Only with Blood

by Therese Down

  “Where do you suppose he’s off to now?” asked Mrs Spillane.

  “How do I know?”

  His wife sat back in her chair, lowered the sock she was darning, and stared into the firelight. They had taken to using the parlour as a sitting room in the evenings since Donal had moved in. Mick wasn’t too happy about the extra work and cost involved in keeping it warm, but it was very important that Donal Kelly made it known abroad how comfortable life was at the Spillanes’ house.

  “What do you want now?” asked Caitlin, more wearied than irritated by Donal’s appearance. He ignored her.

  “What’s wrong with that horse?” he asked. The animal was barely distinguishable from the growing darkness.

  “He is lame,” she answered simply. “The vet said to exercise him to keep his foot strong.” Donal followed her across Flynn’s yard and into the barn. It was pitch black.

  “This brings back memories,” he said, and Caitlin smirked in spite of herself, glad he could not see. She felt for a lamp on the windowsill and the matches always beside it, struck one, and soon the barn was diffused with soft light. She held up the lamp to locate a hook in a beam from which she suspended it. Tethering the horse, she took out a tin of liniment from her coat pocket and hunkered down to apply it to the animal’s pastern. “Let’s see,” said Donal, and, squatting down beside her, he reached for the horse’s fetlock and ran his hand down to the hoof. “Ringbone,” he pronounced, “but it’s not swollen. How old is he?” Caitlin considered, moving further away from Donal.

  “I’m not sure. Old enough, I think.” Then she added, “He’s a lovely horse. Himself says I can ride him if he gets better.” She stood up and Donal did likewise. Flynn’s sows and new bainbhs snorted and squealed in another part of the barn. The horse pulled at his haynet and chomped contentedly. Reaching for the lamp, Caitlin turned towards the barn door.

  “Listen, Caitlin.” There was something in Donal’s tone which made her stop and comply. She held the lamp away from her face so he could not discern from her any reaction to what he might say. “I like you – a lot, and…”

  She cut him off. “Why are you staying at my father’s house?”

  He walked closer to her, came to her side. “Because it is close to the school.”

  “And that’s all?” There was a long pause. Caitlin hmphed to herself and walked more purposefully towards the barn door, extinguished the lamp, and put it back on the windowsill. She stepped outside and waited for him to exit. As she shut the door firmly she said “good night” and made to go indoors, but he ran in front of her.

  “All right,” he half whispered in the darkness, “I admit it. Since that morning you showed up in my father’s barn, I have thought about you… a lot. Sure how the hell was I to know your father had sold you off to an auld fella… like a… like a sack of grain. I came looking for you, Caitlin.” He stopped whispering animatedly and spoke in low tones. “And you were already married. But I couldn’t get you out of my head and when I saw you…” He paused again. They could barely see each other’s faces in the darkness; he came closer. Caitlin raised her head in instinctive mistrust but she did not move away. “When I saw you… you are beautiful, Caitlin Spillane.”

  No one had ever called her beautiful. Maureen and her father had mocked her for her vanity, and her mother, for fear of upsetting Maureen, would never have acknowledged Caitlin’s beauty. Mrs Spillane was only too aware, in any case, of the superfluity of the attribute in rural Tipperary. It was kinder on a woman if she hadn’t it. The mirror, though, had not lied to her. Caitlin knew she was beautiful. But, as with all extraordinary gifts, beauty was no more than a troubling suspicion until it was celebrated by others and became a blessing. The acknowledgment of what she had known in her heart did more to win her trust of Donal Kelly than anything he had hitherto said. Even so, the situation she was in put her irredeemably beyond this man’s reach. She may as well have been an apparition or a photo in his pocket. The substance of her was lost.

  “It is too late,” she said flatly. “This is all… too late.” She strode away from him, went into the house, and locked the door. Upstairs, Flynn was coughing, obviously conscious. He would need some tea and maybe a little soup.

  Donal left the Spillanes’ house next morning in his suit and carrying his briefcase, as though he were walking to the school. Kilty’s car was waiting for him five minutes down the road. Donal got into the back seat and the car sped away. Through a passenger window, Donal watched the children on their way to school stop and point at the beautiful car. If they had seen him get in, it hardly mattered. He wouldn’t be coming back anytime soon.

  “Is this car not a bit conspicuous?” he asked aloud, without taking his eyes from the window.

  “Michael here is not coming with us.”

  “Oh?” Donal was surprised. “I thought he was.” He looked at Kilty’s heavy set face and Kilty met his gaze in the mirror.

  “Change of plan. We need someone back at base, if things go wrong.”

  “Like what?” Donal sat up, paid attention properly for the first time to what they were about to do.

  “Any number of things could go wrong, Donal,” said Joe. “You know that. If Michael is ready with transport and papers, we have a chance of getting away clean.” The car rumbled its way towards Tipperary and Kilty’s enormous farm.

  “How are we getting up to Buncrana?”

  “You’re going with Corcoran, in the lorry. We’ll meet him now in Tipperary.”

  “With the explosives?”

  “You’re not scared, are you, Donal?” Joe gibed. “It won’t be volatile until someone lobs a firebomb in the back of it. And you’ve been out and about with Corcoran before. There are employment records at the depot with your name on them. It’s a good cover. And sure, you could lie your way out of hell, Kelly. You’ll be grand.”

  “Have we clearance to get across the border?”

  “All taken care of. Mr Kilty here has some influential friends. Most of the sugar in the lorry is from his beet crops and the North is fierce short of the stuff.”

  “How are you travelling, Joe?”

  “I’m going up with Rourke in a car we have borrowed for the purpose.”

  Donal sat back and closed his eyes. It seemed to him he was speeding away from anything in his life which had made the remotest sense.

  Sister Mary Francis was furious that the junior pupils’ maths lessons were uncovered. She had to go in and teach maths herself. As principal, she was not supposed to do any teaching, let alone cover work. Well, Donal Kelly would certainly never get work again in her school, that was for sure! Jim Fennessey shook his head in the staffroom and said he had absolutely no idea where Kelly could be. There was something very shifty about that young man, he pronounced. When Caitlin Spillane turned up as usual for lessons, Jim Fennessey was quite surprised.

  Mick Spillane tore up the road from Dunane to Golden in his red truck and screeched into Dan Kelly’s yard, crossed it in a few strides, and banged on the door.

  “Is Donal here?” he demanded angrily.

  “No, he is not,” said Dan. “What’s the matter with you, Spillane?”

  Mick pushed past Dan and went into the kitchen. Deirdre, Jacintha, and Pat were all at the table drinking tea and eating soda bread covered in jam.

  “Have any of ye seen him?” he challenged.

  “I told you, Spillane,” Dan replied, his voice rising in pitch and volume, “he is not here. What is the matter?”

  “What’s the matter? I’ll tell you what the matter is!” spat Spillane, rounding on Dan. “He’s skedaddled off with a hundred and fifty pounds of my money, that’s what the matter is!” There were gasps around the table.

  “Gone where, Spillane? How did he get the money?”

  “I gave it to him…”

  “You gave him a hundred and fifty pounds – sure what for, in the name of all that is holy?”

  Spillane was burning red. His fists were clenched a
nd he pursed his lips together as though he were trying not to burst.

  “It doesn’t matter why!” he shouted. “What matters is he’s taken off with it!”

  Pat stood up and spoke to Mick. “I think you’d better calm down,” he said. “It’s not nice to burst into someone else’s house making all sorts of accusations about their kin.”

  “And who the hell are you?” demanded Spillane, taking a step towards the younger man. Pat didn’t move and Mick stopped before he got too close. “I suppose you’re the one whose wages I’m supposed to pay, is it? Well, you can whistle for wages, boy!”

  “That’s fine,” said Dan Kelly, opening his door and standing aside for Spillane to leave. “Pat is family now. Sure we’ll manage, will we not, Pat?”

  Pat beamed at Dan, and Deirdre smiled, bit her lower lip. Spillane swore roundly and stormed out. Once he had gone, though, Dan sat down heavily at the table and put his head in his hands. “What the hell is that young fella up to?”

  Having reconnoitred at Roscommon, the South Tipperary and Wicklow flying columns spent half the night drinking, smoking, and arguing about tactics. Twelve men squeezed into the kitchen of a farmhouse to the north of Castlerea. Some sat on the backs of chairs weighted down by those who sat on the edges of the chairs themselves. Some sat on the floor. Someone even sat in the sink. Joe Morgan and another man from Wicklow, his equivalent in rank, took it in turns to stand on the table and swivel around to look at every man assembled, rousing the columns to patriotic fervour though clouds of smoke.

  Donal sat with his arms folded and observed. Occasionally, so as not to draw attention to himself, he raised a fist and shouted when the rhetoric peaked, but his heart was elsewhere. It resided with a lonely girl in Tipperary, betrayed by all she knew. If he could just get through the next two days without being arrested or killed, Donal intended, as soon as it was possible, to take her hand and deliver her from the darkness in which she dwelt.

  The following evening, Donal and Des Corcoran rolled into Buncrana along the main Derry road. The one hundred and thirty mile, four-hour journey from Roscommon had been passed mainly in silence. Des had stopped a couple of times so they could relieve themselves and refuel but they had little to say to each other. If Corcoran was worried about his explosive cargo he never betrayed it, even when, as they pulled up to the Derry border patrol at around 7 p.m., the gardai asked them to get down from the lorry. Des smoked a cigarette and laughed out loud with one of the gardai as another checked their papers by torchlight and asked them questions about their cargo. A procession of young women laughed and flounced their way over the border from Derry into Donegal, heading for dances and bars.

  Donal stood with his hands in his pockets and smiled pleasantly every time a torch was flashed in his face, but he ached to be as free as the servicemen who tipped their military caps at the gardai and held their girls close against the chill. What he was about to do seemed insane. He had read once, at college, that the measure of a person’s sanity was the gap between his reality and what he thought of himself. Donal felt increasingly that his reality was lala land and the safest place to be was his own head.

  The back of the lorry was opened up and revealed sack upon sack of sugar. A few were pulled out and one even ripped open with a knife so its contents could be verified, but all that spilled onto the road was sugar. The lorry was so densely loaded it was impossible to climb into it. The paperwork all looked official. After twenty minutes or so, the lorry was waved on, and even then, when they climbed back into the cabin, Des said nothing. Donal wondered what he had laughed at so raucously with the gard, wondered if Des didn’t like him, and decided he couldn’t care less. It was easier not to talk in any case; talking meant you risked betraying how nervous you were, or worse, any doubts you might have about what you had to do.

  They were making their way along Waterside, through the blacked-out Derry streets. Good thing Pat O’Meara hadn’t come along in the hope of seeing the sea, Donal thought grimly to himself. The beauties of Lough Swilly and the Inishowen peninsula were shrouded by darkness and a thick fog which had glutted itself over the sea before settling on Derry. British and US naval personnel were everywhere, on and off duty. There were no street lights and many people carried hand torches, shining them downwards to make sure they didn’t trip or miss the end of a pavement. The impression Donal had as the lorry moved slowly, slowly towards its target, was of being underwater, a shark nosing massively through shoals of small, shimmering fish.

  The ostensible destination of the lorry was a depot off the main Buncrana road, about a mile from the border checkpoint, but the RUC barracks was on the quayside, running parallel with the River Foyle, towards Letterkenny. It had been decided to target the RUC rather than larger US and British naval garrisons, because being Protestant and colluders with the British, they were the treacherous wedge in the door to freedom. And treachery to the IRA – even the sniff of it – was unforgivable; rational thought or changes of mind, revision of tactics in the face of changing political reality were not excuses for it. It was punishable by death and that was that. Also, there was more chance of leaving the scene alive if there was only a handful of policemen to worry about and not a regiment of English- or American-trained military personnel.

  Operation Holiday was merely the name Joe Morgan had cynically conferred on the South Tipperary arm of the IRA Northern Campaign which was being mounted across the Free State. It was a coordinated effort which had started in 1942, to get arms and explosives from IRA stashes across Eire to border locations. From there, Republican guerrilla warriors could use them to ambush RUC barracks and plant bombs in various Northern Irish locations. The campaign was continuing where Collins had left off – a sort of homage to the best of his intentions and the bedrock Republican belief that Ireland’s unification could not be achieved without armed struggle and blood sacrifice. As there were very few IRA warriors left by 1944, it was expedient that the blood should be someone else’s. What sort of god might be appeased by such sacrifice and whether the majority population might like to serve him, was not a legitimate question.

  Derry’s quays and wharves bristled with US and English naval vessels and submarines which nosed into her like bainbhs suckling a sow. “This is crazy,” muttered Donal to himself as he made out the looming bulk of ship after ship along the quay and the lorry parted the crowds of personnel who crossed the Strand Road to and from their vessels.

  “It’s a hot one, all right.” Des echoed Donal’s concerns. It was all he said the entire mission but the tone in which he spoke stretched back down the quiet miles and hours of their run from Roscommon. Any talk at all really was a risk. The lorry slowed then stopped.

  “Is this it?” Des nodded tersely to Donal’s question. They had parked a hundred yards from the barracks, down a side street. Joe suddenly appeared with some other men, but it was impossible for Donal to determine how many in the darkness. Joe had a torch and shone it into Donal’s and Des’s eyes to ensure their identity.

  “Des, you know the plan,” Joe whispered sharply before turning so that the searchlight of his torch illumined a huddle of men behind him. “Get in, tie them up – shoot them if you have to.” Joe turned back to Des, who looked away to avoid the torch beam. “Twenty minutes from when we set off, drive the lorry down the street till it’s outside the barracks. You know what to do then.”

  “Aye.”

  “Donal, you come with us.” Joe handed him a gun, which Donal swiftly put in his inside jacket pocket.

  “Where’s everyone else?”

  “In their places, Kelly – either close to the barracks or waiting, as back up. There’s a few in cars driving round who’ll be ready to pick us up and take us to safe houses as soon as we’re out. They’ll flash their headlights in sequences of three. Jump into any car. Right, come on, boys, clock’s ticking. For Ireland!” There were murmurs in response and the men melted into darkness. Joe, Donal, and two others began walking towards the main road
. “Act natural,” ordered Joe as they turned left onto the Strand Road, his torch leading them into a counterflow of people eager to be home on a cold, February evening in wartime Derry.

  Canadians, Americans, Royal Navy personnel, laughing and talking, whistled and jeered at each other as their torches roamed over uniforms, looking for identifying insignia. They split around the four Irish men, brushed shoulders with them, regrouped in catcalls and derisive laughter. Strains of music swirled with the darkness at a couple of street junctions as pubs livened up and dances got underway. What the hell am I doing here? Donal thought to himself. This is madness; this is madness. His heart was pounding, and though he was aware of the street beneath his feet, the sullen, driven movement forward of his comrades, and how he strode to keep up with them, it was as though he were being transported. Even as he was careful to stay close to the torch which guided them, Donal was distracted by the desperate bid of rational thought which banged in his head for attention, as if against glass.

  Within minutes they were at the barracks. Several men suddenly emerged from the night and they were running into the police station. Once inside, there was shouting and men were waving their firearms and yelling to RUC officers to lie down or be shot, calling them names and accusing them of betraying their country. There was an explosion of glass as the men outside smashed widows and stormed the barracks from behind, sweeping through the offices and corridors. A burst of automatic machine-gun fire and several single shots dispelled any vestiges of confusion regarding the seriousness of the situation. Death had slunk in under cover of darkness from his land of distant hills, and shredded the air they breathed with rampant claws, the heart-flailing terror of his roar.

  Donal stuck close to Joe, following his frantic movements as if dreaming him. They went into a room dominated by two desks behind each of which a uniformed RUC man lifted his hands in the air. The officer at the desk nearest the door was a sergeant and had been writing, his pen still in his upraised right hand. An incident report? Duty handover paperwork? The barrier in his head finally shattered. Donal’s senses returned and he heard with acutest clarity what Joe was saying to the two officers.