One Man's Flag

by David Downing

  Which didn’t look good. Killing the oppressor’s armed police was one thing, but murdering an unarmed civilian was something else again. She could imagine the justification—what was one man’s life when millions were being slaughtered by the capitalist machine!—but it still left a sour taste. Colm’s shining martyrs were looking somewhat tarnished.

  It also reminded her of McColl’s claim that he had witnessed Brady killing a policeman in Paterson, New Jersey, the previous spring. Here, too, she had only her ex-lover’s word to go on, but that story also somehow rang true.

  Was he an essentially honest man who had just told one big lie? Well, what if he was? Did a life of nonviolence excuse one murderous moment?

  She stared out at the rippling river. What if she decided, after all this, that Colm’s operation had been merely a sideshow, eventually killing ten people for no discernible gain? The Germans could hardly have been impressed, and none of the English and Irish she’d talked to had seemed persuaded to change their minds. On the contrary, as far as she could tell, the whole sorry business had only served to confirm existing prejudices.

  What could she do with such a conclusion? She knew how the journalist should answer. But what about the sister? And the woman who thought Ireland should be free?

  She told herself not to prejudge. She had more relatives to talk to, and she wanted to further sample wider Irish opinion.

  It was time to go. Her appointment with Maeve McCarron was at three, the address half a mile north of the river. As Caitlin crossed the Liffey and started up the street of that name, she found herself thinking about money. She could afford to stay another week in Ireland, and maybe a few more in London, but that was about it. She could always ask Aunt Orla to send her some, but she didn’t really want to. No, once she had learned all she could on Colm’s behalf, she would go home. But not across the Atlantic—the sinking of the Lusitania a few weeks earlier by a German submarine had gotten her thinking about other routes and the possibilities they offered. There seemed no problem with the North Sea routes to Scandinavia, and while Denmark offered a chance to witness the imminent introduction of women’s suffrage, Norway was currently home to the Russian writer Alexandra Kollontai, who’d been writing and fighting for a socialist feminism for almost a decade. According to Sylvia, who had met the Russian in London before the war, she was not only brilliant but also a really nice person. “And, like all European revolutionaries, she speaks several languages. It’s only we English who can’t be bothered.”

  There were so many important stories being eclipsed by the war. If Colm’s allowed her the time, she planned to research a piece on the republican women’s auxiliary organization, Cumann na mBan, while she was in Dublin. And it had occurred to Caitlin that she was ideally placed to investigate what one of Sylvia’s friends called the “great tragedy”—the decision by German socialists, after decades of preaching workers’ solidarity, to support the Kaiser’s war. As an American she could travel to Berlin and actually ask them why they’d done it. Kollontai knew most of them and would be able to give her introductions.

  These were stories that any decent journalist would love to research and write. And what a chance to prove that a woman could do the job as well as a man, and perhaps even better. Afterward she could travel to Russia via Finland, take the train across Siberia, and a ship home from Japan. The only dangers of a voyage across the Pacific were emotional ones. But maybe by then her memories of the wretched man would finally have let her be.

  Reaching the house on Mary Street, she paused for a moment to compose herself, then let the heavy knocker drop.

  When Maeve McCarron answered the door, Caitlin recognized her. She had passed the slim, raven-haired woman on the stairs at Liberty Hall, on her way up to see James Connolly. Maeve had been wearing a silver Cumann na mBan badge, the letters CnAmB, in flowing Gaelic script, set against a miniature rifle.

  Caitlin introduced herself and was led through to the parlor, where a formal family photograph had pride of place on the mantelpiece. The adolescent girl was obviously Maeve, the young boy in short trousers her brother, Donal. There were several shelves of books and a pile of magazines on a corner table. The one on top was the latest issue of The Irish Volunteer.

  They both sat down. As a woman journalist, Caitlin was used to people chafing at her gender, but Maeve was more suspicious of the scribe. “I agreed to meet you,” the Irishwoman said, “because you lost a brother, too. But I want to know what your intentions are.”

  “My intentions?”

  “There are many ways to tell a story. Some more useful than others.”

  As Caitlin explained about Colm’s request, she could hear her own doubts seeping through. Maeve heard them as well. “So what if the story proves less than glorious?”

  It was a relief to acknowledge the problem. “There are three things I could do,” Caitlin said. “I could print the truth. I could print an edited version, which leaves out the less comfortable bits. Or I could decide to keep silent.”

  “And which will you do?”

  “I don’t know. First I need to know the truth.”

  Maeve thought about that for a moment. “I doubt I can help you much,” she said eventually.

  “Did you know about the operation before it happened?”

  “Yes. Donal told me about it the night before they left.” She paused. “I was his sister, but I was ten years older, and both our parents died when he was only eleven, so I sometimes felt more like his mother.”

  “I was seven years older than Colm,” Caitlin said, “and our mother died when he was small.”

  “It seems we have a lot in common,” Maeve conceded, her expression softening.

  “Mmm. Tell me about Donal.”

  “That’s easy—and hard. He was an ordinary boy, with the usual share of virtues and flaws. He was always brave, physically at least. And loyal to a fault. He wouldn’t have let the others down.”

  No, Caitlin thought. She wondered if Aidan Brady had let Maeve’s brother down.

  “Did you know he went to St. Enda’s?”

  “No, I didn’t. I’ve heard a lot about it.” St. Enda’s was the school that the well-known nationalist Patrick Pearse had set up before the war, as a font of truly Irish education. “Is that where Donal became a republican?”

  “Oh, no. We both got that from our parents. But you should talk to Pádraig Pearse. He’s an extraordinary man.”

  It wasn’t the first time Caitlin had heard Pearse’s praises sung, but she was interested in why a woman would do so. “In what way?” she asked.

  Maeve smiled. “Oh, that’s hard to put into words. There’s a passion there that’s hard to ignore. And an honesty. If you meet him, you’ll see what I mean. Donal admired him, despite their political differences.”

  “Donal was a socialist, like you?”

  “What makes you think that I am?”

  “I saw you in Liberty Hall the other day.”

  “Ah. But I don’t want to give you the wrong impression—Donal would have said he was a socialist, but he was no theoretician. He wanted action and adventure, and he wanted to hit the English and their Irish puppets where it hurt them.”

  “Is that what he told you they were going to do?”

  “More or less. He didn’t give me any details—they’d all been warned not to do that—but he made it clear they were carrying the fight to England.”

  Caitlin didn’t want to upset Maeve, but she felt she had to ask: “Did you try to stop him?”

  Maeve thought twice before answering. “I didn’t encourage him, but no, I didn’t try to stop him either. Donal was a grown man. I would have preferred that my brother stay safe in Dublin, but that wasn’t an argument likely to appeal to him. And I had no political or moral objection to what they were planning.”

  “You’re aware of what happened that night?”<
br />
  “Most of it, I think. Connolly sent a man over to London . . .”

  “Michael Killen.”

  “You know about him?”

  “I know Michael quite well.”

  Maeve must have read something in her tone. “Well, he’s a good man.”

  “No, no, nothing like that,” Caitlin insisted. We just sleep with each other, we’re not in love, was what she felt like saying, but she didn’t know how the other woman would take such a frank admission. She had no idea how feminist Cumann na mBan was—were its members equals in name but followers in fact, as the label “auxiliary” suggested? That was something she wanted to find out, but this wasn’t the moment. “Did you meet Donal’s partner on that night—Aidan Brady?”

  “No. Did you?”

  “I did, in the States. Seán Tiernan introduced him to Colm. But I don’t how Brady met Tiernan—Colm never said.”

  “What was Brady like?”

  “Powerful,” was the first word that came to mind. “Intelligent. Committed.”

  “But?” Maeve asked, picking up on Caitlin’s ambivalence.

  “I don’t think there’s any love in his heart.”

  “Ah.”

  “I don’t know him well,” Caitlin said. But well enough, she thought.

  Maeve gave her a wry smile. “I’ve met men like that,” she said. “We’re all socialists at Liberty Hall, and most of the men are fond of telling you how and when they came to realize that the world needed turning upside down. And among all those men who learned it at their father’s knee or experienced it firsthand at work, there’s a group that gives me the shivers. They’re every bit as passionate, every bit as brave, but there’s something missing. And then you find out why they hate injustice so much—it all goes back to their childhood and the injustice they suffered then. Not from the state or the owners, but from mother or father or both. Their socialism is rooted in resentment and hatred, not love.”

  Caitlin knew exactly what the other woman meant but had never heard it expressed so clearly. She told Maeve that after finishing this assignment she was hoping to write a piece on Cumann na mBan for the American press. Would the Irishwoman suggest some people Caitlin could talk to, in addition to herself?

  Maeve looked delighted by the prospect. “Of course. When do you think that might be?”

  “I’m not sure. I still have to see relatives in Limerick and Belfast. And I need to get an idea of what ordinary people think—the ones who don’t have a political agenda.”

  “They’ll think what their situation tells them to think. People with sons or husbands in the British army are not going to fancy the idea of their boy being blown up in England. Most of those who’d like to see the back of the English think that Home Rule is just a matter of time, so why fight for something that’s coming anyway? And yet there’ll always be some who’ll cheer any Irish resistance to English rule, no matter how badly conceived it is. You can probably count the number of people who’ve really thought things through in the hundreds, and even they’ll disagree with one another.”

  It was the first time she had sounded bitter, Caitlin thought. “I’m sorry about Donal,” she said.

  “And I about your Colm. But better they died fighting their own war than someone else’s.”

  There was no disputing that, Caitlin thought as she walked back to her hotel. The sky had clouded over during their talk, and rain had just began spattering the pavement when she reached the doorway. She was standing in the lobby, wondering whether to write letters home in the bar or up in her room, when a bespectacled man in a tight-fitting suit approached her. “Caitlin Hanley?” he asked, with a perfunctoriness that suggested he already knew the answer.

  “Yes.”

  “My name is Finian Mulryan, and I’d like a short word if that’s possible. I’m speaking on Mr. Connolly’s behalf, you understand.”

  “Oh. All right. Shall we go into the bar?”

  “If you like,” Mulryan said, looking more flustered than an ICA man should by her forwardness. He bought them both half a pint, though, mild for her and bitter for him, and almost succeeded in suppressing his surprise when she offered him a cigarette.

  Her talk with Maeve had reawakened something, Caitlin realized.

  “First off, my condolences on the loss of your brother,” Mulryan said, with what seemed like genuine feeling.

  “Thank you.”

  He paused, as if embarrassed by what he had to say. “We—Mr. Connolly, that is, but not just him—as armies go, we’re very democratic, so I’ll stick with ‘we’—we are a tad worried about what you might be planning to write on the matter of you-know-what. One of the relatives you talked to . . . well, they came to us, and said you were asking questions about an English night watchman who was killed around that time.”

  “That is true.”

  “But as far as we can tell, no newspaper ever mentioned such a man, and he never came up at the trial.”

  “Also true.”

  Mulryan still looked embarrassed, but she no longer thought he was—it was just his natural affect. “You see, the way it is,” he said, “we arranged these conversations for you, and we were expecting a commemoration of those who’ve been lost.”

  “I do see,” Caitlin said. She took a sip of the mild and sized him up—what was the best way to fob him off? And as she asked herself this, she knew what she hadn’t known in many months, what her own priorities were. A journalist first, a supporter of Irish independence second.

  “You see we’re fighting a war,” he was saying. “And no army can afford to dwell on the other side’s casualties. It’s bad for morale.”

  “Of course it is,” she agreed, “and you have no need to worry. I feel no obligation to print everything people tell me. I lost a brother, so I need to know the full story for my own peace of mind, but I have no intention of besmirching his memory or handing his executioners a propaganda victory.” All of which was true, she thought, albeit far from the whole truth. But she didn’t want to upset Connolly and risk losing his cooperation.

  Mulryan looked relieved. “That’s good to hear,” he said with a smile. “Your brother will never be forgotten in Ireland.”

  “I hope not,” she said, restraining a sudden unexpected impulse to reach out and slap the man.

  When he was gone, she sat back with the rest of her drink and lit another cigarette. Michael had raised the same subject with her the other night, dismissing her doubts at first, then backing off when she refused to do the same. Was he under orders to shadow her journalistic endeavors? And when he had passed on his doubts at the direction she was taking, had Connolly decided that rather than risk her confidence in Michael, he would send someone else to confront her?

  Was she suffering from paranoia? Or was she just attracted to duplicitous men?

  At least she hadn’t fallen in love with this one.

  The following morning she took the train to Limerick. After a night of rain, the countryside was green as a rebel flag, but the small clusters of Irish boys on almost every platform were off to fight for the Union Jack.

  She ate a quick lunch in the Limerick Station buffet, then took a hansom into the center. There were a few fine buildings, but her first impression was of narrow streets and widespread poverty, and the romance of the name, which she’d carried with her since childhood, seemed sadly inappropriate. After taking a room on Rutland Street, she asked directions from the desk clerk and walked down a succession of increasingly shabby streets to the home in question.

  The two young Kierans—Breslin had grown up in Limerick, Coakley in Belfast—had suffered mixed fortunes on that August night. After blowing up their bridge, they had lost themselves in the Hampshire lanes and run into an off-duty constable roused by the general alarm. Under the pretext of showing them the way, this bright young spark had successfully lured them int
o a local army depot, where they’d quickly been overpowered.

  This twosome had waited six months for their execution, because the British had been reluctant to execute boys who were only seventeen. Eighteen was fine, and once they’d had their birthdays in Brixton, both Kierans had been taken to the Tower and shot.

  The Breslin family was a large one, and Caitlin found mother, father, two of the sisters, and one of four brothers at home when she arrived. The sprawling, sparsely furnished house was off an alley close by the Shannon, a framed photograph of young Kieran hanging in the narrow hallway.

  Finding out who Caitlin was, they swiftly ushered her inside their cloak of collective grief. Over tea in the parlor, they didn’t so much discuss the events that had killed their son and brother as unpack the historical context like a worn and much-loved map.

  They knew for an absolute fact that an Irishman’s killing of an Englishman could never be classed as murder. A thousand years of English occupation had made that so. Their Kieran and her Colm had not faced justice; they had just been struck down by a greater power. One day things would change, and then both boys would be remembered for the sacrifice they’d made.

  They grieved for their loss but were proud of it, too, and assumed that Caitlin must feel the same.

  After leaving the house, Caitlin walked out to the middle of the long stone bridge and stood there staring at the river and the rising hills beyond. Was that how she felt? Was that how she wanted to feel?

  No, was the answer that came to mind.

  Why was that? She felt Ireland’s oppression as keenly as anyone; she wanted the English out. And the brother she loved had tried to speed them on their way.

  So why did she feel no pride?

  She was back in Dublin by lunchtime next day and spent the afternoon moving from café to café on both sides of the Liffey, asking people what they knew of the August events and what, if anything, they thought the perpetrators had achieved. Her Irish-American accent cushioned her against hostility, but many of the people she approached were clearly suspicious, and several politely refused to express an opinion. The views she did succeed in eliciting proved as diverse as Maeve had said they would be. Colm and his partners were “the best of the best,” “traitors pure and simple,” “a hapless bunch of idjits.” All of which offered confirmation of the one thing Caitlin knew she had learned—that the loyalties of Irishmen and -women were a lot less straightforward than she’d been led to believe.