Ian St James Compendium - Volume 1

by Ian St. James

  Samuel Averdale died that night. For him the rescue came too late. He starved to death, dying with cheers ringing in his ears, clasped in the arms of his eldest son, Hugh. Ulster had claimed the second of its Averdales.

  The raising of the siege led to the eventual defeat of King James in Ireland. Landing at Carrickfergus the following year, William of Orange won a huge victory at the Battle of the Boyne, then routed the remaining Catholic forces at Aughrim. The triumph of Protestant over Catholic was complete. Orange conquered Green and never forgot it.

  Chapter Nine

  "Aye, Dinny's right if you ask me," Pat Connors said when he heard about Lord Averdale. "The Gazette will never be the same."

  Sean wanted to ask for advice. To be out of work now, just when everything was going so well! But to ask for advice, even from his father, was against the rules.

  He worked harder than ever at the Gazette, treasuring every moment, fearful it might be the last. He tried to ignore the atmosphere - the whole place had changed. The spark had gone from Dinny Macaffety. Once the very air had been charged with Macaffety's determination to run the best paper in Ireland - now the door to the Editor's office remained closed, and the man behind it sat in resigned apathy.

  News of the paper's change of ownership was all over Dublin, spread further after the memorial service held for Lord Bowley and his son. Even the Widow O'Flynn spoke about it - "They say the new owner is a Protestant, connected with the government in the north. They say he'll make changes."

  Sean feigned indifference. It was a technique he was practising. If something troubled him he refused to talk about it. It could worry him sick but there was no point in discussing it if the rules forbade him to ask advice. It was a hard trick when he was so worried, but one he was determined to master.

  "Sure now," Maeve O'Flynn continued. "Most people are worried to death. Most people who work at the Gazette I mean."

  "People worry too much," he answered.

  She smiled, seeing through his act but thinking no less of him for that. Indeed she was pleased, awarding herself at least some of the credit for his growing self-confidence.

  "Sure you're a cool one," she said. "Sometimes I think there's ice in your veins."

  Hardly that, he thought, watching her across the kitchen table. Her beauty still captivated him. They had been discussing some premises owned by Jim Tully and even now the excitement showed on her flushed cheeks. He watched her play with the top button of her dress, a teasing signal that she was ready for bed. He remembered the first time she had opened her blouse and drawn his hands onto her breasts - remembered the shock of excitement, the sensual arousal, and his fear of the unknown. But he knew now - and the knowing made her even more exciting.

  Maeve O'Flynn's nimble fingers undid the buttons of her bodice. There was no hurry, the night lay before them, a delicious banquet to be savoured. She rose and crossed the room to sit on his lap, arranging herself carefully to avoid his thrusting hardness. His hand moved under the fabric to cup a breast. God, she had waited all day for that ... all week really ... to be held, fondled, stroked.

  They adjourned to bed, him carrying her from the kitchen as easily as she might have lifted a pillow. And at five o'clock he left her, dressing himself in the dark before turning to kiss her goodbye. She would sleep late, whereas he would yawn his way down from the barn loft to greet the labourers in an hour's time.

  It was cold in the barn - too cold to sleep. Sean shivered and wrapped a blanket over his shoulders. His mind drifted pleasurably back over the night, but as dawn broke his thoughts turned to the new day - bringing a reminder that some of yesterday's worries remained unresolved. He was no nearer to Tomas's five hundred pounds, and Tomas slumped deeper into despondent old age every week. Tomas would die soon, poor devil, simply fade away before Sean could repay his debt of gratitude. Sean cursed his luck. If only he had some assets. Then he could send Tomas and the family to Australia. Assets were the key to everything. Given assets he wouldn't worry about his future at the Gazette. Given assets ... Jaysus, he thought angrily, hadn't that actually happened to this Lord Averdale - he had been given assets. "I should have been born a Lord," Sean said aloud to the empty barn. He wondered what it was like, to be pampered by servants, to have every whim obeyed, to live in a huge house in Ulster. Sean had never been to Ulster, not even to Belfast. Suddenly he shuddered. The cold, he told himself - but it was a lie. Belfast reminded him of Matt Riordan. The thin white face leapt out of the darkness. Instinctively Sean raised his hand to wipe the imagined spittle from his cheek. He shuddered again. He generally did when he thought of Matt Riordan.

  Matt Riordan's life had taken on new meaning. A succession of events had led him to reach certain conclusions. What astounded him was his previous ignorance. He was appalled at the time he had wasted. He grew angry with his past foolishness. But the past was over, and now Matt's life had a purpose.

  He had been born at the beginning of the Anglo-Irish war, but despite two uncles killed by the British and his father's long absences from home, the drama of the struggle had never registered with Matt. He had been his mother's baby and then a mother's boy. She had devoted her life to him ... easily done with his father away so often, first fighting the British, then the Free Staters. Matt had grown up without him, not missing him, in fact the opposite - he had resented his father's homecomings because they absorbed his mother's time. Only when he left did she relax and put things to rights - with Matt at the centre of her life and her performing her proper function, which was to dance attendance on him from dawn to dusk and beyond if it suited him.

  All of which had lasted until Matt was twelve. His father began to spend more time at home then. That was when the rows started - vicious arguments between his father and mother which ended with his father thrashing her to within an inch of her life - or so it seemed to Matt as he listened to her screams and rushed to her aid - then it was his turn to take a beating. His father had taken a belt and leathered Matt so badly that he was laid up for a week. Time and again after that Matt pitted his puny strength against that of his father. Matt was mauled badly every time - until eventually he learned to cover his ears when his parents quarrelled rather than face another whipping. That was how Matt learned to hate. The ability to hate is like any other, it can be developed with practice ... and Matt got plenty of practice early in life.

  It had been a hard time for Matt. He had avoided his father as much as possible, detesting his coarse ways and the dominant air. Men in the pub were watchful of Liam Riordan. Of course Matt knew why - the reasons were bound up with the IRA. His father had fought the British and then the Staters in the Civil War, his father had held rank and led men into battle, his father had been a commander of brilliance, according to some. But nothing associated with his father found favour in Matt's eyes. To him his father's past was a source of secret contempt, and in the same way that Matt scorned his father he scorned the IRA.

  He knew that his parents' quarrels were mostly about him. His mother wanted him to be a doctor - his father said the boy was to work in the family business. Of course his father's wishes prevailed. They had opened the butcher's shop by then, and Matt was to be an apprentice butcher. The matter was decided, all arguments ceased.

  To begin with Matt was revolted at the prospect of handling animal carcasses for the rest of his life, but after a while that ceased to have importance, far outweighed by the rest of the job, which mainly consisted of serving in the shop. Matt enjoyed that. He enjoyed meeting people women mostly - and exchanging a joke from behind the counter. Perhaps them being women helped, after all Matt's childhood had not given him much experience of men. Not that there was anything sexual about it, Matt saw them as customers first and women a long way second, but he relaxed and related to them in a way that they liked. Certainly they were always pleased to have a crack with him as he chopped up their orders. Matt became popular. He forgot his mother's ambitions and concentrated instead on becoming the best butcher
in Dublin. The shop gave good value and business improved, a fact which did not escape Liam Riordan's notice.

  Then one of the barmen fell ill and Matt took a turn in the pub. There too he was a success. Customers found Matt a sight less intimidating than his father. A man never felt the need to prove himself with Matt, whereas with his Da ... So the bar takings rose steadily, another fact which did not go unnoticed by Liam Riordan.

  Gradually the relationship changed between father and son. They were not friends, but at least they ceased to fight. The atmosphere improved in the home, with less to argue about. Matt's mother ran the drapery and when not engaged there she took to sketching local scenes around Dublin. People laughed at first - as she hurried back from mass on a Sunday to take a stool and sketchbook down to the canal. But some of her work was quite good, good enough anyway for people to pay modest sums for ... which was another thing noticed by Liam Riordan.

  He was a strange man, even his friends admitted that. "Made of granite," they said. Liam Riordan could no more settle to a life of business than he could swim the Irish Channel. Making money, despite his natural aptitude for it, was a poor substitute for the thrill of fighting for Ireland, or perhaps even dying for Ireland. Unlike his son, the lives of individuals were of no interest to Liam Riordan, it was the future of "the people" which mattered. "The people" should be free of British tyranny. "The people" should be free of those Prod bastards in the north. So every once in a while Liam Riordan went missing on IRA business. It was the way he was, always had been and always would be.

  Matt stayed out of it. His contempt for the IRA never faltered. He made his own plans for the future - one day he would inherit his father's businesses and expand from there, first into another butcher's shop, then into a whole string of them.

  But then the future vanished. Tomorrow's life was destroyed, wiped out - Pat Connors murdered it. Pat Connors and that son of his!

  And so to Belfast and a succession of shocks. First the kicking handed out by the B Specials, then the fruitless search for work and the degrading misery of rejection. He hated his life ... watching his mother wither into an old woman ... forever cursing his father's failure to exact revenge on Pat Connors. Matt's cup of bitterness overflowed. The grinding poverty of the Falls registered only as background to his despair. Belfast was a black hole from which he must escape. But escape how? Without money, without help - escape was impossible. That conclusion numbed him for weeks. It was Belfast or death, and though one seemed as bad as the other at times, Matt chose Belfast. It was his first step to recovery.

  After that people helped. Little by little friendships began to matter. Matt cared nothing for "the people", that great abstract of his father's, but he was affected by the sufferings around him. It upset him to see pinched-faced kids growing up with rickets. It was a worry to hear men talk of thieving as the only way they could provide for their families. He was outraged when a neighbour's boy was so badly beaten by a gang of Prods that the poor child was crippled for life. Slowly Matt became part of the community and felt better for becoming so - listening to other people's troubles eased his own bitterness. And just as Dublin housewives had once warmed to him in the butcher's shop, so did the women of the Falls Road ... and so too did the men. Matt Riordan was a sympathetic listener. People began to respect his opinions. Yet he was nothing to look at. Of average height, thin and wiry, stronger than he looked but that wasn't saying much ... hair a mousey brown ... dark grey eyes. But he liked people and it showed.

  It was therefore inevitable that Matt's latent talent for leadership attracted the attention of the IRA ... and in particular that of Ferdy Malloy, since it was Ferdy who called every week with money sent from Matt's father. At least that was how the payments were described - in fact the money was not sent at all, Liam Riordan had merely arranged for sums to be delivered to his wife at regular intervals - but it appealed to Ferdy's romantic nature to pretend that although Liam Riordan was far from home his thoughts were forever with his loved ones. Matt and his mother knew better.

  Ferdy Malloy took some getting used to. Matt was dismissive at first, seeing merely the caricature which Malloy presented to the world - a man who had lost the use of one eye, dressed in an old flannel suit under an oversized raincoat, dragging his left leg in a limp. Ferdy's disabilities should have made him conspicuous but the extraordinary thing was that he seemed to materialise out of thin air. One moment a man was alone, then Ferdy was beside him. Only afterwards could the faint shuffling sound of the limp be remembered, and afterwards was too late for some men to remember anything.

  Ferdy had sensed Matt's dislike and been intrigued to discover its reasons - after all Matt might have starved but for the money Ferdy delivered. There had to be a reason, Ferdy said to himself, and set out to find it. His first surprise came when he mentioned the IRA. Matt's face clenched like a fist... which intrigued Ferdy all the more. Why does the boy react like that, when his own father is revered as an IRA hero? So Ferdy probed. Not that it sounded like an inquisition, Ferdy was too skilful for that. He rarely even asked a question. Instead he developed a habit of bringing tit-bits of news whenever he called, so that after a while he became the fount of much knowledge. He even encouraged questions for which he had no immediate answer - "Sure won't I have to find out about that," he would say, "I'll have the answer next time I'm here." And he did. Ferdy never hurried and was endlessly patient why not, he thought wryly, sure I'm not going anywhere ... and neither is Matt Riordan.

  Such then was Matt's indoctrination, though it was months before it became obvious. Mostly he and Ferdy talked of current conditions in Belfast, or of England where Ferdy had lived for a number of years, or even of faraway places like Russia and America ... which was how Matt learned of the international dimensions of the IRA ...

  "Take Russia for instance," Ferdy said airily. "Joe Stalin received a delegation from the IRA in 1925. Pa Murray and Sean Russell went over and met Stalin himself. We got some guns but only a few, Pa Murray reckoned they didn't have any to spare, but they made a lot of excuses to avoid saying so."

  Most of the guns came from America, and the extent of Irish influence in the United States astonished Matt. "And why not?" Ferdy demanded. "Sure the place is half Irish, didn't you know that? You'll never guess the number of Irishmen over there. Come on now, have a guess." And when Matt suggested a figure Ferdy clapped his hands in triumph. "You're wrong by a mile. You'll be amazed when I tell you. Twenty million. There are twenty million living Americans with Irish blood in their veins. There now, and what do you think about that?"

  Ferdy went on - "There are Irish Societies all across the States, and don't they hate the British as much as we do. More in some cases. But they get a bit muddled at times, what with them being so far away an' all - so we have to send someone over to straighten them out."

  Then came a revelation. Ferdy gave a sly grin, "That's where your Da is now, did you know that? Over in America getting us more guns and ammunition."

  So that was the important mission. Matt remembered the quietly spoken man that morning. "You should be proud of your father," he had said. Well Matt was not proud - Matt found the whole thing contemptible. Wasn't that typical, him rushing off to America, talking about "the people" while his own wife and son suffered in Belfast. Pat Connors was the bloody enemy, not the British. But Matt stifled his rage and encouraged Ferdy to talk more about America.

  Matt learned a lot that day - for instance that Eamon de Valera himself had been born in the United States. "Didn't you know that? That's what saved his life after the Easter Rising. The British would have shot him along with Connolly and Pearse and the others. The Clann saved him. They got a copy of Dev's baptismal certificate from St Agnes Church in New York and took it to President Wilson himself, and the President got onto his Ambassador in London to tell the British to back off." Ferdy nodded knowledgeably. "The Clann saved Dev's life - reckon he should remember that now and then."

  The Clann was the Clann na Ga
el of course, even Matt knew that... the most powerful group of Irishmen outside, or perhaps even inside, Ireland. The Clann had collected millions of dollars in 1920 for the Irish Victory Fund. The Clann had smuggled arms and money into Ireland for generations. But the Clann had been confused by the Treaty of 1920. Americans had switched off then, believing that the establishing of the Irish Free State had solved the Irish problem. "That's why your Da is there now," Ferdy said cheerfully, "telling them about these bastard Prods. Your Da will make them see sense, don't you worry."

  When Matt seemed reluctant to discuss his father, Ferdy pursued the matter. "You maybe don't understand your Da. I've known him for years and he's a great man, believe me."

  Matt snapped that there was nothing great about a man who sailed off to America without looking after his wife. Ferdy shook his head. "Ach, it's a different set of priorities your Da has. It puts me in mind of when he organised the hunger strike in Mountjoy. Did you ever hear about that?"

  Matt shook his head and Ferdy told him the story. "We got taken by the British in 1920, beginning of April it was. Anyway a whole lot of us get bundled into Mountjoy jail, me included, slammed into a cell, frightened out of my wits. Next morning the cells get opened up and we found ourselves in the exercise ring. Just down from the north I was, an' green as a cabbage. Then a man lines us up and gives us a speech. We're prisoners of war, says he, and should be treated as such but the governor won't have it - so we're going on hunger strike, the whole lot of us. Well that was the start of it, but this man was fair and proper - he says we should each consider the consequences and anyone can back out without it being held against him." Ferdy paused to shake his head. "I was scared stiff. I wondered how long I could hold out on a hunger strike. Maybe everyone wondered the same - but this man had a way with him. I tell you he was like a superman, strong, commanding - you felt he could do anything. We were mesmerised. So of course nobody backs out and the hunger strike starts."