1916

by Morgan Llywelyn

  Ned gave a wry smile. It must be getting harder to find men who would volunteer to die in France and Belgium.

  When he reached Mrs. Drumgold’s house, the hardest part was knocking on the door. After a considerable wait it opened and a heavily made-up woman with frizzed hair looked out at him. “Can I help you?”

  “I’m here to call upon Miss Síle Duffy.”

  “To call upon?” she mimicked. “Miss Síle Duffy?”

  “If you please.”

  The woman flashed a professional style and held the door a little wider. Ned caught a glimpse of a carpeted staircase ascending into gloom. “I think you mean Copper Clare. She’s one of our best girls, though. Are you sure you can afford her services?”

  In all their conversations, Síle had never mentioned her professional name. Ned was taken aback, but he swiftly recovered. Once employed, courage was gathering momentum. In his most formal Saint Enda’s style he said, “I am able to pay for her time if that is what you require, but I do not seek her ‘services.’ I have come to ask her to have dinner with me in a respectable restaurant.”

  “Respectable?” The woman’s eyes widened. “Aren’t you the funny one? Clare!” she shouted over her shoulder. “Someone here for you! Step inside, young man, and wait in the parlor. You want to buy a drink while you wait? We have wine or whiskey.”

  Feeling decidedly uncomfortable, Ned took a seat on a brocaded couch facing a large gilt-framed mirror. There were two young women in the room, neither of them Síle. They darted amused glances at him and giggled behind their hands.

  Within a few moments Síle herself appeared, dressed in a skimpy frock with too much bosom exposed. When she saw Ned the color drained from her face.

  He stood up politely. “I came to ask if you would have dinner with me.”

  “If he pays me for your time before you leave this house,” said the madam in a no-nonsense voice, “he can take you wherever he likes.”

  Síle was struggling for words. Ned took a step toward her and held out his hand. “Please. Just do it.”

  She turned and fled from the parlor.

  Ned sat back down on the couch. Mrs. Drumgold folded her arms across her chest and stood looking at him, bemused.

  After what seemed an interminable wait, Síle reentered the room. This time she was wearing a plain hobble skirt with a ruffled shirtwaist and carrying a coat over her arm. Her face glowed from recent scrubbing.

  Mrs. Drumgold went to stand in front of the door with her hand out. Ned held Síle’s coat while she put it on, then paid the madam the amount demanded. When she stepped aside he put his hand under Síle’s elbow and ushered her through the door as a gentleman should.

  But he could not resist saying over his shoulder, “Don’t worry. I’ll have her back at a ‘respectable’ hour.”

  When they were safely on the street Síle burst into laughter. “You’re mad, you know that? Barking mad!”

  “Copper Clare?”

  “After my hair color and my birthplace. When a girl enters a house the first thing she loses is her identity.”

  “You haven’t lost your identity. You’re my friend Síle Duffy and we’re walking out together.”

  He took her to the Gresham Hotel for dinner. If he was going to be public about his affection, he reasoned, he might as well go the whole way. Then perhaps he would not be afraid anymore.

  She hesitated at the broad front steps leading to the hotel lobby. “There might be men in there who know me, Ned. Are you sure you want to be seen with me?”

  “Take my arm.”

  The headwaiter in the Gresham’s handsomely furnished dining room gestured toward a table snowy with linen. “Will that do, sir?”

  Ned turned to Síle. “Will it?”

  She squeezed his arm. “I think it’s just grand.”

  As they followed the headwaiter Ned noticed several men looking at Síle. From their expressions he could not tell if any of them recognized her or if they were simply admiring her.

  She walked like a queen.

  When they were seated Ned ordered for both of them. The prices alarmed him, but on Mr. Pearse’s advice he had been saving since he first went to work at the Independent. In addition, Kathleen always sent him money for his birthday and Christmas. Without Mary to spend it on, the amount in the jam jar had grown. If this night cost his last ha’penny he would not complain. It was worth it for the way Síle looked sitting across the table from him.

  Basking in her happy smile, Ned indulged in a moment of self-congratulation. I’m doing this well, he thought. I’m really doing this well.

  Then over Síle’s shoulder he saw Henry Mooney enter the dining room with another man and two well-dressed young women.

  Ned fought back an urge to dive under the table, but it was too late. Henry saw him, sketched a salute, and made some smiling remark to his companions. All four came over to the table. Henry did not see Síle’s face until he stood beside her and she looked up at him.

  There could be no doubt about recognition now; it leaped between them like a hostile spark. But before Henry could say anything Ned was on his feet. His eyes locked with the journalist’s. “Allow me to present Miss Síle Duffy,” he said. “My fiancée.”

  WHEN a leisurely dinner was finally concluded, Ned walked Síle back to Faithful Place. Through their linked arms he could feel her shaking with laughter.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “I wouldn’t have missed that for anything! There was your friend introducing his friend, and you being so polite and formal, and the three of you chatting away about sport and politics. And me and Tess Trilby and The Diamond looking as if we dined on feathers and shat pearls.”

  “Tess Trilby and The Diamond?”

  “Introduced to you as Miss This and Miss That, or somesuch. They’re whores, same as me. Did you not know?” She was laughing so hard she pulled her arm away from his and leaned against a lamppost, hands pressed to her stomach.

  “But they looked like…I mean…”

  “Like ladies? They should. They’re very expensive, they work in a flash house. Gentlemen escort them to the best places to show them off to other gentlemen.”

  Ned’s jaw muscles clenched. “Is that what gentlemen do with you? Take you to places like the Gresham?”

  “Och, Ned, I’m not in a flash house. No man’s ever taken me to a fancy restaurant or much of anyplace, except you. It put a real flea in their ears, seeing me there. I’ll be the talk of the Village tomorrow. Imagine me being introduced as someone’s fiancée in the Gresham Hotel!”

  Ned was struggling to keep his temper. “I did not say it as a joke.”

  Síle stopped laughing. Her eyes searched his face in the light of the street lamps. “Then why?”

  “Mr. Pearse taught me to say what I mean and mean what I say. Unless I’ve lost my temper entirely, I do. Does that not tell you anything?”

  When she spoke, her voice was almost a whisper. “I’m afraid to believe what it tells me.”

  Ned gathered her into his arms and pressed her cheek against his shoulder. “Don’t be afraid, Síle Duffy. Don’t you ever be afraid. I’m afraid enough for both of us.”

  Returning her to Mrs. Drumgold was out of the question now. Nor could Ned take Síle to Middle Gardiner Street. Louise Kearney was a highly respectable widow woman; no female visitors were allowed in the rooms of her gentlemen lodgers. As he held her in his arms, his mind was racing.

  His impetuosity had presented him with an enormous problem. But had he been so impetuous, really? Had he not been giving expression to something that had been growing inside him for a long time? Perhaps that is what all ideas were: seeds that grew in the dark until it was time to burst in the light.

  “I don’t have enough money to support a wife yet, Síle,” he said, burying his nose in her fragrant hair. The smell of white lilac. “But I shall. I’m ambitious. I’m going to work hard and make a name for myself.”

  “Are you asking me to wai
t for you?”

  “I’m asking you to be my intended wife.”

  She was very still in his arms.

  He said, “That means leaving Mrs. Drumgold and all she represents.”

  “Where would I go?”

  “What about the Clarkes? They have a house on Richmond Avenue now, with a garden for Tom. I could take you there tonight if you’re willing. It’s where they took Seán MacDermott when he was released from prison.”

  “A proper house in Fairview? With a garden?”

  “Indeed.”

  Her body was shaking again. This time she was crying.

  Within the hour Síle Duffy was in Tom Clarke’s parlor. She was sitting on the edge of her chair while Ned stood beside her and held her hand as tightly as he dared.

  “I’m not sure about this,” she was saying. “I have money saved, hidden in my room. And my clothes—I can’t just abandon everything I worked so hard for.”

  “Don’t worry,” Tom said. “I’ll send someone to collect your belongings in the morning. Just tell me what you want and where it is.”

  “I don’t want to cause you any trouble. Mrs. Drumgold has some dangerous men working for her.”

  Behind his spectacles, Clarke’s eyes gleamed. “So do I, Little Girl.” It was the first time Ned had heard Clarke call Síle by a nickname, but after tonight he thought nothing would surprise him anymore.

  Katty Clarke served tea all around, with a stiff dose of whiskey in the men’s cups. “There’s no question of you going back,” she told Síle firmly. “We’ll put you on the couch tonight, then tomorrow I’ll ask around and see if we can find you another place. Someplace nice. You would be welcome to stay here indefinitely, but every nationalist household in Dublin has become a hostel lately. We’re packed chock-a-block as it is—not to mention having two cats, a dog, and a dozen canaries.”4

  “I can pay my way out of my savings,” Síle offered.

  Tom Clarke shook his head. “You can earn your keep by helping the cause. There’s going to be plenty of work to do, don’t you worry. Some men think women are fragile flowers that have to be kept out of harm’s way, but—”

  “Women,” his wife interrupted, “are the backbone of nationalism. As you know, Cumann na mBan split when the Volunteers split, and the majority went with Redmond. I daresay they’re sorry now! But it meant that those of us in Central Branch who kept the faith, like me and Eamonn Ceannt’s wife, have ten times more to do. The men simply could not get along without us. I myself have all sorts of assignments, some of them top secret.”

  Clarke winked at Ned. “Indispensable,” he said solemnly. It was a long word for Tom Clarke.

  By the time Ned wearily bade Síle good night and headed back toward Middle Gardiner Street, the first pale streaks of dawn were showing over the Irish Sea.

  When he entered the room he shared with Henry Mooney, the journalist woke up. He sat up in bed and started to say something.

  Ned reached for the gaslight and turned it up to high. “What?”

  Once again Henry found himself regarded by cold green eyes he would not have liked to see looking down a rifle barrel at him. “Were you serious tonight?”

  “Dead serious.”

  “You know what you’re doing?”

  “I’m planning to marry an exceptional woman. I suspect they aren’t that easy to find.”

  Henry read those eyes a moment longer, then held out his hand. “You’re right, they aren’t. Let me be the first to wish you, sincerely, the greatest happiness. If there’s anything I can ever do for either of you, I will.”

  January 27, 1916

  BRITISH LABOUR PARTY VOTES

  OVERWHELMINGLY AGAINST CONSCRIPTION

  January 27, 1916

  MILITARY SERVICE BILL RECEIVES

  ROYAL ASSENT. CONSCRIPTION BECOMES LAW.

  Chapter Forty-one

  JAMES Connolly was back. He told no one aside from his wife where he had been. “I’ve been walking in the country,” was his standard answer to everyone but Con Markievicz. To her he confided, “I’ve been through hell,” but gave no details. He simply resumed managing the union, printing a newspaper, and leading his militia with his usual dynamism.

  In an editorial on the fifth of February, Connolly wrote, “Deep in the heart of Ireland has sunk the sense of the degradation wrought upon its people, so deep and humiliating that no agency less powerful than the red tide of war on Irish soil will ever enable the Irish race to recover its self-respect.”1

  It was observed, however, that he was no longer condemning the republicans for their inaction.

  OTHER writers were making their voices heard. The Daily Express published the Manifesto of the Irish Volunteers on its front page.2 Even the avowed pacifist Francis Sheehy-Skeffington wrote a strongly nationalistic article for the Century.3

  BEYOND the shores of Ireland the world and the war went on. On the seventh of February, the Independent reported that Germany had accepted full responsibility for the loss of lives on the Lusitania and had agreed that the United States had the right to claim indemnity.4

  Food shortages in Berlin were causing riots.

  In London the government announced that 400,000 women would be recruited to till the fields in the absence of their menfolk. A royal proclamation banned the importation of paper and tobacco, and there was an appeal against the use of motorcars and motorcycles for pleasure.

  NED’S latest letter from Kathleen said:

  You have not written in many weeks and I am worried about you. Is everything all right? I try to follow news from home as best I can. A young Irishwoman called Nora Connolly was in New York in December and John Devoy introduced us.5 I like her very much. She is only nineteen, your age. Her family lived here for years while her father was learning about American trade unions and “breathing the air of freedom” as Nora puts it. They are back in Ireland now, where her father is the leader of a working-class militia called the Citizen Army. Have you ever heard of them?

  Nora says there are women in the Citizen Army who drill right along with the men. She tells me it is not like that with Cumann na mBan because the Volunteers only allow women to do things like cooking meals and rolling bandages.

  I promised her I would help raise money for the Citizen Army, but realistically I do not know how much I can do. Alexander is not as generous with me as he used to be. He has fired my housemaid, Della, who was a good friend to me, and hired another woman whom I do not like. I feel as if I am being watched all the time.

  By the way, have you heard anything from my friend, Father O’Shaughnessy? Please do let me have news of him.

  Your loving sister,

  Caitlín

  Ned was disturbed by the letter. Obviously there were problems in his sister’s marriage; problems severe enough to make her hand shake when she penned “I feel as if am being watched all the time.”

  He resolved to find Kathleen’s priest and question him.

  Ned had become almost as good as Henry at sniffing out information. Within a day of receiving the letter he discovered that a Father O’Shaughnessy had accompanied O’Donovan Rossa’s body to Ireland and was remaining in the country for a year on sabbatical. His address was a cottage in Ringsend.

  By the time Ned left work that February afternoon it was already dark. As he cycled along the quays, yellow lights danced like malign spirits on the oily surface of the Liffey.

  When Ned reached Ringsend he called in to the Yacht Pub and a toothless barman gave him directions to the Cahill house. “This ain’t Dessie’s local, but I know the place sure. Go up the road to the first right but don’t take that. Go on to the T-junction and then go left and right again. It’s the second door down from where the public watering trough used to be. Ye can’t miss it.”

  He might have, except there was a crowd gathering outside the house. As Ned was leaning his bicycle against the wall a priest came out to invite them inside. In the light from the open doorway Ned recognized him. “Father,
weren’t you at City Hall with O’Donovan Rossa?”

  The priest turned toward Ned. His eyes widened. “You were there, too. I remember.”

  “I was there, Father. I’m—”

  “Ned Halloran.” The priest exhaled slowly. “You couldn’t be anyone else. Please come inside for a few minutes, will you? I apologize for this, but my cousin died and we’re about to take the body to the church for tomorrow’s funeral. You and I can talk afterwards.”

  Ned whipped off his tweed cap and arranged his features in a suitable expression of reverence, then followed Paul into the dingy little house. He understood the Removal of the Remains as an American might not.

  Des Cahill, in his open coffin, occupied a table in the center of the room. Ned and the priest had to edge their way through a crowd of relatives, friends, neighbors, and the ubiquitous strangers drawn to any death in Ireland.

  Paul said, “Excuse me please,” in his confident American voice.

  Ned shyly murmured, “Sorry.”

  The air was stifling. Paul knelt and prayed silently beside the coffin while an elderly woman Ned assumed to be the widow stood to one side, fingering her rosary. Ned made his way over to her and whispered, “Sorry for your trouble.” Other women were patting her solicitously, and an ancient shawlie kept rocking back and forth and wailing in Irish, Ochóne, ochóne!

  The priest signed the cross and stood up. The coffin was closed, the lid screwed in place. Four men hoisted it onto their shoulders and set off with the rest of the procession forming behind them. The widow paused to take her heavy shawl from the peg and sweep it across her shoulders.

  “I never did like that man,” she said.

  Then she followed the corpse out the door.

  After the Removal Ned and Father Paul went to Dessie’s local, a pub called Peter North’s.6 The publican had attended the Removal. As Mrs. Cahill was heading for home he had given her a sugar bag clinking with coins. “We collected from Dessie’s mates to help you in your time of trouble.”