by Iris Murdoch
‘I’m sorry to go, Barney, and I’m specially sorry to leave you. I’ll miss you. But it’ll do me good to get out of Ireland. With the war and so on, Ireland is a bit of a hole. And I have been in such a stupid mood lately. I won’t stay more than a minute now. I see you’re working. Is it Saint Brigid?’
Frances picked up a sheet of paper from the table.
‘Wait, not that!’ Too late Barney jumped. She was already reading the letter.
There was a moment’s silence as she read it, put it down, then rested her head in her hand with an almost inaudible ‘Oh’.
After another moment she said in a tired, spiritless voice, ‘How did you know this, Barney?’
Interpreting her tone he said quickly, ‘So you know?’
‘Yes.’
‘How did you find out?’
‘First tell me how you did?’
‘I was there last night, at Rathblane. I went to see Millie and found—’
‘Pat and Andrew. Yes. You didn’t see my father. He was there too. There was quite a gathering. Just like comic opera.’
‘Christopher—so he knows—’
‘Yes, and he told me this morning.’
‘And then you broke things off with Andrew.’
‘No, no. I’d refused Andrew days ago, I mean we’d decided not to marry. That was nothing to do with Millie. Millie’s not a monster. She didn’t grab Andrew until after I’d dropped him. And he still thinks no one knows about his little adventure.’
Barney held his head. It was complicated. But was it not now all right, utterly all right? Christopher knew, and Millie was innocent. Well, not quite but almost. So everything would be all right. He would not have to lose Millie after all. But what was he saying?
Frances’ voice interrupted him. ‘I’m reading the other letter now. I like the bit about your tragic duty. You must have enjoyed writing that. Which one were you going to send?’
Barney suddenly became aware of a different Frances, a Frances with a new vocabulary, a Frances who could talk in a cynical way, who could assess and sentence him. He felt hurt, then appallingly guilty. His instinct had been right. One could not so intrude one’s abominable knowledge. He deserved to be hated for what he knew.
‘Frances, darling, I was not going to send either of those letters, honest. It would have been utterly wrong and I’d decided not to. I was just going to tear them up.’
‘Oh.’ She did not believe him.
Barney jerked himself about, jostling the table and spilling the greater part of the Memoir on to the floor. He trampled the pages underfoot. He felt frantic. He was not going to get the credit for anything with anybody. And now she would never forgive him simply for knowing. ‘Frances, I swear I was not going to send those letters. I know I ought never to have written them—’
‘Don’t shout, Barney. It doesn’t matter, I knew anyway, it doesn’t matter. I really must go now. I’ve got so much to do.’
‘When are you going?’
‘Tuesday or Wednesday.’
‘So you’ll be on the mail boat after all. Frances, you do believe me—?’
‘Yes, yes, of course.’
There was a sudden loud bang on the door and they both jumped. The door swung wide open to reveal the large form of Pat Dumay.
‘I must be off,’ said Frances. She whipped her things together and was gone, fading thinly away under Pat’s right arm.
Barney stared at where she had been, and then formed the face of Pat, huge, excited, grinning. ‘What is it, Pat?’
‘Sit down. I want to ask you two questions.’
Barney sat by the table and Pat closed the door carefully and sat beside him, placing his large hand on Barney’s shoulder.
Barney sat open-mouthed staring up at his stepson. He felt he was being apprehended for some fault. But the pressure of the hand was affectionate. Pat seemed to be in a state of anxious rapture. His left hand, which was bandaged, kneaded Barney’s shoulder with a rhythmic clutch and caress, while he pressed his other hand flat upon the table as if he were about to vault. He leant over his stepfather.
‘Listen now. You know the plan that you heard of yesterday? Well, we are going to carry it out tomorrow.’
‘You mean you’re going to fight after all, the Volunteers, just like—?’
‘Yes. It’s for tomorrow. I want to ask you first, do you want to join us, or would you rather be left out? No one will think the worse of you.’
‘I’ll come with you of course,’ said Barney.
There was silence between them for a moment. Then Pat released him and stood up. ‘You mean you’re willing to fight?’
‘Yes.’
Pat stared at him doubtfully. Then he gave a grunt which might have been a sigh or a laugh. ‘Good for you.’
‘When is it to be tomorrow?’
‘Twelve noon at the first stroke of the angelus. I’ll give you full instructions.’
‘What was the other thing you wanted to ask me?’
‘It doesn’t arise now. It was something about Cathal. But it would only have come up if you’d said no to the first question. I’m afraid I thought that you would. I apologize.’
‘Don’t mention it,’ said Barney. ‘By the way, you’ll have to issue me with another rifle.’
When Pat was gone, Barney stood beside his cluttered table and stared at the powdery cottage gardens deep in the old wallpaper. He was extremely frightened. He had too, in a way that was not entirely disagreeable, a sense of being finally cornered. Whatever the state of his soul might be, his old existence was over, a life beyond his own had taken charge of him.
Would he have sent those letters to Frances in the end? Would he really have managed to give up Millie? He would get no credit. He was justly judged. Or rather it did not much matter now how he was judged. That was not so very important after all.
He reached out for the two letters and took them and tore them into long strips. Then he picked up the crumpled sheets of the Memoir from the floor and began systematically to tear each sheet into small pieces.
Chapter Twenty-two
PAT DUMAY began to mount the dark stairs to the attic. A lamp placed on the floor at the top cast thick shadows down beneath each stair and illuminated the figure of a man in Volunteer uniform who had just come to attention. Pat swayed with fatigue. He had been unceasingly active since the news had reached him on Sunday afternoon that the rebellion was to take place after all. Now it was already after midnight, it was already Easter Monday morning.
On Sunday morning MacNeill’s countermanding order had appeared in the Sunday Independent. At the same time, Pearse, Connolly, MacDonagh and all the chief militants came together for a meeting at Liberty Hall. At this meeting it was decided that in spite of MacNeill they must act. The rising was fixed again for twelve noon on Monday. Couriers were sent out to all parts of Ireland with the new order.
They all knew, and Pat knew perfectly well, that MacNeill’s action had damaged the project perhaps irrevocably. The men, who had been keyed up, had relaxed. Some of them had gone away. A few had even destroyed their uniforms in disgust. There was an atmosphere of detente and disappointment and irresponsibility. Monday was the day of the Fairyhouse races, the Irish Grand National. Even if the messengers could, in time, reach every part of the organization, would the order be obeyed? Faint-hearts would find an excuse in the obvious confusion of the leadership. The first plan had administered a fright. Those who had learnt with relief of its cancellation would be in no mood to start again. They would say that they knew not whom to believe and they would go off to the races.
On Sunday Pearse and Connolly could have been sure of their numbers. On Monday it was anybody’s guess how many men would turn up. This meant that a lot of quite new arrangements had to be made in a hurry, and crucial projects had to be abandoned: such as the cutting of all telephone contact with England, since there would now not be enough men to occupy the Dublin telephone exchange. An elaborate plan, the product
of weeks and months of work, had to be scrapped in favour of a congeries of last-minute improvisations.
However, it was necessary to fight. The English might be slow-witted, but they were capable of reflection upon the events in Kerry; and since so many people in Dublin now knew what had been intended an informer would soon find his way to the Castle. It was surprising that he had not already done so. Then the English would have to act, they would have to disarm the whole movement: and the Irish would have the choice of firing a few disorganized shots or submitting tamely. These were compelling reasons for fighting. But they were haunted by another reason which nobody mentioned. History now required of them that they should shed their blood. They had planned and schemed and hoped for so long, and set going a train of events which now seemed to have a momentum of its own. On the morning of Sunday, April the twenty-third, at Liberty Hall they could, in some quite ordinary sense of could, have decided otherwise. But everyone present felt their decision to be inevitable.
Pat reached the top of the stairs and the uniformed man saluted.
‘How is my prisoner?’
‘All safe, sir.’
‘You may go now.’
The guard unlocked the door and stepped aside and Pat entered the room. The prisoner was Cathal.
Pat had decided to spend the night of Sunday to Monday at Blessington Street. This had been made possible by the timely departure of his mother to the country. Because of anxiety about Pat she had been putting off a visit to an ailing elderly cousin. Now her mind had been entirely set at rest. Pat thought that what had impressed his mother most was reading MacNeill’s notice in the Sunday Independent. After a Sunday paper had said that all was well Kathleen was entirely reassured. Her joy took form immediately as an extreme concern for her ailing cousin and she left Dublin by train after mass on Sunday.
Late on Sunday afternoon Pat had made the decision to detain Cathal. He knew that this was only a temporary solution, but he did not want a repetition of Saturday’s drama. He had of course not told Cathal that the rebellion was going to take place after all, but Cathal might at any moment find this out and decide to hide himself from his brother. Hurrying back from the other end of Dublin, Pat was extremely relieved to find the boy in the house and decoyed him upstairs and locked him in an attic, setting one of his own men there to guard him. He informed Cathal briefly about the renewed plan and told him that he would let him know later what his own part in it might be. Pat said this out of prudence so that Cathal might not be driven into a frenzy and attempt to climb out of the window. Pat was in fact determined that Cathal should have no part at all in the coming events.
But how on earth was he to bring this about? Pat was now more certain than ever that if his brother were exposed to danger he himself would become totally ineffective. He realized, realized it only perhaps now on Sunday with absolute clarity, that Cathal was as important to him as Ireland: was conceivably more important. When he knew this he was appalled. If this were so then anything might happen, anything might be decided. Only then slowly he moved again in automatic performance of his tasks, for he knew that there was something else which would always weigh down the balance on the side of Ireland, and that was his own honour. He could not conceivably in any last or smallest particular fail the cause to which he was engaged. But he could not put it to himself that he must be ready to sacrifice Cathal. If anything happened to Cathal he would become incapable, blind, a mad man. He had got to save Cathal, not only because of Cathal but because of Ireland. But how?
When he had seen this problem, as of course he had seen it, from further back, it had seemed to Pat that he would manage either by arranging for his brother to be out of Ireland at the crucial moment, or else by somehow incarcerating him. Pat had had too short a warning to adopt the former plan: he now saw at the last moment the difficulties of the latter. It was not realistic to imagine that Cathal could simply be imprisoned until the rising was either successful or was crushed. This might take weeks, months. All that could possibly be achieved would be to keep him prisoner until the fighting had started and hope that it would then be physically impossible for him to reach any of the places where the rebels were. If he could prevent Cathal from marching with Connolly’s men he would have done all that he could. But even this was difficult since, and Pat did not fully understand this until Sunday night, it was not just a matter of ropes or handcuffs or a locked door. Cathal would have to be guarded.
Cathal would have to be guarded or else he would do himself some serious damage. The problem of imprisoning him was like the problem of restraining, without an adequate cage, a strong and desperate animal. Obviously a locked door was not enough; and it is not so very simple to tie someone up in such a way that he cannot escape and also cannot hurt himself seriously in trying to. If Pat was to march away on Monday morning without the most crippling anxiety he must find somebody to stay with Cathal: but who? It was after all unfortunate that his mother had gone away and could not now be reached. He could not honourably spare one of his own soldiers for this odd entirely personal task. He had thought first of his stepfather. But when Barney had so simply and so unexpectedly elected to fight, Pat, taken aback, had felt unable to deny him what was, after all, every Irishman’s right. To keep his stepfather well out of his own way he had arranged for him to join the contingent at Boland’s Mill, and Barney had already gone to spend the night with a comrade in the vicinity. Pat telephoned Christopher several times but got no reply. He even thought of Millie, but she was presumably still at Rathblane, which was not on the telephone. He continued with his duties, acting as courier between Dawson Street and Liberty Hall, without solving the problem. Would it be all right just to tie Cathal up and lock the door? He visited the store room at Dawson Street and came away with a pair of handcuffs. The problem obsessed and paralysed him; and now late at night and almost unconscious with tiredness he had still not resolved it.
There was a small lamp burning inside the room. Cathal was huddled on the bed in a rather unnatural position and did not stir when Pat came in. He seemed to have been sitting thus for a long time staring at the door.
Pat was now in full uniform. He had left his rifle and knapsack downstairs but was wearing his bandolier and revolver. The handcuffs were in his pocket. He closed the door and sat down on the floor, leaning against it.
The attic had once been a maid’s bedroom in the days when there were maids at the house in Blessington Street, and it still contained an iron bedstead and mattress, a washstand and an upright chair and a coloured picture representing the Sacred Heart. The little lamp, which was on the floor, showed the underside of innumerable cobwebs upon the yellow stained walls. Close pattering rain enclosed the room, the roof, the window, made of rain. Pat looked at the picture and thought, but the heart is not there in the middle of the body, it is on the left. Then he recalled someone saying that in fact it was really in the middle though it was popularly said to be on the left. What would it be like to be shot in the heart? He realized that on sitting down he had almost fallen asleep and that Cathal had said something.
‘What did you say, Cathal?’
‘I said what are you going to do with me?’
What, what, what? Pat saw from the outline of Cathal’s shadow on the wall that the boy was trembling. He could not see his face clearly through the rain and the sleep.
‘That mattress must be damp,’ said Pat. ‘You shouldn’t be sitting on it.’ He simply must not fall asleep. He got up, half staggering, opened the door, transferred the key to the inside, locked the door and put the key in his pocket. He sagged down again to the floor.
‘What are you going to do?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Pat. ‘You’re a problem. Let’s start at the beginning.’ He felt that there was some sort of logic here, some sort of consequential procedure which if he could go through it step by step he might keep awake and reach a conclusion with independent authority. ‘Logic,’ he said aloud.
‘What?’
‘I said logic. Listen. Let’s start at the beginning. I don’t want you to take part in this business, you’re too young.’
‘You can skip that bit,’ said Cathal. He began to uncurl his legs which were obviously very stiff. He grimaced and rubbed his ankles and then knelt up on the mattress. ‘You’re right about the damp.’
‘You’re too young,’ said Pat, ‘and you must simply obey me and promise me that you’ll stay at home tomorrow and not put yourself in danger. This is a job for professionals. You’re not trained and you would only be a hindrance. Someone would have to look after you and you would do harm and not good to the cause. I know this is very hard, but you must be old enough and brave enough to understand it.’
‘I’m old enough and brave enough to fight,’ said Cathal. ‘You may still treat me as a child, but other people don’t. And I can use a rifle, one of the I.C.A. fellows taught me. And—’
