“I expect you’ll want to stop a few weeks beforehand. I’ll see that you remain on the payroll, and you can come back to your job whenever you’re ready. If there’s a job to come back to,” he added ruefully. “Sometimes I wonder how long the League’s going to last.”
Elsie Lester gave a dinner party to which she invited both Ursula and the foremost obstetrician in Switzerland. By the end of the evening Magnus Leffler, a big man with a wide mouth like a frog and thick fingers capable of remarkable gentleness, had accepted Ursula as his patient.
That night she wrote in her journal, “I have thrown myself on the mercy of strangers and not been disappointed. My child will be born a citizen of the world.”
Early in the morning of February 10, Pope Pius XI died at the age of eighty-one. The League of Nations was immediately informed; the secretariat announced that formal mourning would be observed for three days. Ursula bought a loosely-cut black dress with no belt, and several colorful scarves to vary her costume afterward.
Coincidentally she was wearing a scarf of emerald green nine days later, when Eamon de Valera announced that Éire would be neutral in any imminent war.
Even in the black dress it was growing impossible to conceal her belly any longer. In Ireland no decent woman would have gone out on the street at this stage, but Europe was different. Women smiled at Ursula in the shops and men tipped their hats respectfully.
True to his word, Lester allowed her to continue working as long as she wanted.
On the twenty-eighth of February the British government’s recognition of General Franco caused furious scenes in the House of Commons. Several MPs cried, “Shame!”
According to the newspapers, Prime Minister Chamberlain justified his action on the grounds that Franco had gained possession of most of Spain and no one knew how much of the Republican government remained, nor even where it was hiding.
Clement Attlee, leader of the Labour Party, retorted furiously that Chamberlain would always recognize a government that outraged every law, human and divine, but any government that obeyed the rules of civilization was “bound to be done down by the prime minister.”1
The British delegation at the League of Nations had no official comment.
On March 14 the German army seized Prague. The last democracy in central Europe was extinguished.
The knowledge was as ashes in the mouth. People passed one another in the corridors of the Palais des Nations with averted eyes.
Dead dreams and failure.
Ursula cleaned her desk and left to await the birth of her child.
Almost unnoticed in the midst of other events, Madrid quietly crumbled into Franco’s hands after a thirty-month siege.
On the first of April, 1939, the Nationalists triumphantly declared the Spanish Civil War over.
The next day was Sunday. Ursula was invited to dine with the Lesters, and found Seán uncharacteristically bitter. “Chamberlain’s announced a Franco-British guarantee for Poland,” he said. “But for what, the weekend? If Hitler makes a move on Poland, France and Britain will back down just as they did with Czechoslovakia. The man who replaced me as high commissioner in Danzig is a charming fellow and a great raconteur, but that’s all. The League’s never given itself the power to do anything but talk.
“It breaks my heart, Ursula. Poland’s history is so like our own. No Irishman can have other than sympathy and admiration for the Poles.”2
The fifth of April dawned cold and crisp. Ursula was too restless to stay in the flat. She went for a long walk, gazing wistfully into shop windows where ski clothes were still displayed. Carefully balancing her heavy belly as she stepped over ridges of snow frozen to the pavement. After eating an early supper in a café around the corner from her flat, she spent the evening reading. By ten o’clock she had turned out the light.
She struggled awake bathed in sweat. As she threw back the duvet, a savage spasm gripped her.
Jesus Mary and Joseph!
Perhaps it was only a stomachache. Too much cheese fondue….
The cramp seized her again, stronger this time.
When she switched on the electric lamp by her bed the first thing she saw was Böcklin’s painting. Somehow she found the strength to struggle out of bed and tear the thing from the wall.
The hospital was white. Everything. Walls, sheets, nurses, even the light. A glaring, pitiless light beneath which she felt like a butterfly pinned to a board. A butterfly…no, a chrysalis being split open…
“Take a deep breath now,” said Herr Doktor Leffler. He bent over her, smiling with his frog’s mouth, kneading her belly with his sausage fingers.
Pain ripped and tore. Someone was breaking her spine from the inside.
The obstetrician stepped back to be replaced by a nurse in a white mask. She clapped a rubber cone over Ursula’s nose and mouth. The world went spinning away…came back screaming…went away again…in her dreams she thought she heard the sound of gunfire. In her dreams she was Síle Duffy, running along the quays of Dublin while British artillery tore the city apart. In her dreams…
“So you’re awake at last,” said a cheerful voice.
Elsie Lester was standing beside the bed. Sunlight was streaming through the window. Elsie offered Ursula a glass of water with a bent straw and she drank gratefully. “Is it over? I feel like a building fell on me.”
“You did very well.”
“How’s my baby?”
Elsie hesitated.
Ursula almost shouted, “How’s my baby?”
“Ssshhh, it’s all right,” Elsie soothed. “He was very premature, Ursula. He’s in an incubator and I’ve requested a priest to baptize him as a precaution. I thought you’d want…don’t look like that, nothing’s wrong with him! Ten fingers, ten toes, everything; he’s just a tiny little fellow, that’s all. But he’s breathing on his own and putting up a strong fight for life. You’ll be able to visit him soon and see for yourself.”
He. My son.
“The priest will want a name for the baptism,” Elsie went on. “And the hospital needs one for the birth certificate.”
Ursula closed her eyes and lay back against the pillows. “Finbar Lewis Halloran,” she said in a steady voice. “But I’m going to call him Barry.”
Chapter Forty-three
Barry was too small to leave the hospital. They wanted to keep him for at least six weeks. His mother was so thin she had very little milk, so he would be fed on a specially prepared formula. While Ursula waited, Seán suggested she come back to work—partly to give her something to keep her busy, and partly because she was genuinely needed.
Seán Lester had been put in charge of the “Ax” committee, which meant he was responsible for reorganizing and reducing the League. There already had been a number of defections, and half the secretariat’s staff of six hundred must be cut by the end of the year.
Berlin no longer believed the League had a role to play on the world stage. The number of German communications reaching the deputy secretary-general’s office was greatly diminished, so Ursula began helping with correspondence from Ireland as well. “At 2RN I learned to do half-a-dozen jobs at once,” she assured Lester.
Although remaining resolutely neutral, Eamon de Valera was quietly trying to distance Ireland from Germany. In a letter to Seán Lester he explained that he was recalling the Irish representative in Berlin because the man had gone a bit too far in his admiration for Hitler.
Barry was released from hospital at the end of May. Lester asked
Ursula if she wanted to give up her job and stay home with her baby.
“I certainly do not! I can bring Barry with me. There are plenty of empty offices now, so I can fix one up as a nursery and do my work there.”
Lester tried to protest, but Ursula had answers for all his arguments. “It was easier just to give in,” he told his wife later. “I feel rather like Neville Chamberlain when it comes to that girl.”
Although she was now well paid by Irish standards, Ursula had not lost the old habit of thrift. With a sense of relief she finally paid off the last of the money she owed Ella and began putting savings in an envelope under the mattress. She looked with longing at the smart outfits she saw other women wearing in Geneva, but bought almost nothing for herself.
She did buy things for Barry, though. Beautifully made baby gowns in rainbow pastels. Crocheted matinée jackets and matching caps. Tiny sailor suits with embroidered anchors on the collar. Miniscule leather boots, soft as butter. Socks of fine Egyptian cotton that would not chafe an infant’s tender skin. And stacks and stacks of bird’s-eye nappies.
At night in her room she gloated over them as if they were ball gowns.
In June, central London was rocked by more IRA bombs. No casualties were reported.
Three days later Kathleen Clarke was named as lord mayor of Dublin. The widow of a Fenian bomber was the first woman to hold such an office in Ireland.
In England conscription began.
King George and Queen Elizabeth arrived in the United States for the first visit to that country by a reigning British monarch. Ships in New York harbor welcomed them with whistles. Flying Fortresses overhead dipped their wings in salute.
“It may look like a big tea party, but they’re over there for good reason: to bring the Americans on side in case of war,” Lester told Ursula.
“My Uncle Henry says America has no interest in getting involved in another European war.”
“This may not be limited to Europe. Keep your eye on Asia. The whole world’s infected with greed. Greed for land, greed for power, greed for what they perceive as glory.”
“You think it’s going to be very bad, don’t you?”
Instead of answering directly, he said, “I’m going to take Elsie and the girls back to Ireland for a summer holiday—and leave them there. You and Barry can go with them. I’ll arrange to have his name added to your passport and get the necessary exit visas.”
“Barry’s not strong enough to travel yet.” And unwed mothers with infants have a hard time finding employment in Ireland. And I have no family to take us in.
Lester read her unspoken thoughts. “You’d be welcome to stay with Elsie and the girls. They’d love to have you.”
And Ireland is stifling and provincial and this is where everything’s happening. “I can’t, Seán. It would be taking advantage when your family’s been far too good to me already.”
“Nonsense. I mean it.”
“I know you do, and I’m grateful. But thank you, no.”
Ursula bade the Lesters farewell at the airport, then went back to work. The staff at the secretariat was still shrinking and she was busier than ever. She enjoyed the feeling of being essential.
Her tiny son was always within her sight, always within her reach. Their day began very early and often finished very late, but Barry was thriving. Sometimes she read him communiqués instead of nursery rhymes.
Those from the high commissioner in Danzig were the most troubling. The Germans were stressing the need for more food-growing space to feed their increasing population. Hitler’s scientists claimed they could make German soil more productive by employing a powerful cocktail of chemical fertilizers, but this eventually would render the soil sterile, unable to produce anything. Hitler had decided the future of the German people depended upon acquiring the rich acres of Poland.
Danzig was nervous.
When Seán Lester returned to Geneva on the twenty-eighth of August, Ursula met him at the airport. One look at her face told him all he needed to know.
“You should have gone back to Ireland with us, Ursula,” he said.
“What’s going to happen next?”
“I don’t know for certain, but I can make an educated guess. You’d best come with me this afternoon and help me restock the household supplies. If I remember correctly, I’m low on Irish cigarettes and there’s not much wine left in the cellar.”
By the end of the month European mobilization for war was almost complete. Polish reservists and retired veterans were requested to join all men of call-up age and report to barracks. France was also summoning its reservists to arms, and the railways had been requisitioned. Belgium announced that it was closing its frontier and manning antiaircraft defenses. Switzerland moved to fully-alert status.
At the Palais people tried to reassure one another. “The Germans will back down because they don’t want a repeat of 1918.”
No one really believed it.
Ursula held Barry in her arms and pressed her lips to the downy top of his head. He smelt of milk and soap, a fragrance as sweet as a clover meadow. “It’s you and me, little man,” she murmured. “Whatever happens, I’ll take care of you.”
1 September 1939
NAZIS INVADE POLAND
Chapter Forty-four
The German battleship Schleswig-Holstein had opened fire on the Free City of Danzig before dawn. Within hours German troops occupied the city. They seized Polish shipyards for building German warships and Polish civilians to serve as forced labor.
The war everyone had feared, and no one had prevented, was under way.
“The Nazis have to be beaten,” Seán Lester stated emphatically. “Otherwise civilization doesn’t stand a chance. During the Great War we Irish nationalists didn’t exactly want Britain to be defeated, but we certainly weren’t her unqualified supporters. We weren’t pro-German, but Ireland was in captivity and Britain was the captor.
“This time it’s different. Our national interest will lie with those who ally against Hitler, and please God that will include Britain. She’s promised to defend Poland. Now’s the time to redeem that pledge.”
He was emotionally shattered; he found it difficult even to write. Ursula understood. The League existed in a vacuum, swept with rumors and despair. Helpless before the whirlwind.
The September 4 edition of the Irish Times announced, “Yesterday morning His Majesty’s ambassador in Berlin presented the German government with an ultimatum, giving it a space of two hours in which to reply to Great Britain’s demand regarding the evacuation of Poland. When the fateful hour struck, no reply was forthcoming. At eleven o’clock yesterday morning a state of war was declared between Germany and the British Empire.”
Speaking in Dáil Éireann, Eamon de Valera said, “Back in February last I stated in a very definite way that it was the aim of government policy, in case of a European war, to keep this country out of it.
“We, of all nations, know what force used by a stronger nation against a weaker one means. We have known what invasion and partition mean; we are not forgetful of our own history and, as long as our own country, or any part of it, is subject to the application of force by a stronger nation, it is only natural that our people, whatever sympathies they may have in the conflict, should look at their own country first, and consider what its interests should be and what its interests are.”1
In reaffirming Irish neutrality, the taoiseach was walking a very delicate tightrope. Éire was a small new nation, practically unarmed, pathetically vulnerable. It was by no means certain what the outcome of the war would be. Hitler might win; at the moment the possibility was very strong. Journalists coming out of Europe were already expressing that opinion. De Valera did not want a triumphant Germany regarding Ireland as an enemy and treating her accordingly. Nor could he afford to alienate Britain; not with six counties of his country still tightly held in her grasp. But he could not openly side with Britain either. That would mean surrendering the hard-w
on independence for which generations of Irish men had fought and died.
The word was quietly passed to the Irish newspapers. Nothing should be printed that might give offense to either Britain or Germany.
Every office in the secretariat was equipped with a radio. Broadcasting from Britain, Anthony Eden, who had returned to government as dominions secretary, said that after the war a new civilization must be built with peace, justice, and freedom as its foundations.
“He didn’t mention the League, I notice,” Seán remarked. “But that’s what will be needed: the League or something like it.”
The German Wehrmacht swept across Poland while the Luftwaffe pounded the railways and drove the Polish air force from the skies.
On the seventeenth of September the Russians invaded the reeling country.
By the end of the month Poland was shattered. Hitler and Stalin divided the land between them.
Russia was expelled from the League of Nations but did not bother to enter a protest.
The World’s Fair was held in New York City that October. To mark “League of Nations Day” on the twenty-first, speeches were broadcast from League members around the world. Henry Mooney was among those who heard Seán Lester on the radio. “The catastrophe of this war marks a collective failure for mankind,” Lester told his unseen audience, “a failure in which all of us have some share and on account of which we must all feel a deep humility.”2
That evening Henry said to Ella, “I wish Ursula would go back to Ireland while she still can.”
“I’m sure she will, dear.”
“I’m not. She rarely says anything personal in her letters anymore; all she writes about is the international situation. I suspect she’ll stay where she is to view the excitement firsthand.”
1949 Page 30
