‘Here’s where the Civil War started,’ says Tomas. ‘Here’s where Emmet placed the big guns.’
Kitty rules out a visit to Kilmainham. ‘I can’t bear to think of what happened to my father there,’ she says. ‘And nearly to you. He’s still lying there with the others. They should all be given a decent Christian burial in Glasnevin.’
Kitty goes shopping in Grafton Street, picks out a red dress and red shoes.
‘Are you sure we can afford it?’ she asks Tomas, shocked at Dublin prices.
‘We can, of course,’ says Tomas. ‘I’ve spent little enough on you, barring a hundred cups of tea in the County Hotel. You’re an inspector’s wife, you need to dress the part, Kitty Sullivan.’ He enjoys saying Kitty’s new name.
On their last night they have dinner in the grand dining room of the Gresham, Tomas in his uniform, Kitty in her new red dress. They are confident enough to enjoy the luxury, aware they are a handsome couple. Upstairs in their room the red dress is carefully taken off by Tomas, carefully hung up in the wardrobe, and then Kitty and Tomas, almost as carefully, make love.
On the train back to Ennis the next day they read the newspapers for the first time since their wedding. The papers are full of stories about Eoin O’Duffy and the formation of the Blueshirts.
‘He’s a big man, O’Duffy. And maybe that’s what the country needs right now.’
Kitty is less certain. ‘Ireland needs fewer uniforms, fewer slogans. I don’t know what the Blueshirts stand for, except for O’Duffy.’
‘They’re due to meet in Ennis in ten days’ time, it says here. I might go along, hear what they have to say for themselves.’
‘Mind, Tomas, I don’t want to see you in a blue shirt,’ says Kitty. ‘Your Garda outfit’s uniform enough for me.’
Kitty moves into the superintendent’s house and transforms it. The floors are polished, the front step cleaned, the door knocker polished, there are flowers in the front room, a new radio is bought, comfortable sofas and chairs installed. And there is a proper tea when Tomas gets back from work at five-thirty.
After two years, Kitty asks if Mrs O’Hanrahan can move in with them.
‘She can, of course, as long as she knows it’s your house and you’re in charge.’
‘We’ll find her a job with the parish priest. That’s what keeps her out of mischief in Macroom. Besides, it’ll be handy her being here when the baby comes.’
‘When the baby comes?’ Tomas drops his teacup with a clatter as Kitty smiles at him and kneels down beside her, his arms around her waist.
‘I’m two months’ pregnant. I didn’t want to tell you until I was sure.’
Tomas immediately starts work on preparing a room for the baby’s arrival. He washes, then paints the walls of the little boxroom next to their bedroom, and buys an old wooden rocking cradle from the junk shop in Ennis, which he strips and varnishes.
When Mrs O’Hanrahan arrives, she tells Tomas to stop fussing over Kitty.
‘You’ll drive her mad trying to wrap her in cotton wool. This isn’t the first baby to be born in the world, and it won’t be the last.’
Tomas is unrepentant; his unspoken fear is that Kitty might miscarry again. Kitty is calm and content to let her mother do the heavy housework. Mrs O’Hanrahan has found work as the relief housekeeper in the Carmelite convent.
‘There’s no money, but Masses for the repose of my soul, and for your father.’
‘The two of you are well enough covered with prayers and candles by now. I’d say you’ll skip Purgatory entirely. It’s time you started to look after Tomas’s and my immortal souls.’
Mrs O’Hanrahan brings back regular, lurid news from the convent.
‘Mother Superior told us this morning that if the Communists take over they’ll turn the Pro-Cathedral into an anti-God museum and Westland Row church into a dance hall.’
‘We’re a long way from that,’ says Kitty. ‘And I don’t want you filling Tomas’s head with these stories, or he’ll join the Blueshirts.’
Tomas has heard O’Duffy speak at a big public rally in Ennis, a meeting interrupted by scuffles, shouts and stone-throwing. O’Duffy is a compelling speaker, but Tomas is too preoccupied with controlling the crowd to play close attention, and he comes back unconverted.
‘Your man made great play of the news that W. B. Yeats has written the words for a Blueshirt anthem. I’m not sure that’s enough to make me sign up.’
Tomas and Kitty lead a quiet domestic life; the red dress, which Tomas persuades Kitty to wear on Saturday nights, is soon outgrown and carefully put away. Mrs O’Hanrahan (Tomas never calls her by her first name, and she refers to him as ‘Inspector’) is no trouble, spending most of her time cleaning the house or with her nuns, joining Tomas and Kitty for meals only at the weekend.
Tomas is visiting a station in Corofin when Kitty’s waters break. He hurries home to find the midwife looking concerned.
‘It’s a difficult birth, a breech, and I haven’t managed to turn the baby around. I’ve sent for Dr Donovan, but he’s an hour away in Inagh, seeing a patient with pneumonia. Mrs Sullivan’s lost some blood. No, you shouldn’t go and see her – make yourself a cup of tea and we’ll come and get you when the baby appears.’
At noon Dr Donovan arrives, shakes Tomas’s hand and goes upstairs. Tomas is left pacing up and down, hearing faint, low groans from upstairs that pierce his heart. Two hours later Dr Donovan comes down.
‘Tomas, I think you should go for the priest.’
‘For the baby?’
‘No. Kitty’s lost a lot of blood, and we can’t get her into hospital now. It’s gone beyond that.’
Tomas, who doesn’t fully grasp what is happening, fetches the priest and they go upstairs together. Tomas sees Kitty, pale and unconscious, lying on blood-soaked sheets and blankets. Mrs O’Hanrahan is crying; the midwife is holding the baby.
‘You have a beautiful boy.’
Tomas brushes the offered bundle away. He has eyes only for Kitty. The priest murmurs the last rites, anoints Kitty’s forehead with oil and makes the Sign of the Cross. She gives a final gasping sigh, her eyes open for a moment, then close.
‘She’s gone. May she rest in peace,’ says the priest, closing his prayer book.
‘Gone? Gone? She can’t have gone. She was having a baby, that was all,’ and Tomas cradles Kitty in his arms, his cheek pressed against hers, his body shaking.
They take the baby next door; Tomas stays with Kitty until nightfall, and is finally persuaded by Mrs O’Hanrahan to come downstairs.
‘It’s God’s will, Tomas. And you have a strong son.’
‘It’s my wife I want, it’s Kitty I want.’
Tomas cannot bring himself to hold his new child. He doesn’t leave the house for three days, unable to believe that his life has been turned inside out. He is used enough to violent death, but the disaster that has overtaken Kitty seems to belong to a different order of things. He looks at the whiskey bottle on the table for comfort and amnesia, then empties it into the sink.
Kitty is buried three days later, and two days after that his son is christened. Tomas finds it impossible to love, even to hold, his son, who seems to sense his indifference and cries the moment Mrs O’Hanrahan passes him over. She has found a wet-nurse for the baby, christened Michael after the dead martyr of the Easter Rising. Tomas shows no interest in the name.
He begins a round of ferocious inspections of the stations in his division. His reputation changes quickly from that of a reasonable disciplinarian to that of a martinet. He dismisses three Garda for relatively minor breaches of discipline, and when his decisions are reversed in Dublin he responds with an angry, intemperate letter to the commissioner. The commissioner is a supporter of Fianna Fáil, as are two of the three Garda that had been dismissed.
A month after his letter Tomas is summoned to Dublin and sacked; he doesn’t fight the decision. He is given a week to move out of his house.
Tomas rents
a cottage in Ennis for Mrs O’Hanrahan and Michael, and goes back to Kerry and Ardsheelan. Annie Sullivan tries to console him, to persuade him to think about his son. Tomas still thinks only of Kitty.
‘We were good together,’ he says to his mother. ‘I’ve never been so happy, and I made her happy too. Now it’s all gone. It’s a punishment for the things I’ve done.’ He remembers Captain Newbury, how his pregnant wife miscarried and then died.
Annie’s robust. ‘That’s nonsense. You did what you and the others had to do. It was a war. You’ve confessed, you’ve received absolution. God has forgiven you.’
‘Has he? I can’t stay here for long; I may leave Ireland for a while, go to England, find work there. I’ve put money by for Mrs O’Hanrahan and the baby, and she has her pension.’
After Mass on Sunday, Father Michael stops Tomas on his way out of church and suggests they walk together out to Staigue Fort. Tomas hesitates, then agrees; after two silent miles Tomas unburdens himself to Father Michael, says how he feels Kitty’s death was a punishment.
‘God doesn’t work like that,’ says Father Michael. ‘Or only in the Old Testament. It’s hard to understand, hard to accept, but retribution it is not. You’ve confessed, you’ve received absolution, you’ve done penance enough one way or another.’
On the road below Staigue Fort, they stop at the boreen that runs up to the walls.
‘I came out when I heard the firing, anointed five dead men, gave three of the wounded the last rites. And I felt responsible – I’d warned your man O’Gowan that Eileen Burke and I had agreed to tell both sides what was planned, but I wasn’t persuasive enough for him to call it off. They’ll be expecting two Kerrymen and a dog, he told me, not twenty Volunteers.’
‘I was one of the firing squad that shot Mrs Burke. Frank O’Gowan wasn’t a man you could change once his mind was set.’
‘For months I felt responsible, felt guilty, but I’ve come to terms with it now. As you must.’
Back at Lissagroom, Annie tries to persuade Tomas to stay. ‘I need you here, and your boy needs you.’
‘This farm can’t support the two of us.’
‘It can if you want it.’
Tomas doesn’t want it. He plans a trip to England; then his eye is caught by an article in the Independent, saying an Irish Brigade is about to leave to fight for the Church and for the Nationalists. Three days later Tomas, together with four hundred other volunteers, is on board a German boat, the SS Urundi, on his way to Spain.
III
Spain, Ireland and Greece
1936–1969
26
JOHN AND ROBERT are lying in a narrow trench below the crest of a hill in Aragon, and if they raise their heads they can see across the red, fissured earth of the steep valley to the matching ridge on the other side. The heat draws shimmering lines across the valley; scrub oak, a few stunted olive trees, a dried-up river bed, an abandoned field in which whatever had once been planted had long ago withered and died.
‘They’ll not attack in daylight across the valley, will they?’ asks Robert. He is unshaven, dirty, his fingernails broken and grimy, his spectacles held together with wire, a crack across one of the lenses. His uniform is torn and inexpertly patched, his boots red with dust.
‘Doesn’t seem likely. You’d think they’d come round on the plain.’ John points to the west, where the two ridges drop down to a vast red flatland. A small town, Huesca, is visible in the distance. ‘It looks more like Africa than Europe.’
‘The Moors must feel at home. I hope our commanders have, what’s that disgusting phrase, secured our flanks.’
‘I expect they’re too busy rooting out informers.’
An artillery shell shrieks overhead; it lands a quarter of a mile away and fails to explode.
‘Two out of five shells are duds,’ says Robert. ‘So our commissar told me yesterday. And he says the Moors’ morale is terrible, that they all want to go home.’
‘I’m right with them. This doesn’t feel like a war we’re winning.’
‘The commissar’s view is that we’re on the side of the angels.’ The end of the sentence is drowned by the shriek of another artillery shell.
‘Perhaps we ought to dig deeper, not rely on the angels.’
Robert takes a long drink from his water bottle and begins to clean his rifle.
‘How many times have you fired that bloody thing?’ says John. He lights a cigarette and throws the packet over to Robert.
‘Twenty or thirty times.’
‘Twenty or thirty dead Fascists then.’
‘It would be an unlucky Fascist that was hit by a short-sighted Oxford history don. Look, here’s our lieutenant come to lower morale.’
The lieutenant, a tough Scots Communist from the Clydebank shipyard, arrives in a crouching run, says, ‘We expect an attack tonight. We’ll hold the hill, then counter-attack and sweep down into Huesca,’ and runs on.
‘If I understood Big Jimmy’s dialect and dialectic right, that sounds like a good, simple plan. Maybe we’ll even pull it off.’
‘I wonder where Kate is now,’ says John.
They had met Kate Lowell, a tall, fair-haired war correspondent for the New York Times, when their contingent arrived in Alicante to join the International Brigade in the spring of 1937.
‘Can you two give me a story?’ she asked, picking them out in the transit camp. ‘I can’t take another hardline Communist explaining why the real enemies are the bourgeoisie.’
‘We’re your men,’ said Robert. ‘I’m an Oxford don specializing in thirteenth-century manorial rolls and he’s an Anglo-Irish racehorse trainer. Completely untypical. Eighty per cent of the International Brigade are working class, and half belong to the Party.’
‘You’re just what I wanted,’ said Kate, and they went to the canteen where she was the only woman among sixty or seventy men. They talked over thin soup and black bread.
‘What brought you here?’ asked Kate, pulling out her notebook.
‘We came for the food,’ said Robert.
‘Don’t pay any attention,’ said John, leaning across the table as he spoke. ‘We’re both here, we’re all here, because we believe in the causa of the Republic. If we fail there’ll be a war in Europe within two years.’
When Kate stood up, John looked again at her carefully, her brown eyes, her short blonde hair, her long fingers closing the notebook, locking them away in a war-free zone in his memory, then said, ‘Make sure you find us if you get to the front line.’
‘Of course I’ll get to the front line, probably before you. I’ve already been shot at and shelled, which is more than either of you can say.’
‘Quite right,’ said Robert. ‘My friend means well, he just wants to see you again.’
They met again six months later in Jarama, a town secure enough for a dozen journalists to be bussed in. John heard of their arrival and went to the Hotel Victoria, the only large hotel. He saw Kate standing in a small group of journalists outside on the pavement. They were being briefed by a smartly dressed commissar, who scowled at John as he returned his salute.
‘Robert and I want to buy you a drink in the Bodega Nacional. It’s just round the corner. We’ve become battle-hardened veterans since we saw you last.’
‘I’d like that,’ she said, smiling. ‘I made shameless use of you after our meeting in Alicante. You were both famous for a day in New York.’
Two of the other journalists looked disappointed as Kate walked away from their group.
The cobbled square had a plane tree at each corner and a dry fountain at its centre. It seemed remote from the war. There was little food in Jarama. Bread, meat and cigarettes were rationed, there was no coffee or milk, and only wine was plentiful. Robert made Kate laugh through the long, hot evening. John, more serious, found it hard not to keep his eyes fixed on her. He persuaded a waiter, one of the collective that had taken over the bodega, to produce black olives and hard cheese, which they washed down w
ith several jugs of rough red wine.
‘It turns out,’ said Robert towards the end of the evening, ‘that Tolstoy was right. War is chaos and confusion. There is no connection between the plans of the generals and colonels and what actually happens on the ground. It’s all a series of random events, and the most important thing to do is not to kill the enemy but to avoid being killed yourself.’
‘I’ve had a detailed briefing with maps and statistics showing how the Government forces will defeat Franco’s Nationalists within a couple of months,’ said Kate.
John refilled their glasses. ‘That’s their reality, not ours. Our chaos is greater than Franco’s. We’re a patchwork army, Communists, socialists, anarchists, anarcho-syndicalists, democrats, mostly untrained, and as suspicious of each other as the Fascists. There’s a war of initials going on – CNT, FAI, POUM, PSOE, PCE, UGT. Hard to keep up with. Although we have plenty of men, enough to shoot twenty of our own troops, including three officers and a brigadier, after the Brunete fiasco. We’ve got several hundred in our own concentration camp. Which is where I’ll wind up if a commissar overhears me.’
Kate lit a cigarette, offered the pack to Robert and John, then asked, ‘So who will win in the end?’
‘The big battalions always win in the end. At the beginning, in Barcelona especially, we thought we were fighting for an idea, for a new kind of democracy. Then the commissars took over. Now we’re fighting for survival.’
A militia man walked past, unshaven, dark blue boiler suit, red and black scarf, rifle slung over his shoulder. Robert gave a right-fisted salute.
‘No pasarán!’
‘No pasarán!’
‘Anarcho-syndicalist. Surprised he didn’t ask for our papers.’
‘How can you tell?’
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