by John Masters
Sean, close in front of her, threw over his shoulder, ‘There’s Clare Island, out in the bay, see? Five miles from shore … The U-boats used to lie up in the lee there, and we’d be fishing on the island, with our boats pulled up and out of sight in the rocks. Then we’d row out to them … spend half an hour on board, down inside … they had some good gin, those German skippers … schnapps, they called it.’
They paused at the poor fields marking the edge of Clew Bay. Dry stone walls divided the little patches of cultivation one from another; and another wall ran along the top of the low cliffs, leaving room for a rough stony track, twenty feet wide, for ox carts and jaunting cars.
Eamonn said, ‘The constables patrol this regularly. They might be on their way now, but we’d know because … see that little bothy up there? My uncle lives there and he has nothing better to do than work in the cabbage patch out front, and if he sees anything along the coast, he hangs a length of peat over the wall to dry … There’s no peat there now, so … The constables are from Westport. They use bicycles, for they’ve a powerful long stretch to cover from outside Westport to Killary Harbour.’
‘Why do they patrol at all, when the war’s over?’
Sean chuckled, ‘Smuggling, Lady … trawlers up from France with perfumes and brandy and silk stockings, though precious few of the colleens round here would be seen with them – the marks of a whoor, they think … Right after the armistice they did catch some arms … German machine-guns for the Volunteers that had been transferred to a Dutch ship and no one really knew what to do … so the RIC got ’em …’
Margaret stood, rubbing her cheek in thought, staring out over the heaving sea. It had been blowing hard from the west for two days and the sea was a tumble of grey-green water and white foam under low, hurrying clouds. She said, ‘Is there any way we could get more than two?’
It was Eamonn’s turn to scratch his head – ‘Well … we’ve never seen more’n just the pair … there’s ten of ’em in the barracks at Westport, that do this patrol, the same pair for a week at a time, as far as I can make out … and once a week they have to do it twice in the day – they choose their own day for that.’
‘What about today?’
‘They’ve been round once … can’t say whether they might make today the day for the second patrol. It’s getting late.’
Margaret said, ‘Suppose we let them learn that some more arms are coming in, one day … or that I am to attend a Volunteer meeting.’
Eamonn nodded – ‘If they thought you were going to be there, Lady, they’d bring up a battalion.’
‘No,’ Margaret said. ‘They’d want to keep all the glory for themselves. Especially if the information reached them late enough so that they couldn’t get reinforcements. If it were a question of just getting together whatever men they have on the spot and rushing out there, how many would it be?’
Sean said, ‘A sergeant and ten.’
‘And we’re seven, with me.’
‘You mustn’t come out, Lady.’
‘I’m coming, and I shall be in command,’ she said briefly. ‘Now, what night?’
‘We could do it the second night from now,’ Sean said. ‘But how do we let the sergeant know?’
‘Don’t they have any spies in town?’ she asked. ‘You must know who they are.’
Sean nodded – ‘We know two for sure.’
‘But they don’t know you know?’
Both men shook their heads.
‘Tell one, then, under oath of secrecy, that …’
It was a dark night, the moon hidden by clouds, rain falling intermittently in warm, slashing showers from the invisible sea – invisible, but fully known to the nostrils from the reek of the piled seaweed along the rocks, the smell of tar from fishing boats hauled up above the high-tide mark along the strand …
Margaret waited with the six Volunteers from Westport. They’d be outnumbered if the whole eleven of the RIC came, but she didn’t think they would. The sergeant would have to leave at least one to answer the telephone and take urgent messages; and probably another to keep him company – and one was ill with flu. So she would probably face eight – almost equal numbers; but the Volunteers were in position and they had two Lewis guns, which had spent the last six months buried under floorboards in cottages in Westport, waiting for just such a night as this; and two men, both ex-Lewis gunners with Irish regiments on the Western Front, who knew how to use them.
She waited, tranquilly. Peace had returned to her soul since she came to Westport, and the sea. Dublin was not a good place for a revolutionary; one thought too much, worried too much; there were libraries and books and courts and churches everywhere to confuse one’s directions. As soon as she arrived here she felt that the wind had blown the cobwebs out of her mind; and all she saw was the land, the bare rock and tilled earth and purple heather of Ireland … and on that harsh soil, against that unforgiving sea, the people bent, struggling … only the distant sound of a church bell, borne down on the wind from Killary Harbour, disturbed her. As to Christopher – she would not see him, or send any message. He was irrelevant.
Sean, beside her, said, ‘They’ll have left the barracks by now … Sergeant Doyle’s no fool. He’ll come on cautiously … and from both directions.’
Margaret said, ‘We’re ready for them, however they come. Go round and remind them all again that when I fire the Very light, they are to disperse, as planned … it doesn’t matter if we haven’t killed them all … though I think we will … And Sergeant Doyle will surely have telephoned for reinforcements as soon as he got the information … so more may be coming, later, and our men have to be reminded to look out for them.’
‘They’ve all been told,’ Sean said.
‘People forget things when they’re excited,’ Margaret said. ‘Particularly Irishmen.’
Sean disappeared silently into the darkness. The clouds seemed to be dispersing, and some stars appearing, shedding a faint light over the still land and the heaving sea. Margaret sighed contentedly; this was better; her men, hidden among the rock walls, invisible against their background, would have a little light to aim by.
A Lewis gunner, ensconced beside her in the corner of a wall, big rocks hiding them from directly in front, muttered, ‘Someone coming, Lady.’
‘How many?’ she whispered.
‘One,’ he said, ‘… if he’s got a gun he’s holding it low … can’t see it against the stars … he’s gone.’
‘Wait, wait,’ she whispered. ‘He’s a scout …’
A heavy explosion rocked the air and seemed to shudder in the ground immediately beneath her where she knelt by the wall. The Lewis gunner muttered – ‘Can’t see the fellow now … must’a ducked down when he heard the bang. What was it?’
Behind them someone was moaning in pain, trying to suppress it but unable to do so. Another explosion roared out in the night, with a momentary flash of orange flame. ‘Grenades,’ Margaret said.
‘The RIC don’t use ’em much,’ the gunner muttered.
A stream of machine-gun bullets ripped down the track in front of them, some ricocheting off the walls, others striking sparks from stones and then leaping towards the sky with a clatter and a whine.
Another machine-gun opened up from behind – her other Lewis, Margaret thought. The gunner beside her opened fire suddenly, sending short hiccoughing bursts down the track. ‘Saw something move,’ he shouted to her above the rattle of his own gun.
A voice from the darkness called, ‘Sean? How do you like it now?’
He was answered by a few single shots from a revolver. The speaker chuckled – ‘Missed!’
The Lewis gunner said, ‘That’s Lynch … recognise his voice anywhere.’
The voice cried, ‘There’s me and my father and uncle, me brother, and three cousins here, Sean … and these are for the other three brothers you dirty bastards sent to the bottom in the Leinster.’ Four grenades exploded one after the other among the walls behind them, followed at
once by screams, gasps, curses.
Sean the gunner said, ‘I don’t think the constables have got here yet, though they’ll be coming as fast as they can, ’cause they’ll hear the shooting.’
Eamonn came, crawling, his face a mask of blood – ‘They got us, from behind …’ he coughed, ‘and now the RIC’s coming to finish us off.’
Margaret thought, we must charge; they are no more than we are, and we must get away before the RIC come. She leaped to her feet, to be struck at once by a savage blow in the stomach and another in the chest. The force of the bullets hurled her back four feet against the stone wall where she lay, crumpled, on her back, blood filling her mouth and lungs.
From a mile away she heard Eamonn say, ‘Christ! Lady’s hit … Paddy, pick her up … Drag her, drag her … they mustn’t know they got her.’
‘I’m … I’m …’ she gurgled through the blood.
They were dragging her, her feet sliding over the grass, over the pebbles, to the steep path down the cliff, to the sand, hitting rocks, bouncing off, to the sea, her feet wet and cold in the sea, under the vagrant stars, clouds sliding over again, darkness containing the stars, to the boat. They dragged her over the gunwale into the coracle, and jumped in after her, Eamonn bleeding, Sean the gunner rowing strong, for he was untouched. Behind them Margaret Cate stared at the dark sky, eyes wide open, seeing nothing.
The guard at the window said, ‘’Tis a priest, general.. They’ll search him downstairs, but he looks … well, like a priest, bejasus.’
Collins frowned. He did not approve of blasphemy. He said, ‘You’ve never seen him before?’
‘No.’
‘Then how did he find his way here?’
‘Sure, and how should I know? Wherever he came from, it was a long way, and in the bogs … there’s mud and peat on his shoes, and shameful old trousers sticking out from under the cassock … I can’t see him any more – they’ve let him in.’
Collins waited. His quick mind, searching the past week or two, had already come to the conclusion that the priest’s visit – especially if he was from the countryside – was connected with Lady’s death. From outside the door a low voice called, ‘There’s a priest come to see you, general. Won’t give his name or say where he’s from. He has no weapons.’
‘Let him in.’
The door opened and the priest came in, a man of medium height with a very Irish face, a long mobile upper lip, bright blue eyes, about forty, but looked older, yet serene.
He said now, ‘I do have a weapon, general … my crucifix.’ He held it up deprecatingly from where it hung on the chest of his black cassock. ‘May I speak to you alone?’
Collins stared a few moments, wondering. Was it a trap? But if he was unarmed … and the house was full of his men, all armed … He said, ‘All right. Wait outside, Mick … and don’t listen at the door.’ The guard nodded and strolled out, putting his pistol, which he had been carrying negligently in his hand, into the pocket of his old tweed coat.
As soon as the door had closed behind him the priest said, ‘I believe you were visited by Cathal Donoghue from Westport a few days ago.’
Collins nodded. His guess had been correct; Donoghue was the man from Westport, who’d found his way up through the channels of the extremist Volunteers to tell him that Margaret Cate was dead, and buried; but that so far only he, two others, and a priest knew it. Margaret had been killed, apparently, in an internecine feud caused by the fact that two Westport families – Sinn Feiners but not Volunteers – had lost three sons in the torpedoing of the Irish packet boat Leinster shortly before the end of the war; and of course had held the men who had been supplying U-boats to blame.
The priest said, ‘I am Father Caffin.’
Collins exclaimed, ‘Are you Padraic’s brother, that was shot after the Rising?’
The priest nodded and said, ‘I served in France as padre to the 1st Battalion the Weald Light Infantry. Their CO was a man called Quentin Rowland, and I soon learned that Margaret Cate, the Lady, was his sister.’
‘Are you for us or against us?’ Collins broke in roughly.
‘I am for Sinn Fein – ourselves alone, one Ireland, independent, united. I am not for murder …. on any grounds, for any reason.’
Collins said at last, ‘That’s your right, father. We don’t have the privilege of choice.’
The priest said, ‘Colonel Rowland told me that his brother-in-law, Margaret’s husband, had heard nothing from her for a long time. And that he – Cate – has for years been desperate to marry another lady. But he could not, because she was still alive, and had not committed adultery, that could be proved.’
‘She hadn’t, at all,’ Collins said shortly. ‘She wasn’t that sort.’
‘I buried her,’ the priest said. ‘On the Island of Inishturk, in Clew Bay, where two of the Volunteers took her. One has since died of his wounds. Now only four men know that she is dead – myself, and the other Volunteer, Cathal Donoghue, and you.’
Collins said, ‘They did good work, great work, to bury her without anyone knowing. Why had they to bring in a priest? … Sorry, father, but it is absolutely necessary for our cause that the British continue to believe she is alive. Her name is worth a thousand men … The Lady, the woman they cannot catch … the Will of the Wisp … the Angel of Death, for them …’
The priest said, ‘It is wrong that Mr Cate and the woman he wishes to marry should suffer for such reasons, born of hatred.’
Collins said angrily, ‘Anyone who publishes the fact that the Lady is dead will be punished.’
The priest said, ‘That is a pity, general. The green flag cannot stand much more Irish blood on it, shed by other Irish, without bearing the stains for ever … I am now going to the hotel where I have reason to believe that Mr Cate is still waiting for an answer from Mrs Cate to his plea. Good day, and may God bless you and forgive you your sins as I pray that He will forgive mine.’
He turned and went out, without looking back.
Collins went to the door and watched him go down the stairs. The guard was there, five feet away, leaning against the wall. Mick was a man who didn’t give a damn for the Church, or priests.
He said in a low voice, ‘That priest’s going to the British. Stop him!’
At this the guard looked up, touching the pistol butt in his pocket. Collins nodded and the guard said, ‘Better wait till dark, general. The people won’t stand by when a priest falls.’
‘It doesn’t matter! Get him!’ Collins cried in a hoarse, low, agonised whisper that could not be heard above the thud of the outer door being shut. The guard started down the stairs. When he was near the bottom Collins cried in a terrible voice, ‘Stop! What am I doing? No, no, no!’ He made the sign of the cross and bowed his head a moment, praying; then went back into his room.
Daily Telegraph, Monday, July 14, 1919
NEW BEER ORDER
The Food Controller has made an order amending the Beer (Prices and Description) Order, and fixing a maximum price of 2d a pint in a public bar for any beer sold below 1020 deg. The maximum price of this beer was formerly 3d.
Other alterations in the order provide that beer of any price must now be of a greater strength than previously, e.g. a beer at 5d a pint in a public bar will now be of a gravity 4 deg. higher than before, and the same applies to the other prices. This is in accordance with the decision of the Cabinet that brewers must give better quality for the same money instead of further taxation being imposed on them. The order takes effect on Aug. 1.
Stronger beer at the Arms, Cate thought, that’ll please our many beer drinkers. They’d been complaining bitterly since 1914 that they didn’t mind any other sacrifice for victory, but why did the beer have to taste like dishslops? PC Fulcher might have to deal with a few more drunks on Saturday nights from the stronger beer, but they’d probably be visitors from London. The men of Walstone knew how to hold their beer.
He put the paper aside and read the letter from John Me
rritt for the third time. John had written the letter, and Stella had added a postscript about how the countryside was impressing her – the silence, the distances, the pale gold and yellow and red of the earth, the upthrusts of rock – mostly places sacred to the Navajo. She could not, or would not have written so much, or so lucidly, three months ago. John was more matter-of-fact, and dealt more with the people than with the land. ‘I am enjoying my work here,’ he wrote, ‘because I am learning – the language, which is very difficult for me; the religion; the customs and manners; the working of the economy; above all, the way of life. I doubt if I shall enjoy myself much longer, as I disagree with the Indian Service’s policy towards the Navajo. I am continually having arguments – fights you could call them – with the Agent here over programmes, policies, and people. One day they will throw me out, or I will get out myself. But we will not leave the Navajo. Or the Hopi, whose reservation is entirely surrounded by the Navajos’. They are a very different people – inward-turned, while the Navajo look out; peaceful and pacifist where the Navajo are warlike in their hearts …’
Cate read on, finally putting the letter aside and pulling towards him a rolled blueprint. He unrolled it and began to study it carefully. It was the final plan for the Walstone War Memorial – a simple obelisk in local stone, a sword carved in bas-relief on one face, the hilt garlanded with laurel; on either side the dates 1914-1918; and on the other side of the obelisk the names of the fourteen men of Walstone who had been killed in the war. It was very simple, because Walstone could not afford anything more elaborate; nor would that be proper: remembrance should be austere.
The names on the back were pencilled in, on the blueprint; the official list was pinned to one side. There, in his place in alphabetical order, was CATE L.H., Lieut.; Weald L.I. But Laurence had been cashiered, and shot by a firing squad for desertion in the face of the enemy. Was it right that he should be remembered with these others who had died doing their duty? He ought to cross Laurence’s name out. He wouldn’t have to say anything. They’d understand. Just cross it off.
