by Therese Down
“You were in America? I’d love to go to America,” interrupted Donal. “What did you do out there, Joe?”
“Well… I’m getting there… The main reason I left was things got… sticky here in the twenties – Collins was assassinated.” He paused again, looking down. “When Collins signed that treaty, boy, I tell you…” The kettle boiled and Joe spooned tea into a pot, poured on the boiling water, replaced the teapot lid. “It cannot be denied that there were plenty at the time who said Michael Collins’ signing of that treaty with England was a ruse, a means of lulling the English into a false sense of security – and of getting weapons – but how could you tell? To us, it looked like betrayal of de Valera and everything we had fought for…” Joe trailed off, seemingly lost in sadness.
“Weapons?” Donal was incredulous.
“What?”
“You said the English gave Collins weapons?”
“Yes indeed,” answered Joe, pouring tea into two mugs, adding milk, placing a mug of tea before Donal, and indicating the sugar bowl in which a teaspoon stood upright. “The British trusted Collins, feared de Valera. They gave guns and ammunition to Collins so he could defend the Irish Free State against Dev and the IRA. There’s irony for you now, eh?” But Joe wasn’t smiling. He looked angry.
“Did you meet Collins, Joe?” Donal’s question was met with a slight frown and knitting of brows. Joe sighed, and as he did so, he pulled out a chair opposite Donal and sat down at the table.
“I did. Loads of us knew him. Sure I was hanging around with fellas who were active from sixteen, in flying columns. Michael Collins, Sean Treacy, Dan Breen trained many a column in Tipperary.” He paused again, sipped his tea, and continued, “Breen and Treacy were Tipperary boys, as you know. I knew them fairly well – speaking terms, like. And Collins was often this way. That was why it was such an almighty shock when he signed that bloody treaty pledging allegiance to England! It was only later – too much later – that we found out he was plotting all the while to turn their own guns against them.”
“What?”
“It turned out that a few months before he was shot, Collins had ordered the IRA to kidnap a load of Northern Protestants. The lads kept about forty of them in safe houses in the South for ages – as hostages, like. Then there was a load of cross-border raids and attacks on the USC.”
“USC?”
“Ulster Special Constabulary. There were fierce riots up North and about thirty people killed in the crossfire – many of our own. But it turns out that about forty USC were killed by the IRA – on Collins’ orders!”
“So why was he shot?” Donal was shocked almost past belief at what he was hearing; had Collins really played such a dangerous double bluff of both Dail and British government?
“Because it was not – or could not be – generally known that a Dail minister and pledger of allegiance to the British – the man who had agreed to the partition of Ireland into North and South – was still an IRA activist and giving orders to the IRA!” Joe exclaimed, exasperated, his hands flailing as he spoke. Donal was undeterred by Joe’s agitated tone. His hunger for a first- hand account of his country’s recent political history was more compelling than any fear he had of possible rebuke.
“Did de Valera know about this?”
“Now that,” said Joe, half smiling at Donal’s fearlessness and adjusting his tone, “is the sixty-four thousand dollar question. One thing is for sure: when Dev got back from America in 1920, Collins was a lot more powerful – and dangerous – than when he’d left him. And by then, de Valera was talking of constitutional revision and freedom through democracy and negotiation. Looking back, it was clear Dev was turning soft.”
“Who shot Collins, do you think, Joe?” Here, there was a very long pause. Joe sipped his tea and seemed to contemplate the table.
“Who indeed,” he snapped, but then added, “That’s when I went to America. I knew a chap who wanted someone to courier a package personally to a businessman in New York, no questions, and I grabbed my opportunity. The package fitted nicely in the lining of my bag. I never knew what it was. I never took my eyes off that bag the whole journey, boy – it was my pillow at night time. When I got off that ship I had four pounds and ten shillings in my pocket and the name and address of the businessman. The man got me a job as a bellhop in a smallish hotel on Seventh Avenue – I thought I was the bee’s knees! And the place was full of Irish lads. The craic was something else, boy.” Donal smiled widely, fascinated by this man to whom he had been instinctively drawn, whom he had watched with curiosity night after night in O’Hallorahan’s bar, sipping his pint and measuring the world’s revolutions with quiet, grey eyes.
“I joined a union,” Joe went on. “I wasn’t much older than you are now. We thought we could change the world, defeat capitalism, give the working man back his dignity… then the slump. Wall Street crashed. There’s nothing philosophical about starvation – you can lose all the metaphorical chains you want, but dropping hunger is not an act of will.” Joe sighed, closed his eyes, and rubbed his forehead for a moment.
“What happened?”
“I lost my job. The hotel closed down. Intellect and youth were small recompense for a rumbling belly. And I half froze to death in the winter of 1930. I worked my passage to England on a liner, sharing a tiny cabin with three other fellas below decks, with a food ration that would insult a sparrow. We stole what we could from the leftovers of the great and glamorous above decks. Nothing really changes, eh?”
“And you came back here? To Cashmel?”
“Eventually. I worked for a while in London, on building sites, but times were almost as hard as they were in New York, and the construction industry ground to a virtual halt. I came home via Dublin. Worked there awhile.” Joe seemed to have come back to the present and a more usually guarded evasiveness. He looked directly at Donal. “When de Valera was elected President of Ireland in January 1932, he wasn’t happier than I was – even though by then he was leading Fianna Fail and had relegated Sinn Fein to the Opposition.”
“And now?” Donal was fascinated to discover Joe’s feelings towards de Valera on this New Year’s Day, ten years on. As Prime Minister he had imprisoned thousands of IRA men in the Curragh and executed many, and was now squaring up to add Plant to the list.
“How far do you want to be trusted?” Joe’s earnestness, the sudden alteration in his demeanour, and the challenge in his eyes as they held Donal’s, took the younger man off guard.
“What do you mean?” faltered Donal.
“Exactly what I say.” Joe’s eyes were steely. The monotonous drone of the news announcer had been replaced by orchestrated traditional music; a lurching jig on strings filled the silence. “You came here hot and bothered about de Valera. How hot and bothered are you, is the question? How far might you go to do something about it, if you had the chance?” Donal did not shrink from Joe’s steely scrutiny. He nodded briefly. “Are you sure?” Donal nodded again. Joe extended his right hand, still not taking his eyes from Donal’s. Donal lifted his hand and the two men were joined in a firm handshake. “Right, so,” Joe pronounced. “Right so.”
CHAPTER NINE
On Sunday the third of January 1944, Caitlin refused to go to mass and Mick Spillane did not put up much of a fight, for he feared a scene if anyone tried to speak with her about the forthcoming wedding or if there were an awkward encounter with Flynn. He had not had an opportunity to speak with Flynn since Christmas Day and was half afraid to do so, given how Caitlin had treated him. He was seriously concerned that the deal would now be off and Jack would not want his rude and disobedient daughter. And so, as on Sundays gone by, Mick Spillane waited nervously outside the church for Jack to emerge after mass. It was raining and cold. Most pulled coats over their heads and ran for their carts or hastened on foot to their homes in the village. Maureen and Mrs Spillane lurked just inside the church doors and stood close together for warmth. Mick’s cap was small protection from the heavy ra
in and he plunged his hands into his trouser pockets, hunched his shoulders as he paced outside the church. He did not want his wife or daughter to hear what transpired between himself and Flynn – whatever its nature.
“How’re you, Jack?” Mick raised his voice above the rain as he walked quickly towards his neighbour when the latter emerged from the narthex. Jack turned, eyed Spillane with more weariness than irritation and stopped walking. “I wasn’t sure now, how things stood… you know… with last week and all,” Spillane said blinking away drops from his cap peak. He was shocked at how pale Jack was and how the shadows under his eyes made them look sunken.
“They are as they were, Spillane.” Jack spoke quietly so that Mick had to use his powers of deduction as much as his hearing to get the sense of what he’d said.
“So, it’s still on for Saturday?”
Jack nodded, keeping his mouth tightly closed to suppress a couple of insistent coughs. He had to get home, out of this rain. Spillane looked relieved for a moment, then spoke again.
“That’s great, Jack, great,” he said. “l hear you had to slaughter a few cows above?” Mick squinted through the rain at Jack’s face with an expression he hoped was sympathetic, then carried on as Jack began to turn away from him. “Only… only, a thing like that could knock a man’s finances, now… change things.”
“It changes nothing, Spillane.”
“Grand, grand.” Mick nodded, smiled. “The wedding’s at nine o’clock,” he added. As Jack began to walk towards his horse, which stood hitched and tethered to a nearby fence, head down against the driving rain, Spillane shouted after him, “See you there, so – nine o’clock.”
Jack did not turn. He raised a hand in a gesture which acknowledged the words and, reaching his horse, climbed into the cart. Mrs Spillane and Maureen ran into the rain and urged Mick to hurry home.
When the Spillanes burst through their door to a warm kitchen and the smell of simmering bacon and potatoes, Caitlin was in her room, reading. She put down the book when she heard their voices and then slowly got off the bed, stood up, and waited uncertainly for any sound which might indicate someone was coming upstairs. After a considerable pause and no approaching steps, she moved cautiously to the door and opened it, then headed for the stairs. She had to know if she were really free of this arrangement her father had made to sell her to Jack Flynn. She knew Mick would have spoken with Flynn after mass.
When they saw her coming down, Maureen and Mrs Spillane nodded and smiled to her but went into the kitchen and busied themselves with the preparation of lunch. There was bound to be another scene. At the foot of the stairs, Caitlin, pale, thin, eyed her father, watching him stamp his feet to dispel surplus rainwater from his clothing and stimulate blood circulation to his feet. He looked at his daughter briefly, threw his cap onto a chair, shook his head, and ran his hands through his unruly hair, blowing out hard.
“It’s stinking weather out there today, so it is,” he remarked. “I’m frozen!”
“Well?” said Caitlin softly, never taking her eyes from him.
“Well what?”
“You know fine well what I mean,” she responded, her heart beating so fast she felt unsteady and gripped the banister rail.
“What did you expect? That your tantrum had ruined everything, is that it? Is that what you’re waiting for me to say? Well it did not. You are to be married next Saturday, and that’s final.”
Caitlin did not answer him. She stared at him levelly for a moment and then turned around and ascended the stairs to her room, closed the door quietly. Mick frowned to himself in confusion and shrugged. Perhaps she had finally accepted things.
“Is the dinner ready?” he shouted to his wife. “I’m ravenous.”
“Is Caitlin coming down for dinner?” enquired Mrs Spillane timidly, as her husband entered the kitchen.
“Leave her be,” he said. “Sure she’ll hardly starve.”
Mrs Spillane drained the potatoes of water, closed her eyes, and sighed. She wondered if Caitlin would do just that rather than as she was told.
When Jack got home from mass he had no appetite. He had a temperature and his health had not been helped by the rigours of milking. Though he did not have to rise quite so early these days, for the dairyman did not call on schedule any more to pick up his churns, he still had to get his animals to the milking parlour by eight o’clock at the latest or they would be uncomfortable, and the last thing he needed on top of the TB crisis was an outbreak of mastitis in the herd. By the end of February, though, the drudgery of milking would cease, either because his cows were within a couple of months of calving or because he would have them slaughtered.
He reached out a trembling hand for his mug of tea. He had to use both hands to lift it steadily to his mouth, and it hurt his rheumatic fingers to straighten them on cold, rainy days like this. Flynn reflected that no matter the cause, the end of milking for that year would be a blessed relief. The rain fell with increased ferocity, slamming against the windows as if it were angry they were there. Jack shivered feverously and sipped his strong, sweet tea. He could not summon feeling at the thought that by the same time next Sunday, he would be married. The notion was as hard to grasp as the certainty that one day, he would be dead.
On the twelfth of February 1942, Plant, Walsh and Davern were retried before a military court for the murder of Michael Devereux. On the twenty-fourth of February, Walsh’s and Davern’s previously withdrawn statements were readmitted and stood as evidence that Devereux had been drawn deliberately into a web of drama and deceit enabled by a whole cast of players. They had pretended to him that he was a suspect for the murder of a senior IRA officer – no less than the commanding officer of Devereux’s own Wexford IRA battalion, Thomas Cullimore. The IRA Chief of Staff Officer himself, Stephen Hayes, gave the order – it was alleged – for Devereux to be assassinated. Plant had persuaded Devereux that he needed to abandon his wife and child in Wexford, drive through the night to an IRA safe house in Tipperary, and lie low to avoid being arrested for Cullimore’s “death”. Plant and Walsh and Davern pretended all the while to be Devereux’s friends, but after three days of intimate contact, Plant shot Devereux within minutes of suddenly accusing him of treachery. He used a gun borrowed for the purpose from a man in Carrick-on-Suir, to whom Davern returned it once Devereux’s body was hidden.
It was heard again how Devereux had pleaded for his life, protesting vehemently that if they just gave him time, he could prove he was innocent of the charge that he had revealed the whereabouts of IRA weapons to the gardai. But he was given no opportunity to defend himself. His young wife and infant child next saw him when his remains were unearthed a year later and removed to Wexford for burial.
Davern was tricked into revealing the location of Devereux’s body by a garda detective working under cover, a Sergeant Dennis O’Brien. On the twenty-seventh of February 1942, the military court reached its decision after just forty-five minutes of deliberation. All three men – Walsh, Davern, and Plant – were condemned to death.
The atmosphere in O’Hallorahan’s bar was muted and grim when the verdicts reached the radios and newspapers of Cashmel. Outside the streets were icy, and remnants of snow froze in the gutters and along the edges of the road. There was no moon, as if she were sensitive to the mood which hung over the town, and Cashmel was lost in darkness. Even here, there was a strict curfew forbidding the lighting of streets or the appearance of light from houses, as German planes aiming for Northern Ireland or England had been known to bomb Eire by mistake. The Luftwaffe killed thirty-four people in Dublin following one such error. Joe Morgan, Donal, John Tuohy, Pat Moran, and Michael Flaherty sat around a table drinking their ale, apparently mesmerized by the roaring fire, which Molly fed with turf briquettes and logs.
After a long silence, Tuohy spoke. “’Tis a disgrace of the highest order, so it is, to try a man twice. Sure what the hell is de Valera thinking?”
“De Valera knows exactly what he�
��s doing,” replied Joe Morgan. “Not even the supreme court can object to a Government Order under Dev’s Emergency legislation. That trumps case law and all the niceties of jurisprudence. There wasn’t a thing the defence could do.”
“I cannot understand that.” Donal spoke ruminatively, shaking his head slowly, not taking his eyes from the fire. “How can hundreds of years of case law be overturned in a split second? Sure I’ve a scholarship to study law at Cork University starting next September. I don’t think I’ll bother! What’s the point?” He looked away from the fire and turned to Joe as if seeking agreement in principle. Joe sighed, sipped his beer, replaced his tankard on the table, and contemplated it for a few seconds.
“It is a terrible but true thing that to conform to the constitutional legislation of this so-called Free State today, is to betray natural justice. This has never been so clear as it is this night.” He looked meaningfully at Donal, held his gaze for a moment, then turned to the fire again.
When Donal returned to contemplation of the flames, he was greatly troubled. His comments regarding his scholarship and its futility had not been in earnest. For the first time, he felt the full weight of his late apprenticeship to a life in shadows.
“Mammy! Mammy, come quick – Caitlin is gone!”
Maureen’s voice was shrill with alarm. Both Mrs Spillane and Mick raced for the stairs, she ceding to him reluctantly where they met at the bottom, and when they reached the girls’ bedroom, it was indeed apparent that Caitlin had taken her leave of the house, through the bedroom window. Clothes and personal effects were thrown haphazardly on the floor and across the bed in her haste to pack for a journey they could only guess at.
The sash window stood open and Mick leaned out of it, cursing roundly and loudly as he strained to see past the rain and gathering afternoon darkness. The road was just visible across the small yard from this vantage point but there was no sign of Caitlin. She had obviously hung from the ledge then dropped the ten feet or so to the ground and had been sufficiently uninjured to get away. And so it was that – having just got dry and warm before the range, having settled down with a pipe and a full belly to read the Sunday paper – Mick Spillane put on his damp coat and his boots and made for the barn.