by Paul Reid
He came forward a few paces and tipped his hat. “Adam Bowen? You’re late.”
“The train is late,” Adam corrected him.
“One hour and forty-two minutes, by my watch.”
“A scandal, to be sure. And you might be?”
“I’m Feeny. I’m under instruction to drive you out to your lodgings. Come on, get yourself out of the cold and hop in.”
The road took them to the northwest around Bantry Bay, the famed scenery of the region now invisible in the darkness. “It’s a farmhouse a few miles outside Glengarriff,” Feeny explained in his soft-tumbling West Cork accent. “The word from Dublin is that you’ll be training our lads?”
“That’s my understanding too,” Adam said.
“By Jesus, you’ll have your work cut out for you.”
The car bumped on the rutted roads as they negotiated several twists and turns, some of the tracks so narrow that the briars on each side scraped the panelling. They were on gradually rising hillside now. In this black countryside Adam doubted that Feeny could even know where he was going.
But eventually, after negotiating a few perilous stretches of cliffside, Feeny steered the car between two concrete gateposts and pulled up outside a farmhouse. The house was of cut stone and slate with a small shrub garden in front, looking oddly picturesque in the wildness of its environs. There were candles lighting in the windows and smoke billowed out of the chimney.
“Ah. They’ve waited up for you,” Feeny said.
“Who are these people anyway?” Adam asked him. “It would be nice to know whose hospitality I’m going to be imposing on.”
“Go in and introduce yourself.” Feeny turned the car and gestured for Adam to climb out. “See you soon, Bowen.”
As the car rumbled back out of the yard, Adam walked to the front door and knocked. The door opened into a well-lit hallway, and a bald man with thick, black whiskers peered at him in wonder.
“Ah, welcome,” he exclaimed. “It’s Adam, isn’t it? I’m Ambrose, Ambrose O’Dowd. We’d almost given up on you. Come in, come in.”
He ushered Adam into a large, beautifully furnished drawing room, a fire blazing in the hearth. The air was heady with turf smoke, but even more overpowering was the fragrant musk of perfume.
“My wife, Mrs. O’Dowd, and our twin daughters Deborah and Adele,” O’Dowd introduced them. “This is Mr. Bowen, who will be staying with us for a short while, as you know.”
For a moment Adam didn’t know who was who. There were three females sewing at the fireside, each of them auburn-haired, striking of face, and willowy of body. The three heads lifted to smile sweetly at him, though with a certain mischief in their eyes. He bowed.
“Ladies, a pleasure. Sorry about the late hour.”
“Mr. Bowen.” One of them rose from her embroidered armchair.
“Call me Adam.”
“Adam. You’re more than forgiven. And you must be hungry after your journey?” She had a fine, angular face and eyes of glittering green, and the graceful touch of maturity to her features made Adam realise that she must be the mother, though she had to be at least a decade younger than her husband.
“Thank you, Mrs. O’Dowd, but I’m perfectly all right. I’ve imposed myself enough in taking your bed—er, your guest bed.”
The twins glanced at each other and giggled. Adam felt his cheeks redden.
“Nonsense, Adam,” said Ambrose O’Dowd. “We’ve already eaten, but something hot can be rustled up for you. In the meantime, let me show you to your room.”
The room was high up in the loft, but it was warm and clean, and there was a chest of drawers in which to store his clothes. He could hear the wind whistling around the eaves, the barking of a dog on some distant farm. He removed his shoes and wristwatch and sat for a while on the bed, stiff from travel and his eyes heavy with tiredness. The straw bed was more comfortable than it first looked, enfolded in a thick patterned eiderdown, and he couldn’t help but lay back and rest his head on the pillow, feeling the aches and strains flow miraculously out of his body.
He must have dozed, for he didn’t hear at first the sound of feet clambering up the ladder, and when he opened his eyes fully he made out the silhouette of a slim, long-limbed body, dress belted round a narrow waist and hair tumbling over shapely shoulders.
“Huh?” was the only sound he could muster.
The girl stopped, turned, and whispered down the ladder. “He is awake. I told you.”
More feet scrabbled up the ladder. Adam sat up, groggy and confused.
“I’ll carry it.”
“No, I’ll carry it.”
“I had it first.”
“Well, I made it. Give it to me.”
They almost upended the supper tray in their eagerness. Two grinning faces appeared over his bed and Adam edged away.
“Whoa, thank you, I—there was no need, really.”
“There you go, Mr. Bowen,” one them said, boldly wresting the tray from her sister. “I made the soup.”
“And I made the sandwich,” declared the other.
They were about seventeen years, identical in every feature except that one was slightly taller than the other, and their bumptious energy made Adam nervous. “You’re very kind. Both of you. I’m afraid I don’t know who’s who.”
“I’m Adele!”
“I’m Deborah!”
The replies came simultaneously and he nodded. “Well, thank you, ladies. Please convey my gratitude to your parents once again.”
Adele was the taller girl, and she had a cocky glint in her eye as she draped one hand on her hip and regarded him. “Have you met Michael Collins?”
“Mick Collins? Yeah, a few times.”
They exchanged glances, impressed.
“Is he married?” asked Deborah.
“I don’t believe so.”
Now they were positively beaming. “Are you married?” Deborah asked him. “Only that Adele wanted to know.”
“No, I didn’t,” Adele hissed indignantly, giving her sister a cuff on the arm.
Heavy boots stomped up the ladder then. Ambrose O’Dowd emerged into the loft and snapped his fingers with a growl. “You two, out. Now. Let Mr. Bowen enjoy his meal.”
Glowering at each other, the two twins departed, and O’Dowd lit an oil lamp on a hook in the rafters. “The toilet is in the outhouse below. If there’s anything else you’ll be needing . . . ”
“Not at all. And I do appreciate this hospitality,” Adam said.
“Well, I admire what you’re doing, helping our people down here. And it’s going to take courage, for Britannia has left many bloody footprints in this land. But do you know what? The Englishman is a classic example of one who has the utmost faith in his own purpose and destiny, and as a consequence, he always overreaches himself and ends up toppling from his lofty perch. You remember that.”
He didn’t seem to require an answer, so Adam nodded politely.
“You’re going to train the local boys?” O’Dowd asked him. “That’s what has been said.”
“My duties should become clear soon enough.”
“I look forward to the day when you lead those boys into open battle. I have no doubt but you will emerge victorious.”
Adam gave him a wry smile. “Thanks. Your faith is cheering.”
“Don’t mention it.” O’Dowd patted his shoulder and then climbed back down the ladder.
Grateful for the peace at last, Adam applied himself to his meal, a bowl of vegetable soup and a sandwich of ham, onions, and cheese. It tasted delicious on an empty stomach, and there was a mug of small beer to wash it down.
His fatigue returned, more overwhelming now with his belly full. He closed the hatch over the ladder, turned out the lamp, undressed to his underwear, and climbed beneath the eiderdown. His last conscious thought was how wonderfully warm the bed was.
A hand gently nudged him awake a little after dawn, though it seemed to Adam he couldn’t have slept at all.
He opened his eyes to find Ambrose O’Dowd’s black-whiskered countenance grinning down at him. O’Dowd laid a cup of coffee on the bedside locker and said, “You’d better get up, Mr. Bowen. There are some men looking for you outside.”
When he went out, he saw a car parked in the yard and two men leaning against it. One was smoking, a short, whippet-like figure, and he tossed aside his cigarette as Adam appeared. “Bowen?” He shook Adam’s hand briefly. “I’m Kieran MacBarron, brigade commandant in this neck of the woods. I understand you’ve been sent to me by the big fellow himself?”
“Mick said you fellows were looking for men with military experience.”
“We are. We’ve had a flood of recruits the past six months, but hardly any of them have ever held a rifle before, much less shot it at someone. And the Brits have been making mighty sport of us hereabouts. You haven’t come a moment too soon.” He indicated the other man nearby. “You met Feeny last night?”
Adam nodded. “He was kind enough to drive me out here. Thanks for these lodgings, by the way. Such pretty surrounds.”
“That’s all right. Now come on. We’ll be away from here and go meet the lads.”
A half hour later, Adam got out of the car on a stretch of hillside where the fields were separated by a rough scattering of stone walls. There were no houses visible and only a single road ran beneath the dour sky. In the cover of a copse of trees, several dozen men had begun to assemble at the sound of the car. Some looked young, too young to have even held a razor to their cheeks, while others must have been at the latter end of their fifties. Most had the ruddy complexions of bog cutters and ploughboys.
“I know they don’t look like much,” MacBarron sighed. “West Cork is not Dublin City, Bowen. It’s poor country out here. Every young man has his eyes on the road out, while every older man has a stretched household, a loan drawn against the harvest. All of them need reassurance, you see, reassurance against their own island’s history. And you’re here to help me with that.”
He bawled an order and the company hastily formed up into a something resembling a line. In their hands they clutched crudely hewn lengths of timber meant to represent rifles, and as they stood there in threadbare shirts and tattered boots, Adam doubted whether he had ever seen a more unconvincing body of troops.
“Anyone at all with experience?” he asked MacBarron.
“None. The fellows with experience are already serving with active units. Your job is to whip this lot up to the same standard.”
“No problem. Lloyd George and Churchill will be quaking in their slippers.”
They were strong, raw-boned men but baffled by his commands when he attempted his best drill sergeant’s bellow. He made them form two lines with two paces between each man and explained how they should stand, turn, and march to slow time, quick, and double. For the first hour they stumbled about like a gaggle of lost goslings, but they soon learned what his instructions meant and he roared at the few slackers who still weren’t holding their rifles properly. After another hour they knew how to wheel left or right without losing formation and to break file at a moment’s notice. As they paced up and down the field he shouted orders like, “Three files on the left. Right turn. Left wheel,” and bit by bit they grasped the art.
When several hours had passed and the light was weakening, he called a halt to the exercises and MacBarron told them they could go home.
“But in formation,” Adam warned.
As the column trooped down the road, shouldering their wooden rifles, MacBarron sat himself on a roadside boulder and rolled a smoke. “So, what do you think?”
“I don’t think they’re any great danger to the British Empire just yet,” Adam said, picking up his coat. “But they’re willing. I’ll give them that.”
“It’s their first day. They’ll turn out grand. You were once a clumsy recruit yourself, I’ll bet.”
“Indeed. You have me there.” Adam watched the line of heads disappear below a dip in the road, and he turned his gaze across the landscape. The sky was unsettled, leaden clouds over bare moorland, a hint of thunder in the air. He looked over the distant mountains and thought of the army garrisons at Dunmanway and Macroom and other places. Trained men, trained killers, armed to the teeth with Lee-Enfields and Webleys. And here, in this miserable spot, a few dozen men in tweed caps carrying wooden guns down the road. The carnage of bloody battle would soon visit these hills.
“Aye, Commandant. We’ll be just fine.”
Winston Churchill’s Temporary Cadets arrived in Ireland on the promise of ten shillings a day plus board and lodging. Charged with “a rough and dangerous task,” they were to supplement the ranks of the Royal Irish Constabulary and assist in putting down the IRA.
The sheer volume of men who came forward to volunteer quickly led to a shortage in official RIC uniforms, and the new recruits were obliged to wear a mismatch of army khaki and darker police issue. This appearance prompted one journalist to compare them to the “Black and Tans,” a famous pack of Irish hunting hounds. The humorous reference stuck, but their subsequent escapades in Ireland were not such a cause for laughter.
Along with the Tans, a second paramilitary body was sent to Ireland, made up of ex-officers who were paid the higher wage of one pound per day. This was the Auxiliary Division, instructed again to lend weight to the RIC, though they soon began to operate independently and conduct their own campaigns. While the Tans were a mobile strike force, the Auxiliaries also proved adept at gathering intelligence. Like the Tans they were ruthless and saw no wrong in punishing civilians for the sins of their rebel brethren. Like the Tans they earned an early reputation for drunkenness, violence, and general lack of discipline.
Not all those sent from England liked to get their hands dirty, however. A small few, a chosen few, who wore expensive suits and ate in exclusive restaurants, represented the biggest threat of all.
James Bryant had been summoned to meet a group of them now.
They liked to meet in a private lounge upstairs, where nobody from the restaurant below could hear them. It was an elegant but unobtrusive establishment on Grafton Street, run as a gentleman’s club, and membership was strictly by recommendation only. The lounge had a fireplace with a stag’s head mounted on the wall, a mulberry carpet covering the floor, and oak-panelled walls adorned with oil paintings. On the stinkwood table in the centre was an ashtray and a copy of the Times.
They were midway through their roast beef, eagerly discussing a forthcoming race festival at Punchestown, and one of them acknowledged James’s arrival.
“You’re a little behind the clock, old boy. Shall I fetch the girl?”
“No thanks, Arthurs. I’m not hungry.” James was out of breath and took a seat on the armchair. “Sorry to interrupt your dinner. Take your time. I’ll enjoy the fire while I wait.”
He flicked through the Times and had a cup of coffee to chase the Dublin cold out of his limbs. After a while Arthurs joined him in the other armchair. There was laughter at the dinner table, boyish spirits. James knew them, though. He knew he was in the company of some of the most viciously efficient spies in the entire service of the British Empire.
With the arrival of the Auxiliary forces in Ireland, James was now working alongside the F Company Auxiliary Division, Royal Irish Constabulary. The Tans and the “Auxies” had the job of disciplining the countryside, but the men in this room were a very particular and skilled group of intelligence agents, trained by Special Branch and MI5 and charged with finding and destroying the leadership of the IRA. They’d spent the past month or so establishing cover, posing as salesmen, insurance brokers, travelling musicians. Inside official circles they were known as the Dublin District Special Branch, and already they had massively reorganised and strengthened British intelligence operations in Ireland.
Arthurs took a leather-bound notepad from the bookcase beside him and handed it to James. “Names and locations, Bryant. Isn’t that what you wanted? Have a look through tha
t. I think the boys have done rather well.”
As James scanned through the pages, his breathing quickened. For several minutes he was silent, then he sat back and swore softly. “And this is all good?”
“It was at the time of going to print,” Arthurs grinned. “But I’d advise that your side acts on it fairly fast.”
“Oh, we will. We have them, by God. We have the bastards by the balls.” He returned to the start and reread the entire report.
Tom Cullen, Dick McKee, Peadar Clancy, Liam Tobin. And Collins. Michael Collins, the myth himself. James couldn’t believe it.
“Damn it, Arthurs, we’ve been searching for him for months. We put a bounty on the blighter’s head, and we couldn’t lift so much as a photograph. How did your men find him?”
“He’s like a sprat in a deep pool, that one. He just keeps on moving. And I wouldn’t quite say we’ve found him yet, but we’re closing in on him.”
“But how?”
“Ah. Let’s just say he has a certain lady friend who works in a bank. We explored that little avenue, and it’s proving rather fruitful.”
“She’s giving you information?”
“The lady friend? Goodness, no. She knows nothing about us. But we managed to get one of our chaps into the bank, and he’s been discreetly following her trail. Collins meets her several times a month for some romancing, usually in private residences, sometimes in hotels or restaurants. He’s been building a rather large war chest, you know, gathering funds. We have a team of bankers looking into that. All in all, there’s enough of a pattern going on for us to strike at.”
“And once we have him,” James couldn’t help but smile, “we’ll have every last one of them.”
“And that’ll be an end to this dirty little war, and we can all go home,” Arthurs agreed.
There was one other name that James had missed initially. He stopped. “Hold on. This man, this one right here. You’ve found him too?”
Arthurs looked and nodded. “Mulligan. Yes, we’ve found him. A brigade commander in Wicklow, hiding out in a little hole in the mountains. I can even give you the exact directions for when your boys pick him up. One of Mulligan’s foot soldiers turned informant with the promise of cash, so we’ve gleaned some lovely details. Mulligan might be a wily sort, but we’ll run him to ground.”