by Therese Down
“Is that all he said, Jacintha?” asked Dan quietly. “Why did he send the letter to you?”
Jacintha blushed and took the envelope from her apron pocket. “No, Daddy, it’s not all.” She pulled out the notes and counted them. “Thirty pounds!” She had never dreamt about, let alone seen, such a lot of money.
“What’s that for?” asked Dan, as shocked as his daughter. “Why did you hide it, Jacintha?”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know how much was there. He says it’s for me to…” she paused, considering how to phrase it, “to start a new life, and ten of it’s yours, for a horse.”
“What?”
“Here.” Jacintha passed the letter and the notes to her father. When he had finished reading, he looked at his daughter.
“You know whose money that is?”
“Yes, Daddy, I know,” said Jacintha, sighing. “And it’ll have to go back to him.”
Dan seemed to consider for a moment. “Thirty pounds!” he exclaimed quietly. “Sure that would buy a decent horse and a cow – it’s half as much as we get for our milk in a year!”
“Then take it, Daddy,” urged Jacintha. “You have it, please.”
“I couldn’t do that, Jacintha.” She looked chastened, nodded. She had never known her father anything but honest. “If Spillane is responsible for the loss of my son, then he can pay for my daughter to start the life she wants. Sounds fair enough to me.”
Jacintha looked up and her face broke into a beaming smile. She jumped up from her chair and rushed to embrace her father. Twenty pounds would be more than enough to pay her rent for a few months and set her up in a nice apartment in Limerick city or even Dublin, while she looked for work.
“What’s going on?” Deirdre appeared at the door, carrying freshly gathered eggs in a basket. She looked from Jacintha’s flushed and smiling face to Pat’s.
“Your father is after getting news of Donal,” said Pat. And Deirdre sat down with them, crying and smiling by turns as she learned that soon both siblings would be from home and starting new lives. In the end, the news was less devastating than it might have been, she considered, meeting Pat’s clear blue eyes through her tears.
“Who did the Spillane girl marry, in any case?” asked Dan some time later. Nobody knew. But Dan Kelly had a mind to find out. Someone in the Spillane household needed to explain to him how it came to be that Dan had no idea when he might see his son again. That evening, as Dan was reading his paper, Deirdre, Jacintha, and Pat were talking and laughing at the kitchen table.
“Pat,” Dan said, lowering his paper, “we will go into the market in Golden on Thursday and buy a horse. There’ll be several fellas selling them in the main street. There’s always a few good ones in it.”
“OK,” said Pat, delighted to be involved with such a purchase.
“Can I come, Daddy? Please?”
“Haven’t you school, Deirdre?” Dan looked over his glasses at his daughter. She stopped smiling and slumped in her chair, folded her arms. Dan went back to his paper. He did not disapprove of the budding courtship between Deirdre and Pat, but he could not determine if he were more pleased they were under his roof so he could keep a close eye on them or if he would have preferred that Deirdre were courting a fella who had to call at the door and have her back by nine o’clock.
Having eluded detection after the explosion, Donal wandered away from the Waterside area of Derry city and walked some miles till he reached an area north-west of the River Foyle where all was quiet. It was still only ten o’clock. He found a pub from which music emanated in spite of the blacked-out windows and, within a few minutes, had rented a small room for the night. Donal told the landlord that he had come up from the South looking for work. If he didn’t find any in Derry, he said, he was thinking of getting a train to Belfast and the recruiting office, so he could sign up for work in England. Donal’s easy charm and plausible narratives impressed the landlord, who warned him in a fatherly way to be careful if he was intent on going to Belfast; Republicans had tried to plant a bomb outside the recruiting office the day before, but luckily had been caught and arrested. Donal looked suitably shocked and shook his head, said he was despairing of ever finding decent work and that sort of thing didn’t help – sure what was the point of that, and it likely to blow to smithereens your own countrymen? The landlord served Donal a pint, told him it was on the house.
“If you’re a single man and ready to go abroad, there’s plenty of work to be had on the escort ships from Derry harbours,” said the landlord. Donal was interested. “If you don’t mind living at close quarters with a hundred or so Yanks or Canadians, that is, and waiting till you get to Nova Scotia or New York and back for your pay.” Donal sipped his beer. He had a hundred and twenty pounds in his inside jacket pocket. He didn’t mind waiting for his pay. “Of course,” continued the landlord, folding his arms and leaning on the bar, “you could be blasted out of the water by a U-boat.” But sure that was the point, he added philosophically, of the escort and convoy ships – to provide safe conduct for merchant ships used to bring supplies to the allied forces. There’d be no need without Germans. The landlord knew a couple of local lads who had just walked onto a Corvette docked at Lisahally and volunteered their services. They were snapped up, he said. As far as he knew, they should be coming in from their third transatlantic run any day now. They always made for his bar once they’d been up to the Royal Navy base to collect their pay.
Donal spent a restless night in a tiny bed which creaked every time he moved. The mattress springs protruded painfully and so frequently that there was no part of the mattress on which to lie comfortably. But it hardly mattered. His head was so full of fears, regrets, and possibilities that he could not wait for dawn that he might face and explore a few of them head on. At six o’clock the next morning, Donal stole through the hushed streets of Derry to the docks, looking for a ship that flew the Canadian Maple Leaf Naval Jack. The landlord had told him that the Americans and the Canadians had little time for each other and less for the British – that there were fierce fights in Derry on many a Saturday night between the Canadians and Royal Navy Brits in particular.
An officer looked him up and down and told him to walk a quarter of a mile north to where several Canadian Corvettes had docked and were ready to pull out of Derry that morning, escorting an empty merchant ship back home. They were small and grey and heavily armed, explained the officer when Donal asked what a Corvette looked like. They flanked the convoy ships assigned to merchant ships bearing oil, fighter jet engine parts, or ball bearing cargoes to the British Isles, he added. The officer asked Donal if he had properly considered the risks of volunteering for service on a Corvette, given that he didn’t even know what one was. Donal assured him he was prepared to accept whatever risks were necessary if it meant he found paid employment. And though the Merchant Marine naval officer shook his head sceptically as Donal walked away, he had no way of knowing that of which Donal was certain – that whatever dangers awaited him at sea between Derry and St John’s Port, Newfoundland, they could not be more life- threatening than those to which he had awoken that morning.
By the time Jacintha read her letter, Donal was halfway across the Atlantic Ocean and wearing a Canadian naval uniform. He slept in a hammock ten inches from the next sailor and carried his money and his passport in a breast pocket at all times. In his heart, he carried a sensation which kindled at the very thought of Caitlin Flynn and the possibility he might never see her again.
Several days into his voyage, halfway through a freezing dawn watch duty, soaked, exhausted, sicker than he thought it possible to be, the realization came upon him that he loved her. There were many days in the eighteen-day crossing when the prospect of a German mine or U-boat torpedo seemed merciful. The Corvette would climb a monstrous Atlantic wave until it seemed her single screw engine would certainly fail and she would topple backwards from its crest, be lost in the curl and crush of its mighty fist. Or el
se she teetered on a crest before plummeting headlong into a trough so deep, destruction seemed certain. As Donal clung to anything he could in a bid to remain upright and on board, it was the thought that he might find his way back to Caitlin Spillane, in spite of the odds, which gave him the strength to hold on. Without any hope he would see her again, he might have uncurled his hands, opened his arms, and embraced the storms and the jealous sea.
On calmer days, or as he lay exhausted in his hammock, trying to ignore the snores of sailors which rivalled in volume and persistence the drone of the ship’s engines, Donal attempted to calculate his chances of reunion with Caitlin. Each day he survived the Atlantic might be increasing the probability of seeing her again, but the vagaries of life were no respecters of mathematics; a turkey, a maths teacher had explained to him in the past, would be foolish indeed to calculate the probability of its survival based on avoidance of death on the days leading up to Christmas. Was there, Donal began to wonder seriously for the first time, a God with whom his fate was logged, and, crucially, was he open to negotiation?
For her part, Caitlin tried not to think of Donal Kelly. There was not much in his conduct to recommend him as worth the while. He had seemed to pursue her in spite of the odds, and then, when she had allowed herself to imagine what life might have been like had she met him earlier – just as the seed of the possibility he might be in her future extended a tentative shoot – he had disappeared. Caitlin had no time and less energy to waste on treacherous men – even good-looking ones. Her life had been ravaged by their kind and her focus now was self-preservation. But there were times on long and lonely evenings when Donal Kelly’s liquid eyes and the way he had amused her, in spite of herself, crept into her thoughts and she smiled.
Father Kinnealy arrived at Caitlin’s request, on the second Sunday in his life that Flynn missed mass. Jack insisted on being up and dressed for the priest. He sat close to the range, a blanket over his knees. Father Kinnealy was unable to hide his shock at the transformation in Jack Flynn when he walked into the kitchen.
“Well, Jack, and how are you?” he asked, though regretted the inanity of the question as soon as it was uttered. Jack nodded and wheezed in reply, smiled weakly at the priest. He lifted his hand, suddenly agitated. “What is it, Jack?” asked Father Kinnealy, pulling up a chair in front of the sick man. Jack leaned forward and seemed to be summoning energy to speak. Father Kinnealy moved to the edge of his chair in readiness.
“Last rites,” wheezed Jack. “Can you… hear my confession, Father?”
Father Kinnealy had come prepared. “I can of course,” he said solemnly. “I can of course.”
Caitlin withdrew from the kitchen and went upstairs, quietly closed her door. Left to her own devices, she had not chosen to attend mass. The prospect of seeing her family was alone a deterrent. When added to the horror she felt at the thought of being gossiped about or quizzed on the subject of her husband’s health, antipathy for the service was insurmountable. Now, as she sat on the edge of her bed and contemplated the little tree directly in her eye line, as Father Kinnealy’s sonorous tones resonated from the kitchen below, she wondered if she believed in God, and could not decide. As she pondered the question, something in her head was vying for her attention, some impression of difference or alteration to usualness. At last she realized what it was. Getting up and approaching the window, she observed the little black tree. Its branches were no longer stark, but fringes of green like delicate gloves softened their skeletal reach.
“Bless me, Father,” struggled Jack in low tones, “for I have sinned.” He had to break off to cough.
“Take it easy, now, Jack,” comforted the priest. “Take your time.” There was a long pause during which Jack recovered sufficiently to continue.
“That night,” he whispered hoarsely.
“What night, Jack?”
Jack looked at Father Kinnealy and pleaded with him to recall the only night, the significance of which they had shared. The urgency and sorrow in Jack’s eyes were all the aide memoire the priest needed. He knew well enough. He nodded and looked away from Jack’s desperate gaze. “Cappawhite. That was…” Jack struggled, tears welling in his eyes in spite of his best efforts to suppress them. “That was murder, Father.” The memory and the declaration were almost as uncomfortable for the priest as they were for the confessor. He still did not meet Jack’s eyes. Jack continued, “Those men had no chance.”
Father Kinnealy looked at Jack at last, mournful and full of compassion. He nodded. “I know, I know.”
There was a long pause while each man remembered his part in the Cappawhite killings. Jack recalled out loud for the first time – haltingly because of sorrow as much as difficulty breathing – how he had alighted from the hay cart, having left the Dundrum dance with the other men from the South Tipperary flying column. He had picked up his rifle from the floor of the wagon and descended upon the signal from the driver. He recalled how he had run stealthily, crouching, as if that way the night could afford him extra cover. At last, he and the others had crept silently towards the barracks in which four Black and Tans slept soundly. A deliberate distraction had been created a few miles down the road in Annacarty so that the Irish Constabulary sergeant and his men had gone to the cross to investigate, leaving the Tans alone and vulnerable. The lookout had clearly been too tired, the night too silent and warm, for he had fallen asleep and the next thing he knew was a gun in his face and a command to get on his knees and keep his mouth shut.
Jack related to a pallid and tortured priest how that night had soured his life, weighted his dreams till he dragged them around like shackles through his waking hours. He might, he said now, have tried harder to make something of his life; might even have sold the farm upon his father’s death and pursued salvation from grief and loneliness while still a young man, if it were not for the terrible, dragging guilt of that night.
“Did you never wonder,” he enquired tearfully of Father Kinnealy, “why I never went up to the altar rail for Communion once in twenty years?”
Jack could still recall the name of the first man to open fire – Dan Mulcahy from Ardfinnan. The shots ripped through the night and made their hearts leap wildly in their chests. All rational thought was scrambled, the training they had received, forgotten. General panic broke out and then they were all firing randomly into the darkness. There were a few short exclamations – cries and indecipherable expressions of anguish in English accents. It was a miracle, gasped Jack now, that they weren’t cut down by their own fire, so chaotic was the whole thing. It lasted only seconds. It was impossible to see anything clearly. Although it was a late summer night and there was a half-moon, the barracks were not lit and all was shadows and shifting silhouettes. It hardly even seemed real.
The only Black and Tan still certainly alive was on his knees, pleading for mercy. He kept saying he had a wife and children. He promised he would go back to England – desert that very night – if only they would let him go. Jack remembered that many Tans did exactly that; sick of being ambushed by the IRA, or else having no stomach for the brutality many of their kind exhibited against helpless Irish families, they shed their uniforms and slunk away. If they were not caught and dispatched by the IRA and if they reached a port, they could steal home on a cargo ship or even pay a ferry fare back to England. But there would be no such escape for this one. Whoever had held him at gunpoint throughout the ambush took a step back and pulled his trigger. The man toppled instantly, and everyone, Jack included, ran as fast as they could into the night, taking various routes back to their homes and what was supposed to be normal life.
Three of the bodies, Father Kinnealy recalled afresh, lay together in one room. One had been fifty or so yards from the barracks. Whoever shot him had not killed him outright and he had died slowly, of blood loss. It wasn’t likely that Father Kinnealy would ever forget the blood. God knew he had awoken sweating from dreams of it on many a night. On innumerable occasions, he had groped in
the darkness for his rosary beads and slipped from his bed to his knees. He had heard a few versions of that night’s events in the confessional box.
“This,” Jack managed through the outpouring of his grief, “is my punishment. My life was lost that night and it ends here, like this. Please, Father…” Jack leaned forward and looked earnestly into the priest’s eyes. “Do you think God can forgive me? Do you think there’s any chance of a life at all… after this?”
“Nothing,” Father Kinnealy said emphatically, “is unforgivable, Jack.” Jack’s crying became less intense. He remained bent over, head in his hands. “You are absolved, forgiven, in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord.” And here the priest made the sign of the cross over Jack’s bowed head, as he said, “In nomine Patris, et Filii et Spiritus Sancti.” He touched Jack’s head and closed his eyes. “Your contrition is evident and the grace of God is boundless. Be at peace, Jack, be at peace.”
Father Kinnealy heard the remainder of Jack’s confession and performed the last rites, then left. He would not sleep that night. How he wished his faith would bring him the peace with which he left Jack Flynn that day.
One evening during the last week of March, Caitlin was surprised by a knock at the door. She was even more surprised to open it and behold a man she had never seen before. She stared at him, waiting for him to say who he was. Dan Kelly removed his cap.
“Mrs Flynn? I am Donal Kelly’s father.” Caitlin’s frown intensified. What was he doing on her doorstep? “Can I come in, please? I won’t keep you long. I understand things are… hard at the moment.” The man’s voice and manner were gentle. He smiled at her. She stood aside and let him in. “I’ll get to the point,” said Dan, though he turned his cap nervously in his hands. “I have been up to your father’s place. I know about… how you were married, and it’s none of my business,” he added quickly, “but Donal, my son, is why I’m here. You see, I understand that he… well, he…” Caitlin raised an eyebrow; Dan could not continue. Spillane had told him enough – about how he had sold his daughter to Flynn and how, when he heard Flynn was dying, he had hoped Donal might be in line as her next husband. But Mick had also begged Dan not to tell Caitlin of the conspiracy. As it was, he had pleaded, there was enough bad blood between them. “Well, I understand Donal… liked you a lot, Mrs Flynn.”