Sean saw him off in the morning - a sad-faced, grey-haired old man who could barely speak when it came to saying goodbye.
Afterwards, shaken and heart-broken, Sean found a Catholic church and sat staring at the stained glass windows for over an hour. It was months since he had attended a Mass. "Soon I'll be a lapsed Irishman," he told himself wryly, "as well as a lapsed Catholic."
Val remained in Manchester and was still away when Sean broadcast that week's Seven Days in London. He was glad. It was his decision, not hers or theirs, but his alone.
It was one of his best broadcasts. Freddie had never allowed guests on Seven Days - "It's my show," he would say. "People expect my stories, my way of looking at things." He had permitted Sean to play a junior role, but Sean's voice had only been heard five minutes at a time when Freddie was in Britain. Freddie was an established broadcaster who could carry the full thirty minutes. Sean lacked that maturity and he knew it. Following his instinct, he had involved other people from his very first solo.
On 1 September he took the process a step further. The programme was a montage - reports of aerial dog-fights taking place "somewhere over southern England" were interrupted by accounts of other battles, as European refugees spoke of how their own countries had been crushed. Anton Jastrow talked breathlessly of the destruction of Warsaw ... then Sean was back, describing the duels in the skies above Kent... interrupted by Henri van de Criend's heart-breaking account of the bombing of Rotterdam ... followed by Sean's vivid description of the grim battle being waged by the RAF. Next came a Frenchman remembering the Stukas swarming over Sedan in May ... Sean again, with his commentary about now ... giving way to a Belgian, sweating over memories of being strafed by machine-gun fire. The effect was spine tingling. That was happening then, this is happening now. Different voices, European accents, united against a common enemy. The pace of the inserts accelerated as Sean built to a climax. The message was clear. The last-ditch fight over southern England was not a Battle for Britain - but for the whole world.
At the end, immediately after a Stuka's screaming dive and the whistle of bombs - came a pause. In the studio Sean wiped the sweat from his brow and summed up.
"Tonight you have heard a Frenchman, a Pole, a Dane, a Belgian, a Swede, a Norwegian, a Dutchman and an Englishman. They have little in common. In Rotterdam, Henri was a fishmonger. Eiliv is an engineer who built Oslo's roads. Andre was a gardener in Brussels, and Rene a policeman in Lyons. Eight men of different nationalities, without common political or religious beliefs - who find themselves united by. the need to confront a single enemy. Did they have a choice? Was neutrality a choice? Henri's country is now ruled from Berlin. His country's neutrality was ignored by Hitler, just as Hitler has ignored the neutrality of other countries. Neutrality has ceased to be an option. Indeed a neutral country has less security than one now at war. By not raising an army, it leaves itself vulnerable to Nazi Germany at some future date. And that date will come, in the opinion of the men you have heard tonight."
Sean drew a deep breath - "Ten days ago, Prime Minister Churchill paid tribute to the RAF when he said, 'Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed to so few.' My interpretation was that the Prime Minister meant the British people when he spoke of the many, but now I wonder. Could the many who have reason to be grateful to the RAF include Americans in New York and Irishmen in Dublin? Could those cities, those countries be next? This is Sean Connors, an Irishman in England, bidding you goodnight until the same time next week, when it will be my pleasure to bring you Seven Days in London, the weekly news programme from the heart of Great Britain - the country that now stands alone."
The studio erupted when he finished. Technicians stood on chairs to applaud. His guests crowded round with frenzied enthusiasm. Sean was carried off to a bar to celebrate. He was himself excited. The novelty of broadcasting had never worn off and the technical achievements of his show had been considerable; the quick interplay of stories and accents had worked astonishingly well. It was an advance in technique and he was mastering his craft.
Yet, despite the excitement and the many congratulations, Sean left as soon as he could.
With Val in Manchester, the house in Craven Street was quite empty and Sean felt the need to think. However, the retreat to Craven Street proved a mistake. Ghosts came out of the woodwork. His father was talking about Michael Collins signing the Treaty - "He knew he was signing his death warrant, but it was the best deal he could get. Sure it was a compromise, at times there's no other choice. It cost Mick his life."
"Is that what you're saying, Da?" Sean asked aloud. "It will cost me my life?"
"They called him a traitor, Sean - him, Mick Collins, the greatest Irishman ever to draw breath."
"And me? They'll call me a traitor too?" Sean buried his head in his hands.
A moment later he heard Dinny say, "Sean, they'll spit on your name. Will you think of the Da ... what he wanted for you -"
"Shut up!" Sean shouted, "For God's sake shut up!"
The Widow O'Flynn giggled, "Sure now, you'll be many things in your life, but you'll never be Taoiseach."
"Did I ever say I wanted to be?" Sean demanded aloud. "Did I? Just once. The Da wanted that, not me."
His eyes filled with tears. He was a little boy again in the tiny room on Ammet Street. His father was teaching him the rules, and he was trying to be brave.
"They'll kill me, Da, won't they. They'll kill me like ..." he choked on the name Jesus Christ and instead said, "like they killed Michael Collins."
But the ghost of his father was gone.
Chapter Nine
Sean's broadcast on neutrality, as reported in the Irish newspapers, alerted Matt Riordan to his whereabouts. Until then Matt had assumed that his enemy was still in Dublin. The news that Connors was over the water was disastrous, London was even further from Matt's reach. The only good thing was that the reports of Seven Days, in London justified Matt's accusations to the hilt. "Didn't I say he was a treacherous bastard? The proof's there now - for all to see. The pity is someone else might get to him before I do. God in Heaven, I must get out of here!"
But escaping from prison was no easy task.
The IRA was under the heel as never before. De Valera was in the middle of a dangerous game. To the German Ambassador, he stressed he would turn to the British if the Germans invaded - and to the British he promised to call on Germany's help if the British ever set foot in Dublin again. His was a desperate gamble to assert Irish independence once and for all. He was walking a tightrope, and the IRA could jerk the rope out from under him.
Dublin was alive with rumours of German spies linking up with the IRA for an attack on the border. It was certainly possible. Germany had armed the IRA before, in Dev's day, when he was fighting the British in Ireland itself. For the Germans to get together with the IRA again now though would be fatal. Ireland would be in the war whatever Dev did. He had to crush the IRA - and although the widespread arrests after the Magazine Raid had netted hundreds of men, others were still on the loose.
In February, Dev caught some more.
IRA officers of the Western Command were meeting GHQ men in Dublin's Meath Hotel, when suddenly two hundred soldiers surrounded the place and captured the lot. Sixteen more IRA men were thus incarcerated in Mountjoy Jail. Conditions were appalling. The prison was already crammed. The food was disgusting - "Slops a pig wouldn't eat," said Ferdy Malloy. Worst of all, traditional IRA privileges were withheld. Men were denied political status, not allowed to work as a unit, nor permitted to elect their own Commanding Officer.
A hunger strike was called.
Dev stood firm.
On 16 April, Tony D'Arcy died, the first hunger striker to die in an Irish prison since the Emergency began.
Dev clamped press censorship in a vice, and continued to refuse to grant political status to the men in the prisons.
On 19 April, Jack McNeela died on hunger strike.
The next day IRA GHQ s
ent Father O'Hare into the prison with an order - the hunger strike was to be abandoned.
Matt Riordan breathed a sigh of relief. He was as ready to die for Ireland as any man, but he had business to finish first. Ireland's business as well as his own, to rid Ireland of two of her enemies - Connors and Averdale. He would settle with them before he died.
"I'm still a young man," he told himself. "I'll get out of here one day."
Sean would never have believed he and Dinny could have argued so bitterly. True they had patched things up, but the relationship would never be the same. And elsewhere everyone knew about Sean's CBS show, even though it had not been broadcast in Britain. Fleet Street had picked it up, and most of the emaciated papers had carried the story "Irish columnist condemns neutrality."
Perversely Sean resented the fuss. His views did not oblige him to suffer condescending Englishmen with their "Good show old boy, glad you spoke out at last." He developed a standard reply, "Aye, let's beat Hitler together, then we'll throw you out of Ireland once and for all." It wiped the smile from their faces - "Funny chap Connors, heart's in the right place of course, but he's damn prickly at times."
Sean had reason to be prickly. Hundreds of abusive letters poured into the BBC for forwarding to CBS - and disgruntled Irishmen expressed themselves in other ways - a dozen bricks smashed the front windows at Craven Street one night. Sean nailed boards over the openings and tried to forget the write-ups in the Irish papers saying "impertinent interference" ... "a treacherous statement, totally unrepresentative of Irish opinion." The Gazette was the exception - the Gazette had published no comment at all.
Even in London, some doors closed against him. Three Irish friends cut him dead, and his telephone call to Ambassador Kennedy met a secretary's frosty response - "The Ambassador has no statement to make at the moment."
It hurt.
Every coin has two sides, however, and Freddie's cable of congratulations was not the only one from America - while nearly a third of the calls which had swamped the CBS offices in New York had expressed approval.
Val was delighted, of course. She smiled up from their bed on her first night back from Manchester. "A call to arms," she said, opening hers. "That's how Morrison described your broadcast."
He rolled into bed beside her.
She grinned. "I told him we've a lot of fences to mend with the Irish."
"Is that what you're doing?"
"I'm enjoying my share."
They made love, slept until noon, and made love again in the afternoon. Val's stay in Manchester had underlined how much they missed each other. Sean wanted this wonderful girl for the rest of his life, but all talk of the future was hushed by her drawing his head down to her breast.
"We'll have the rest of our lives to make plans," she whispered, "after the war. All I want now is to be loved, and for you to tell me you love me.
The next morning they kissed goodbye and went back to their wars - Val north to a factory in Luton, Sean south to the chalk hills of Sussex. They had enjoyed such peace for thirty-six hours that the awfulness of war might have been a bad dream. But it was waiting for them. At Val's factory, old men and young women raced the clock to manufacture the provisions of death - while in Sussex skies boy fighter pilots hurled fragile machines into impossible turns in an effort to kill each other.
Sean limped back into London on Saturday, 7 September, and went directly to Oxford Circus to record his broadcast. He felt tired and strangely irritated, and he wondered why? His script was ready, that was no problem. Then he remembered - he was expected for tea at the Dorchester with Val and her parents. "Just for an hour," she had pleaded on the telephone. "It's weeks since I've seen them."
He shrugged. George disapproved and Cynthia did too - even though they never said anything. Was it his fault that their daughter refused to get married until after the war?
Seven Days in London went without a hitch, and afterwards Sean spent an hour discussing events with the team in the studio. Everyone drew hope from the past week. Miraculously the RAF seemed to be holding the Luftwaffe. "Perhaps the worst is over," someone said cheerfully as Sean left for the Dorchester.
How wrong that was. The worst was about to begin.
At the Dorchester, Sean cursed when the air raid sirens sounded at five o'clock. He and Val were on the point of leaving, now they would have to make polite conversation until the "All clear."
"Have some more tea, George," Cynthia suggested, her hand on the silver pot.
"I'm awash with the stuff already. I want a proper drink." George crossed to the sideboard and raised an eyebrow at Sean, "Whisky?"
Sean accepted and turned back to Cynthia who was planning a party for Somerset Maugham. "It's on Thursday, you must come, both of you," she smiled happily as she leafed through her diary. "There's so much happening this month. David Niven is getting married - have you met him yet? Now when's that... ah, here ... the twenty-second, at the Cafe de Paris of all places. You know Primula of course. Isn't she exquisite. She's the granddaughter of the Marquess of Downshire, you know."
Cynthia was still prattling on when a buzzing noise interrupted her.
George said it first. "What the devil's that? Sounds like a million bees."
Then Val said, "Oh my God!" and they all rushed to the window.
The sky was black with aircraft, advancing like a swarm of insects, trailing back for miles and miles. Sean, who had spent weeks watching dog-fights, was the first to realise that the planes were bombers. German bombers.
"My God," Val gasped, "the Invasion."
The bombers blotted out the sky. The air throbbed with their engines.
"Where the devil is Fighter Command?" George asked in a strangled voice.
Sean was out on the balcony. There was not a Spitfire in sight, not even a Hurricane. He felt he was dreaming. "They must be down by the coast - chasing the German fighter escort, then they'll..." his voice died amid the first explosions. Dull crumping sounds came from the river.
Val choked, "The docks! They're bombing the docks."
Suddenly anti-aircraft guns in the park blazed into life. Black puff balls of flak darkened the sky even more. But the bombers kept coming.
Later that evening the sun seemed to set in two places at once - above Wimbledon in the west and over Poplar in the east. The orange glow in the east lasted longer. The entire skyline was a mass of light - and as the flames blazed, other bombers came to stoke the fire. It went on all night. London was burning.
London never stopped burning after that - at least not for months. The pattern of Sean's life changed yet again. No longer did he hunt for stories amid picturesque villages on the South Downs. The big story was in the capital itself, and the drama of Seven Days in London outshone news from all over the world.
Sean went everywhere and saw everything. When he was stopped by officials, or denied access by suspicious civil servants, he used his contacts as never before. Val got him to Herbert Morrison. Peter Plum of the Express got him to Beaverbrook, and a whole host of people got him at least close to Churchill.
"But he's Irish," someone complained in the Prime Minister's office. Churchill snorted, "So's Brendan." Brendan Bracken of the Financial Times had long been a close friend. "Come to think of it, Montgomery's Irish, or sort of ... and so's Alanbrooke."
Sean won his special privileges. Perhaps his record was known even then. After all he had spoken out against the IRA, and about neutrality, and done what he could to pass messages to de Valera. Perhaps it was because he had sailed to Dunkirk - and of the effect Seven Days was having on American public opinion. Whatever the reason, the outcome was the same. Sean Connors took his CBS microphones into every corner of bombed-out London.
He was always there, that's what people said afterwards - with his tin hat and overalls, and a cable running back to his recording van like an umbilical cord. "You'd have thought he was Chief of Staff," someone remembered. "He had special passes for everywhere. I reckon Churchill was b
ehind him - well someone must have been."
When cumbersome equipment restricted him, Sean gathered stories with an old-fashioned notebook. Afterwards no single fire stood out above all others, at least not in London.
The nights merged into one all encompassing flame. He remembered intense heat, getting soaked, being icy cold and swallowing hot tea from mobile canteens, before pushing off into the night for still other stories. The Fire Service knew him well. The men were mainly wartime auxiliaries, mostly volunteers. Few had previously tackled a real fire. Londoners had despised them before the Blitz - "men with guts went into the Army." The Blitz changed people's opinions. The courage of London's fire-fighters grew into a legend. When they appeared on newsreel screens, entire audiences rose to their feet in spontaneous applause. At dawn, early morning shift workers lined the streets to cheer the raw eyed heroes as they returned exhausted to their homes. And Sean Connors told the whole world about them.
Life changed for everyone. Every night Londoners burrowed underground into damp shelters and subways. From seven in the evening until seven the following morning, the Underground railway became "home" for two thousand people. They bedded down on newspapers and rugs, spread across floors made gritty by leaking sandbags. Hessian screens hid the primitive sanitation of bucket latrines. Privacy was non-existent. Sean saw at least one marriage consummated in the bowels of the earth beneath the Tottenham Court Road. A yard of space along platform edges was reserved for the travelling public - elsewhere every inch of platform and passage was utilised. As trains thundered in and out people slept, or sang, or talked, or made love - or gave interviews to Sean Connors. The atmosphere was rarely fearful. The tunnels rang with laughter, not tears. Tears were reserved for the mornings when they emerged to find that bomb blasts had ripped doors and windows from those dwellings still standing. Even then the tears were brief. The need to salvage was too urgent to waste time crying. They toiled desperately, reducing chaos to order, knowing that nightfall would bring more bombers and even greater destruction.
Ian St James Compendium - Volume 1 Page 128