1921

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1921 Page 21

by Morgan Llywelyn


  Above the river small houses climbed steep hills shoulder to shoulder. Henry wandered at random up one street and down another. He stopped to chat with anyone who would talk to him, and most would. Corkonians were responsive where Dubliners would have been suspicious. The lilting musicality of the Cork accent gave an impression of light-heartedness which was, perhaps, misleading.

  Tidy terraced houses soon gave way to dilapidated hovels cobwebbed by sagging lines of faded laundry. The fragrance of bakeries mingled with the stench of slaughterhouses. Henry paused to write in his notebook: “An old Irish proverb says, ‘It is not a matter of upper or lower class but of being up a while and down a while.’ ”

  When he returned to the Imperial Henry planned to have a good dinner and an early night. First he must unpack and hang his clothes in the wardrobe to let the wrinkles fall out. As he unfolded a pair of gray serge trousers from the bottom of the bag, something fell out and hit the floor with a clunk.

  Henry stared down at the dull black gleam of a pistol.

  BEFORE he left his room next morning he stood lost in thought, the pistol in his hand. Then he scooped up the cartridges he had found in a twist of paper at the bottom of the suitcase, and thrust them, together with the pistol, far under his mattress.

  Henry’s first call of the day was to the offices of the Cork Examiner in Patrick Street to buy a morning edition fresh off the presses. He wanted the feel of newspaper stock in his hands; the smell of newspaper ink in his nostrils. Even more than the river, they would give him a sense of home.

  George and Michael Harrington, whose brother Tim was the editor of the Irish Independent, were working at the Examiner. They offered to give Henry a tour of the offices.

  “Do you ever see Mick Collins up in Dublin?” Michael Harrington asked.

  “From time to time.”

  “What do you think of him?”

  “He’s…mmm…a very clever man.”

  Harrington grinned. “What we in Cork call a cute whoor. Too crafty by half, which is just what we need. It’ll take a Cork man to outsmart the British.”

  “You should move down here, Henry,” George Harrington suggested. “The Southern Capital’s a grand place to live.”

  “That’s as maybe. I heard that some houses were wrecked by soldiers the other day.”

  “I’m afraid they were,” said Michael. “And now there’s more troops in town, so I suppose we can expect a repeat performance. The British are trying to intimidate our lord mayor, but he’s a Cork man too, and hard to intimidate.”

  “Tomás MacCurtáin,” Henry said, referring to the second name on his list.

  “The very one. He’s also the commandant of the Cork Brigade of the IRA.”

  “I understand he’s been receiving death threats?”

  George nodded. “You’re well informed. The prominent Republicans here have been getting death threats. Some are living more or less on the run, but the lord mayor’s a married man with five children; he can’t desert them and go live in a hedge. Say, are you here to do a story on him?”

  Henry rocked back on his heels and sucked the inside of his cheek, wishing he had a cigarette. “Might be. Might not. But I would appreciate a map of the city and environs if you have one—and any other useful information you would care to pass along.”

  George grinned. His teeth were yellow and his features asymmetrical, but he had the same jauntiness as Michael Collins. “Let us have an advance copy of your story and it’s a deal.”

  Michael Harrington added, “And come back anytime—you’re among friends here. We’re not as intimidated by the Sasanach* as our brother in the Big Smoke.”

  TERENCE MacSwiney was married to Muriel Murphy, a daughter of the distillers who produced Paddy’s whiskey and Murphy’s stout. The Murphy family were amongst Cork’s wealthiest Catholics, and according to Henry’s information, Muriel and Terence occupied a handsome residence in the Douglas Road. When Henry went to that address, the housemaid who answered his knock said bluntly, “There’s no one here of that name.”

  He was taken aback. “Are you certain?” Beyond the maid he could see a shadowy figure in the room. He cupped his hands around his eyes and peered in. “Mrs. MacSwiney?”

  The woman who stepped forward was in her late twenties and very pretty. In her arms was a toddler, who instantly won Henry’s heart with a huge smile and two pearly teeth.

  “Are you sure you’re not Mrs. MacSwiney?” Henry asked the mother.

  Her reply was evasive. “I know who I am.”

  “But you don’t know who I am. My name is Henry Mooney, and Mick sent me.”

  She glanced past Henry, looking up and down the road, then in a low voice asked, “Are you referring to the man from Clonakilty?”

  “Indeed. I have a note from him identifying me. It’s unsigned of course, but perhaps you’d recognize his handwriting?”

  She shifted the baby to her other hip. “You’d best come inside.”

  When she was satisfied as to his bona fides, Muriel MacSwiney gave Henry tea and scones and let him hold baby Máire. “Before she was born we called her Terry, because we both wanted a boy. But she’s our little angel and we wouldn’t trade her for a hundred boys now. Mind there, she’s pulling on your watch chain, Mr. Mooney. Do you want me to take her?”

  Henry chuckled. “She’s just playing—leave her be. I don’t get to hold a little one very often.”

  “Máire was born while my husband was in prison in Belfast. I took her there to visit him when she was only two months old, and one of the guards said—”

  With a crow of triumph, little Máire pulled the watch from Henry’s waistcoat pocket and popped it into her mouth. The watch was swiftly rescued and patted dry, but its silver case would carry the marks of two small front teeth forever.

  Muriel MacSwiney gave Henry directions to a safe house in the village of Glanmire. As he left the MacSwiney home, he noticed a member of the RIC standing across the road with his arms folded across his chest—not doing anything, just standing there. I’ve never had my photograph taken, so he can’t identify me. Anyway, I have a right to go anywhere I want, damn it!

  Henry walked a quarter-mile or so until he found a horse-drawn cab without a fare. He gave the driver directions to take him to the suburb of Sunday’s Well, and they set off at a brisk trot. After a few minutes Henry knocked on the back of the driver’s seat. “I’ve changed my mind—I want to go to Glanmire.”

  “But that’s in the opposite direction,” the man protested.

  “I know. Just take me there, please. I’ll pay for the extra distance.”

  Eventually he arrived at an unoccupied Georgian country house that had fallen into disrepair. Behind it was an ivy-mantled carriage house that looked equally deserted. From the dovecote came the music of pigeons cooing. As Henry walked around the side of the house a black-and-white sheepdog slunk forward on its belly, sniffed his shoes, then offered a tentative tail wag.

  Terence MacSwiney answered Henry’s coded knock on the door of the carriage house. They had met before only briefly at the Dáil the year before, and Henry was flattered that MacSwiney recognized him. MacSwiney was equally recognizable: tall, slim, very dark, with a lock of jet-black hair falling over his forehead and intense blue-gray eyes with hooded lids. While he talked, he nervously paced the floor with short, surprisingly awkward strides. He’s not an athlete like so many Cork men, Henry thought to himself. But he sure burns hot just the same.

  “The situation here is pretty bad,” MacSwiney admitted, “but we’ve laid our lines carefully. If anything happens to one of us, the others will carry on the work. We’ve set up five Dáil Loan subexecutive committees, and we’re also establishing more Sinn Feín clubs in some of the more isolated areas of the county. There’s more work to be done than a thousand men could do, but with the help of God we’ll do it.”

  “Do you not find it difficult to be separated from your wife and baby?”

  “I do of course, but
it’s necessary for their safety.”

  “I saw a constable outside your house this morning, Terry.”

  “They won’t bother Muriel as long as I’m not there. The RIC are Irish after all—they won’t hurt a woman.”

  “It’s not much of a life for either of you, though…like this.”

  “Few men are given the chance to help build a new nation, Henry.”

  “What about your family?”

  “You’ve seen my little Máire—would you want her to spend her life enslaved by a foreign power?”

  “Ah, now, I’m not sure that ‘enslaved’ is the right—”

  “Subjugated, then.” MacSwiney stopped pacing. In a voice that vibrated with feeling he said, “We’re subjugated in our own country by an imperialist nation that has no scruples about seizing our land or taking the food out of our mouths or shipping us off to be cannon fodder in their wars. We’re just a commodity to Britain, something to be used up. That’s why I decided to put the cause of Irish independence above family considerations. It’s a sacrifice some of us must be willing to make if things are ever to get any better. What greater gift could I bequeath my children than a free Ireland?”

  There it is again, that wild light that burns in only a few. Pearse, Connolly, Countess Markievicz…Síle. What must it be like to feel such passion?

  Even as he asked himself the question, Henry knew the answer. Deep inside him, suppressed, controlled, reined in, the passion was waiting. For a cause. Or a woman.

  He spent the afternoon with MacSwiney but did not write down anything he was told. It was stored safely in his memory, in the dark vault of the skull, beyond the reach of prying eyes.

  By the time Henry returned to his hotel the March night was closing in. The desk clerk looked up as he entered the lobby. “You going out again, Mr. Mooney?”

  “I don’t know. Why?”

  “A policeman was shot earlier. There may be trouble, so we’re recommending that our guests stay off the streets tonight.” He smiled apologetically. “We’d hate to lose you.”

  Henry went to his room and knelt down beside the bed. At first his groping fingers found nothing under the mattress, and he experienced a brief panic. They’ve searched the room, they found…Then there it was. Cold. Heavy. Deadly.

  He took the weapon out and looked at it again. A Mauser semiautomatic. His mind ran back to Limerick and the Wolfe Tone Club in Harrington Street. One evening a senior member had brought in a new-model Mauser similar to this and passed it around amid great excitement. Henry had been as fascinated as anyone, seduced not so much by the deadly purpose of the pistol as by its engineering. He had asked a number of questions and paid close attention to the answers.

  Holding a Mauser again brought them flooding back, as if memory were a tactile function.

  The pistol was fitted with an external hammer and a fixed magazine in front of the trigger. On firing, the barrel and breechlock, which were joined by heavy lugs, recoiled together. After a few millimeters the lugs fell, the barrel was halted, and the bolt continued to the rear to extract and eject the spent case and cock the hammer. Then it was ready to fire again.

  I know how to use this. I could shoot someone if I had to.

  This time he hid the weapon by rolling back part of the rug and putting the gun underneath. He pulled the bed over it and threw damp towels and yesterday’s underwear under the bed, then went downstairs for a meal in the dining room. Afterward he stood beneath the Imperial’s shallow neoclassical portico, a traveling businessman innocently taking the air. He was wearing his good suit. His hands were casually thrust into his trouser pockets, drawing his coat aside so his watch chain glinted. His shoes were polished to a high shine. No one bothered him, although there was a large police presence in the South Mall. Henry observed both men and women being stopped at random and roughly questioned. If they protested, they were marched away.

  Henry went back inside and ordered a large whiskey in the bar. A stout man in a seedy overcoat was trying hard to strike up a conversation with a bored-looking woman. Another man was downing one drink after another, like someone trying to put out a fire. At last Henry went to his room and wrote a long, rambling letter to Ella Rutledge on hotel stationery. He read it through twice, crossed out some lines, rewrote others, tore the whole thing up, wrote another, more ardent, which he also discarded, fell into bed, and finally succumbed to a troubled sleep.

  He awoke to the sound of distant shouting. Dim gray morning light filled the room. Raising the window, Henry looked down into the street. A newsboy in a cap was waving a copy of the Examiner and shouting, “Lord mayor murdered!”

  Henry pulled his trousers over his pajamas and ran down into the street without a coat. He carried his newspaper back into the hotel and read its lead story in the lobby, oblivious to those around him.

  Shortly after midnight a cordon of soldiers and police had isolated the area surrounding Tomás MacCurtáin’s house. Mrs. MacCurtáin was awakened by a ferocious pounding on the front door. When she looked out the window, she saw a number of men with soot-blackened faces. Before the startled woman could respond, they broke down the door and rushed in. They shot MacCurtáin in the doorway of his bedroom. He died within a quarter of an hour while his killers were still searching his house and smashing his furniture.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  TWO days after MacCurtáin’s murder, British soldiers in Dublin shot and killed a young man and a girl, both civilians. An elderly man was shot in the back by police in Thurles as he was leaving a pub, and the next night another man was murdered in his bed by members of the RIC in County Tipperary.

  “Police show excessive zeal,” commented the Irish Times.

  Henry tried to send a telegram to Desmond FitzGerald’s house at 6 Upper Pembroke Street, Dublin: “Coroner’s jury finds lord mayor of Cork City was murdered under circumstances of most callous brutality. Further finds assassination was carried out by members of Royal Irish Constabulary under direction of British government. Verdict of willful murder returned against Prime Minister Lloyd George, Lord-Lieutenant French, and senior officers of Cork police force.”1

  The clerk in the telegraph office was dismayed. “I can’t send that—it would be worth my job.”

  “But it’s the truth.”

  “Sometimes,” said the telegraph operator, “you have to forget you know the truth.”

  Henry Mooney wrote out two copies of his report and sent them in separate envelopes to Desmond FitzGerald and Frank Gallagher. They were not entrusted to the regular mail service but were smuggled to Dublin by railway employees, part of the secret network that was reliably delivering IRA communications throughout the country.

  Almost by return he received a note from Kathleen McKenna. “We have been raided!!! They carried away our typewriters and multigraph and the mailing list for Bulletin subscribers. According to one of Michael Collins’ contacts in Dublin Castle, they are going to print forged copies of the Bulletin cleverly worded to turn people against the IRA.2 But we will be back in business just as soon as we can get another typewriter and some sort of printing machine. We’re determined not to miss a single issue. We shall tell our readers how to spot forgeries.”

  On the twenty-fifth of March Frank Gallagher was arrested. Anna Fitzsimons gave Henry the news by telephone while he stood in the editor’s office of the Cork Examiner, listening to faraway Dublin crackling down the line. “They’ve put him in Mountjoy,” she said, “as a political prisoner.”

  “Do you want me to come back?”

  “Desmond says no; it’s better that you’re at large where they can’t get at you. Wait a minute—there’s someone here who wants to speak to you.” There was a pause, during which Henry was afraid the line had gone down; then he heard Erskine Childers’ clipped English accent. “I say, Henry, are you there?”

  “Ready and waiting. I’m damned sorry to hear about Gally.”

  “He may not be in prison for long. The other political pris
oners in the Joy have been talking about going on hunger strike to try and force the authorities to release them. Since Thomas Ashe’s death garnered so much bad press for the British, they may be amenable to that sort of persuasion.”

  “Or they may not,” said Henry. “It’s hard to predict how they’ll react to anything now.”

  INDIFFERENT to the charge of murder laid at his door—if he even knew of it—Lloyd George was preparing for a partitioned Ireland with two parliaments. This included making a number of personnel changes. Sir Nevil Macready was appointed commander in chief of His Majesty’s forces in Ireland. Formerly the commissioner of the metropolitan police in London, Macready had a reputation for ruthlessness.

  The British also were introducing a new weapon to use against the Irish Republican Army.

  Crown forces stationed in Ireland were not trained for counterinsurgency. Many of the regular army still subscribed to the code of chivalry that for all practical purposes had breathed its last gasp in the trenches during the Great War. As for the Royal Irish Constabulary, it was becoming increasingly unreliable under the combined weight of public opinion and IRA onslaught.

  Therefore a third force had been created.

  After the Great War a certain type of soldier, often with a low mentality and limited prospects, no longer had a legitimate outlet for the violence they had learned to enjoy. Many of these were English, others had belonged to Irish battalions, but all had one thing in common: once demobilized, such men ran wild.

  Lloyd George’s government considered them perfect for Ireland.

  They were recruited through advertisements promising “a rough and dangerous task,” in return for which they would be receive ten shillings a day and unlimited access to firearms. Although they would comprise a military force of irregulars, they were funded out of police funds rather than through the War Office.

  When the first of them arrived in Ireland at the end of March, they were given a memorable nickname. They became known as the Black and Tans.

 

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