1921

by Morgan Llywelyn

  With this expression of apparent sympathy, Lloyd George hoped to placate Ireland’s many friends in the United States. Britain could not afford to antagonize America when a wartime alliance was desperately needed.

  The new prime minister had then proceeded to cut the ground from under any idea of an Irish nation, however. “In the northeastern portion of Ireland,” he said, “you have a population as hostile to Irish rule as the rest of Ireland is to British rule—as alien in blood, in religious faith, in traditions, in outlook. To place them under national rule would be as glaring an outrage on the principles of liberty as the denial of self-government would be for the rest of Ireland.”

  Lloyd George went on to say that his government was perfectly willing to grant home rule “to that part of Ireland that demands it.” His meaning was obvious. If Ireland continued to insist on its own legislative assembly, the price would be the separation of the Unionist-controlled province of Ulster from the rest of the island.

  After Lloyd George’s speech, John Redmond led the Irish Party out of the House of Commons in anger. The next day they issued a formal protest against allowing a minority in the northeastern corner of Ireland to have a veto over the whole island’s future.

  Lloyd George undertook to mollify Redmond by promising that partition, should it ever occur, would be temporary. Furthermore, he repeated assurances that home rule would be Ireland’s ultimate reward for encouraging her sons to fight and die for Britain.

  “I don’t believe a word the prime minister says,” Henry had remarked to Ned. “Home rule’s been waved in front of the Irish too many times before, like a carrot to tempt a donkey. But we never get the carrot. We get the stick every time.”

  He worded the end of his article more elegantly. “It would be a mistake to continue to anticipate home rule,” he warned. “Now we must avoid any situation that might give Britain an excuse to dismember this country before nationhood can be achieved.”

  But who would print those words? Most of the papers sympathetic to nationalism were shut down, their doors boarded and padlocked.

  A dead newspaper is like a dead person. All those hopes and dreams and ideas destroyed. All that potential lost.

  Muffled sounds came through the wall from Ned and Síle’s bedroom.

  Henry went to the bedside locker where he kept his cigarettes. Only one, badly bent, remained in a crumpled packet. “Why do I never find a full packet when I need one?” he wondered aloud—then paused, realizing that like many people who live alone, he had begun talking to himself. He justified it by thinking, Either you talk to God or you talk to yourself.

  And how do you know the difference?

  IN the passage outside Ned’s door Henry called, “I’m going out again. Can I bring you anything?”

  “Nothing, thanks,” Ned called back.

  From Precious’ room came a sleepy “Some boiled sweets?”

  “You should be asleep,” Síle told her sternly.

  “Am asleep.” Precious gave a credible imitation of snoring.

  As Henry’s steps receded, Síle asked, “Where do you suppose he’s going at this hour?”

  “Down to Monto for some female companionship,” Ned answered without thinking. Too late he saw the expression that flickered across Síle’s face.

  Chapter Seven

  April 6, 1917

  UNITED STATES ENTERS WAR TO SAVE DEMOCRACY

  April 19, 1917

  NATIONAL COUNCIL OF IRISH NATIONALIST

  ORGANIZATIONS ESTABLISHED

  EASTER Monday in 1917 was different from the preceding year. People openly wore armbands of tricolor ribbon. Defying the authorities, men and women pasted copies of the Republican Proclamation on every available wall.

  In Dublin an even braver band succeeded in smuggling a tricolor flag to the ruined roof of the GPO and hoisting it at half-mast.1 British soldiers struggled for hours to untie the cleverly knotted spiderweb of ropes that held the forbidden flag in place, while a large crowd jeered them from the street below.

  Ned Halloran was out of the house all day. When he finally returned, his face was flushed and his eyes fever-bright. Síle ran to meet him and kissed him, hard.

  Dublin newspapers reported the flag-raising incident as “regrettable,” the act of “a few ill-advised criminal malcontents.”

  There was a fresh wave of arrests.

  “UNTIL I was on my own,” Henry remarked in Louise Kearney’s parlor the next evening, “I didn’t realize how much journalists depend on the office and the desk and having one another around. I miss all that. What I need is a newspaper that’s not intimidated by the government—one that’s willing to hire a moderate nationalist.”

  Ned said, “There’s no such paper in Dublin. Nor a moderate nationalist, either.”

  “There’s me.” Henry folded the Evening Herald he had been reading and set it aside. “I’m a moderate nationalist. But Dublin’s not my city right now. I’m thinking of trying my luck in the provinces for a while.”

  “Limerick?”

  Alice whimpering, Pauline resenting, Mam like a black crow, cawing at him—Clawing at him. “Not Limerick. Meath, perhaps. The Meath Chronicle is hanging on—it just called for full independence for Ireland.”

  “Forget about Meath, Henry. We’re west-of-Ireland men, you and I. The Clare Champion is still being published in Ennis—Frank sends me copies from time to time. Why not try them? If I could go home, I’d apply for a job at the Champion myself.”

  “If I could go home.” As Ned spoke, his glance inadvertently flicked toward Síle, who was mending a shirtwaist by the light of the gas jet. If she heard him, she gave no sign.

  But a spot of blood dropped onto her sewing from a pricked finger.

  The next morning Henry made a little trip to the stationer’s and purchased a dictionary. He carefully wrapped it in tissue paper, then presented it to Precious that night at the table.

  “What’s this for, Uncle Henry?”

  “Next time you want to know what a word means, you can look it up instead of having to ask Ned.”

  “I can always ask you.”

  “ ’Fraid not. I’m going to be away for a while—that’s why I want you to have the dictionary to use. Until I come back,” he added, dismayed by the grief-stricken expression on her face. “I shall always come back, I promise. Here now, what’s this?” he asked as he took out his handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes.

  “Paindrops.”

  “Paindrops?”

  “You know, like raindrops. Only coming from people instead of from clouds.”

  “I don’t think the child has any need for a dictionary,” Louise remarked. “The words she makes up are better.”

  A few days later Henry was on his way to County Clare and a meeting with Josephine Maguire, sister of the paper’s deceased founder, and her husband, Sarsfield Maguire, the editor.2

  County Clare was beautiful in the spring. A froth of whitethorn in the hedgerows: lace petticoats hemming little green fields. Gentle hills singing with the lark and the cuckoo. Wild cliffs booming with the thunder of the surf. Narrow laneways clogged with cattle being moved from one pasture to another.

  The county was deceptively peaceful.

  The prevailing wind off the Atlantic was like the roar of a distant crowd.

  Ned’s brother, Frank Halloran, met Henry at the railway station with a pony and trap. “The pony’s name is Tad,” he explained as they drove away from the station. “The girls used to ride him, but they’ve outgrown the old fellow now.” Henry grew mesmerized by the rhythmic movement of the rounded haunches in front of him as the pony trotted along the dirt road. The trap creaked; the wheels sang. The air smelled of growing things. He felt as if a clenched fist inside himself was gradually loosening. I’m back in Ireland now, Dublin is Someplace Else.

  At first he stayed at the Halloran family farm. Since the death of Ned’s parents in 1912, Mrs. Halloran’s sister Norah Daly had kept house for Frank and his sisters.
Frank Halloran did not look much like his brother Ned, though in his profile Henry caught glimpses of a familiar bone structure. The family farm was good land, but Frank had about as much talent for agriculture as Henry had for blacksmithing. He was weary and weather-beaten, and the seat of his trousers drooped.

  Norah Daly was a soft-spoken, self-effacing woman in her sixties. She punctuated her every movement with a little grunt, as if she were carrying an invisible burden. She seemed unaware of the habit, and no one else ever mentioned it.

  Lucy and Eileen were the babies of the family, but older than Precious—girls on the brink of womanhood. After they got over their initial shyness with a stranger, they were friendly enough to Henry. They had no interest in the world beyond Clare, however; their conversation centered around pump and parish. An older sister, Kathleen, had escaped both. She was married and living in America.

  The Hallorans refused to let Henry pay board. “You’re Ned’s friend. That’s all that needs be said.”

  When Henry called in to the offices of the Clare Champion, Josephine Maguire told him, “We know your work, I’ve read a number of your columns.” She was a brisk, no-nonsense person who dressed plainly and spoke in the same fashion. But there was warmth in her smile. Her husband—taller, thinner, grayer, but equally genial—added, “If you write as well for us as you did for the Independent, you have a job for as long as you like. We’ll run your commentary on the Lloyd George speech in the next edition.”

  That night there was a celebratory dinner at the Halloran farm. Hearty country food: a heaping platter of chops and brown onions served with pitchers of cold buttermilk. Henry cleaned his plate and allowed Norah to fill it again. Although he was enjoying himself, he could sense a disturbed undercurrent. Something was troubling Frank and Norah.

  After a couple of days Frank intercepted him as he was returning from using the earth closet out back. Embarrassed, but driven to ask, Frank said, “Why does Ned never come home and bring the wife for us to meet?”

  “He took a nasty head wound during the Rising. He’s not completely over it yet, Frank.”

  “Are you sure you’re telling me everything?”

  “What else could there be?”

  “They didn’t invite us up to Dublin for the wedding. Is Ned ashamed of us?”

  “Not at all. When he speaks of his people in Clare he practically crows with pride.”

  “What is it then? Some problem about his wife? He’s written hardly anything about her, except that she’s red-haired and her maiden name was Duffy. Sure Ireland’s chockablock with Duffys; that tells us nothing. You know her, Henry. What’s she like?”

  Henry hesitated before answering. Tread carefully here. “Síle doesn’t have much education, but she’s quite intelligent.”

  “Intelligent?” Frank looked as if a woman’s intelligence was something he never considered.

  “And attractive,” Henry added. “She’s very attractive.”

  “But?”

  “There is no ‘but,’ Frank. I’m sorry you weren’t invited to the wedding. You can blame me for that. Given the circumstances in Dublin these days, I advised Ned not to splash out and draw attention. It was a very small ceremony. Beside Ned and Síle there was only the priest—Ned’s friend Father Paul—and myself and my cousin Louise for witnesses. And the little girl Ned rescued. You know about her, of course. She’s their foster child now.”

  Frank appeared to accept the explanation, but later he told his aunt, “There’s more to this than Henry’s admitting. He pretends everything’s grand, but that’s bunkum. When I asked questions about Síle, his voice changed.”

  A smile seeped into the creases of Norah Daly’s face like melted butter running through porridge. “Listen while I tell you. I think the poor man’s in love with Ned’s wife himself. That’s why he’s come away to Clare—to put distance between himself and a sweetheart he can never have. I could never do such a thing, but I admire him for it.”

  Frank clicked his tongue. “Ah, Norah, you’re misreading the man entirely. He’s simply here to do a job of work.”

  “I know what I know,” his aunt insisted.

  That night she took a cup of hot milk to Henry’s room before he went to bed and offered to say the rosary with him.

  Henry hated hot milk.

  Next day he went in search of other lodgings. “I need to be closer to the newspaper office,” he told the Hallorans. He soon found a room over the Ennis Town Hall adjacent to the Old Ground Hotel. The accommodation was plain, but he would not be there very much.

  Ennis was the county seat and a market town: narrow, crooked streets rambling all unplanned, shabby shopfronts with cats dozing in windows, plainly dressed country people greeting a stranger with smiles and nods. Deep country quiet at night. The river Fergus murmuring through town like a satin ribbon, reed-fringed.

  “You’ll find everything you need within the reach of your arm,” Henry’s new landlord assured him. “And if it isn’t here, you don’t need it anyway.”

  “I suppose I’ll need a bicycle.”

  “There’s always one or two ’round the back. Help yourself.”

  Unlike the big Dublin newspapers, the Champion did not have subeditors or a separate commercial department. The small staff was expected to cover church, sporting, and social events as well as hard news, create fillers on the spur of the moment, and solicit and write advertising copy. “Suits me like my skin,” Henry told the Maguires. “I’ve been doing those things for years anyway.”

  Away from the overheated atmosphere of Dublin, smoldering with bitterness on both sides, he felt as if a weight had been lifted from him. In rural Ireland many men were open about their nationalism. Henry met them everywhere, Volunteers who now proudly bore the name James Connolly had given the rebels of Easter Week: the Irish Republican Army. They felt an inchoate need to atone for not having been in the GPO during the Rising. The one thing they would not do was fight under a British flag.

  British army recruitment in Clare had reached a peak following the sinking of the Lusitania, but the county’s support for the Great War had dwindled dramatically after the Easter Rising. Yet Henry’s feature articles for the Champion were not blatant espousals of nationalism. He tried to strike a balance.

  He paid sincere tribute to the four thousand Clare men who had marched off to fight under a British flag: “The young men who join the Royal Munster Fusiliers and other Irish regiments do so for understandable reasons. They are escaping poverty or seeking adventure, they are responding to the urging of their friends or the influence of their employers, they are defending Catholic Poland or fighting for the freedom of small nations. This small nation, which is not free, acknowledges the valor of these men—and mourns the many who will sleep forever in foreign soil.”3

  Reading the copy, Sarsfield Maguire nodded in approval. “ ‘This small nation, which is not free…’ You’re good, Mooney. You’re very good.”

  A change in public attitude was increasingly evident. Many Irish—and even English—intellectuals and members of the artistic community were beginning to express opinions publicly that were in sharp disagreement with the view of the British establishment.4 They no longer accepted that the leaders of the Easter Rising had been traitors. They called them patriots.

  In February there had been a by-election in County Roscommon. Sinn Féin had put forward a man whose son had been shot against a wall in Kilmainham Jail by General Maxwell. George Noble, Count Plunkett—the father of Joseph Plunkett—had won by an overwhelming majority, becoming the first member of Sinn Féin elected to Parliament. Count Plunkett was a popular choice. A courteous, highly educated man whose ebony walking stick and bushy white beard were a familiar sight in Dublin’s museums, he had impressed everyone by his demeanor after the death of his son, He did not cast blame; he did not collapse in grief. Instead, Count and Mrs. Plunkett had set about championing the cause for which Joe died.

  When Count Plunkett won the election, Dublin
Castle responded by arresting twenty-six prominent nationalists. Although in many cases there were no grounds for either charging them or trying them, ten were promptly deported.

  In May, South Longford, a stronghold of the Irish Party, held a by-election. As its candidate Sinn Féin nominated Joseph McGuinness, who was being held in Lewes Prison. The campaign slogan was “Put him in to get him out!”

  When McGuinness unexpectedly defeated the candidate of the Irish Party, Henry wrote cautiously, “We may be seeing a trend.”

  The passion of his pen was reserved for the wave of diphtheria killing so many children in the west of Ireland: the little white coffins, the empty beds at home, the teachers recording deaths on the school rolls.

  He attended cattle sales and cake sales, reported on births and deaths and marriages. Weather predictions were popular with his readers. “Farmers expect the coming summer to be very wet. Some herons have been observed leaving coastal areas and flying toward the mountains. The ash trees are already budding, and as you know, ‘Ash before oak, in for a soak—oak before ash, in for a splash.’ ”

  Every week—religiously—Henry sent the household tithe to Limerick. On most Sunday mornings, instead of going to Mass, he fished the clear water of the Fergus below the distillery. The Fergus meandered across the countryside, bristling with rushes for much of its journey as if ancient riverine monsters with raised hackles lurked beneath the surface. A blue heron claimed the stretch of river by the distillery. When Henry first arrived, it had glared with a cold eye at its human competition, but over time they established a grudging truce. Henry spent contented hours outsmarting silver salmon and fat brown trout, throwing some to the heron and trading the rest to the cook in the Old Ground for his Sunday dinner.

  He began to feel at home. Almost.

  Affable and gregarious by nature, Henry had learned early to guard his private core. An unspoken Irish commandment that Hannah Mooney’s children had absorbed with their mother’s milk was “Don’t tell anyone your personal business.” As he grew older, Henry had developed a shell of self-protection against his family as well. Ned Halloran was his first close friend.