A Winter of Spies

by Gerard Whelan

  Mrs Breen said that perhaps he was right. Moore turned his smile on Sarah.

  ‘And is this your youngest child?’ he asked. It was a ridiculous question to ask of such an old woman, Sarah thought. Perhaps it was meant as flattery.

  Mrs Breen almost simpered. ‘I can see you’re smooth-tongued at any rate, Mr Moore,’ she said. ‘It must stand you in good stead in your dealings. This is Sarah, a young friend of mine.’

  Moore laughed and said hello to Sarah. ‘Anyway,’ he said then, ‘I felt I should introduce myself. We’ll be here for the summer at least. I do hope we’ll see more of all of you. It will be pleasant to live with a family next door.’

  ‘I know exactly what you mean,’ Mrs Breen said. ‘And it’s nice to have some genuine army men in the area.’

  With a nod and a wave, Rory Moore left them. His friend by now was banging imperiously on the Ryans’ door, while behind him the little cart-driver struggled up the path, laden down with luggage. There was still more in the cart, but Rory Moore walked by it without taking anything.

  ‘What a pleasant young man,’ Mrs Breen said. ‘But I think it’s getting colder, Sarah. We had better go inside. Come and have some cake.’

  Sarah hadn’t thought Rory Moore was so pleasant, never mind young. Something that he’d said had puzzled her, but she couldn’t think what it was. It was only as she followed Mrs Breen through the door of the basement apartment that it struck her.

  ‘Mrs Breen?’ she said.

  ‘Yes, child,’ said Mrs Breen. She’d given up long ago on trying to get the Conways to call her Honoria. Ma thought it would be cheeky.

  ‘Mr Moore said it would be nice living next door to a family.’

  ‘Yes, dear, he did.’

  ‘But how did he know there was a family here? What did he mean, “all of you”? He’s only seen the two of us, and you told him we weren’t related.’

  Mrs Breen looked puzzled for a moment, then made a face. ‘I’m sure I don’t know, dear,’ she said. ‘But come and have some cake. I just baked one today.’

  Sarah looked out. From the basement doorway you could see Ryans’ top step, but neither of the newcomers was there. All Sarah saw before she closed Breens’ door was the sweating cart-driver clumping sadly down the steps to fetch the rest of their luggage. Cake beckoned.

  7

  IN TROUBLE

  LATER, WHEN SARAH WENT UPSTAIRS, she found nobody home except Ma and Ella. They were sitting in the kitchen. Sarah knew that both Da and Mick were working, but she’d expected to find Josie or Jimmy there.

  ‘Where’s the lads?’ she asked Ma.

  ‘Gone for a walk by the sea,’ Ma said.

  It wasn’t far to the sea from here. Often in summer the whole family would walk there to take the air or to visit the Doyles, who lived in Ringsend. The Doyles were old friends of the Conways. They’d lived in the same tenement in the bad old days. Mr Doyle had been in the union with Da, and had been in jail with Mick after the Rising. Tommy, their son, was an old pal of Jimmy’s. Like the Conways, the Doyles had come a long way from the slums. In Ringsend, Mr Doyle claimed, the fish threw themselves out of the sea and into the frying pan. The fish-eating and the sea air, he said, was making them all grow gills.

  ‘They could have asked me if I wanted to go,’ Sarah said, disappointed. ‘When did they go?’

  ‘Oh, they’re gone this good hour and a half,’ Ma said. ‘Anyway, you were down in Breens’. They can’t always be running after you, you know.’

  Ma was sitting at the kitchen table, sewing. Sarah sat beside her. She was suddenly bored. She would have liked to walk in Sandymount and watch the tide coming up the long strand.

  Ella was reading that day’s newspaper, tut-tutting at the reports of fighting that were taking up more of the news each day. Her sympathies lay – just – with the Volunteers, but she hated the whole business. She thought they were all mad, really – Tans, Tommies, Volunteers, police, the lot.

  ‘I hope your Da remembers that I told him to buy bacon,’ Ma said. ‘There’s no meat in the house for the dinner tomorrow.’ She sighed. ‘Sometimes,’ she said, ‘I wonder whether men are worth the trouble. Your Da have a head like a sieve when it comes to getting messages. But if there’s no Sunday dinner on the table then we’ll hear all about it.’

  ‘Ah, but men are nice, Ma, all the same,’ Sarah teased.

  Ma gave her a comic look, screwing up her face. ‘They are and they aren’t,’ she said. ‘And whether they are or not, you’re too young to be bothering about them.’

  ‘I met our new neighbour,’ Sarah said.

  Even Ella looked up. ‘Is someone taking the rooms in Ryans’?’ she asked.

  ‘A Mr Moore and a Mr Fowles. Ex-army men. Mr Moore was talking to me and Mrs Breen.’

  ‘And? What’s he like?’

  ‘Mrs Breen seemed very taken with him. He’s a bit too smooth for my liking.’

  Ma and Ella laughed when she said that. ‘Lord,’ Ella said, ‘but they do grow up quicker and quicker, don’t they, Lily? When we were your age,’ she said to Sarah, ‘we’d have been called cheeky for talking like that about grown-ups.’

  ‘I heard Da say one time,’ Sarah said, ‘that soldiers never grow up. He said the army was like a boys’ club with guns.’

  The front door opened and closed. ‘Talk of the devil,’ Ma said. ‘That might be your Da now.’

  But it was Josie. She came into the kitchen looking wild. The three of them stared at her.

  Josie stalked over to the table and glared at her sister. ‘Sarah Conway,’ she said, ‘your Da is going to kill you stone dead. You’ll be lucky if you’re let outside the front door for a year.’

  Sarah goggled at her sister. She was too shocked even to be indignant. ‘I never done anything!’ she said, as much out of habit as anything else. But she honestly didn’t know what Josie was talking about. Then a terrible suspicion formed in her mind. Josie promptly confirmed it.

  ‘Hah!’ Josie said. ‘I suppose carrying guns past a crowd of Tans is nothing, then.’

  ‘Holy mother of God!’ Ella said.

  Ma said nothing. Her face had gone blank and white. She just stared from Josie to Sarah and back.

  ‘Sarah,’ she said finally. ‘Tell me it’s not true.’

  Sarah was immediately defensive. ‘And what if it is? Haven’t I as much right as anyone to help the boys?’

  ‘No,’ Ma said. ‘No, you do not. Apart from anything else you’re only eleven years old.’

  ‘There’s lads hardly older than that throwing grenades in Camden Street.’

  ‘You,’ Ma said, ‘are not a lad, and this is not Camden Street.’

  ‘I can do anything a boy can,’ Sarah insisted. She glared at Josie. ‘Who told you about it anyhow, nosy?’ she demanded. She caught a hint of colour in Josie’s face and knew. ‘It was Simon Hughes,’ she said. ‘You were seeing him tonight. That stuff about a walk was all a cod.’

  ‘It was not a cod,’ Josie said. ‘We did meet Simon, as it happens. And yes, he did tell me about it. He’d never have got you involved in a thing like that. He knows better. And what Da will say to that gurrier Martin Ford I dread to think.’

  ‘Stop,’ Ma said. ‘Will one of you tell me what happened, please? I’m not even sure who to curse.’

  Josie sat down at the table opposite Sarah, who was looking daggers at her. ‘Simon Hughes,’ Josie said, ‘was nearly caught in a raid last Sunday. Him and Martin and that fellow Byrne had spent the night in Phelans’ after being caught out by the curfew. Except there was a raid early on Sunday. It was a botched raid. Byrne and Martin got out, but Simon was stuck in the lanes.’

  ‘But sure we know that,’ Ma said. ‘More or less. What has it to do with Sarah?’

  ‘Martin wanted someone to take Simon’s gun off him. But he’d no time to find anyone – until he met your dear daughter here out in the street.’

  Ma looked in horror at Sarah. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Sarah, no. You
didn’t.’

  Sarah folded her arms and stared back, defiant. She said nothing. She’d never speak to Simon Hughes again. His moustache was rotten, anyhow. He should wax it.

  ‘Simon is after feeling bad about it all week,’ Josie said. ‘He didn’t want to get Sarah into trouble. But he knows too that Da can’t afford to have any of us involved in anything.’

  This was too much for Sarah. She stood up. ‘Can’t afford?’ she demanded. ‘How can we afford to sit by while all this is going on? I want to help the lads fighting. It’s my fight too. It should be everybody’s!’

  ‘Sarah!’ Ma didn’t shout, but she spoke in what Jimmy always called her ‘policeman’s voice’. She didn’t have to shout when she used it.

  ‘Sit down,’ Ma said. Sarah sat down. Ma put an elbow on the table. She rested her chin in her hand. She looked at Sarah in a peculiar way.

  ‘I wish,’ she said, ‘that your Da was here this minute.’

  Her wish was answered almost immediately. They heard the front door opening, then Da came in with Jimmy. Both of them had obviously rushed home. They were panting. Jimmy was carrying a parcel wrapped in butcher’s paper. Sarah assumed it was the bacon.

  Da walked over to the table and stood there without saying a word. Jimmy stayed by the door, looking tense. Da looked hard at Sarah for a long time. He was breathing heavily. Nobody spoke.

  ‘Jimmy came and got me,’ Da said finally. ‘Is it true, what he says?’

  ‘Ask her, why don’t you?’ Sarah said, gesturing angrily at Josie. ‘She seems to know everything.’

  ‘I’m asking you.’

  Sarah was getting a very bad feeling about all this. Everyone seemed very worried, but nobody was actually giving out to her. Even Da seemed frightened rather than anything else. She almost wished that somebody would shout at her.

  ‘Youse are all always at me –’ she began.

  Da cut her short. ‘Is it true?’ he asked again.

  Sarah felt herself starting to go red. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, it is.’ She looked around defiantly. ‘And I’m glad I did it,’ she said. ‘I’m proud.’

  Da leaned on the table with both hands and hung his head. He groaned. ‘Oh God,’ he said. Sarah looked at him, frightened herself now. She’d never seen him like this. Da pulled out a chair and sat beside Josie. He looked at Ma.

  ‘Lil,’ he said, ‘we have to tell her.’

  Ma’s hand was still over her mouth. She looked at Sarah, and then back at Da. ‘I know,’ she said.

  Sarah stared from one of them to the other. Tell her what? She looked at Ella and Josie, but she could read nothing from their faces.

  Da looked into Sarah’s eyes. ‘I want you to listen very carefully,’ he said. ‘Ask what you like, and forget what I tell you. Do you understand?’

  ‘No.’

  Da sighed. ‘What harm,’ he said. ‘How could you? Listen anyhow.’

  8

  DA’S WAR

  ‘THERE’S A WAR GOING ON IN THIS COUNTRY,’ Da said. ‘In fact there’s a couple of wars.’

  ‘A couple?’ Sarah looked confused.

  ‘There’s a war with guns and ambushes and raids. You know that. But there’s another war, a more important one.’

  Sarah couldn’t imagine anything more important. ‘What –?’ she began.

  ‘Look,’ Da said. ‘Wars have to be organised. The parts of an army have to stay in touch with one another. Somebody have to collect information. Somebody have to make sense of it all, and give orders.’

  ‘I know,’ Sarah said. ‘And that somebody is Michael Collins – everyone knows that.’

  Even saying the name of Collins excited her. He was a hero to the people – the young general who directed their war against the whole force of the empire. The British agent who caught him, or the Irishman who betrayed him, would be rich and famous for life; but still Collins travelled around the city without any disguise, simply refusing to be afraid.

  ‘Very well,’ Da said. ‘So how can Michael Collins know what’s going on around the country? The British check the post, they run the telephone system. Men living rough with their guns out in the bogs don’t have telephones or postal addresses anyway.’

  Sarah had never thought about it.

  ‘The Volunteers needs other ways to pass messages and reports and orders,’ Da said. ‘Understand?’

  Now that Sarah did think about it, this made sense. She nodded.

  ‘The British know this intelligence system is there,’ Da said. ‘They know if they smash it they’ll have the war half won, because we’ll have no organisation. Do you follow me?’

  He was looking at her with cold, serious eyes that Sarah hardly recognised. She thought hard. She could hear what he was saying but she had trouble making sense of it all. Da saw this on her face.

  ‘Look,’ he said. ‘Say a Volunteer officer in Cork captures British Army mail. And say there’s a letter in it mentioning raids planned in Dublin. Don’t the officer need to warn someone some way?’

  Sarah nodded.

  ‘Michael Collins,’ Da said, ‘needs all the information he can get. He needs a quick and reliable way to get information and reports from all over the country. He have people in the post office and telephone system, but it’s not secure. So tell me, Sal, what else covers all of Ireland?’

  The question surprised her. Da was looking at her very anxiously. Then the answer came to her like a blinding light.

  ‘The railway!’ she said. ‘The railway covers the country!’ And Kingsbridge station, where Da and Mick worked, covered all of the south, where the heaviest fighting went on.

  ‘Michael Collins have people on the railway,’ Da said. ‘There and other places. Lots of other places. It’s their job to carry messages and other things back and forth. Sarah, I’m one of them people. Mick is another. Our work is very, very important. We can’t get mixed up with the police, or the soldiers, or the Tans. There’s other people to do that business. The Tans would take us in and torture us for information, and we know too much. We can’t afford to have people paying attention to us.’

  Sarah wasn’t sure at all of what she felt. Everyone was looking at her. They’d all known already, of course. They’d all known, and had had to listen to her mad, dangerous talk. She thought of the pained looks she’d caused with her ranting about ‘the struggle’. And all the time Da had been up to his eyes in it!

  ‘It must be very dangerous,’ she said to Da. ‘The stuff you do.’

  ‘It can be,’ Da said. ‘And if we’re caught you’ll all be in trouble.’

  ‘But not like you and Mick.’

  ‘Sarah,’ Da said, almost mildly, ‘if we’re caught then me and Mick will probably be found in a ditch somewhere – shot while trying to escape, with our hands and our feet tied.’

  For all Da’s mildness in saying them, his words made Sarah go cold. She looked around at the others again. They were all still looking at her. Nobody said anything.

  ‘How long has this been going on?’ she asked.

  ‘A year or so,’ Da said.

  Almost from the time he started working on the railways, Sarah thought. From the time he’d suddenly turned against politics. ‘No-one ever told me,’ she said.

  ‘We thought you were too young. We were trying to protect you.’

  ‘And I might have ruined us all!’

  ‘We were wrong not to tell you. I blame myself. You’re a sensible girl.’

  Sarah was starting to understand things that had puzzled her. ‘That’s why you were so annoyed at Martin Ford for coming here last Sunday,’ she said.

  ‘And well I might. I had messages for Mick Collins upstairs. It’s not just the danger to us, remember – there’s names and addresses, all sorts of information that the British would give their eyes for.’

  ‘But why did you let Simon in so?’

  ‘Sure what was I to do – throw him to the Tans? Besides, Simon’s different. Simon and his friend Byrne work for Collins. T
hey were supposed to collect them messages. That’s why they were in Phelans’ the night before.’

  ‘Oh!’ Sarah said, suddenly excited. ‘That’s what you meant when you told him on Sunday to take nothing with him! He was going to ask for the messages, and you stopped him!’

  Da’s face was still pale, but he smiled at her. ‘You’re no fool, young one,’ he said. Then he looked grim again. He tapped the table sternly. ‘Now,’ he said. ‘You know what the story is. I don’t want you to ask any questions – the less you know, the safer you are. And we have to be very careful. The raid on Phelans’ worried me. I only thank God it was done so bad.’

  He turned to look around the room at the others. ‘I’ve been meaning to say this to all of you,’ he said. ‘I’m starting to think we’re being watched. It’s only a feeling, mind. I’ve seen nothing. But I learned to trust feelings like that when I was in the trenches. It’s like an extra sense that a lot of men got – them that lived long enough. A sense for danger. It kept me alive more than once out in France.’

  The five of them were looking at him now. Da never talked about his time in the trenches. He’d seen things there, he said one time, that he didn’t even want to think of, never mind talk about.

  ‘I want all of you to keep your eyes and ears open,’ he said. ‘And your mouths shut. Watch out for anyone asking questions about us, even innocent ones. And I don’t mean just strangers. I mean anyone.’

  ‘You don’t include the Breens in that, I hope,’ Ma said.

  Da shook his head. ‘I’m sure,’ he said, ‘that them people could hang me if they wanted to. These days one word in the wrong place could do exactly that. The Breens must know there’s something odd going on around here, but they don’t want to know what it is. I mean strangers especially – people who want to know too much about us, or even people who know more about us than they should.’

  Sarah gasped. Da looked at her.

  ‘Mr Moore!’ Sarah said. ‘You’re after reminding me!’

  Quickly she told Da about the newcomers next door. ‘It was only a small thing,’ she said, ‘but I don’t understand why he talked about a family when he’d never met us.’