Mick, was out of the car at the first shot, his revolver in his hand, ducking and weaving across to an outrider who lay wounded on the ground. His troops poured out from the Crossley and fanned up the hillside, taking what cover they could as they gave answering fire. Gradually the rebels were forced to retreat. Half an hour later the skirmish was as good as over. Gunfire became sporadic. Mick wondered whether to give chase, or to proceed on his journey. He stood up. Then it happened. A sniper's bullet ricocheted and pierced the back of his head. Men dashed to him, but it was too late. Michael Collins was dead. Killed by an Irishman.
In Dublin, Pat refused to believe the news. Mick dead? Mick with his quicksilver tongue. The greatest Irishman ever to draw breath. Dear God, Mick was Ireland half the time. Without Mick the British would still be in Dublin Castle. "Without Mick ..." Pat repeated blankly, racked by misery. First Finola ... now Mick Collins too... both snatched away within six months of each other ...
Brigid worried herself sick that Pat would wander off again. She washed and cooked for him, while inventing endless excuses to keep him at her place. Of course Sean was a draw, and although Pat sometimes gazed at the child with unseeing eyes, Brigid was heartened by other occasions when he responded with a sad smile or by sticking a finger out for the boy to grasp.
But Pat was not allowed to brood for long. A week after the funeral he was sought out by Richard Mulcahy, formerly Mick's chief of staff and now a Minister in Cosgrave's government. "Are you giving up now?" Mulcahy demanded. "Giving up when what Mick fought for is in sight? He would have disowned you for sure!"
Not many spoke to Pat like that - but Mulcahy had supported Mick too, so perhaps that gave him the right. Anyway Pat took it. Only the slow reddening of his face showed his rising temper. Mulcahy gripped his arm and led him away for a quiet talk - and it soon became clear that he was under orders to get Pat back into the fight. And Mulcahy could talk the hind legs off a donkey, so it was no surprise when Pat set his sorrows aside to rejoin the fray. Brigid and Tomas were sorry to see him go, but privately agreed it was for the best. No amount of brooding would bring poor Mick back, and there was something unnatural about Pat when he lapsed into his long silences.
So Pat hugged his son goodbye and went back to war - and a monstrous bloodbath it turned out to be. Cosgrave's government applied emergency powers every bit as harsh as those employed by the British in the worst days of martial law. The unauthorised possession of a revolver was made punishable by death, and those who scoffed at the idea of Irishmen executing Irishmen were mistaken. Erskine Childers was mistaken. Pat's old ally was arrested while spreading anti-Treaty propaganda, and when searched was found to possess a revolver. The tiny pearl-handled gun had been a gift from Mick Collins himself, but even a pedigree like that failed to save Childers. Following a court-martial, he was taken from his cell and shot at Beggar's Bush barracks.
The rebels hit back. Liam Lynch, leading the anti-Treaty IRA in the south, issued orders to shoot members of the Dail on sight - and a week later Sean Hales, whose own brother commanded a brigade of rebels, was shot dead as he walked to the Dail.
Which provoked the Dail to retaliate - this time through the men in the prisons, men like Rory O'Connor who had led the occupation of the Four Courts. Ever since his arrest O'Connor had awaited trial with the others - but killing members of the Dail changed everything. O'Connor forfeited his life. He and his senior men were woken in their cells and shot without trial.
Old friends were killing each other all over Ireland - and Pat Connors was in the thick of it, hunting out Republicans with single-minded ruthlessness. He rarely wore his captain's uniform, saving it for State occasions and friends' funerals. Instead he toured the country with five trained men, all dressed in civilian clothes. They travelled in two cars with enough guns aboard to stock an armoury - but the weapons were rarely seen by the public. Pat was too clever for that. He would arrive in a village, put up at a pub, and spend the evening talking to the locals. Two of his lieutenants would be with him, while the other three propped up another bar counter down the road - all doing the same thing, buying drinks and waiting for tongues to wag. Men were cautious at first, but as the drink flowed and the night wore on Pat generally found out what he wanted. Early the next morning he moved on - travelling far and fast, before stopping at a different pub in another village to repeat the performance over again. His reasoning was effective. A man nursing a hangover might regret his indiscretions, he might run scared, scared enough to be curious about the inquisitive strangers. However, little could be done if the strangers were gone, and after a day a frightened man would come to forget the wagging of his tongue. But Pat never forgot. He passed some information to the new Criminal Investigation Department in Westland Row, and passed even more to the Free State Army intelligence units - but some information he withheld. Pat was ever mindful of one thing, his need to find the man who shot Mick Collins. Pat wanted that man for himself.
Weeks, months, passed as the civil war ran its bloody course. Both sides committed terrible atrocities. Interrogations were conducted with the aid of a hammer - the castration of prisoners became commonplace - men were tortured until they went mad. Shocked and frightened, the Catholic bishops condemned the Republicans harshly: "They have caused more damage to Ireland in three months than could be laid to the charge of British rule in as many decades."
In Kerry, Pat Connors dwelt in the valley of death. His intelligence-gathering missions soon became too well known to be continued. The boot was on the other foot, as units of anti-Treaty IRA sought to capture and kill Pat's small band of men. Mulcahy ordered Pat back to Dublin, but Pat refused, remembering Mick's words - "The rest of the country will fall into line if we bring peace to Kerry and Cork." But bringing peace was no easy task, especially when Pat was shot in the leg and two of his men were killed in an ambush.
A month later, Pat struck back. In nine engagements over eight days his squad killed eighteen IRA rebels and wounded a score more. Pat and his men slipped away to the Boggeragh Mountains, to hole up while Pat's leg healed and he planned his next move.
Gradually the Free State forces gained the ascendency. By the spring of 1923 more than 13,000 Republican prisoners were in jail - many of them wounded, or on hunger strike. In six months the government executed seventy-seven rebels, three times more than the British shot in the two and a half years of the Anglo-Irish War. Even that failed to quell the rebellion, until - after a running fight in the Tipperary mountains - Liam Lynch himself was killed. For the first time since the outbreak of civil war, the rebels faltered. So many of their leaders were dead Cathal Brugha, Rory O'Connor, Richard Barrett, Erskine Childers now Liam Lynch too. The only survivor with enough authority to marshall the flagging Republicans was Eamon de Valera, but a month after Lynch was killed it was Dev himself who gave the order to surrender. More than 8,000 men came down from the hills. The Irish Civil War was as good as over.
Pat dragged himself home to Dublin. Physically he was much changed. He would never walk again without a limp, but it was more than that. In twenty months or so he had aged ten years. His eyes bore a haunted look. Some memories could never be erased from his mind. He remembered rescuing a man from the rebels - the poor devil had been kicked half to death and his entrails slithered out of his anus as Pat picked him up. He remembered another man, pinned to the floor with six-inch nails through his hands. And the sounds ... the screams ... made up a bloodcurdling sound-track that went round and round in Pat's head.
Years later, people pointed out that Sean Connors was a mere baby during the civil war. He could not have been influenced, they said. But his father was influenced, and his father never forgot. Nor did he die before telling Sean all he had seen. There were times in Kerry when Pat nearly gave up ... without God, without Finola, without Mick Collins ... but the thought of Sean kept him alive. It was the memory of sitting on Saint Patrick's Wishing Chair as dawn broke on Coney Island, and saying aloud - "I wish I could write it all
down. The magic a man like Mick has. That trick of getting his own way. Sure now, there must be a list of rules somewhere, rules which make some men giants among men. Don't I wish I could put it all down ... the way some men get power, and how others let it slip through their fingers. Would you imagine that. A set of rules for a man to pass onto his son ..."
Chapter Four
Brigid hated politics. She always had. Even before the civil war she had distrusted politicians, and Finola's excited chatter about Irish unity had simply bemused her. Whether the land was ruled by the English or the Irish made no difference as far as Brigid could see. The poor would always be poor, children would still need feeding - politics were an irrelevance. The only politician she had any time for was Pat Connors. She felt a sense of duty towards him - affection too because of the happiness he had given Finola - and the two feelings combined to produce a kind of protectiveness. Odd to feel protective about a giant like Pat Connors, but if ever a man needed watching over it was him. She had been shocked at the sight of him coming back from Kerry. Not just the way he dragged his leg - God knows enough cripples haunted Dublin for that to be common enough - but by the way he had aged.
But, as she said, time heals most wounds - so gradually the old pattern reestablished itself. Pat slept in his room on Ammet Street and shared the occasional meal at Brigid's table, but they saw little of him except on Sunday afternoons, when he played with the children or helped Tomas on his vegetable patch. Slowly Pat recovered some of his old self, enough anyway for Brigid to consider him more or less normal. At least he looked as if he slept at nights, and there was a sense of purpose about him again, especially when he looked at young Sean.
The boy was taken to Ammet Street every Saturday afternoon, first carried by Cooey and later as a toddler on the end of Dary's long arm. There he was left for an hour or two, and during those hours on a Saturday father and son forged a bond that was to last all of their lives. Perhaps living apart helped. The relationship might have been different had they seen more of each other. Of course they met at Brigid's when Pat visited, but the atmosphere was different - Sean was one of the family there and Pat took care to pay attention to all of the children. But Saturday afternoons were special - the high spot of Pat's week. Not a visit passed without his heart quickening at the sight of his son. He hugged the boy, delighting in the growth of bone and muscle and never ceasing to marvel that he and Finola had made this child between them.
"Did you see him, Finola?" he would ask her afterwards. "The size of him. As big as a barn and already as sharp as a knife to go with it."
Pat often talked to Finola. He treated his room not as a shrine to her but as a telephone box. Sometimes the line was bad and he had trouble hearing her, but they had constant conversations. It was a harmless eccentricity. He had become a self-contained man, but not a lonely one. He ate well, sketchily at home perhaps but he took one or two meals a week at Brigid's place. He drank moderately, but not to excess. Most of all he read, biographies mainly, and English and Irish history, and all the newspapers, starting with the Irish Times and Dublin Gazette in the morning, and not ending a day without the Independent, the Mail, and the Herald. And he had a few visitors, politicians and journalists mainly. During the day he was busy working for the Free State and during the evening, when not at Brigid's or drinking with some politician, he talked to Finola about the rules he was formulating. He wrote them down secretly, hiding his papers beneath the floorboards, so that not even Brigid would come across them when she cleaned up once a week. And on Saturday afternoons, Sean came to see him.
What struck most people about young Sean was his air of assurance. It began with the eyes - Finola's eyes, Pat always thought as he looked at them, bright blue and as clear as a summer sky. The short nose came from Finola too, whereas the square jaw and glossy black hair were Pat's - even Pat recognised that. But the smile, when it came, was something else. Pure goodness. "Born for the church," Brigid sighed wistfully, though never in Pat's hearing, for Pat's continued absence from mass shamed the whole family. Pat's denial of Catholicism even alarmed his son occasionally - after all, everyone went to mass.
"But Da ... aren't you afraid of eternal damnation?"
"What kind of God is that?" Pat snapped, darkening with temper. "What God creates men to cower like animals?..." he broke off, aware of the boy's alarm, knowing he had said too much. "Oh, leave it alone, son. Sure now, do as Brigid says and you'll come to no harm. We'll talk about it another day. You'll be making me forget what I was going to tell you ..." and Pat would be away into one of his stories.
As for Sean, he idolised his father - not surprisingly perhaps for Pat Connors was something of a legend in Dublin. They still sang songs about him in the pubs. People still talked of his past ... the man who had fought in the GPO with Pearse and Connolly ... the man Mick Collins loved as a brother. The stories lingered on, and Sean liked nothing more than to persuade his father to talk about them. And Pat told the tales with his shanachie's skill, leaving the brutality aside to concentrate on the humour, while the boy hugged himself with glee.
"You've heard about the looting going on while we were in the GPO? Well shops were plundered left and right as people took advantage of the situation. Then along comes a priest, determined to put a stop to such wickedness. Down Parnell Square he goes, huffing and puffing with indignation, till he bumps into a boy your age, loaded down with an armful of boots. 'Where did you get those boots, boy?' thunders the priest. The boy looks over his shoulder, but keeps running, 'In Earl Street Father, but you'll have to hurry or they'll all be gone.'"
Sean hooted with laughter and begged for more stories. Pat obliged, skilfully weaving fact and fiction, but only so far as it suited his purpose. He never lost sight of his objective, which was to prepare the boy's mind for the rules.
Years later, Sean could never work out exactly when it all started he was eight or nine - but life was different from that day on. The concept of the rules acquired the importance of a magic inheritance. Precisely what they amounted to Sean could not define - how could he, when his father still held them secret? But to the best of his understanding the rules were a formula known only to very great men. They had made Mick Collins the greatest Irishman ever to draw breath. One day Sean would be a great man himself ... if he followed the rules.
"They'll be awful hard to learn, won't they, Da?"
Pat shook his head, "Hard to follow maybe, but not hard to learn."
Sean digested that. His eyes narrowed. "I'll have to die, won't I, Da? They'll end up killing me like they did ..." He almost said Jaysus Christ but stopped in time, "... like they killed Mick Collins."
Pat laughed, "Sure, that's nonsense. Mick was the bravest, wisest man I ever set eyes on ... but even Mick wasn't knowing the whole pack of rules. Maybe nobody gets to learn them all ... but you'll be knowing a powerful lot more than Mick when we finish. You'll know enough not to get yourself killed."
Sean appeared neither glad nor sorry about that. Death is irrelevant to the young. Instead he asked, "When will I be big enough to be told, Da?"
Pat made him stand against the wall to be measured.
"But that's as tall as you are, Da," Sean cried in dismay.
"Sure, that's when you'll be ready to know all the rules ... but maybe we could start when you're that big." Pat lowered the mark by fifteen inches. "Just the smallest rules, wouldn't you say."
"Will I be that big next year, Da?"
"Next year, the one after," Pat shrugged, 'Soon enough. Just so long as you don't get too big to walk through that door when we've finished."
Sean longed for that day more than anything. His father never set a specific date, merely that mark on the wall, and not a Saturday passed without Sean standing beneath it to be measured. He imagined that day a thousand times. "Will it take long, Da? Will it take you long to teach me the rules?" "Ten days or so, but you'll spend the rest of your life getting them right." Ten days! Ten days with the Da and nobody else no
t Aunt Brigid or Uncle Tomas, or Maureen or Dary ... "Will I stay here, Da? Will I sleep here?" His father had stopped him with a wave of his hand. "We shall go away - to an island I know." An island! Sean had never heard his father speak of an island before. Ten whole days on an island, learning the magic rules ...
So every Saturday Pat Connors cast his spell over his son. Even when they were apart, Pat found himself thinking about Sean and the need to teach him the rules.
Pat continued to work for the Free State government - acting as security advisor to Mulcahy, a shadowy job which suited him. Had it not been for the changes within himself, or had Mick Collins been at the helm, Pat might have wanted to play a more active role. With Mick in charge Pat would have felt sure the country was on the right course, but Cosgrave's government inspired no such confidence - especially when it came to dealing with the Boundary Commission.
The Prods in the north were as adamant as ever - not an inch of the six counties was to be yielded to the Free State. Craig, the northern Prime Minister, even refused to nominate a man to sit on the Boundary Commission. Dublin seethed, while the British struggled to make good their promise given when the Treaty was signed. Eventually Westminster appointed their own Ulsterman as the north's representative. The Free State nominated Eoin MacNeil, and at last the Commission was in session, under the chairmanship of Mr Justice Feetham, a South African judge who was deemed to be impartial.
The Commission sat for a year. Behind the scenes Pat heard grumbles that MacNeil was getting nowhere, which turned out to be true when Justice Feetham summed up. No recommendation could be made, he felt, which materially affected the political integrity of Northern Ireland. As soon as Pat realised the way of the wind he delivered a blunt warning to Mulcahy. "Dublin will erupt," he forecast bitterly. "Mick would never have signed the bloody Treaty with this as the outcome!"
Ian St James Compendium - Volume 1 Page 85