The right-wing National Bloc, led by General Francisco Franco, began conspiring against the new government. As army chief-of-staff, Franco had the support of the military. The possibility of a Spanish civil war added to the tensions building throughout Europe.
On the afternoon of March seventh Finbar Cassidy telephoned 2RN and asked to speak to Miss Halloran. When she came on the line he said, “The Nazis have invaded the Rhineland, Ursula. Unopposed, as far as we know. They began marching across the border before dawn. I thought you’d want to have the story without waiting to get it from the BBC.”
Ursula was so surprised to hear from him she needed a moment to regain her composure. “That was thoughtful of you, Finbar. Are you certain it’s true?”
“We’re certain. External Affairs looks on it as a significant development. Hitler’s openly defying the Versailles Treaty that awarded the Rhineland to France. He may justify his actions by saying the territory was part of Germany originally, but who knows what he’ll do next? For years he’s been claiming the German people need more land. A lot more land.”
“I’ll write a news bulletin immediately. Can I say the information came from a highly placed government source?”
“You can.”
“I appreciate this, Finbar.”
“It was nothing,” he replied before ringing off.
Ursula had her scoop on the air before the first news came through from the BBC.
While Eamon de Valera was giving his annual Saint Patrick’s Day broadcast over 2RN, the transmission from the studio was suddenly interrupted by a clear, unaccented male voice saying, “Hello, everybody. This is the IRA!”4
Ursula laughed out loud with surprise, then clapped her hand over her mouth as her colleagues exchanged shocked glances.
Government agents began scouring the countryside for hidden transmitters that could have been used in the sabotage. Throughout the day, Ursula smiled to herself from time to time as she went about her work.
Seven days later a grimmer news item was carried on the wireless. With a heavy heart Ursula prepared the announcement. “We regret to announce that Vice Admiral Henry Boyle, late of the British navy, has been shot dead at his home in County Cork by members of the Irish Republican Army.”
Once Ursula would have cheered when any member of the British military was slain. But that time had passed. There was something callous and brutal about shooting down a retired old man whose war was long behind him.
I hope it wasn’t you, Papa. Please God, don’t let it be Ned who pulled the trigger.
On May 27 the 2RN newsreader announced, “Today marks the inaugural flight of Aer Lingus, the new commercial Irish airline service. The first flight will be from Baldonnel Military Aerodrome to Bristol in the United Kingdom, using a five-seater de Haviland Dragon called Iolar.”*
A de Haviland, like Lewis Baines’s Moth.
Damn him damn him damn him.
On the twenty-fourth of June, Eamon de Valera officially declared the Irish Republican Army to be an illegal organization.
When she returned to her room that night Ursula went through the newspaper clippings she was saving and threw away every one referring to de Valera.
Damn him damn him damn him.
But she kept on working for his government. Forcing her rebel soul to embrace the contradictions.
Lloyd George, the former British prime minister, visited Adolf Hitler in his mountaintop retreat in Bavaria and was deeply impressed with the man. When he returned to England Lloyd George wrote glowingly in the Daily Express, heaping praise upon the Fuehrer for his transformation of Germany. “The Germans are the happiest people in Europe,” Lloyd George stated.
Hitler continued to flex his muscles. Two years earlier he had sent Heinrich Himmler to Danzig to stage a Nazi parade with twelve thousand uniformed men, obviously intended to intimidate the new high commissioner, Seán Lester. As time passed Berlin had increased pressure on the Free City. By the summer of 1936 headlines such as NAZI COUP FEARED IN DANZIG and HIGH COMMISSIONER DASHES TO GENEVA TO CONFER WITH LEAGUE OF NATIONS were appearing in the world press.
In Dublin a special abattoir for Jewish meats was opened. A rabbi told newspapers covering the event that Jewish communities all around the world looked to Ireland as a haven of tolerance.
“August 1936 is a banner month for news,” Ursula wrote in her journal, “and the communications industry is at the heart of the excitement. The British Broadcasting Company has begun transmitting talking pictures on television! They are not available here, of course, but Fliss writes that the pictures look something like rice pudding with raisins. The Radio Corporation of America has been experimenting with television technology for several years. Scientists predict that television will replace the wireless but not many people believe them. Except me. I think the nature of magic is to evolve.”
That month the Olympic Games opened in Berlin to record crowds. Within three years of taking power, Hitler and National Socialism had transformed Germany. Visitors to the Games were awed by the grandeur of the facilities and the enthusiasm of the people. When German athletes won thirty-three gold medals, Hitler proclaimed it a triumph for Aryan superiority. But the undisputed star of the Games was non-Aryan and very black. American Jesse Owens won an astonishing four gold medals. As the vast crowd rose to salute Owens after his victory in the 200-meter sprint, Adolf Hitler pointedly left the stadium.
Also in August, the Irish government designated Aer Lingus as the national airline. Planes were based at Collinstown Airfield north of Dublin, a facility previously used by both the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Air Force. Irish wits promptly dubbed the national airline “Air Fungus.” Those with a bawdier turn of mind, the wild pagan past still existing under the sanctimonious surface, sniggeringly referred to “Cunni Lingus.” But not in public. Not where a priest might hear.
The new national airline attracted little public interest, for by that time General Franco had broadcast a rebellion manifesto and Spain was engaged in civil war. Franco’s Nationalists against the government’s Republicans. Photographs of burnt-out buildings began appearing in the world press. Churches and convents were reported under attack. The Irish Independent informed readers that the bodies of murdered Catholic nuns were lying on the sidewalks in Barcelona.5
Catholic Ireland was outraged.
Sometimes it seemed that the fighting had become more important than the winning. A way of life, an end in itself. Against the horrific background of kill or be killed there were occasional moments of sensual and intellectual clarity that Ned Halloran never experienced in any other way. They acted upon him like a drug. He suspected other men had the same experience. “We fight, therefore we are,” he scribbled on the flyleaf of the notebook he always carried with him.
“I’m writing a novel,” he explained if anyone asked, though very little actual writing took place. His energy was either used up in skirmishes or, more commonly, sapped by boredom. On March seventeenth he had spent an exhilarating day in the Free State on special assignment, but that was the exception. He had been ordered to come straight back to the north…and wait. Wait for weapons, wait for instructions, just wait.
Young lads who thought joining the IRA was a guarantee of excitement were sadly mistaken, he told new recruits.
Months could pass without Ned consciously thinking of “the Irish Republic” at all. When one of the new recruits in his unit, a boy called Séamus Burke, asked Ned how long he had been in the IRA, he had to stop and count back. “I joined in 1914, I was one of the early ones. And this is what—’36? So I’ve spent twenty-two years in the army.”
They were sheltering in a ramshackle lean-to behind a row of tenements in the nationalist area of Belfast. Rain beat on the roof with an insistent rhythm, like the fists of the enemy demanding admittance. The floor of the shed was littered with pellets of goat’s dung. To Ned they looked like lead shot.
The day’s rations consisted of a quarter loaf of bread smuggled
out to them by the woman of the house, with many a fearful glance over her shoulder. “I’m that grateful to you lads,” she had said. “But would you be off in the morning? Otherwise it will go hard with us and I’ve a sick husband in the bed and five babbies to think about.”
“Twenty-two years in the army. That’s longer than I’ve been alive,” Burke told Ned as they divided the bread between them. “Has it been worth it, would you say?”
Ned shrugged. It was a question he no longer knew how to answer. 1921 had been victory. Everything that came after had been a slow slide downward. If he let himself think about it, it would break his heart.
The persecution of Catholics in Northern Ireland went on; a random, unthinking violence so ingrained in the culture that Ned could not imagine the Six Counties without their sectarian undertone. Sometimes rifles and other weapons came north, via various circuitous routes, from supporters in the Free State. More often than not the IRA found itself defending northern Catholics with fists and clubs. Deaths on both sides mounted up. Nothing got better. Incised in blood, the hatred grew deeper.
People on either side claimed they could tell a person’s religion simply by their appearance.
“He has a Prod face on him, so he does.”
“She’s a Papist, I’d know that mouth among hundreds.”
Amazingly, more often than not they were right. Ned was confident he could recognize a Volunteer anywhere by the look in his eyes.
The sense of comradeship in the IRA was intense. Even more than the Republican philosophy, their shared experience of war instilled the Volunteers with a deep, unspoken love for one another. Trust was the cement that bound them together.
Any who betrayed that trust were dealt with severely.
“If peace broke out tomorrow,” Séamus wondered aloud as he dug in one of his pockets and produced a sodden half-cigarette to conclude their meal, “what would you do?”
Ned shook his head at the cigarette. “Never got the habit,” he said. “You mean what would I do if they dissolved the border and everything was sweetness and light?”
The boy grinned. “Something like that.”
Ned stared off into space. “I honestly don’t know. I don’t even know who I would be, in a situation like that. I’d lose myself.”
On the thirtieth of September Seán Lester was appointed to be deputy secretary-general of the League of Nations. Finbar Cassidy telephoned Ursula with the news, and she sent a personal letter of congratulations to Lester.
He responded, “As a result of my determined resistance to anti-Semitism in Danzig, some say I am now the most hated man in the Reich. I consider that a compliment. The Nazis have been eager to get me out of Danzig, and are crowing about my new appointment as if it were a defeat for me and a victory for them.
“I must confess that Elsie and I were looking forward to returning to Dublin when my Danzig posting was over. But that is not to be, not yet. I shall continue to do my best here until I take up my new post in Geneva next February. Elsie joins me in inviting you to visit us there once we’re settled in again.”
In October the Nationalist forces of Francisco Franco attempted to surround Madrid. Although the Republican government had already moved to Valencia, Franco ordered air strikes on Madrid.
The bombers belonged to the German air force. They were sent to Franco by Adolf Hitler.
On the twentieth of November Eoin O’Duffy led several hundred men—the majority of them Blueshirts—to Spain to support Franco in his right-wing rebellion.
The news was broadcast on 2RN but Ned Halloran did not hear it. Together with a score of others, he had set up operations in a wooded area near Derry—or Londonderry as the British persisted in calling the ancient Irish town. Séamus Burke had been captured by the RUC and reportedly beaten to death during “interrogation” in Derry Jail. Ned and his companions were lying in wait for the killers.
Chapter Thirty-four
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was reelected as president of the United States by a landslide, and Mussolini and Hitler proclaimed a Rome-Berlin Axis. As 1936 wound down, Finbar Cassidy was kept busy in the Department of External Affairs. Although Ireland was playing no role on the world stage, protocol demanded that such events be acknowledged.
From time to time Finbar paused in his work and swiveled around in his chair to gaze out the window. Daydreaming.
Aside from telephone calls with news items, his contact with Ursula remained limited to an occasional glimpse in the street. Or in dreams.
Dreams which sent him, red-faced and embarrassed, into the confessional box every Friday. Finbar was a devout Catholic thoroughly indoctrinated with the tenet of chastity until marriage. But oh, the years were passing and the little sum of money he was able to put aside never seemed to grow the way it ought! Ailing family members at home, unexpected expenses…he began to fear he might spend his life unmarried.
The prospect of permanent celibacy depressed him. Yet so strong was the influence of the Church, he would accept it if he must. “That is your cross to bear,” his late mother would have said.
So why must his body insist upon rebelling in his dreams?
And why must his heart leap when he glimpsed Ursula walking down the quays with her long free stride and her head held high?
Every day he scanned the dispatches that crossed his desk, watching for choice nuggets of information he could pass to her like a gift.
On the tenth of December King Edward VIII of England abdicated to marry the woman he loved.
Eamon de Valera summoned the Dáil for the next day. At his direction the government introduced an amending act removing all references to the king and his appointed governor-general from the Free State constitution. The bill passed at once.
As usual, Ursula went to Clare for Christmas. At the farm a letter was waiting for her. “I haven’t opened it,” Lucy was quick to point out. As she grew older Lucy imagined herself the subject of endless criticism, all of it undeserved. Her lips were permanently pursed as though she tasted something sour.
The envelope was addressed in the exquisite copperplate handwriting Ned Halloran had mastered at St. Enda’s. Ursula felt her heart lurch. Something must be wrong, or he would not have written. She ran an impatient thumb under the flap, tearing the envelope.
Dear Ursula,
Frank Ryan is recruiting Volunteers to go to Spain with the International Brigades. De Valera’s government has all but emasculated the IRA here, so some of us are going to fight Franco and save the Spanish Republic.
By the time you read this I shall be on my way. Say a prayer for me, Precious.
The postmark was dated the fifteenth of December.
He could be anywhere by now.
“Well?” Lucy said sharply. “Is he coming home for Christmas or not?”
“Not,” said Ursula.
Lucy curled her lip. “If that isn’t just like the man. Putting the army ahead of his own family.”
Norah Daly whispered, “Leave it be, child.” Norah was very frail. Her bones showed through skin worn translucent by the years. The house had an unpleasant odor Ursula had never noticed before: chill, dusty, with a bitter undertone like the smell of moldy leaves at the bottom of a pile. The smell of old women.
As soon as she could, Ursula fled to the barn and Saoirse.
The deep hollows over the gray horse’s eyes reminded her that he too was old. He had been foaled in the spring of 1917, long before independence. She had named him Freedom.
“You’re a good age for a horse,” Ursula whispered to him, stroking the soft nose that insistently nudged her arm, “but please God there are years left to you yet. I need you to be here for me.” Throwing her arms around his neck, she buried her face in his mane.
King George’s gray horse following the coffin….
Christmas was a muted affair. After the three women attended Mass Lucy cooked an indifferent dinner. Then they sat in the parlor struggling to make conversation. Ursula had so littl
e in common with the other two anymore that she found it almost impossible.
At last she inquired, “Have you heard from Kathleen in America?”
Lucy’s pursed lips drew tighter.
“Kathleen wrote us a while back,” said Norah in a voice as faded as the parlor wallpaper. “She’s thinking of remarrying.”
“So we’re all that’s left,” Lucy added. “The Halloran dynasty. End of the line.”
Ursula cleared her throat. “You can’t forget Ned.”
“Can I not? He forgets us easy enough!”
“I have to go out and feed Saoirse,” Ursula said abruptly. She jumped to her feet and fled again.
In the barn the shadows were soft as velvet and the air was fragrant with hay. Saoirse, chomping his oats, provided a rhythmic counterpoint to her troubled thoughts.
How could Papa leave Ireland to fight for a different republic? If the IRA’s suppressed, could he not just come home? Surely he’s earned a little peace.
Saoirse raised his head and glanced over at her, then gave a contented sigh and returned to his oats. “Food, shelter, and companionship. That’s all your nature requires, isn’t it?” Ursula remarked fondly.
All your nature requires.
Perhaps that was the answer.
Perhaps it was not the fight for a republic that drew Ned to war. He was a man in conflict with the two sides of his own nature, the tender and the brutal, and he sought to ease his pain by fighting in the physical world. The war in Spain looked more capable of resolution than the one in Ireland. So, worn and weary, Ned had set off in hopes of winning at last.
Ursula felt a wrenching pity for him.
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