1921

by Morgan Llywelyn

  “What do you mean, ‘betrayed’?” she asked.

  “I’ve always maintained that we could achieve independence through political negotiation, even if it took years. Anything was preferable to violence. Ned and I used to argue about that, you know; he is so much a physical-force man. I believed the peace conference would be my vindication. Surely the other nations would understand that Ireland has as much right to exist as the small countries the war was supposed to be fought for! We need only present our case through the proper channels. But there aren’t any proper channels, not for us. The door’s been slammed in our faces.”

  “Why, Henry? I don’t understand.”

  “I’m beginning to. Woodrow Wilson’s dream is to establish a League of Nations to prevent global war. He’s been working in Paris during the peace conference to ratify a covenant for the league. The support of the Allies is essential, of course. I’ve been doing some investigating, and it looks like the price of British support for the League of Nations is to be the Irish Republic. According to Article 10 of the league’s covenant, Ireland is an appendage of the British Crown. So much for going the political route, Síle. Maybe your husband was right all along.”

  THE twin cancers of anger and frustration ate at Henry Mooney. He knew the members of Sinn Féin were trying to work out a new political strategy, but there was another element in the equation: men like Dan Breen—tough, gritty physical-force men. Whatever chance might have existed to persuade them to peaceful means was lost now. The price on Dan’s head had been raised; he and those like him were fighting back, all across the country.

  “We’ll see some action,” Dan had said. “Say, you wouldn’t be interested in joining the South Tipperary Brigade, would you?”

  Henry took up his pen instead.

  “In 1914 Prime Minister Asquith justified Britain’s entry into the war on the grounds it was to defend the neutrality of Belgium against German aggression,” he wrote for the Clare Champion. “Asquith said, ‘it is impossible for people of our blood and history to stand by while a big bully sets to work to thrash and trample to the ground a victim who has given him no provocation.’1 Yet for eight centuries his people have relentlessly bullied ours, and now they have used their strength against us yet again. They would argue that the cause is just. The most degrading attribute of humankind is not callousness or greed or even violence, but the ability to justify all three.”

  Writing helped release some of the tension Henry felt, but not enough. He spent sleepless nights pacing the floor of his room, smoking cigarette after cigarette and then opening the window to let the smoke out. The rush of cool, damp air on his face did not ease his fever.

  Ireland’s nationhood has been bartered for other men’s dreams.

  Other men’s…

  Síle, upstairs. Another man’s dream.

  Ella Rutledge on the other side of town. A woman to put on a pedestal.

  The whores of Monto only a short walk away. Ready and willing.

  But Henry did not visit Monto anymore.

  The decision had not been a conscious one. A seismic shift had taken place within him; the easy relief of Monto was no longer enough. He spent his evenings at home with Síle and Precious, wrapped in an emotional contentment that did not satisfy physical desire but fed a deeper need.

  IMMEDIATELY following its inauguration, the Dáil had set about putting new government structures in place. In voting for independence the Irish people had voted to govern themselves, so on both national and local levels men and women were being recruited to serve a new nation. There was no shortage of willing, if inexperienced, workers.

  The response of the entrenched power was predictable. Dáil members were watched and harassed, forced to meet in secret. People began referring to them as “the Underground Parliament.” A favorite rendezvous was the Wicklow Grill, where they conducted the Republic’s business in whispers over steak-and-kidney pie.

  British agents were searching for Michael Collins with arrest warrants in hand. They still did not know what he looked like, but were increasingly aware of his importance. He lived a life on the run, sometimes sheltering in the house of a friend or sympathizer, sometimes spending nights in the open, sometimes sharing a bed with a comrade such as Harry Boland, each of them sleeping with a gun by his pillow. Once, when Vaughan’s Hotel was raided, Collins got out just in time and found shelter crouched behind the stone buttress of a nearby church while heavily armed British soldiers paced back and forth just a few yards away.

  When under pressure Collins became irascible and profane, even cruel. At such times his friends walked carefully around him. Then, in the blink of an eye, he would return to the merry fellow no one could resist and be forgiven everything.

  Colorful stories about Collins were proliferating. Henry Mooney was not the only journalist who wrote down every one he heard. “There’s a book in the Big Fellow one of these days,” Matt Nugent prophesied.

  “Ah, sure,” said Henry, “there’s a book in all of us. But I’d rather mine remained unread.”

  THE spring weather was bitterly cold. The air of central Dublin was so thick with coal smoke that a perpetual twilight hung over the city. The twin horrors of influenza and consumption stalked the streets.

  Henry emerged from number 16 later than usual to find Ned Halloran coming up the front steps.

  Ned laughed out loud at the expression on his face. “Going to work, Henry? Surely you can spare an hour or two. It isn’t every day a friend escapes a British prison. Come inside with me and let’s tell the women.” He clapped one hand on the astonished Henry’s shoulder and steered him back into the house.

  “I’m home!” Ned shouted at the foot of the stairs. He drew a deep breath, then repeated softly, as if to reassure himself, “I’m home.”

  There was shriek, then a clatter of running feet from various parts of the house. Síle arrived first, hair flying as she tore it free from its hairpins. Everything she felt was in her eyes. Henry could not bear to look at them. Their message was for Ned alone.

  Precious flung herself at Ned. “Papa, Papa, Papa! I knew you were coming home today! I knew it, I knew it!”

  He lifted her to cover her face with kisses. “My, you’re getting heavy. How did you know I was coming home, Precious?”

  “The birds told me,” she said seriously. “The birds under the eaves. I listen to them and they tell me things.”

  Ned laughed again. “There are spy networks everywhere,” he said.

  Louise Kearney’s way of expressing herself was to prepare a celebratory meal they were too excited to eat. As they sat around the table with the food congealing on their plates, Ned spoke offhandedly of his imprisonment. “It wasn’t so bad. We had a roof over our heads and walls to keep out the wind, and something they claimed was decent food. Matter of opinion, of course. We were watched, but there’s nothing new about that. Besides, they couldn’t watch us all at the same time.”

  “Obviously not,” said Henry. “How did you get away?”

  Ned put his hand over Síle’s. “It’s a long story and I’m knackered. Do you suppose we could save it till later?”

  As if she had been waiting for the clue, Síle shepherded her returned hero upstairs. “He needs a good long sleep in his own bed,” she announced firmly.

  “That means you stay down here with us and let him rest,” Louise said in an aside to Precious.

  “But Mama’s going with him, so why can’t I—”

  Henry interrupted. “You come into the parlor with me and I’ll read to you. Anything you like.”

  The little girl’s expression brightened. “Something about ponies?”

  NED did not reappear until late that night. When he came downstairs he found Henry alone in the parlor, slumped in a chair and gazing at the dying flames on the hearth. Ned ran his fingers through his tousled hair before sauntering into the room. “Want some company, Henry? A good talk, like old times?”

  Henry started from a deep reveri
e. “Where’s Síle?”

  “Asleep. She put Precious to bed hours ago, and now they’re both asleep.”

  “So should you be at this hour.”

  Abruptly Ned coughed, a deep, racking expulsion from the bottom of his lungs. “I don’t think that chimney’s drawing properly,” he said in response to Henry’s glance of concern. “I’ll have a look at it in a day or two.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with the chimney. I wish I could say the same for you.”

  “You’re as bad as my wife. I’m all right, truly I am. Just overtired.” Ned’s boyish grin resurfaced. “I’ve had something of an adventure.”

  “I’m sure you have,” Henry said with a touch of envy. “Do you feel up to talking about it now?”

  “I suppose so. I keep going over our escape in my head anyway; that’s why I can’t sleep.”

  “‘Our’ escape? Who else did you bring out with you?”

  “It was the other way around, Henry. He brought me out with him. De Valera.”

  Henry sat bolt upright in his chair. “I think you’d better tell me.”

  Ned was too restless to sit. He paced the room as he talked, occasionally pausing to lean against the mantelpiece with his arms folded. Henry was struck by his physical beauty: the elegant, attenuated line and careless grace of the man.

  How easy it is to take our friends for granted until we almost lose them.

  “We thought the British might release us sooner rather than later,” Ned began, “because some had already been sent home. But we couldn’t be sure how strongly the government was still regarding the ‘German plot.’ Besides, Dev wanted to give our lads the morale boost of a dramatic escape. He said it was our duty to resist the British every way we could.

  “From the beginning of our imprisonment, Dev had used coded messages to communicate with Mick Collins. Some of the messages were in Irish and others in Latin. Translation was my specialty, so I worked closely with Dev, but I wasn’t the only one. There was an elaborate Republican network inside the prison, and Mick was setting up a similar network outside. Since the start of the year he’s been our director of intelligence, as I’m sure you know.

  “When we first arrived at Lincoln, Dev had insisted we were not to receive any food parcels. He said it was up to the British government to feed us. Then he changed his mind. The food was dreadful and they kept cutting back our rations, but that wasn’t the reason. Dev and Mick had a plan, you see.

  “Dev was serving as an altar boy and had gained the trust of the prison chaplain. So he was able to sneak into the sacristy during Mass and use candle wax to take an impression of the chaplain’s master key. Then Seán Milroy made a very precise drawing of the impression, and we smuggled it out of the prison as part of the design on a Christmas card.

  “Using that drawing as a template, Mick’s people on the outside had a key made that they smuggled back into the prison inside a cake. The guards never checked our food parcels for contraband. They thought the Irish were too stupid for clever plots.

  “So we got the key in with no problem. But unfortunately it didn’t work in our locks. Neither did the next one Mick’s people sent in another cake. At last, in desperation, they sent us a blank key of the right size and the tools, and we cut it ourselves. Fortunately Mr. Pearse had made us boys learn craftwork at Saint Enda’s.

  “Meanwhile, Mick was in England making the final arrangements for the escape. He wanted to be in Dublin for the first Dáil, but even he couldn’t be in two places at once.”

  If Collins was in England at the time, Henry thought, at least he wasn’t killing RIC men in Tipperary.

  Ned continued, “When the key was ready I gave it to Dev. He sent word to Mick, and one night in February Mick and Harry Boland cut a hole in the barbed wire around the prison. Everything was timed to the last minute. They hid in a field close by and flashed a signal with an electric torch at 7:40 precisely, and we were watching for it.”

  “You and de Valera?”

  “And Se´n MacGarry and Seán Milroy.”

  “Why them in particular when there were so many of you?”

  “Only a few could possibly get out at one time without alerting the guards. MacGarry’s the president of the supreme council of the IRB as well as being the secretary of the IRA, and Seán Milroy’s on the Sinn Féin executive committee. As for me—and promise you won’t tell this to my wife—I’d been having a lot of dizzy spells, and Dev was worried about me. He thought if I didn’t get out soon…”

  Henry nodded. There was no need to finish the thought. “Go on about the escape.”

  “When we saw the signal, Milroy answered it from his cell window. But he accidentally set a whole box of matches alight in the process. The poor sod was having a run of desperate bad luck that night. Dev let us out of our cells with his key, but then the sole of one of Milroy’s shoes came loose, and it kept flapping on the stone floor while we were trying to sneak out.”2

  Henry chuckled. Ned said, “It’s easy to laugh now, but it didn’t seem so funny then. A jail at night echoes something fierce. Luckily we made our way to a side gate without arousing the guards, and Mick and Harry met us there. Mick had brought a duplicate key made from our drawing, and he was so impatient that he tried to use it before we could use ours. When he turned his key in the lock the damned thing broke off.

  “I’d never heard Dev swear before, but he did that night. He kept his head, though. He used his own key to push the broken one out of the lock, and when the gate swung open we all ran like the hammers of hell.”

  “Holy God,” Henry breathed.

  “God had nothing to do with it. Ourselves alone, that’s who pulled it off. And it wasn’t over yet. When we got to the road we saw several courting couples out walking together, nurses and soldiers from the local military hospital. Dev was unusual-looking enough to attract notice, so Harry whipped off the heavy fur coat he was wearing and wrapped it around Dev. Dev turned up the collar to hide his face, then linked Harry’s arm and they strolled off together like another pair of lovers. The ‘woman’ in the fur coat was uncommonly tall and gawky, but the genuine lovers didn’t pay a blind bit of notice, even when Dev and Harry said ‘goodnight’ to them in their deep voices. The courting lads and lassies had other things on their minds.”

  Henry was shaking his head. “Still, I marvel at the neck of you—the sheer brass neck of the lot of you!”

  “Nothing succeeds like effrontery,” Ned laughed. “We walked to Lincoln town as cool as you please, although I had to sit down by the side of the road once and put my head down for a few minutes. Mick had one of his men waiting at a pub with a motorcab. Mick and Harry went to Worksop to catch the train for London; then a different cab took the rest of us to Sheffield and we changed cars again. Another of Mick’s men drove us on to Manchester. A safe house had been arranged for us there, but Dev was put up at the local presbytery. Mick had told the priest he would arrive by midnight, and he actually walked in the door at 12:05.”

  Henry said, “Leave it to de Valera to go to a priest’s house.”

  “Actually, it wasn’t such a great idea. The British police started watching the presbytery, so Dev had to move again. The rest of us were all right where we were, though; we only had to stay out of sight and wait. Mick had us smuggled out of England one at a time. I came back to Ireland on the mailboat with false whiskers and a false identity Mick had borrowed for me from the postal employees register. It really was quite an adventure. I’m almost sorry to see it end,” he added, stifling a yawn.

  “Is de Valera in Dublin now?” Henry asked eagerly. “I’m writing for the newspapers again, thanks to your Mick Collins, and if de Valera would give me an interview…”

  “I know he made it back to Ireland without being picked up, but I don’t know where he is at the moment. I’m just back myself, remember? He might be with his wife and children in Greystones, or he might have thought it safer for them if he stayed away. I’m sure Mick can tell you, though.
I have to report to him in the morning. You come with me, then maybe I’ll go with you to de Valera. I’d like to see the Chief again myself.”

  “The Chief?”

  “That’s what we began calling Dev in prison. Taoiseach in Irish. There was no other name for him. I wish you could have seen him, Henry. He organized sports days at Lincoln to make us keep fit, then won the mile himself and the weight throwing, too. He made sure all the Irish prisoners went to Mass, he held classes in Irish and mathematics—he even read Machiavelli and discussed some of his ideas with us.”

  Henry raised his eyebrows. “Dev was reading The Prince in prison?”

  “Indeed. The Chief admires Machiavelli’s work immensely.3 He quoted us that bit about the ideal state being a republic, and he said the concept of a citizen army could safeguard our republic’s future. He was always planning for the future—he even had a typewriter sent in and taught himself to type. He was so resolute that he simply carried us along with him, like warriors of old marching behind their chieftain.”

  In Ned’s eyes Henry saw the light that once shone when he spoke of Pádraic Pearse.

  Ned’s found himself a new demigod, Henry thought later, lying sleepless in his bed. We Irish need a hero, and we have an inborn reverence for teachers. But I wonder if Ned ever recognizes any flaws in his idols. Or do they always appear to him as perfect and whole? With a weary sigh, he turned over to pound his pillow.

  THE next morning Ned took Henry to the intelligence office Michael Collins had set up on Crow Street—two hundred yards from Dublin Castle.4 The sign over the door read THE IRISH PRODUCTS CO. In charge was a bony, deceptively listless individual called Liam Tobin. When they asked for Collins he told them, “The Big Fellow hardly ever comes here.” The words were hardly out of his mouth when Mick bounded through the door, bareheaded, shaking the rain from his hair. “It’s all right, Liam, I know these men.” He greeted Henry with a broad smile and a hearty handshake. “Great to see you! Don’t suppose you have a fag you can spare, do you?…Thanks! Now if you’ll just wait a few minutes while I debrief your friend, Liam here will entertain you.”