A Winter of Spies

by Gerard Whelan

  Moore shrugged. ‘I’m a servant of the Crown,’ he said. ‘One does what is necessary.’ He raised his glass and drained the whiskey from it. ‘I suppose,’ he said casually, ‘that I’m a dead man.’

  ‘What do you think?’ Collins said. ‘This is a war, and you are a spy.’

  ‘War?’ Moore said scornfully. ‘You people don’t know what war is! You ask James here – he’s seen real war. This is a little local skirmish, a police action.’

  ‘Tell that,’ Collins said, ‘to the maimed. Tell it to the mothers who’ve watched your men kill their children.’

  ‘Don’t our soldiers have mothers, then? Even Black and Tans have parents, Mr Collins.’

  ‘But we don’t raid their homes in the middle of the night. We don’t murder a father or a young brother because the man we want isn’t there. We don’t burn the roof over their heads.’

  Moore was impatient. He shrugged. ‘Please,’ he said. ‘What you’re describing is the history of the human race. You know we could do far worse. It might be kinder in the long run if we did. Concentration camps worked well enough in South Africa.’

  ‘Unless you were imprisoned in one. But the world is watching you closely in Ireland, Mr Moore. And your masters are afraid of that. They don’t want their deeds to be seen. That’s a sure sign that those deeds are shameful.’

  The word ‘shameful’ seemed to sting Moore. ‘I had four brothers,’ he said. ‘They all died in the Great War. Eight cousins – all gone the same way except one who’s still in a madhouse. Dozens of friends. Hundreds of acquaintances. But we were army people, the officer class. The backbone of the empire. We did what needed to be done, and suffered what had to be suffered. And we didn’t whinge. And do you know why? Because it was our place. That’s what’s happening with you Irish, Mr Collins, you and the Indians and the Egyptians and the rest: you’re forgetting your place.’

  The very phrase made Sarah angry. Forgetting their place, indeed! But Michael Collins actually smiled.

  ‘On the contrary, Mr Moore,’ he said. ‘I think, in a small way, we’re starting to remember it.’

  He gave a little call. Martin Ford and Simon Hughes came into the kitchen from the back room. Moore looked at them scornfully.

  ‘A fine army you have,’ he said to Collins. ‘Murderers all.’

  ‘Murderers?’ Collins said. ‘That always puzzles me, you know. Why is it murder when we do it, and not when you do it?’

  Moore gave a contemptuous smile. ‘Because,’ he said, ‘we are the law.’

  ‘And that makes it all right, does it? The betrayals, the killings, the burnings?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Collins, it does make it all right. We are working for the greater good.’

  Sarah thought of young Annie O’Neill, shot in a gateway as she stood minding her own business.

  ‘What about Annie O’Neill?’ she burst out in spite of herself. ‘How did her dying help the greater good?’

  Moore looked at her as though seeing her for the first time. ‘Who?’ he said.

  And that was precisely the problem, Sarah realised. The Annie O’Neills of this world meant nothing to a man like Moore. To himself he was the backbone of the empire, however low his actions. The Annie O’Neills – and the Sarah Conways too – were just dirt. Her own father was just dirt to the Rory Moores of the world. A piece of dirt might save your life, but that didn’t mean that you owed it anything. It was something to be ignored, used or discarded as the occasion arose. It had nothing to do with being British or Irish or anything else. It had to do with people who could think of other people as dirt. And there were people like that everywhere.

  ‘Excuse me, gents,’ Martin Ford said. ‘But it’s time to go. I’ll need your gun, Mr Moore.’

  Moore looked at this other piece of dirt. ‘I don’t carry a gun when I’m at home,’ he said haughtily.

  Martin Ford gave a little sigh. ‘You’re not at home now, Mr Moore,’ he said almost gently. ‘You’re not at home at all.’

  Moore stood up and looked at Michael Collins. ‘At least we’ll get your man Byrne,’ he said. ‘Or is poor young Fowles to be murdered too?’

  ‘Oh no,’ Collins said. ‘That would be wasteful.’ He gave a thin smile. ‘Hugh Byrne,’ he said, ‘left the city this morning.’

  ‘Hugh?’ Moore said. He stared at Da. ‘You told Fowles that his name was Christopher,’ he said.

  Collins looked towards the doorway through which the others had come. ‘Eddie?’ he said.

  The slim figure of the man Sarah knew as Fowles appeared in the doorway. He caught Sarah’s eye. ‘Hello again,’ he said.

  If Sarah was shocked then Rory Moore was staggered. His calm disappeared. He seemed about to fall over, and caught the edge of the table to support himself. Michael Collins looked at him and smiled.

  ‘He’s one of yours,’ Moore whispered disbelievingly. ‘You knew from the start!’

  ‘He’s one of mine,’ Collins said. ‘And ye brought him up to Dublin to help your Intelligence Department.’ He shook his head and gave a little laugh. ‘How you people hold on to an empire,’ he said, ‘is a constant wonder to me.’

  Moore recovered. He looked around the room, and his eyes were filled with disgust and hate. ‘Come on,’ he snapped at Martin Ford. ‘Let’s get this over with.’

  Ford nodded to Simon. They led Moore out. He didn’t look at anyone, or say any goodbyes. He’d entered the house in excitement; he left it as a bitter and a beaten man.

  Fowles followed the other three out. He didn’t look back. A motor car started up outside. In the kitchen there was silence. Da was still looking at the table and his hand was still bleeding. He spoke for the first time.

  ‘If he’d only left us alone,’ he said, ‘none of this would have happened.’

  ‘It wouldn’t have happened to you,’ Collins said. ‘But it would have happened to someone else. As for what’s happening to Moore, that would have happened sooner or later anyway. Sooner, if that’s any comfort to you.’

  He poured a drink into Moore’s empty glass and sipped it.

  ‘Fowles and Moore are going to raid the address you gave,’ he said. ‘There’ll be a shoot-out. Captain Moore will be fatally injured. Fowles will report to his superiors that the gunman, Christopher Byrne, got away. You’d discovered his whereabouts by accident. You’re not involved with us, and you were glad to give information to save your skin. Moore wasn’t reporting on this to his bosses. He wanted the glory of catching me himself. And the reward, of course.’

  He drained the glass and put it on the table.

  ‘It’s over, James,’ he said.

  At last Da raised his eyes from the table. He looked at Collins.

  ‘Is it, Mick?’ he said. ‘There’s more where he came from.’

  ‘He’s not the first. No doubt he won’t be the last. But we have plans for their Intelligence section.’

  Sarah was shocked to see tears in Da’s eyes. ‘I knew that man, Mick,’ he said. ‘He was never a friend, but I knew him. I risked my life with him many a time, and aye, I risked my life for him that one time. We were in the trenches together. We watched our men die in ways that would make you sick just to hear about. I thought something better would come of that war. I thought men would be so disgusted by it that something better would have to come. But the dirt just gets dirtier, Mick, and the innocent gets hurted like they never did in the trenches. At least there it was soldier to soldier. Moore made me choose between him and my family. That’s not a choice.’

  ‘No,’ Collins said. ‘It’s not. You did what he made you do, no more.’

  ‘Then why do I feel so dirty?’

  Collins put his hat on. His face was very serious. ‘I’ve no answer to that, James,’ he said. ‘Except to say that it speaks well of you. Do you think Moore would feel dirty after he’d destroyed you?’

  ‘No,’ Da said. ‘I don’t.’ But he didn’t sound like that made him feel any better.

  Collins looked
at them both. Da looked back down at the table.

  ‘Look after your father,’ Collins said gently to Sarah. ‘He’s a good man.’ Then he turned and walked out.

  25

  SECRET SINS

  SARAH AND DA SAT IN SILENCE. Da had his elbows on the table and his head in his hands. Sarah looked around the ruined room. Her eyes kept going back to the mantelpiece, to the smashed clock. Ma would be devastated. The clock had been in her family for generations. Sarah doubted that it would ever work again.

  She looked at her Da. She wanted to say something to comfort him, but she could think of no words for how she felt. He’d led a man to his death. To do it he’d lied to her, although that didn’t seem important any more. And what would have happened if he’d let her in on his secret? She thought of her time in Herbert Park with Moore. If she’d known the truth, could she have kept it from him? She couldn’t, she was sure of that. He’d have suspected her in some way.

  Sarah knew that Moore had left her house to die. She thought of his grin as he drove in the car to Herbert Park, his smooth hands and waxed moustache. She realised that she could find in her heart no personal regret for Rory Moore. He had made this situation, and he’d made it to betray Da. He’d been behind Mick’s arrest and beating. No doubt he’d been behind the raid on Keane’s. He would kill any of them, and kill in the certainty that he was right. There were people like that on the Irish side too, but her Da wasn’t one of them. It was Da she felt sympathy for.

  Somebody came slowly into the hall. It was her uncle Mick, and Jimmy was with him. Da looked up. Mick came over and sat down. The swelling on his face was slowly going down and he could talk almost normally now. ‘Is it done?’ he asked.

  ‘It will be by now.’

  ‘I’m going to check my books,’ Jimmy said. He ran upstairs. Mick sat looking at Da.

  ‘How do you feel?’ he asked.

  ‘Crocked,’ Da said. ‘Broke up inside.’

  ‘Did they beat you?’

  ‘Just a few taps.’ He held up his bleeding hand. ‘I done this meself.’

  ‘Ah sure,’ Mick said, ‘everyone else was belting us anyhow. Why should we miss all the fun?’

  Da gave a little laugh. ‘How are you doing, Mick?’ he asked.

  Mick too gave a laugh, then he winced. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I feel broke up inside too, but then my ribs is cracked.’

  ‘Moore was in on that beating today, you know,’ Da said. ‘Fowles told me – Fowles or Murray, or whatever his name is. This whole thing is so full of lies I’m not even sure what my own name is anymore. I don’t know anything for sure.’

  Mick heard the bitterness in his voice. ‘Your name,’ Mick said, ‘is James Conway. You’re the husband of my sister, and the father of three fine kids. You’re a soldier risking everything for your country, so that them kids can grow up in freedom. What more do you need to know?’

  Jimmy came back downstairs. He looked relieved. ‘There’s books all over the floor,’ he said, ‘but none damaged.’

  Then he saw Ma’s clock and stood staring at it – remembering, Sarah supposed, other times.

  ‘The poor clock,’ Jimmy said. ‘Ma will never get over it.’

  ‘Jimmy,’ Sarah said quietly, ‘I think Da is as broke up as the clock.’

  Jimmy looked at Da.

  ‘I put a man on the spot tonight, Jim,’ Da said. ‘It had to be done, but it was me that done it. I set him up, and I sent him out to die.’

  Jimmy thought about that. ‘Da,’ he said, ‘if you did that with a million men then you’d be acting like a general in the war.’

  For the first time all evening Da gave a real smile. ‘You have a point,’ he said. Then the smile went. He shook his head. ‘I just don’t know.’

  Mick had been watching him closely. ‘James,’ he said, ‘I want to tell you something. I don’t know if it will help, but I want to tell you anyway. You too, Jimmy.’ He looked at Sarah. ‘And it’s time you heard it too, Sal. Jimmy, sit down here.’

  Jimmy upended another chair and brought it to the table.

  ‘I was in the College of Surgeons in the Rising,’ Mick said. ‘Youse know that much already. I was firing across Stephen’s Green at the soldiers in the Shelbourne Hotel, but I never saw any soldiers all the time I was shooting. Maybe I shot some, maybe I didn’t – I’ll never know.’

  Da nodded. ‘That’s the way of it most of the time,’ he said.

  ‘I had one of them big Mauser rifles,’ Mick said. ‘They’d a kick like a mule in them when you fired them. They’d make this huge bang and a big cloud of filthy black smoke would come out of them. It was like shooting through a smoke screen.’

  ‘I saw that,’ Jimmy said. ‘The clouds of black smoke from the German rifles hanging in front of the college.’

  ‘Aye,’ Mick said. ‘I know you saw it.’ He picked up the bottle of whiskey and seemed to consider pouring a drink. Then he put the bottle down.

  ‘What you don’t know, Jimmy,’ he said, ‘is that I saw you too. And I saw Charlie Fox grabbing you.’

  Jimmy stared at him. So did Da. They seemed to hear something in Mick’s words that Sarah missed.

  ‘I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw you,’ Mick continued. ‘Then Charlie grabbed you and shook you like a rag. You got free of him, but he caught you again. I saw him drawing back his fist to hit you. I could see he was mad with drink.’

  He paused. Nobody said anything. Mick licked his swollen lips. Sarah remembered how Moore had licked his lips too, sitting in that same chair less than half an hour ago.

  ‘I could see,’ Mick said slowly, ‘that he was going to hit you with his full strength. I thought he was going to kill you.’

  He stopped again. Everyone was still staring at him, but Mick didn’t meet their eyes. He looked instead at the dead clock on the mantelpiece.

  ‘I’d a gun in me hands,’ he said. ‘I knew I had only one chance. Charlie held you away from him so as to hit you. I shot him.’

  He looked at Jimmy. ‘I killed Charlie Fox,’ he said. ‘I hated the man, and he was going to hurt you, and he’d already made Ella’s life a misery. But when all is said and done he was only a man, only a drunken eejit. He was more to be pitied nor anything else. And I killed him, Jimmy. I killed him stone dead.’

  ‘You probably saved my life,’ Jimmy said.

  ‘Oh aye, I think I did. It’s the one shot I fired in the Rising that I’m certain did some good. But I killed my own brother-in-law, Jimmy.’

  He turned to look at Da. ‘I’ve lived with that for five years, James,’ he said. ‘It was wrong, what I done. But it was right, too. It was the two things at the same time. Real life is a lot of things, but simple isn’t one of them.’

  Mick sat back in his chair. ‘Moore threatened more than one of the family,’ he said. ‘He threatened all of us and everything we believe in. And he wouldn’t have let up till somebody stopped him.’

  Da looked in Mick’s eyes. Then he reached out and laid his bleeding hand on Mick’s where it lay on the table. Both of them looked at each other, saying nothing.

  ‘I’d be grateful,’ Mick said, ‘if none of youse says this to my sisters. I don’t know what they’d think of me.’

  ‘They’d think you were a good man,’ said a low voice from the doorway. Ella and Ma stood there, their shawls around them, their arms linked. Mick’s still-swollen face grew red.

  ‘Lily,’ he said. ‘Ella …’

  ‘Hush, Mick,’ Ella said. ‘I think we’ve all had enough excitement for the one night.’

  ‘We came up to get youse,’ Ma said. ‘There’s tea ready downstairs. Mrs Breen have a cake and a few sandwiches. It’s supper time.’

  ‘A family supper,’ Ella said. ‘Family and friends.’

  Mick looked back at Da. Da looked at his wife.

  ‘We’ll stay downstairs tonight,’ Ma said. ‘And tomorrow we’ll come up and fix this place up. Come on now, the lot of you.’

  ‘Lil,’ Da sai
d. ‘Your clock.’

  Ma looked at the dead clock. For a moment she paled, but then she made a face.

  ‘Sure it’s only an ould clock,’ she said, ‘when all is said and done. The world is full of clocks. Besides, look at your hand. Come down and I’ll wash it. Human hands is harder to replace.’

  Slowly they all stood up. Ma and Ella led the way down the front steps. Behind them all Sarah lingered, looking at the ruins of her home. Her toy baby-carriage lay upended in the hall. She pulled it up and found Eileen, the doll, buried under her torn blanket. Sarah picked Eileen up and hugged her tight. The adult world was a complicated place. She’d join it soon enough. For the moment she’d stick to Eileen, who was only as complicated as you wanted her to be.

  The adults had reached the bottom of the steps. Jimmy looked back to see if Sarah was coming. He smiled when he saw her holding the doll. ‘The little rebel mammy,’ he said.

  ‘Shut your face, you,’ Sarah said. But she smiled as she said it.

  She took one last look in at the mess in the hall. Then she closed the front door behind her, and followed her family down. Tomorrow they’d clear up the house and start living again. A family clearing up a mess and starting over – that was history for you.

  AFTERWORD

  At nine o’clock on the mild morning of the following Sunday, as church bells around the city rang the hour, eight groups of Collins’s men struck at a number of addresses in Dublin. Fourteen men were assassinated, and British Intelligence operations in Dublin came to a sudden halt. The name of the man known as Rory Moore had originally been on the list of targets, but he had advanced the date of his own death by several days.

  That same afternoon a company of Black and Tans opened fire on a crowd watching a football match in Croke Park in Dublin. Between the shooting and the panicked stampede of spectators, twelve people died. More than sixty were injured. It was not, the authorities said, a reprisal – the Tans had come under fire from the crowd.