1921

by Morgan Llywelyn

  “Most people do, Henry.”

  “You believe that?”

  Maguire nodded. “I have to, and so should you. Where’s your idealism?”

  “I left it in my other suit,” Henry said without smiling.

  IN April, Lloyd George said that the coalition government at last was prepared to implement a limited degree of home rule for Ireland—under certain conditions.

  The Irish would have to agree to conscription first.

  Henry was furious. “It’s the carrot and stick all right, but the stick’s a rifle held to our heads unless we’re willing to take it in our hands and kill strangers for King George.”

  Lights burned late in the offices of the Champion. Sarsfield Maguire sent his reporters to cover every anticonscription speech and rally in the county. “Our people are outraged at the idea of being forced to fight for Austria and Belgium,” Henry commented, “when decent Irish men were shot at Kilmainham for fighting for this country.”

  His words were printed in a box on the front page. Within days there was a response.

  “DEAR Ned,” Henry wrote, “A government flunky came to the offices of the Champion yesterday to tell the Maguires they could continue to publish only upon their guarantee that they would print no more subversive articles.2 ‘We simply cannot have newspapers undermining Dublin Castle,’ the little maggot said. ‘You must support your government in time of war.’

  “Ned, I wish you could have seen Josephine Maguire’s face. She threw her head back and stared him down until the man shriveled like a rasher in a hot skillet. ‘I am supporting my government,’ she told him. ‘I’m just not supporting yours. My late brother Tom Galvin founded this paper and it’s his monument. We won’t surrender a single word of it to the likes of you.’ She was Caitlín ní Houlihan in that play of Yeats’ she was one of the great warrior queens from the ancient time. I think for a moment every man in the office was in love with her.

  “Sarsfield showed the government man to the door and bowed him out with the most icy courtesy I’ve ever seen. Then this morning a detachment of the military entered our printing plant and took away critical sections of the machinery. They left the presses gutted.

  “The Clare Champion is suppressed for six months. The action was not unexpected, we had practically dared the government to shut us down. Yet the shock was enormous just the same. I have a sense of personal grief, almost as if they killed a child of mine, and I don’t even own the paper. I cannot imagine what the Maguires are going through.”

  By the time he finished penning the letter, Henry’s hand was shaking. He went out to pace the streets of Ennis and work off his rage.

  That’s the word for it. Rage. I never felt it before, even during the Rising and the executions. But now. But now.

  He wanted to hit someone. He wanted to drive his fist into a human face and feel bone crunch.

  He was astonished at himself.

  “WE’LL wait them out and publish again in September,” Josephine Maguire assured Henry. “There’s no way we’ll let them close us down permanently, and when the presses are rolling we’ll want you back.”

  In the meantime, Henry had to make a living. There was not enough work in Clare, under the current circumstances, to support him as a freelance journalist, so Henry decided to return to Dublin. “Surely I can scrape up something there,” he told Sarsfield Maguire. He had to eat and the Limerick tithe had to be paid. Besides, Dublin had something else to offer. In his wallet was Ella Rutledge’s Dublin address. “She and Madge live with their brother and his wife,” Ned had explained in a letter. “Ella and her late husband had no children. When he was killed, she returned to her own family rather than stay with his. The Mansells are devoted to one another.”

  A close family. What do you suppose that’s like?

  When he packed his things Henry was surprised at how much he had accumulated in a few months. He had to store a small Turkish carpet, a good armchair, and a tea chest full of books with the Maguires. It was as if he had intended to stay permanently and had been gathering bits and pieces for a home in Clare.

  Once going to Dublin had been a moral victory; now it seemed a defeat. Henry sat gloomily staring out the window while the train lurched and rattled eastward. As it began to slow for Limerick Junction he briefly glimpsed, alongside the track, a face he recognized.

  When the train stopped, Henry collected his suitcase and got off.

  Newspaperman’s hunch.

  He walked back along the track to the maintenance shed of the Great Southern and Western Railway: tar paper peeling off the roof, door sagging open on rusty hinges. Henry rapped with his knuckles, then thrust his head inside to be greeted by the scent of machine oil, strong coffee, and cheap cigarettes. Woodbines, by the smell of them.

  “Anyone here?” he called into the gloom.

  “Depends on who you’re looking for,” came a truculent answer from the rear of the shed.

  “A linesman called Dan Breen. Thought I saw him out on the track a few minutes ago.” Henry did not add that Dan was his cousin, because strictly speaking that was not true. Dan Breen was related to the Mooneys only through the lifelong friendship of his mother, the former Honora Moore, and Henry’s mother. The two had grown up as neighbors in the parish of Doon, southwest of the peak of Gortnageragh. Marital circumstance had separated them, but the tie of a shared townland could be as strong as kinship.

  “Well, you didn’t see him because he’s not here. And we never heard of him anyway,” stated the disembodied voice with finality.

  “My eyes must be going bad on me. If you ever do run into a fella called Breen, would you tell him Henry Mooney’s looking for him?” He turned as if to walk away.

  “Hold on there, Cousin Henry!” A figure emerged from the shadows, wiping his hands on a greasy rag. He was no more than twenty-two or-three but looked older: short and sturdy, a hammer of a man with a broad, coarse-featured face and swarthy complexion.

  “Hiding out, are you?” Henry inquired casually.

  Dan Breen gestured toward a nearby bench where a huge enameled pot sat on a gas ring, surrounded by tin cups. “Let me offer you some of our coffee. It’s mostly grounds, but the cup’s clean. Or was yesterday.”

  Henry accepted a battered cup and took a tentative taste. The sugarless brew was scorched and tasted of machine oil. He put the cup down with a shudder. “Saint Patrick on skates! What is that, the drainings of a tar barrel? Would you not drink tea like the rest of us?”

  Breen hooted with laughter. He resembled a sulky bulldog until something amused him; then his features were transformed by a merry grin. “The mother raised me to be very particular about the way tea was brewed,” he explained. “But you can treat coffee any old way, and we do. It’s reheated a dozen times a day.”

  “You have any stomach lining left?”

  “Never looked. But sure, isn’t it nice of you to stop and inquire after me health—or did you have some other reason?”

  “Curiosity,” Henry admitted. “I haven’t seen you for donkey’s years and a lot’s happened. Last I heard, you were helping reorganize the Republicans in Tipperary town. Are you still?”

  “Too right! I’m commanding the South Tipperary Brigade these days.”

  “Are you really up to brigade strength in Tip?”

  “We have plenty of men,” Breen assured him, “and we’re getting them armed—mostly by raiding the houses of the local loyalists.3 A nationalist is arrested for having a rusty shotgun in the barn to shoot rats, but anyone who sympathizes with the British is allowed to keep all manner of rifles and revolvers. They’re mostly willing to hand them over to us with a little persuasion, so we’ve never had to get rough, thank God.

  “We’re acquiring a nice little arsenal of our own, and not a moment too soon, with conscription hanging over our heads. Not that everyone’s happy about what we’re doing. Some of the more conservative Sinn Féiners in town think we should have no stronger weapons than resolutions
. They want everything discussed at party meetings and put to a vote, but you don’t get anywhere that way.”

  “Be careful you don’t get yourself arrested,” Henry warned.

  “Hazards of the job. My best friend’s been in and out of prison for months. Seán Treacy. He was originally supposed to command the brigade, but after he was jailed the post was given to me instead. Then when Seán went on a hunger strike in Dundalk, a band of us decided we had to do something drastic before he went the way of Thomas Ashe…Say, are you planning to print any of this?”

  “Of course not. You should know me better than that. I told you, I was just curious. What about Seán Treacy?”

  “We planned to capture a Peeler,” Breen said, using the pejorative term for a policeman, “and hold him as a hostage for Seán’s safety. A band of police usually go on night patrol around Limerick Junction, so we brought in forty of the brigade to kidnap one and hold him in the mountains. Then the police found out about it and kept the men confined to barracks.”

  “Do you think someone informed on you?”

  Breen’s heavy eyebrows drew together. “Wouldn’t be the first time. Sure, since the bloody English started bribing the Irish to inform on each other hundreds of years ago, informers have been the curse of this country, worse than the drink. Seán’s off the hunger strike now, thank God, and he’s due to be released in the autumn. Then we’ll see some action. Say, you wouldn’t be interested in joining the South Tipperary Brigade, would you? We could give you an address at the mother’s house.”

  For half a heartbeat Henry was tempted. Hit someone. Drive a fist into a human face and feel bone crunch.

  With an effort he blotted out the image. “I appreciate the offer, Dan, but I try to stay within the law. It’s a peculiarity of mine, like believing it’s better to talk than fight.”

  “Maybe it is—if you can get the other fella to talk. If he’s a Brit, though, you can’t trust a word he says. Not to an Irishman.”

  “I’d hate to believe that’s true.”

  “Prove to me it isn’t, Henry. Until you can, I’ll go on arming my Republicans.”

  “The Irish Republican Army is an illegal organization now.”

  Dan Breen retorted, “And the British army’s in our country illegally. But not for much longer.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  WHILE Henry was on his way to Dublin, the Military Services Act came up for a vote in Parliament.

  The first newspaper Henry saw when he got off the train carried a banner headline: CONSCRIPTION PASSES—ENFORCEMENT EXPECTED SOON.

  Although the entire Irish Party had voted against it, the bill had passed by 301 votes to 103. John Dillon, the new leader of the party, immediately left the House of Commons in protest and returned to Ireland to organize resistance against conscription.

  NED Halloran was on hand to welcome Henry back. “I’m afraid we won’t see much of each other,” he apologized in advance. “No long talks or chess games. I’m doing all the maintenance work here, plus trying to work on that book of mine. It’s an adventure novel like Erskine Childers’ Riddle of the Sands, only set in the Far East.”

  “Why not choose something you know more about? The Easter Rising, for example.”

  “That’s what I told him myself,” said Louise.

  “Och, there’ll be lots of historians writing about the Rising.”

  “I’m not talking about nonfiction, Ned. History tells what happened; literature tells what it felt like.”

  Ned’s focus changed; he stared into shadows. A faint shudder ran through his body. “Maybe I’m still too close to it. In the future, perhaps…Anyway, my time is pretty scarce. I’m out of the house most nights on military business.”

  “How’s your health?”

  “Grand,” said Ned.

  “Dreadful,” Louise contradicted. “I soak brown paper in vinegar and try to make him put it on his head for the pain. It’s a great pity we’ve no holy wells nearby, I know the saints would heal him. I tell him and I tell him, but…”

  Precious was tugging at Henry’s hand. “Uncle Henry, before you unpack come and see my collection.”

  She had driven a number of large nails into the walls of the scullery. From them hung a motley assortment of ironmongery and leather. “What class of collection do you call this, Little Business?”

  “It’s horse tackle, can’t you tell? I pick them up off the street, or from rubbish skips. Here’s a bridle bit—it was rusted and bent, but I’ve cleaned it up and straightened it—and a curb chain, and a tool for picking stones out of hooves, and a broken rein I’ve mended…and this was part of a leather headcollar. I’m going to use it to contrapt a bridle.”

  “Contrapt?”

  “You know, make a contraption. Like you construct something to make a construction. I looked in the dictionary you gave me, but ‘contrapt’ isn’t in there.”

  “It should be,” Henry said. “I must contrapt a dozen things a week myself.”

  Because his former apartment in the attic was rented to someone else, Louise Kearney gave Henry a room off the first-floor landing and her promise that he could move “back home” as soon as the current tenant left. Two days later he was offered a job writing advertising copy with a firm that counted Dublin’s largest stores among its clients. It was not journalism, but the hours were regular and he would be able to pay his bills. Yet he felt strangely cut adrift, marking time between the irretrievable past and the unknowable future.

  Several times he took Ella Rutledge’s address out of his wallet and looked at it…then put it back.

  ON the twenty-third of April, all work was suspended as a nationwide protest against conscription. Shops did not open, trains did not run. A Sinn Féin rally in Dublin drew men and women from the entire spectrum of nationalism to hear conscription condemned as a declaration of war on the Irish people. Ned and other members of the Dublin Brigade served as security officers at the rally.

  The atmosphere in the city was highly charged. An exceptional number of policemen were patrolling the streets. Members of the Dublin Metropolitan Police—known as the DMP—were chosen for their size; not one stood less than six feet. In their dark blue uniforms and spiked helmets they could look menacing, and on this occasion they did. Henry refused to let them intimidate him. When one looked at him particularly hard, he reminded himself that the telegraph address of the DMP was DAMP, DUBLIN.1

  They’re Irish, same as me; right down to the sense of humor. He smiled, relaxed. The policeman’s attention turned elsewhere.

  When Henry reached number 16, he found Síle waiting in the parlor. “Did you go to the rally? Did you see Ned?” she asked before he had his coat off.

  “I’ve been working all day—how could I? Is he not home yet?”

  “He’s not home, and I’m worried about him, Henry.”

  “When you married a revolutionary you knew what you were getting into.”

  “I did; I was a revolutionary myself. We were young and strong and the cause was just,” she said with conviction, “and we were caught up in the adventure of it all. Secret messages and marches and maneuvers. Then Easter Week and the guns, and us ready to die for something more important than ourselves.” The light of those days still shone in her face. Passionate woman, steadfast as stone, intense as flame.

  “Funnily enough, I never really thought I might be killed,” Síle went on. “When Ned found me and we were running across Dublin and the soldiers were shooting at us, I felt so…”

  “Exhilarated?”

  She gave a reluctant nod. “That was how I felt, even though I knew people were being killed. Does that make me an awful person, Henry?”

  Her uncharacteristic question surprised him. “Of course not, Síle. You know the old saying: ‘The nature of the rain is the same everywhere, yet it produces thorns in the hedgerows and flowers in the garden.’ You were experiencing the flowers. The thorns came after.”

  “So they did, for all of us. But that doe
sn’t stop Ned; he’s more determined than ever. And…I have the strangest feeling, Henry. This time…” Síle looked past him, her slanted, catlike eyes focusing on something beyond mortal vision. “This time we won’t all survive.”

  Henry wanted to gather her into his arms and comfort her. The impulse was unexpected and overpowering.

  Ned entered the parlor.

  Henry took an involuntary step backward. Ned looked at him curiously. “What’s the matter?”

  Before Henry could answer, Síle slipped past him to nestle against her husband’s chest. “I was worried about you. I’m so glad you’re back.”

  Ned pressed his lips to her bright hair.

  Henry ceased to exist for them. He waited uncertainly, then went out into the hall. Precious in her nightdress was sitting on the stairs, obviously eavesdropping. He swooped down on her, pretending to be angry. “Don’t you know that earwigging is bad manners?”

  She was unabashed. “That’s how I learn things.”

  “If you have questions, just ask one of us. I’ve never noticed you having any trouble asking questions.”

  “But I don’t always get answers,” she told him. “Grown-ups tell me what they want me to know, not what I need to know.”

  “I’ll answer your questions honestly, Little Business. What do you think you need to know?”

  “Is there going to be more fighting?”

  Henry believed in protecting the innocence of children and sustaining their sense of security, but Precious already knew that security was a myth. Her eyes as she looked up at him were the eyes of an adult asking an adult question. He crouched down so his face was on a level with hers. “In the heel of the hunt, there will be more fighting, Little Business.”

  “When?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Will it ever be over?”