She avoided the nursery. In the evenings when the nanny would carry Sarah down to them in the great room, Molly would take her stiffly, her back straight, her arms reaching, almost reluctantly. Most evenings, after a moment of staring into the child’s face, the tears would come again, streaming down her face, often dripping, wetting the baby’s chemise.
‘Are you quite well?’ he had asked her on many occasions. But she was angry and would scowl and would make him feel as though he were stupid to think that anything was wrong.
He had waited for the doctor’s check-up visit, and took him aside down the corridor when he came out of Molly’s room.
‘I’m worried about her,’ he said. ‘She’s been crying. Uncontrollably sometimes. I know there can be emotions ...’ His voice trailed off. ‘I know it can be a difficult time. But I don’t think this ... she ... is normal.’
Henry felt guilty as he spoke. As though he were telling tales on his wife.
‘She is distant,’ said the doctor. ‘And tired. I have prescribed some medication that shouldn’t interfere with the baby. I’d suggest some fresh air and good, wholesome meals. I can arrange a test to check her iron level.’
‘I think there’s more,’ said Henry. ‘I’m not sure if she’s ... well. In her mind?’
The words leathered his tongue. He felt he was betraying Molly.
‘This can happen,’ said the doctor reassuringly. ‘The blood loss can leave a woman quite depressed. But in a few weeks, she will back to her normal self. If you have any more concerns, come and see me. It’ll probably pass.’
* * *
Henry did feel reassured by the doctor. And for a while it did seem as though things were settling. Molly got used to the baby and her care, the tears subsided and she started to cope better. She returned to some of her old self, even going back to the shops some days, to take stock and check accounts and meet customers.
But with the birth of James, just a year later, the blackness returned. The worry Henry had that it would was realised the day Molly went missing, leaving James crying in the nursery and Sarah toddling, all the way down to the basement kitchen.
When he pulled up that evening, stepping out of the trap, he was met by a panic-stricken Mrs Johansson.
‘Molly’s missing,’ she said, her face white as a sheet. ‘There’s a search out, they’re walking the fields.’
Henry had raced to the fields where the house staff were out with walking sticks calling Molly’s name. They found her sitting at the top of Dowth mound, her hands hugging her knees, freezing, no tears, just staring out over where her family used to live.
It was after this that Henry had her put on complete bed rest and given a mixture of tonics and painkillers, mainly laudanum, each day. The doctor said she could be one of the unfortunate women who suffered hysteria.
The words made Henry’s skin crawl.
As the years passed, Molly would have dark times and good. Sometimes it would be clear when an episode was about to strike, other times, it crept up on them, from nowhere, a black mood that would see Molly take to the bed, crying for hours, other times, sleeping, it seemed, for days.
This Christmas, Henry hoped she would cope well. It was a difficult time for her, stirring up memories of her father and her mother and her childhood.
‘We both lost our fathers at Christmas,’ Henry reminded her.
‘Yes, but yours died at home, in this beautiful house,’ she would say. ‘Mine died on the side of the road.’
It was something that never went away, even though they had long joined their histories and had fallen deeply in love.
Deep down, she still blamed him.
He had long stopped trying to argue his case for fear it would trigger another depressive period. He never stopped worrying for her. Even as he watched her, sitting by the fire, her hair pulled up and put back, her face beautifully made up, it was as though something was missing. As if a piece of her had been lost.
And maybe it had. Maybe every woman who gave birth felt as though a piece of her had been removed. That she had lost some of herself, that pre-mother self.
He worried for Molly and for their children, now old enough to understand. His own mother had suffered with her nerves and he knew, even though it had never been spoken of, that this was the reason she died when he was six. He feared Molly would go the same way. She had that same look in her eye. That distant glint. A look, that scared him, more than anything else in this world.
* * *
James is looking at him with the same expression that Molly uses. It’s a type of pleading and angry look. His eyebrows have narrowed and there’s a furrow that cuts all the way above the bridge of his nose, deep into his skin.
‘But Father, this is my right. I have a right to go if I wish.’
‘A right to be slaughtered?’ said Henry.
‘Don’t you feel for our country. For our men? They need people like me, people who will stand up for what is right.’
‘I have feelings for my family,’ said Henry. ‘For my son. For his mother who will sit and stare out that window and not leave it until the day you come back. If you come back. And what if you don’t? What then? She’s bad enough now.’
‘So, this is about Mummy,’ said James, his expression now turning into a scowl. ‘It’s always about her. Always about what she wants, never about me.’
‘Your mother loves you,’ said Henry. ‘That is why I am not going to watch as you sign up and throw your life away in a hole of a trench in France. You have everything going for you. More than I had when I was your age. When I was your age, my father was in the middle of squandering everything we had. Don’t you know how hard we’ve worked to get that back? Your mother and I? Is this the way you wish to repay us? Signing up to a bloody war that you have no act or hand or part in. The answer is no, James. I understand the lure - the excitement of it. But believe me, this is not something you want to volunteer for.’
‘I would have thought you of all people would understand,’ said James.
‘I owe nothing to England,’ said Henry. ‘And you don’t either. What you owe is the peace you can bring your mother. Going to war will bring none of that. I won’t allow it, James. This is the end of it. You will finish school and then start your studies at university, just like has been arranged.’
James left Henry’s study, flinging the door behind him into a slam.
Henry realised he had been the same with his own father. Battling to find his place. Pushing forward his opinions. Walking out of the study in a temper and slamming the door shut.
The war was a millstone around all their necks. Already thousands of Irish had left for the continent, enticed by a sense of duty to join those who had gone before them and by the rallying cries on their own shore. And now there was civil unrest too, with the Irish Volunteers swirling to bring about Home Rule again. Henry cared none for politics these days. He only cared how it might affect him and his family’s livelihood. And Molly.
Christmas 1915 had been one of the happiest of recent years. Her mood had been pleasant. She’d presented him with a small book of black leather-bound stories with a message inside:
To my darling Henry, for all that you do. You are, my love, Molly.
He had warmed on Christmas morning when he read it. Sometimes it was difficult to tell if she did love him. If she had the same feelings he had for her. If their love that had formed so many years ago, was still alive, underneath all that suffering, under that depression that lingered through their lives.
It was in the days after Christmas that James had started his campaign - his persuasion battle to go to war. Henry warned him to say nothing to his mother. ‘If I hear that she even has a breath of this, I’m cutting your allowance … off!’
James had an uneasy soul. He carried some of his mother’s melancholy with him and had been a quiet and inward child. He flitted from interest to interest, going hunting in phases, then stopping and moping about the estate. He had learned
to fish and then threw the rods in the long sheds at the back of the farm and never reached for them again. He asked for a hive to keep bees and after a few weeks, was badly stung and left it to the gardener to harvest the honey and see to the swarm.
Henry knew that his son’s desire to go to war on the continent was another phase. He was always looking for something new, some excitement. He had no idea what war meant. The boy was too soft, he would never last in an army environment. But James’s new found interest was keeping Henry awake at night. He had a troubling ache in his stomach. He feared they would get up one morning and James would be gone.
It was Sarah who brought Henry most peace. She had taken on the role of confidante; becoming a caretaker for the family. Even as a child they had enjoyed long walks together, chatting. He’d relished teaching her as she grew, watching her interest in nature flourish, taking to books, talking about countries she read about and wished to visit.
She was quick to laugh and he missed her vibrancy terribly when it was time, each term, for her to return to school in south Dublin. The house felt empty without her.
Most of all she could read Molly like he never could. She could predict her moods, let him know when another episode was coming on, reading her mother’s warning signs in an innate way.
There were times when he walked past Molly’s room and found Sarah sitting in a chair reading to her, Molly lying back with a relaxed expression and her eyes closed. She seemed to bring her some solace, a comfort that he was unable to.
He thought about Sarah’s marriage often, how he wished her to make her own choice, someone who could secure her future, someone, he thought, who was a bit like him.
For some reason, he couldn’t imagine handing Brabazon over to James. He was so flippant, so quick to change and easy to temper. What sort of future would it face under his hands?
He wondered if he should confide in Sarah about her brother’s desire to go to war. Ask her to have a word with him. He often spoke with her when he felt the situation was getting out of hand, that a sister’s word in James’s ear would be more powerful than his.
But this was different, this felt like something he should be able to handle. Something that James had to understand. War was no place for a boy. And James Brabazon, was after all, only a boy.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Dowth, Co. Meath, Ireland, 27 April 1916, Easter Week
It was 5.30 a.m. when James Brabazon walked quietly from Brabazon House, out the back door used by the servants, past the orchard and through the gate that led to the woods. He carried a small white canvas bag with some bread, water, and an apple. In his brown leather bandolier, he’d packed spare socks and a little notebook and pen. He thought he might scribble a few notes if there was time, or if they were lying in wait and there wasn’t much to do.
He walked with his black bicycle all the way to the entrance gates, the gates that gave access to the back of Brabazon House. It was twenty minutes before two other volunteers arrived to meet him, their green caps black in the dark. They smiled and hollered when they saw him and he felt his pulse rise. Already, he knew this was the start of the biggest adventure of his life.
They cycled through the dark, their dynamo lights whirring against the wheels. They made good time on the windy road to Slane leaning into the bike right then left, as they manoeuvred the bends. They felt the bogland beneath them as they pedalled over the road that led to the main highway between Slane and Ashbourne. Up and down. Up and down.
James thought about the motor vehicle his father had been talking about getting. If he’d had a motor car, James would have taken it, picked up these volunteers and made their way quickly to Garristown where they were meeting the rest of the garrison. It would have saved time, and a vehicle would have earned him the respect of the troops.
In Slane they met three more volunteers and the group of five cycled as the morning became light, down the hill and up again. They were quiet and watchful. They could be stopped at any time. James was pleased when they met the garrison leader who was waiting at the bottom of a small country road as they cycled into Garristown. They had made it to the battalion. They had gotten this far.
He felt proud to be dressed in his Irish Volunteer uniform. He had packed it into a small, brown suitcase and hidden it in his room after he received it, locking his bedroom door and warning the housekeeper to stay away. She did as she was asked, used to James and his strange habits, aware that they were living in secretive times. No one could be too sure of anyone nowadays.
The rest of the volunteers had not long since arrived and they were setting up camp, fetching water, laying fires, handing out rations and getting the farmhouse they would be sleeping in that night ready. They had marched from Dublin that morning and some were sitting, tired. James saw a volunteer polish up a long, black-brown rifle and his heart fluttered in his chest. Soon he would have a firearm, a weapon he could call his own.
He thought about his father and his refusal to give him permission to go to war at Christmas last year. He thought him still a boy, the baby of the family, incapable of making a decision or doing something for himself, on his own terms. Now war had come to their own land. A cause that James believed in, something true to his heart. His father could do nothing to stop him now.
The volunteers welcomed James with open arms; here was the son of a landlord, an heir to an establishment they were rallying against, who would fight for them. He felt accepted and needed, useful for a change.
Before lunchtime the man leading the battalion called the group to attention. They gathered round, standing with their arms folded and chins tilted to the grey white sky.
‘There is no bravado here,’ the leader said. ‘This is not somewhere you should be if you are here for the wrong reasons. If you aren’t fully committed, if you’re not sure in your heart that this is something you could leave your family for, you could die for, then now is the time. No judgment will be made. We are not forcing anyone. Please, think, and if you know yourself that you shouldn’t be here, then walk away. The same for the sick. I see some of you limping. You will not be coming with us.’
James thought about the man’s words. Some men were nodding, some looking thoughtful. They were separating the men from the boys, putting together the strongest force they could. He worried, with his youth, that they might tell him to go home too. But he would tell them, show them. He was a true patriot.
After the speech, James could feel energy coursing through his veins. He was ready to fight. He was ready to bring Home Rule back to Ireland, to stand up for his country, their country.
He watched as some men stepped forward to speak to the colonel, shaking their heads, he shaking their hands. They gathered up their white knapsacks and left their brown bandoliers behind, taking off their volunteer hats and jackets, ready for someone else to wear. They were leaving the farmhouse, going back to their families, exhausted from their previous days’ fighting in Dublin.
James thought how he was now an asset, fresh blood, new energy, ready to take on the attack they had planned for the small town of Ashbourne, only a few miles from here.
In the afternoon, he was given a rifle and shown how to use it. It felt heavy and smooth in his hands, the smell of gun powder touching his nostrils. He told them he already knew how to use a gun, having often shot using his father’s, taking part in shooting parties when they had visited other estates. They were impressed at his knowledge and he beamed as he was ordered to help others, to teach them how to hold the gun, how to load it and how to shoot it, on target and without injuring or dislocating their shoulders.
As evening fell, a large pot of stew was prepared on an open fire with small, fatty bits of meat floating among the carrot and onions. It was watery, but James lapped it from his metal tin, hunkered round the farmhouse with men, older and wiser, full of tales and patriotism. He felt like a man. He thought of the hundreds of fine dinners he’d eaten at polished dining tables. This was really living.
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br /> They were ordered to sleep early, to conserve energy and prepare for the battle the next day - when they would rise in the dark hours and make their way to Ashbourne.
Before the lights were put out, James listened to some of the men singing ballads, and, laid out on a sack and tucked in a light sleeping bag, he thought his heart might burst out of his chest with pride.
When he awoke the next day, it only took a moment to realise where he was and he jumped up quickly to wash his hands and face and eat a breakfast of bread and dripping being passed around.
Today was the day. Today was the day he would go to war.
* * *
James was quiet, watching the men around him, some saying a decade of the rosary, others using a rag and spit to shine their buttons and boots. The battalion assembled, a group of fifty or so, and as the sun tried to shine through a cloud, they were split into their columns. James liked the look of his, a group with energy; they’d been given most of the rationed ammunition they had.
They set off on their bicycles, two spotters cycling ahead. It was a clear April day. Small, white butterflies flitted on the hedgerows which were just taking on their summer bloom. James thought about his parents, who would have discovered him missing by now. He half-expected his father to come across them, to appear from nowhere and shout ‘stop!’ He was so interfering, his father, always trying to make him into something he didn’t want to be.
They took a back road into Ashbourne, the columns then splitting and going to the points they had marked out and studied on the map. James’s column was to oversee the barracks, a small cement block building in the centre of the town. They’d been told to attack, if it hadn’t been disarmed already.
When they reached the deserted streets of the small town, they threw their bikes in a ditch and walked, crouching low on approach. Up ahead they could see two RIC officers outside the barracks, rushing to barricade it. Two of their column went back and got their bikes. They cycled at speed towards the officers, pointing their rifles and telling them to surrender to the Irish Republic.
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