1949

by Morgan Llywelyn

  But no one thought of him as radical; indeed not, when his government sent a formal assurance to the pope: “We repose at the feet of Your Holiness the assurance of our filial loyalty and of our devotion to your August Person, as well as our firm resolve to be guided in all our work by the teaching of Christ and to strive to the attainment of a social order in Ireland based on Christian principles.”1

  “De Valera’s brand of republicanism has been supplanted but the hold of the Church remains as strong as ever,” Ursula wrote to Henry.

  June 1, 1948

  Dear Mr. Mooney,

  Bella does not know I am writing this letter. For a long time certain friends of mine have been pressuring us to contact you, but she will not hear of it. She believes, sir, that you are dreadfully disappointed in her. Her pride will not allow her to say she is sorry. Once Bella gets an idea in her head she will not let it go.

  I think you should know that you have a little granddaughter. Barbara Mooney Kavanagh was born on the third of May. She is very beautiful. Bella once remarked that she looks like Mrs. Mooney, which is the only mention she has ever made of her mother.

  We are all three in good health. I am doing my best to provide a good home and keep my wife happy. Our current address is on this envelope. If it should change, I will inform you immediately.

  Sincerely,

  Michael Kavanagh

  Ursula took countless photographs of her horses. At first the pictures were fuzzy and out of focus, and sometimes the animals lacked heads. But she persevered. When she had a dozen photographs she considered satisfactory, she announced she would take them to Dublin in August for the annual horse show. “I need to start advertising our stock to people who can afford really good horses.”

  Ned’s sister laughed. “Buy some American lipstick for me too, will you?”

  Ursula concealed the twinge of guilt she felt. “I’m not going on some frivolous shopping trip!” she insisted.

  “And nylons,” Eileen added wistfully. “I would dearly love to see a real pair of nylon stockings.”

  The postwar prosperity that Henry Mooney wrote about in his letters to Ursula had not reached Ireland. Dublin in August of 1948 was, at first glance, little different from Dublin in 1938: shabby and curiously oldfashioned. Shop windows were fly-specked. Advertisements on hoardings were yellowed and peeling. Private automobiles were slow to return to the streets; many still used bicycles for transport.

  But a few stirrings could be felt beneath the surface.

  The Costello government was settling in and interest was focused on economic policy. The External Relations Act which had been part of the Anglo-Irish Treaty meant that the Free State retained strong economic ties with Britain. Some wanted to see those ties cut and the nation stand on her own two feet at last. Others were reluctant to cut the apron strings, no matter how onerous the relationship had been. “Stay with what’s known,” was their attitude.

  Before attending the horse show Ursula paid a call on the Lesters. Let Eileen yearn for lipstick and nylons. She was hungry to discuss the changing political landscape with people who were knowledgeable.

  Seán had returned from Geneva and he and Elsie were living at Avoca, County Wicklow. Ballanagh House was a spacious country residence, two-storied, L-shaped, embedded in rhododendron bushes and perfumed by newly-mown lawns. A pack of friendly dogs ran to greet Ursula when she arrived.

  Elsie professed herself delighted with the rural life, but Ursula was curious to know how Seán Lester was adapting to a smaller stage. He seemed content, but admitted he was disappointed in the local fishing. “And how do you find life on the farm?” he asked her. “Is it dull after Geneva?”

  “Dull?” Ursula laughed. “Hardly that. Every day is at least one new crisis. Working at the League prepared me admirably.”

  “I thought the new coalition government might find a place in its ranks for Seán,” Elsie confided while her husband was at the other end of the room, fixing drinks. “But de Valera had no interest in employing his experience after the war and neither, it seems, does Costello.”

  Ann Lester entered the room carrying a tray of sandwiches. “I hate seeing my father ignored like that,” she said hotly. “After all the credit he’s brought to this country!”

  “It’s all right,” Seán assured her as he passed the drinks. “I’m a man without ambition. Though I would like to think I make a good brandy and soda.”

  Elsie met Ursula’s eyes. “At least the new United Nations appreciates him. Just this June the secretary-general, Trygve Lie, sent a long telegram asking Seán to lead a commission to deal with the India-Pakistan question.”

  “I thanked him most warmly,” said Seán, “but explained that certain urgent personal affairs made it quite impossible to accept the commission.”

  Ann laughed in spite of herself. “He meant fishing season!”

  The long afternoon was drowsy with the warmth of late summer but sparkled with conversation. Ursula hated to leave and promised to come back soon.

  I have a foot in each of two worlds, she thought.

  The grounds of the RDS were thronged with people. Several motorized horseboxes blocked traffic while sleek animals wearing head bumpers and protective bandages were being unloaded. The air smelt of dung and petrol and excitement.

  This one, Ursula told herself. This is the world I want. Isn’t it?

  As Ursula joined the queue to buy her tickets, she found herself behind a stocky woman in a huge straw hat. For some reason the queue was hardly moving. Every time Ursula tried to peer around the hat, the woman shifted to one side or the other and blocked her view.

  Ursula muttered irritably, “They’ll be calling the first class soon and we’re still going to be out here.”

  The woman in the hat turned around. “Ursula Halloran!” cried Felicity Rowe-Howell. “I’d have known you anywhere.”

  Ursula stared at the dumpy woman in the expensive but unbecoming print dress. Gone was the girl who once described herself as “jolly hockey-sticks.” Only her voice belonged to the Fliss of memory. Her puffy face, slashed by dark red lipstick, was a campaign map of lost wars.

  “You…you’re looking very well yourself,” Ursula stammered.

  Fliss smoothed the front of her dress. “You’re kind to say so, but I’m afraid I’ve put on a teeny bit of weight. They do claim it irons out the wrinkles, though.” She gave a high-pitched, girlish giggle.

  The queue at last started to move. The two old friends bought tickets together in the grandstand. While they waited for the first class to begin, Fliss asked a few personal questions that Ursula parried with the skill born of long practice. The other woman did not seem to mind. It was obvious that she really wanted to talk about herself.

  “You didn’t miss much by not coming to my wedding,” Fliss said. “I married the wrong man anyway.”

  Ursula looked at her in surprise. “Did you now?”

  “Oh yes.” Very calmly. “I realized it when I was walking down the aisle and saw him waiting for me at the altar.”

  “Then why in God’s name did you go through with it?”

  “I had the dress and everyone was there,” said Fliss, as if it were the most reasonable of explanations.

  “Jaysus, Fliss!”

  The other woman shrugged.

  Ursula commented, “You don’t seem very unhappy about it.”

  “Why should I be? He has his life now and I have mine. He lives in London and does the social rounds, or goes drinking with his old RAF pals. Drinks rather too much, really, but it’s nothing to do with me anymore. I live in the country and do the sorts of things I like. Our paths almost never cross.”

  “Will you divorce?”

  “Of course not, Ursula. Our arrangement suits us both just as it is.”

  “Have you children?”

  “Two; a boy and a girl. Rather a miracle, really, considering their father never fancied me.”

  “Then why do you suppose he asked you to marr
y him?”

  “Oh, I found out soon enough,” Fliss replied. “He was in love with someone else but she threw him over.” A shadow crossed her face; was swiftly blinked away. “He proposed to me out of bravado, really, to prove he could get anyone he wanted. He’s still doing it.”

  Ursula gave a wry smile. “Proposing marriage to women?”

  “Not marriage, no. Being married to me keeps him safe to make indecent proposals to others. He’s quite successful at it, my friends tell me.”

  Ursula said, “If they tell you things like that, they’re not what I call friends.”

  A bell rang. The two women turned toward the arena, where a big bay gelding was cantering toward the first jump. “Some think my husband is romantic,” Fliss remarked while keeping her eyes on the horse. “A man who was spurned by the love of his life.”

  “Did he love the woman who threw him over?”

  “Oh yes, I’m very certain of that.” Fliss sounded so monumentally indifferent that she broke Ursula’s heart. “My husband never discussed his ‘grand passion’ with me, but I once saw him reduced to tears by a piece of music that reminded him of her. We were at a dance and the orchestra played ‘My Wild Irish Rose.’ Lewis was so upset he left the hall. Left me standing in the middle of the dance floor by myself. I knew then there was no hope for us.”

  Ursula gaped at Fliss. “Lewis…Baines?”

  “Of course. I thought you knew. Did I never tell you his name?”

  Ursula’s world had rocked on its axis and left her momentarily stunned. She needed to reestablish contact with something solid—and Seán Lester was the most solid person she knew.

  Ursula rang the Lesters and invited herself to Ballanagh House to say good-bye before returning to Clare.

  “By all means come down!” Elsie told her eagerly. “Some other friends will be here for luncheon and you’ll fit right in.”

  With her usual deft hospitality, Elsie set up a picnic under the trees. Two tables were covered with crisp linen cloths. Platters of cold ham and chicken were accompanied by bowls of salad and bread hot from the oven. Seán introduced Ursula to his other guests, four men from the Department of External Affairs. Ursula had met none of them before, but found them all intelligent and personable. To her disappointment, however, they were not forthcoming about John Costello and the new administration, though she asked as many leading questions as she dared.

  When the meal was almost over it began to rain, and the party hastily adjourned inside. Ursula took the opportunity to visit the toilet. As she was returning down the hallway, she overheard raised voices coming from the library and halted in her tracks.

  “I beg to disagree!” one of the guests was saying with some heat. “It would be a great mistake to repeal the External Relations Act. De Valera himself proposed an external association when drawing up Document Two, his suggested alternative to the Treaty. The idea was to avoid accepting an internal association that would require the swearing of an oath of allegiance to the king. If we were to set aside the External Relations Act it would mean leaving the Commonwealth and breaking the Treaty.”

  “Nations break treaties all the time,” said another man. “Look at the war just concluded, for example.”

  “My point exactly. If we don’t honor our commitments where does that leave us? On a par with Hitler?”

  Ursula strained to hear.

  “The act is a statute repealable by the legislature,” Seán Lester pointed out in a dry voice, “not a fundamental law. It was a makeshift, a compromise, and I suspect that Dev was planning to repeal it eventually.”

  The first speaker said, “With Costello as taoiseach there’ll be no repeal of the act, I assure you. Fine Gael’s not a republican party.”

  The second speaker replied derisively, “You’re right there, me lad. It’s the party of the status quo.”

  Ursula gritted her teeth. The status quo. Why is Ireland so damned predictable? Expect the worst and it happens, every time.

  As she was bidding the Lesters good-bye later, she leaned forward and asked Seán in a low voice, “Did de Valera really intend to get the republic back after all?”

  He smiled a sad smile. “Did Michael Collins really intend to get the north back? Some questions can never be answered, Ursula.”

  Existence, thought Ursula on the train going home, is made up of bits and pieces and unfinished stories. We’re surprised by birth and thrust into life unprepared. We enter a world filled with beauty and horror; we want to live and we have to die. Every aspect of life is a paradox. How can we ever hope to make sense of it?

  At a meeting of the Canadian Bar Association in Ottawa, Canada, in September of 1948, John A. Costello described the External Relations Act as being full of inaccuracies and infirmities. At a Canadian press conference a week later he confirmed a story carried by a Dublin newspaper, which claimed that his government intended to repeal the act.

  He did not consult his cabinet before making the statement. They had no choice but to agree.

  The world press was rocked by the unexpected announcement. Politically outmaneuvered, the British government could do nothing to keep Ireland in the Commonwealth any longer.

  The apron strings were cut.

  Chapter Fifty-seven

  3 February 1949

  Dear Henry,

  If you can possibly arrange it, I hope you will pay a visit to Ireland soon. Papa is not at all well. The doctors say he has a brain tumor that has been growing very slowly for a long time. It might explain some of his bizarre behavior over the years.

  The tumor is reaching dangerous proportions now. We discussed taking him to Dublin for an operation but he refuses to go. The medical consensus is that it probably would not make any difference anyway.

  Papa never speaks of you by name, but like de Valera with Ireland, I believe I can read his heart. Come home, Henry, and make up the quarrel between you before it is too late.

  How well he knew that quick light step! Ned turned an eager face toward the door of his bedroom. “Síle?”

  “It’s me, Papa.”

  “Oh. Of course.”

  Ursula heard the joy fade from his voice. “You have a visitor, Papa,” she said. “Shall I bring him in?”

  “Him?”

  “Just a minute.”

  She ran back down the passage to where Henry was waiting. Behind his smile, his face felt stiff. “Will he see me?”

  Ursula winced at his choice of verbs. “I think he will, Henry. His room’s right down here, just follow me.”

  The walk to the bedroom door seemed very long.

  Ursula had brought Henry from Shannon Airport in the farm’s new motorcar. The black Ford was her pride and joy; something she could barely afford but had to have. The future.

  “You drive a car like you ride a horse,” Henry had complained, hanging on white-faced as the machine rocketed around curves and bounded over ruts.

  When they reached the farmhouse he set his suitcase down just inside the door. “I want to go to Ned before anything else,” he said. “Bite the bullet, so to speak.” While Ursula took him upstairs, Eileen kept the children in the kitchen.

  The door creaked open again. Ned felt a draft on his face. Someone entered. Heavy footsteps; strangely uncertain.

  They stopped beside his bed.

  “Hello, old-timer,” said a deep voice.

  The cracking sound in Ned’s chest was that of the ice breaking around his heart.

  Without saying a word, he opened his arms to his friend.

  Ursula paced about the kitchen, picking things up and putting them down. Smoothing the oilcloth on the table. Moving the saucepans around on the range. “You’ll ruin the dinner if you keep on,” Eileen complained. “Would you ever sit down and calm yourself?”

  “They’ve been up there together for a long time. I’d give anything to know what’s happening.”

  “When were you ever backward about earwigging?” Eileen wanted to know.

  Ursul
a grinned. Slipping off her shoes, she carried them in her hand as she tiptoed up the stairs. She could not hear anything until she stood outside Ned’s room. The door was slightly ajar. She flattened herself against the passage wall and listened.

  “We didn’t really believe we could defeat England,” Ned was saying. “Not militarily. What we had to fight was the apathy of the Irish people. We had to arouse them to do whatever was necessary to take their destiny into their own hands. And we did. In 1916 the IRA gave Ireland her self-respect back.

  “Then in 1919 Sinn Féin put political power in the hands of the people. What a weapon that was! Except we didn’t appreciate it fully.” Ned gave a weary sigh. “A man has a lot of time to think when he’s sitting in the dark. Sometimes…only sometimes, mind…I think you were right all along, Henry. Perhaps after 1919 there should not have been a bullet fired in Ireland. We had leaders who were as clever as Lloyd George and his crowd; they just weren’t experienced at political chicanery. Is it possible we might have won the Republic without any more bloodshed if we’d had the patience to learn the game?”

  “That’s what I thought at the time,” Henry told him. “Had the IRA not kept fighting, the British wouldn’t have sent in the Tans and…”

  “And Síle would still be alive,” said Ned.

  “Yes,” Henry replied in a choked voice. “Síle would still be alive.”

  The air was suddenly thick with pain. Even standing out in the passageway, Ursula could feel it. But whatever the quarrel had been between them, the anger was gone.

  After a time Ned asked, “Could we have gained our independence your way, Henry? Would Britain ever have responded to anything other than physical force?”

  “Did you read that speech W. B. Yeats once made in the Senate?” Henry responded. “He predicted we eventually would gain a united Ireland not through fighting, but through governing well. He wanted to create a culture that would represent the whole of the country and draw the imagination of the young.”