One of Ursula’s early improvements at the farm had been to install beehives in the orchard. She harvested their golden crop herself. At first she wore a long coat, heavy gloves and a veiled hat, but she soon discovered she could work with the bees barehanded. Gerry Ryan said he had never seen anyone with such a gift.
In her suitcase Ursula had six jars of honey for Louise Hamilton.
For the funeral she had brought her only black dress, the one from Geneva. It hung loose on her now. When she belted it around her waist the fabric bunched into pleats, but it would have to do.
Real silk stockings were only a memory. Small quantities of artificial silk were available if one had enough money and ration coupons, and time to search from shop to shop. Rumors were circulating about a miracle fabric called nylon, but it was not expected until after the war. Whenever that might be.
On the morning of the funeral Ursula did what most women were doing: she painted her legs with Miner’s Liquid Stockings from Clerys’ Department Store, and drew on seams with an eyebrow pencil.
Hector’s funeral was a sober event. Louise was on the verge of tears but never quite let herself go. The other mourners held their grief in check. There was none of the pure, wild, quintessentially Irish keening Ursula had once heard in Clare.
No one would ever keen like that again.
The passions that had exploded into the Civil War had left scars on the Irish people. The children of those who had fought in the war were being taught to clamp down on their emotions, smother them, keep them tightly within bounds.
They must never forget that strong passions had cost Irish lives.
Yet the bitterness of the War of Brothers was not expunged. It was nursed in silence like some dark and poisonous fungus.
The day after the funeral, Ursula told Louise, “I think Barry should see something of the city while we’re here. Do you mind?”
“I don’t mind. Just be sure you’re back here for your tea.”
Louise hated seeing them leave the house. The shadows in the corners were very cold and dark.
What Ursula had in mind was not a sightseeing venture. She took Barry directly to the North Strand. She had to see it for herself.
Although it had been two years since the air raid, a gaping crater remained in the street where a large object, eventually identified as a land mine, had fallen. The rubble had long since been cleared away but the destroyed houses were not being rebuilt. There were no building materials available.
Ragged urchins and mongrel dogs played on the savaged earth.
Ursula did not know where Finbar’s house had stood. Redbrick; terraced. There. Or perhaps over there. One of these blank spaces contained his walls and his roof. Sheltered that kind and gentle man. Please God it brought him happiness!
She reached down and picked up an indignant Barry, who considered himself too old to be carried anymore. Ursula did not feel his weight. It was his living warmth she needed.
Time rushes on like a river in flood, speeding past treasures on the riverbank that we barely glimpse. We try to savor them in retrospect. We try to recapture them in memory. But it’s too late.
It’s too late.
In the nearest shop she bought a sheet of toffee that came with a little hammer. While Barry amused himself cracking the confection into bite-sized pieces, Ursula spoke to the shopkeeper, a beefy, florid man with tufts of ginger hair sticking out of his ears.
“Did you know Finbar Cassidy?” she asked. “I understand he used to live in one of those houses over there.”
The man gave a cryptic nod that could mean everything or nothing.
Ursula softened her voice; gave him one of her smiles. “Finbar and I were…great friends, at one time.” It was as much of an admission of intimacy as any Irish woman could make; barter to elicit a response.
“I knew Cassidy. Nice lad.”
“Were you here when the bombs fell?”
He nodded again. “We live over the shop. Heard it all. Saw it all too. Bits of people blown about. The wife nearly lost her mind at what we saw. Them damned Brits.”
“The Luftwaffe bombed us, not the British,” she corrected him.
“That what you think, is it?” He squinted at her over the counter. “I’ll tell you somethin’ for nothin’. Everyone around here knows it.” He tapped the side of his nose with a finger as thick as a sausage. “We don’t say nothin’ but we know.
“Them Nazis use radio beams to guide their planes. The Brits has learned how to bend radio beams, and they bent the German beams so the Nazis flew over Ireland instead of England and dropped their eggs on us. Killed your Finbar, so they did. Killed a lot of us. Quicker’n’Cromwell.”
Ursula felt violently sick. It can’t be true. Such a thing isn’t possible.
She grabbed her son and fled.
Ursula postponed her return to the farm for a few days. She told Louise she wanted to visit some old friends. Leaving Barry at number 16, she went first to the broadcasting station. Former colleagues were glad to see her and she spent a pleasant hour reminiscing, but left no wiser about the North Strand bombing. Everyone had heard the rumors; no one knew the facts. All agreed, however: if there was any truth to the rumors then someone in government must surely know.
Ursula spent the next day going from one government office to another, asking questions. She had no hesitation about using Seán Lester’s name, intimating that she in some way was still acting on behalf of the League.
“The issue will require more investigation to avoid making unwarranted assertions,” she was told at one department.
“Although we have the facts to hand we are not able to release them at this time,” she was told by another.
Only one man went so far as to say, “A source claims the North Strand was bombed by a German who was lost and thought he was over Manchester.”
“Has that been confirmed?”
“Confirmation of any sort is very difficult to obtain in wartime, Miss Halloran. But rest assured all possible steps are being taken. We are very mindful of our responsibilities to the people. In fact, if you examine the record of this government…”
On the following morning Ursula and Barry called on Elsie Lester. Ursula angrily related her experiences with government officialdom. “Do you know what I resent most?” she fumed. “The uglification of the language by a pox of politicians! De Valera’s people babble out of both sides of their mouths at the same time but say nothing, they’re totally unable to communicate. No one in authority will make a direct statement that might get him into trouble with either Germany or Britain. If nothing else, at least W.T. Cosgrave was a straight talker.”
Elsie was sympathetic. “You said a close friend of yours was killed in the North Strand, so I can understand your frustration. If I were you I would want to know what happened too. But sometimes we simply have to let things go, Ursula.”
I wish it were that easy.
Over tea and scones Elsie told her guests, “Seán’s still in Geneva, but he’s not very hopeful about the future. Although most of the staff at the secretariat is Swiss now, the Swiss government is keeping itself well clear of the League. Everyone agrees it’s a moribund organization. I wish we knew where it all went wrong.”
At last Ursula had to admit defeat. “Sin é,”* she told Louise. “We’re going home.”
“Could you not stop for just a few days longer?” the old woman pleaded. “Yourself and the little fellow?” When Ursula and Barry left the life would go out of the house. The silence, like a reproach, would close on her and swallow her, and she was afraid.
Ursula read the fear in her eyes. “I’m afraid not, Louise. I have Barry and the farm, you see, and I must get on with things. You should too.”
Louise gave a tremulous smile. “I will, don’t worry.”
They both knew it was a lie.
I’ll find out what happened to the North Strand, Ursula promised herself on the train ride back to Clare. I will find out. Someday. I
owe it to him.
Chapter Fifty-two
As it became increasingly apparent that America’s entry into the war would bring about the final downfall of Germany, Irish cooperation with Britain in intelligence-gathering increased.
In spite of this Winston Churchill worked ceaselessly to drive a wedge between Washington and Dublin. One result was that the Americans requested de Valera to expel the German diplomatic legation from Ireland.1 Minister Hempel and his family had been in Éire for years and had a number of friends in Dublin, where the children were attending school.
Precariously balanced on the tightrope of neutrality, which Hempel officially had recognized on behalf of the government of the Reich2, de Valera refused to send any of them back in to the war.
By the autumn Barry’s education was very much on Ursula’s mind. With the exception of the youngest, Eileen’s children were enrolled in the local National School. None of them had any academic ambitions. Like many children in rural Ireland they would leave school at twelve and never look back.
“I wish St. Enda’s was still in operation,” Ursula remarked to Ned one evening while she was fiddling with the radio dials and waiting for the news, “so Barry could have the education you did.”
At the mention of St. Enda’s a smile played over Ned’s lips. “Do you mean courses designed to create well-rounded Irish men rather than imitation English men?”
“That’s exactly what I want for Barry, Papa. He won’t get it in the National School, though. They’re still teaching English history as if Ireland never existed. And I’m reluctant to send him to the Christian Brothers because I’ve heard they can be very cruel. I can’t bear the idea of having an education beaten into Barry. Mr. Pearse never hit you, or anyone.”
“He did not,” Ned agreed. “He made sure we enjoyed learning. His ideas were considered very radical but we boys who were lucky enough to attend his school positively devoured our studies.” Ned’s voice came alive with remembered enthusiasm. “After Mr. Pearse was executed his mother struggled to keep the school going but it wasn’t the same without him. It finally closed in 1935.”
A sudden idea seized Ursula. Pearse and St. Enda’s were dead and gone—yet might they provide the doorway to bring Ned all the way back?
“Will you tutor Barry, Papa?” she asked. “Will you teach my son as you were taught?”
As Ned started to answer, static crackled and the newsreader’s voice came on. Ursula hastily switched off the machine. “What did you say, Papa?”
“Barry. Your son. What about his father? Has he no interest in the boy’s education?”
“He’s not involved. He never will be.”
Ned nodded to himself. “Mar sin,”* he said. He sat quietly for a time, then cleared his throat. “Our Precious with a son of her own.” He smiled again. “What does Síle think?”
“I…I’m sure she’s pleased, Papa.”
“If Síle wants me to, I’ll teach Barry.”
In the kitchen Ursula told Eileen, “Papa says he’ll teach Barry himself. If Síle gives permission.”
Eileen shook her head. “God love him. He’ll never accept her death, will he? You’d best send your lad to the National School with mine.”
The freight handler from the train station arrived at the farmhouse on his bicycle. “Ursula Halloran?”
“I am Ursula Halloran.”
“We have a heavy parcel for you down to the station. Can you send a wagon for it?”
Gerry hitched up the roan mare and drove into town. He returned with a large, extremely battered box sent by S. Lester, League of Nations Headquarters, Switzerland. When she opened the box, Ursula found the precious books she had left behind in Geneva. Including Ned’s textbooks from St. Enda’s.
The hairs rose on the nape of her neck.
While Gerry carried the box up to her room she ran into the kitchen. “Eileen, you’ll never believe what’s after happening! Somehow Síle’s sent Ned’s old textbooks home so he can use them to teach Barry.”
Eileen turned from the range and stared at her. “I don’t believe it!”
“Funnily enough, I do.”
The Italian people had lost faith in their dictator. Mussolini, his inflated ambitions and his comic-opera army were swept away by the resistance movement. Il Duce was arrested and a new government set up to negotiate an armistice with the Allies.
In October 1943 Italy declared war on Germany.
Barry was delighted with his lessons. Every morning as soon as he finished breakfast, he ran to his room and brought back his slate and box of chalks. While Ursula went out to tend the horses—her favorite part of the farmwork—two heads, silver and red-gold, bent over the books on the kitchen table.
Eileen’s children begged to be allowed the same privilege.
“You’ll have to work,” Ned warned them. “No skiving off, hear?”
They all promised. And they all tried, though none with the enthusiasm of Barry.
At first Ned was short-tempered with the rowdy young Mulvaneys. As the weeks passed, however, by using Pádraic Pearse as a model he rediscovered a long-lost gentleness in himself.
When Ned found it difficult to deal with Eileen’s children he summoned his memories of Pearse. Lowered his voice, smiled even if he did not feel like smiling. Repeated the lesson with infinite patience until it was understood. And always rewarded success with a bit of fun, a joke or a game or best of all, an hour’s storytelling.
Somewhere along the way the edgy, irritable soldier Ned Halloran had become was replaced by a different man.
Ned did not allow his blind spells to interrupt the children’s education. If he could not read the textbooks he quoted reams of material from memory, or assigned his students such tasks such as building a model windmill to demonstrate the principle of hydraulics.
When Ursula objected that they were too young, Ned disagreed. “Never underestimate how much a child can learn, Precious. Young brains are like blotting paper. Barry may not fully understand but he will take it in, and the knowledge will be there for him if he ever needs it.”
“You would have made a wonderful teacher if you’d chosen to go that way,” Ursula said.
“Perhaps. But what I really wanted was to be a writer.”
“What became of that novel you were always going to write?”
“Och, it’s up here.” Ned tapped his skull with his fingers. “Some of it. Most of it’s on paper. It isn’t exactly a novel, though. More of a…memoir. History as I saw it.”
“Does this book of yours include the war stories you tell Barry?”
“Still earwigging, are you? Well, they’re part of it, but only one part. I’ve seen much more, Precious.” A sly glint crept into his eyes. “I know secrets some would pay a fortune for; others would kill me to keep me from telling.”
A chill ran up Ursula’s spine. “What secrets, Papa?”
“They’ll be in the book when it’s published some day. It’s important that people know.”
“Are you certain? If telling could threaten your life…”
Ned adopted what Ursula thought of as his “professorial voice.” “Think of the present as a thin film spread over a deep lake,” he said. “The lake is composed of all the events that took place in the past. Our society, our economy, our politics, our culture—everything we are and have was created in the past. Today is only the end result. We’re floating on top of history, we’re created and supported by history. To be ignorant of history is to be ignorant of ourselves.”
Week by week, month by month, Ned Halloran was coming back. Returning to himself. Working with the children relit the lamps in his mind. It was a cause for celebration when he essayed his first small joke in years.
One afternoon Ned sent Gerry Ryan to fetch a coat that he had left in the farmyard. When the hired man returned with the coat Ned said, “Go raibh maith agat, Gearóid.* Here, have a drink on me.” He tucked something into Gerry’s pocket.
Thinking it w
as money, Gerry waited until he got to the pub in Clarecastle that night. He ordered his usual two pints. When the time came to pay, he took from his pocket…a desiccated tea bag from Ned’s army backpack.
An inventory of the pack’s contents would almost constitute an inventory of Ned’s adulthood. At the very bottom was a japanned black box with a lock. He wore the key on a thin cord around his neck.
Early in 1944 there was an American demand for the immediate removal of both the German and Japanese diplomatic legations from Ireland. The message was delivered to de Valera’s office not by an American, but by the British representative in Ireland, a man who did not hold ambassadorial rank because Churchill refused to appoint an ambassador to what he still considered one of Britain’s dominions.
De Valera made no immediate response to what was called “the American note.” However, Robert Brennan, the Irish ambassador in Washington, did call on the U.S. State Department. He said he personally interpreted the note as an ultimatum, and feared that if the Irish government refused, Éire would be invaded by American forces.
The State Department vehemently denied there were any plans whatsoever to invade neutral Ireland.
In March de Valera sent a curt official refusal to the American request. Afterward, as Elsie Lester wrote to Ursula, Brennan quietly visited the State Department again. He stated that Éire was prepared to give prompt cooperation to any security safeguards the Allies wanted to take. He stressed that American officers who had visited Ireland the preceding year had expressed satisfaction with the measures already taken there.3
Publicly de Valera had stood firm against American demands. Privately he had made the necessary accommodations. Throughout the war he would continue to give unstinting aid to the Allies without ever allowing his actions to be made public.
When Ursula read Elsie’s letter to Ned, he asked, “What are your feelings about Dev?”
“Ambivalent. I despise him for putting women back in a box, for giving the Church so much power, and most of all for turning his back on the Republicans who put him where he is. Yet I admire his political adroitness. In spite of tremendous pressure from all sides he’s kept us out of a war that would destroy this country. That takes a lot of courage.”
1949 Page 38