Now—from the rear of the train we heard shots. I looked down the platform and saw a bunch of soldiers running toward us. They had been firing into the air, and I stood beside the general and held my gun to his head.
We walked him—remember, we were down on the tracks and our pursuers up on the platform—we walked him around the front of the engine, across the railway line, and into the engine sheds. The troops came after us and I kept saying to my boys, “No firing, no shooting.”
And the general said, “Well, you seem to know what you're doing.”
We got to the engine sheds—which were empty. It was a kind of strange procession. I was in front, quick-marching the general as best we could on uneven ground—he understood it straightaway and fell into step with me. Behind me, almost walking backward, came five of my fellows—I had not time yet to think of the two fallen comrades. And behind them about fifteen or twenty soldiers with guns aimed at us. On we went, across the floor of this huge shed, and a railway man ahead of us, one of our sympathizers, unlocked a side door.
I said to him, “Where's the car?”
He said, “She's over in the trees—she'll see you.”
Sure enough, there was the car—and there was Mrs. Burke-Somerville, as her name still was, driving it. I discovered long afterward that she had prevailed upon Dermot Noonan to let her take part in some action. This was perfect for her. She wouldn't be stopped; if she was, she had an English accent and we were going to her castle. And she and the general would understand each other. What is it about some women that makes them want to be freedom fighters?
The car had a high seat on the back, outside—I think it was called a “dickey” seat. I was to sit up there, with a gun under the rug aimed at the general's head, in case we were stopped. That was the plan—but it never fell out that way.
We got to the car. The general tipped his hat to April; she had the engine running. The soldiers being kept at bay by my fellows couldn't see the car—which was round the bend on a wooded road. I stood back to let the general get into the car, but he stood with his hands by his sides, waiting for me to open the door.
Like a fool, I fell for it. I think I was seduced by his rank—I remember thinking, Yes, he's used to people opening doors for him. So I reached for the handle on the door and he elbowed me, elbowed my gun hand out of the way, and legged it. He ran surprisingly fast and he ran back the way we came. My fellows never saw him, I didn't shout, and I didn't fire—we were told to take him prisoner, and I started running after him.
Of course you can guess what happened. The minute his own men saw him they opened fire on my boys. But they hit their own general, and down he went.
There's always a hollow in a crisis—a space when you stand there and see everything that's happening. Or at least that's what I've found. And there was a moment that day when I saw everything. Six of us, a dead general, fifteen, maybe twenty soldiers facing us over his body. I shouted to April to drive away, because I didn't want her seen by the soldiers— there were about four other motor-cars in the whole county and none of them a Dunhill.
She razzed up the car. I was the farthest back; I got two of them. But they got all five of my boys. We only had revolvers and one rifle that jammed. And now there were six bodies—and more—on the road that goes into the woods. I ran; I saw the car in the distance and before it went around a bend and out of sight, I saw the windshield breaking—a bullet had hit it. My better thought was that the soldiers hadn't had a chance to see the car, which wobbled a bit, then straightened out and drove on. I thought, She's safe.
Dermot Noonan did all the planning for that Dundrum operation, and it was perfect. There isn't a square inch of those woods that he doesn't know; he was born there. Now his knowledge came to my aid, and I was able to escape and hide. The lateness of the train helped too, because it was soon dark. Once it was safe to start moving again, I left my hidingplace—a culvert up by the sawmill—and I got out of the woods far from the scene of the gunfight.
By midnight I was back at the castle—and that was my next shock. When I came out of the woods I took one of the bicycles that were always left for us at various places. The road home was quiet, I went by all the back ways, and when I cycled up the avenue of the castle, there was the car parked there, in the dark, blocking the avenue, leaning a bit to one side.
My first thought was that it had failed mechanically—and then I saw the driver's seat was all stained dark, and I knew it was blood. Never did I travel up that avenue faster. I got to the kitchens and Charles was there, pacing the place. He looked at me, said nothing, and pointed to the ceiling. Upstairs, there were Helen and Dr. Costigan attending to April, and the sheets were covered in blood.
What happened was this: When the windscreen shattered, a piece of the glass hit April on the neck and she thought she'd been shot. She also thought, from the huge gunfire, that I was dead. On the way home, in all the distress, she started to lose the child. And on the avenue, she hit a stone and couldn't get the car to move.
When she saw me, April grabbed me so hard she bruised my hand, and she kept saying, “I was already too old.” I tried to console her and she said, “Now I'll never have children” and she'd look at the doctor, hoping that he'd say no, that of course she still wasn't too old to have a child. But he said nothing; why would he say anything?
That was one of the two worst nights of my life. I went back downstairs and I said to Charles, “You should be up there.”
Said he, “She won't let me; she says this is all my fault.”
I settled within myself that it was an error. This was the usual Irish official inefficiency that we all love to howl about. Presumably the age of the DNA had confused the test. I telephoned my former pupil and thanked him and then engaged him in conversation. My nerves were still jangling, and I asked him casually what was needed for such a test. Then I thanked him again.
My mother's hairbrush sat in the untouched suitcase on top of my bedroom bookshelves. I went to the library, and on the Internet I found a company in England that does DNA tests for paternity and other legal or commercial reasons.
I telephoned. Yes, a clerk said, the hairbrush and its strands were fine. So I sent it off. By now I had long known that Charles's “History” had no such answers for me.
I was out in the fields with Harney in the early summer of 1921 when Mr. Collins came to us for the last time, and this time I saw a maturer man—a less excitable individual. He seemed to have aged since I'd first met him, in late 1916; given what he had been doing, a little of which I knew from Harney, the wonder is that his hair had not turned white. When I was a boy and my father told me tales of the intrigue preceding the Land Act, and the rebellions plotted by the bearded men in greatcoats who came to our house at night, he inclined to say that when “Ireland has her final revolution, Tipperary will be there at the finish.” I told Michael Collins this, and he replied that he regarded Tipperary as “the intellectual breeding-ground of this war we're fighting.” This explained his many journeys to the county.
His last visit to us took place a few days after a failed Flying Column operation. Harney had been detailed to lead seven men on Dundrum railway station and capture a general from the Dublin-to-Cork train. The general tried to escape and was accidentally shot dead by his own men; Harney escaped uninjured—except for his heart, which ached, he said, with guilt that he lived while his seven comrades-in-arms died. The failure sat heavily upon him; he'd fallen for a ruse of the general's, and he condemned himself gravely for it.
I knew of the operation beforehand, and even though wisdom after the event is an offense to the intelligence, I felt that the attempt should never have been made. The planning seemed lax—though Harney bears no responsibility; he merely carried out incompetent orders. Other than such inefficiency, and the sad losses of Harney's comrades at Dundrum Station, the war went well in our county. Mr. Collins told me of other major operations in which the Flying Columns succeeded against great numerical odds. He also hinted at d
iplomatic exercises.
“It seems that our timing may be proven right after all,” he said. “I think they're war-weary.”
He knew that Mr. Lloyd George, the Prime Minister, feared the funds flowing from the United States to the Irish republicans. Already a stream, they might become a torrent—and England had indeed lost its appetite for war.
SUNDAY, THE 12TH OF JUNE 1921.
I was born for dilemmas. My poor son—where is he left standing in all this? I must stop thinking of him as “my poor son.” He will be sixty-one at midsummer and I will be eighty-five. Why is it I feel younger? Another dilemma.
It doesn't compare with what's happened. April, now my friend of six years, lost her baby. But she will marry the father, little Noonan. What can Charles be thinking? And still he soldiers on. He is garlanded with praise every day for the work at the castle. Maybe that is what keeps him going.
I hope he doesn't hear the things I said to April. She asked me if she should marry little Noonan. I'm too old now to mind my p's and q's. So I said straight out—No. Marry Charles, I said. His feelings will guard you forever. But she didn't listen to me.
Wednesday, June the 15th 1921.
My dear April,
My plan has changed—I shall come on an earlier train, and we shall spend tomorrow night preparing your clothes—how exciting! But I must ask—do you feel strong enough to go into it? My dear, leaving you on Sunday, you looked so pale, and I kick at myself, I do, for having let you walk so far, so long when we could have sat. But I'm the servant, remember, the bride's maid, to do your every wish.
Dan understands the need for the minor key we're playing in, and he doesn't mind not being invited; he mislikes weddings anyway. But he sends you, he said, every good wish and he hopes for your happiness.
Until Thursday noon.
With affection,
Kitty.
It took four weeks for the results, and they charged me heftily—because I paid for three tests: the ancient lock of hair, my mother's hairbrush, and my own hair. The lab technicians must have puzzled over this one. They found no connection whatsoever between the two females. But they also connected me to the tresses found in the theater at Tipperary. If I had already been engaged with Charles O'Brien and his uneven (to say the least) April, now I was obsessed. I went back to my inspection of that teeming drama.
It was a beautiful day. The middle Friday in June. I drove the car. She asked me to, the night before, so I got the blood cleaned out of the seats. And as she walked toward me, she said, “Harney, d'you think—” And that was all.
She never finished the question. Mrs. Moore was standing at the other end of the Great Hall, not a lady I knew very well, but I knew enough about life to tell that she was very anxious. And that evening and next day she hovered over April, giving her all kinds of care and attention. Mind you, April had recovered well from the miscarriage—but she looked exhausted.
People have great natural tact—whether they know it or not. Nobody came out to look at us. We got April into the car out in front, and there was nobody on the terraces, and nobody in a doorway. I couldn't believe it.
You can guess what my fear was—that Charles would appear. If he did, there was no mistaking the fact that April was about to become a bride. No veil of course, being a widow—but she had a bouquet of flowers, and a hat.
Heavens above, did I look around! But—no Charles, no sign of him. I got them all into the car, and away we went. And then, just inside the gate, on a little hill from which you can peep through the trees, I saw him. He was standing there, watching us, just at the point where we had to slow up before going out on the road. He looked straight at me, and I at him. And when he turned his back, you never saw a man with a sadder pair of shoulders.
Well—if that was only the worst thing that happened that day. Because he was on the run, Dermot had arranged things very secretively. He got a priest in Cashel to perform the ceremony and to get over the problems of April not being a Catholic—he told the priest that she was taking instruction in order to convert. The priest was one of his men, anyway.
And then Dermot pulled his masterstroke. No church—too dangerous; anyone might see him going in there. And a bride would attract attention. At that time the Rock of Cashel was all but closed. You had to go up a dirty old lane to it, and nobody would see you, and Dermot knew—the legal brain—that the church on the Rock was still a consecrated church, and that people could legally marry there.
He hid nearby the night before, and we had arranged that I'd come in and tell him everything was clear. In the meantime, the two ladies would wear big coats to hide their finery, and they'd clamber up the lane and into the Rock area. The priest was to wait down the road until he saw us turn up the lane—it was all arranged like a guerrilla operation.
And it all went well. Dermot was there—he came out from his hiding-place and we headed for King Cormac's Chapel, one of the oldest holy places in the country. Now, he hadn't been in touch, and nobody had seen him since these arrangements were made weeks earlier. He asked me about the Dundrum fiasco—and then I told him about April, and her health, and what had happened to her.
He looked shocked and asked how she was. I told him everything about that terrible night in the castle. And I left him there, leaning against the wall, and went to get the two ladies. I was excited at being able to tell April that he was here, ready and waiting.
“Oh, Harney,” said she, “you've answered the question I was afraid to ask.”
She was obviously afraid that events might prevent him from showing up.
The priest arrived a few minutes later. Now the bridal party was complete—bride and attendant, best man and celebrant, and bridegroom waiting for us at the altar.
But when we got to the little church—no Dermot. I thought he had gone into hiding again until he was sure that the voices he heard were ours—that's what I'd have done—and I went looking for him. Well, I searched and I searched and never found him.
When I went back to the chapel, April was crying. Not out loud, just tears pouring down her face. We waited an hour and more, because that's what she wanted to do. But we could be waiting still—he never appeared.
Eventually, we all returned to the car. I gave the priest his offering—a man has to get paid—and we drove back to the castle. She never stopped crying throughout the whole journey, and when we got back there she disappeared and nobody saw her for weeks.
So, now I could conclude that I was not the son of Dermot Noonan. For which relief, much thanks. I met him once and disliked him intensely— condescending and cocky little prancer—and that was years before I ever heard of Charles O'Brien.
Nor could I be the son of April Burke-Somerville, who could not now, after a severe miscarriage—and at almost forty years of age—ever bear children. But I was still the grandson of April Burke the First, the strumpet from County Limerick.
The human spirit can be damnably perverse. However distraught I was by the first DNA revelation, and further hammered by the second one, I was now disappointed. If I had been April's son, that would have given me, late in life, some of the sense of magic that I had always missed. I could have told myself that I came from that grand intrigue, and that both my grandmother, the actress, and my mother, the chatelaine, had been the objects of great, all-consuming passions.
Mind you, I would also have had to observe that both my grandmother and my great-grandmother had taken their own lives by jumping off bridges. So there I was. April did not marry Dermot Noonan. And I still had no explanation for the bizarre DNA results. I searched Charles's history, and I searched it again—and found nothing there. The mystery continued.
I worked like a demon, hauling in every loose end that I could find. Then I indulged in some unraveling of the text to make some more loose ends. And I chased them to their origins. After that, I began to check out the other hazy figures in this steam room.
Noonan did marry. Three years later, while still in his fifties,
he found a different young widow with a large farm of land. A leopard doesn't change his spots. The wedding took place very conventionally, in a church. Why couldn't he have continued the flamboyance?
Whatever the complications, part of me wished that April could have married on the Rock of Cashel—one of the “Seven Wonders of Tipperary,” according to Bernard O'Brien. It's unique.
From the grassy heights inside the enclave, the views to the north and west define the county. The view is of wide open fields, a ruined abbey, a sense of deep fertility, the high, blue sky, and those cloud formations that fascinated Charles O'Brien.
Inside, the buildings continue to engross me, even after forty years of guiding school tours around the place. The vaulted heights, the gray-white of the limestone, the ancient mason work, the smoothness of the cut stone, the hush—nowadays, I sometimes go there just to feel the place, to be part of it.
And I replay what it must have been like that morning—for this disappointed woman, rich beyond her dreams, her body in aching turmoil, still hunting for the happiness she had slightly touched when she lived as a girl with her father. She stood in the shadows of King Cormac's Chapel, an exquisite little twelfth-century Romanesque building whose construction had all kinds of mathematical orientation built into it.
And she waited and she waited for the man who'd lost interest in her once he knew she could not bear him an heir so that he and his family would then completely own the Tipperary estate. He had failed to get it in court, and now he was trying to get it by other means. I suppose she was fortunate that he didn't marry her and then kill her.
Through all of this, Charles kept writing his “History.” But never a word of April's misfortunes does he record—no mention of the miscarriage or the aborted wedding. So much for the objective historian— selective again. But I remind myself in fairness that he did issue a warning at the beginning: “Be careful about me.”
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