1949

by Morgan Llywelyn

  For now the broadcasts are of very low power, but one day people all across the country will be able to listen to the wireless. You and Frank should buy a crystal set for the farm. They only cost a few shillings and you can put one together yourselves. Then you can hear the news almost as soon as it happens, and you can imagine me here in the Dublin station, thinking of you.

  Your loving Ursula

  There was no reply.

  There was never a reply.

  Working at 2RN was like acquiring a new family; a lively family in which something exciting was always happening. Ursula never missed Mass on Sunday, but otherwise most of her waking hours were spent at the broadcasting station. Or thinking about broadcasting. Concentric waves spreading out like brave soldiers carrying urgent messages. Ireland listening. Herself at the heart of the excitement.

  Upon receipt of her first pay packet, she counted out the small sum to the last ha’penny. Her only extravagances would be buying books—used ones, of course, from the many used bookshops in Dublin—and sending her clothes to a commercial laundry. Her European wardrobe would have to last a long time. She could not afford to submit fashionable frocks to the tortures of the copper boiler in the back yard, and Louise’s brutality with a flatiron.

  Mairead Ní Ghráda had recommended two laundries, the Magdalen and the Swastika, both of which had vans to collect and deliver. Work at the Magdalen was done by “fallen women” whose priests or families had turned them over to the nuns of the Holy Saints Convent.

  Ursula chose the Swastika Laundry. Named for an ancient form of cross, it had no unpleasant connotations.

  Taking out a dog-eared notebook in which she had kept an itemized account of the money Ella had spent on her, Ursula read the daunting total. Twice. With a sigh, she put the remainder of her wages, together with the account book, into a large envelope that she deposited in the traditional Irish savings bank: under the mattress.

  One of 2RN’s proudest claims was the presentation of running commentaries on sports events before the BBC was able to do so. In May the station scored a real scoop by announcing that Charles Lindbergh’s plane had been sighted over Ireland on its record-making flight from New York to Paris. Aside from such events, daily programs paid little attention to the news. That was left to the print media. Everyone read the newspapers.

  2RN produced live dramas featuring some of the stars of the Abbey Theatre, and was building its own orchestra. It also presented comedy sketches, a children’s hour, an Irish language program, and rebroadcasts from abroad.

  Guest artists were willing to work for “next nothing” because they enjoyed the novelty of broadcasting. This was fortunate, because the station suffered from a chronic lack of funds. Constant requests for additional money, or for the payment of outstanding bills, were sent to the Department of Finance. Composing the letters became Ursula’s responsibility. If no senior member of staff was available she signed them herself, writing U. Halloran in a forceful hand.

  The atmosphere at 2RN was friendly and informal. Members of staff worked all hours, often coming in on their day off to lend a hand. When a live drama was broadcast, the guest artists and even the door porter helped with the sound effects. Ursula was shown how to pound her thighs with cupped hands to reproduce the rhythms of a galloping horse, and pour dry rice into a folded paper at just the right speed to simulate everything from a light shower to a downpour of rain.

  The general election on the ninth of June was a topic of great interest at the broadcasting station. Ursula listened avidly to what everyone had to say, but kept her opinions to herself. Most of the time.

  The Cumann na nGaedheal Party won forty-seven seats in the Dáil. An energetic campaign spearheaded by Eamon de Valera and Constance Markievicz won forty-four places for Fíanna Fail, compared to twenty-two for Labour and only five for Sinn Féin. But since the Soldiers of Destiny still abstained from taking the oath, they could not take their seats.

  On June 22 the Dáil assembled without the abstentionists, though several smaller parties were represented.

  W.T. Cosgrave of Cumann na nGaedheal was overwhelmingly reelected as president of the executive council.

  Ursula posted the details to Henry Mooney. “The Republicans are letting the Free Staters win by default,” her letter mourned. “The Free State appropriated the symbols of the Republic—the tricolour flag, the green army uniforms, the Dáil—but the government they represent is just business as usual under different management.”

  The ship that took Ursula’s letter to America also carried Eamon de Valera. He was going to raise money for his new political party.

  In July a story broke that no one expected. The illusion of a peaceful summer Sunday exploded in a hail of gunfire.

  Chapter Eight

  There was no broadcast that Sunday until 8 P.M., when a musical program was scheduled. Station employees tended to drift in to Little Denmark Street during the day, however, to help set up the studio for the orchestra. Ursula was just taking off her hat when Séamus Clandillon thrust a piece of paper into her hand.

  “Thank God there’s someone here who can type! Give me a news script, we have to go on air as soon as possible.”

  Ursula stared in disbelief at the scribbled note. All her fingers turned to thumbs. She wadded up and threw away three sheets of paper before producing a script Séumas Hughes could read into the microphone. Clandillon was in such a hurry he did not check the script, but ran downstairs to the studio with it.

  “Stand by for a special bulletin,” Hughes announced, his voice cutting through a crackle of static. “Dateline Dublin, July tenth. Kevin O’Higgins, the minister for justice, has been assassinated. Details are sketchy, but it appears O’Higgins was gunned down in Booterstown as he was walking to Mass at his local church. Witnesses report the ambush was carried out by several men in a waiting car.

  “O’Higgins, it will be remembered, was the man who ordered the execution of Erskine Childers. During the Civil War Minister O’Higgins presided over the executions of seventy-seven Republicans, including Rory O’Connor, who had been the best man at his wedding.”

  Within moments of the broadcast Clandillon loomed over Ursula’s desk. “Who told you to write that?”

  “Why, you did,” she replied, wide-eyed.

  “I never told you to add the part about the executions.”

  “Is it not true?”

  “It is true, but that’s not the point. We can’t have staff editorializing.”

  “Did I do that?”

  “You know you did.”

  “Séumas didn’t have to read it out.”

  “You knew he would.”

  Ursula pushed back her chair and stood up. “Please don’t reprimand him.” Lifting her chin, she gave the station director a level look. A stony, challenging, Ned Halloran sort of look. “I accept full responsibility for the wording of the bulletin,” she said.

  “What makes you think I’m going to reprimand him? Just don’t do anything like this again, Miss Halloran. Whatever our personal opinions may be, this is the Free State Broadcasting Service and the government pays the bills. No Republican propaganda is allowed.”

  “Only pro-Treaty propaganda?”

  Clandillon bit his lip to keep from smiling. “Hold your whisht,”* he advised.

  Later Mairead Ní Ghráda told Ursula, “You had it wrong, you know.”

  “Sorry?”

  “About the seventy-seven who were executed. Ernest Blythe was in cabinet at the time, and he claims the number was actually eighty-four or eighty-five.”1

  Ursula drew a sharp breath. “Why is that not generally known?”

  “A lot of things happened during the Civil War that will never be generally known,” the older woman said.

  The men who had shot O’Higgins escaped. They melted into the city without being identified. It was later claimed they had been IRA men on their way to a football match, and just happened to see O’Higgins in the street.

  A
ccording to the slain man’s wife his dying words were, “I’m going to sit on a damp cloud with Mick Collins and play a harp.”2

  The assassination of Kevin O’Higgins burst like a thunderclap over the Irish political scene. O’Higgins, arguably the most dynamic, powerfully intellectual individual in the new government, had been considered the “strong man” of the Free State regime. His late friend Michael Collins had referred to him as “the Balls.” O’Higgins had seen himself as Collins’s successor and refused to let anything intimidate him. He had been fully aware the IRA hated him, but had never doubted he was doing his duty.

  Some of the staff at 2RN loudly condemned the murder. Others remarked that he had got what he deserved. Séumas Hughes never said anything to Ursula about the wording of the news bulletin, but the following day when he passed her on the stairs, he winked at her.

  The murder had taken place in broad daylight in full view of a number of people. Yet no one seemed able to identify the assassins or explain how they had escaped.

  In a letter to Henry Mooney, Ursula exulted, “The murderer is murdered, that’s one for our side!”

  She wrote the same thing to Ned Halloran, but she did not post that letter. She no longer sent any letters to him, because having them go unanswered was too painful. She kept the unposted letters in a box under her bed. Addressed, “Dear Papa,” they became an informal journal that no one would ever see.

  Men who visited 2RN on business could not help noticing the vivacious young woman with the dazzling smile. The unmarried ones asked her out. Her answer was always the same, delivered in tones of polite regret. “Thank you, I’m very flattered. But it’s just not possible at present.” Without actually saying so, she left would-be suitors with the impression that she was seeing someone else. Their feelings were spared and she did not have to lie.

  She told her journal the truth. “Dear Papa,” she confided. “I have no intention of getting involved with any man. I have my reasons.”

  Ursula maintained a lively correspondence with a number of her former classmates from Surval. Heidi Fromm, who had married a Swiss botanist named Stefan Neckermann, wrote, “We are dividing our time between Munich, where my husband lectures at the university, and Kenya, where he is compiling the definitive index of native plant life.” She sent Ursula a large map of Kenya and a colorful description of life in the Crown colony.

  “I can learn more about the world from my friends than I ever did from a geography book,” Ursula remarked to Louise one afternoon.

  The older woman looked up from preparing a hearty dinner of Dublin coddle.* “Why should you care what’s happening in other countries? Sure we have enough troubles of our own. I’ll be in trouble meself if I don’t give Mr. Hamilton a nice pudding tonight. How do you feel about rhubarb and custard?”

  Five days later the wireless carried a story that had a more profound effect on Irish emotions than the O’Higgins murder.

  In or out of government, Constance Markievicz had been a tireless worker for Republican causes. Her intractable idealism was an inspiration to many. A member of the standing committee of Sinn Féin, she had presided at the inaugural meeting of Fianna Fáil in 1926 and served as a member of the national executive.

  That same winter there had been a severe coal shortage in Dublin. Madame Markievicz had exhausted herself arranging for fuel for the poor, even driving into the mountains to pile her car with turf to distribute to the tenements.

  By 1927 her friends had begun commenting that she looked very worn. She had campaigned hard in the general election, helping to secure the large turnout for Fianna Fáil and winning a seat in the Dáil for herself—one she could not take up because of de Valera’s policy of abstention.

  Shortly afterward she went into hospital for an emergency appendectomy. Following a second operation, her family were called. Her estranged husband, Count Casimir Markievicz, rushed from Warsaw to Dublin to be at her bedside—summoned by a message broadcast on the wireless.

  When Séumas Hughes read the news bulletin on July 15, he made no effort to keep the emotion out of his voice. “At one-thirty this morning, Constance, Countess Markievicz, aged fifty-nine, answered the Last Post. She was the founder of Na Fianna Éireann,† took an active part in the 1916 Rising, was imprisoned numerous times by the British, was the first woman to be elected to the British Parliament but refused to take her seat, was elected to the first Dáil Éireann as a member of the Sinn Féin party and served this nation as minister for labor from 1919 to 1921. At the time of her death she was a member of Fianna Fáil. Funeral arrangements will be announced later.”

  Hughes’s voice broke on the last sentence. Within the radio station men and women, whatever their politics, were crying openly.

  That night Ursula took out the scrapbook she had kept on the countess and leafed through its pages. Her eye fell on a newspaper clipping referring to a lecture to the Irish Women’s Franchise League, in which Constance Markievicz had urged women, “Dress suitably in short skirts and strong boots, leave your jewels in the bank and buy a revolver. Take up your responsibilities and be prepared to go your own way depending for safety on your own courage, your own truth and your own common sense.”

  The Free State government refused to allow Constance Markievicz to lie in state in any of the civic buildings. Her body was taken to the pillar room of the Rotunda Hospital instead. Across the street from the site of Tom Clarke’s former shop where much of the Rising had been planned, and flanked by an honor guard composed of Fianna boys in full uniform, the rebel countess lay at peace at last. Thousands of Dubliners filed by her coffin to say good-bye.

  On the seventeenth of July a huge funeral procession wound its way to Glasnevin Cemetery as had the processions of so many heroes before. The coffin was wrapped in the Irish tricolor and heaped with flowers. Eight additional vehicles were required to carry more wreaths and flowers. The cortége took over two hours to pass the short length of O’Connell Street.

  Tens of thousands turned out to honor Constance Markievicz: members of the Ascendancy, writers, artists, feminists, Republican politicians (there was no official representative from the Free State), Fianna boys, IRA Volunteers, and veterans of the Citizens’ Army. Jim Larkin and what appeared to be the entire trade union movement mingled with the men and women of the slums, mourning the loss of their most devoted and unselfish champion.

  In the crush of people lining the route was Ursula Halloran. When a white rose slipped from the masses heaped upon the coffin and fell into the road, she darted forward and seized it, thrusting it into the bosom of her frock. All day she was conscious of it against her skin.

  Eamon de Valera had come home in time to deliver the funeral oration at Glasnevin. Taller by a head than any of the men around him, his long, horselike face gaunted by prison and hollowed with experience, he spoke in a slow, solemn voice. People held their breath to listen. This was de Valera himself! A hero from a time already passing into myth.

  He concluded, “The world knew Constance only as a soldier of Ireland, but we knew her as colleague and comrade. We knew the kindliness, the great woman’s heart of her, the great Irish soul of her, and we know the loss we have suffered is not to be repaired. It is sadly we take our leave, but we pray high heaven that all she longed for may one day be achieved.”3

  With Constance Markievicz was buried the military uniform she had worn during Easter Week, 1916.

  The photograph dominating the front page of the Clare Champion had been taken from the roof of the General Post Office in Dublin, which was still undergoing reconstruction. Risking life and limb, the photographer had crawled out onto a narrow ledge to capture a picture of the Markievicz funeral cortege. A sea of people filled O’Connell Street in either direction, overflowing into every side street.

  Ned Halloran sat with the newspaper spread in front of him. He was unaware of being in his bedroom in the farmhouse in Clare. Part of him had returned to 1916 and the GPO. As it did every day, his mind presented h
im with kaleidoscopic visions of the defining event of his life.

  He had a hundred memories of Madame Markievicz. The most indelible was the last: marching off on Easter Monday morning to fight for Ireland in St. Stephen’s Green.

  Gone to join a larger army now.

  The army of the Dead.

  Síle.

  Ned leaned forward, trying to make out the faces of the people in the street. Was one of them Síle? Were she and little Precious in that crowd? They must be. Must be. Nothing could have kept them away.

  In the upper corner of the paper was a photograph of Constance Markievicz in her youth. A tall, slim, regal beauty, arrayed in the trappings of wealth and privilege. She had turned her back on all of it. Gone off to help the poor, to help poor Ireland.

  Ned touched the paper with his fingers. Touched the dead face. But it was not dead. How could it be dead when he was staring into those living eyes?

  She’s still alive somewhere, he thought. They all are. Somewhere out there in the peopled dark.

  Síle. Pádraic Pearse. Joe Plunkett. Thomas MacDonagh.

  Síle.

  Abruptly he stood up. “Wait for me,” he said. “I’m coming.”

  Chapter Nine

  In his newspaper office in Texas, Henry Mooney had learned of both deaths by way of the telegraph. He immediately wrote to Ursula, “If it were possible I would come back for Con’s funeral. She was the greatest woman I ever met.