1921

by Morgan Llywelyn

  “They were transported to Bandon Barracks and stood up against a wall in front of a firing squad. The officer in charge demanded that they salute the British flag. This they also refused. They were not shot—that was just another way of torturing them—but they were beaten unconscious. When Tom Hales recovered his senses he saw another British officer taking snapshots of the incident for his personal collection.

  “Harte and Hales continued to be beaten and brutalized by men working in shifts. Pliers were used to tear flesh from their bodies. At one point Tom Hales was dragged to the top of a staircase by the hair of his head, then thrown down the stairs and attacked with fists and feet at the bottom.

  “Both men are now in the Cork Military Hospital. If they survive, they will be deported to Pentonville Prison. One may only speculate about the treatment awaiting them there.”

  When Henry called in to Bushy Park to deliver his articles, Erskine Childers remarked, “You’re still limping a bit, I see. Anna said it was too soon for you to be going off like that. Frank and I’ve talked it over, and we’d prefer if you stayed here for a while. There are plenty of things to write about in Dublin until you’re fit again.”

  Henry decided to stay in Dublin, at least until his hip was thoroughly healed. He knew he stood an excellent chance of being arrested, but that was a secondary consideration.

  He was needed.

  Precious summed it up best: “Nothing’s the same when you’re not here, Uncle Henry. It’s like there’s a big hole where you’re supposed to be.”

  Louise Kearney reincorporated Henry so smoothly into life at number 16 it was almost as if he had never been away. As a bonus he received a cordial note from Ella Rutledge. “On the twentieth of September we shall be having a small party to formally announce Madge’s betrothal, just a gathering for family and close friends. I do so hope you will be able to attend.”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  NED flung aside his pencil with a grunt of exasperation. Síle looked up from her mending. Precious was hard on clothes. “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m not making much headway with my novel, Síle. Maybe I should have taken Henry’s advice and written about the Rising. But those memories still hurt too much.”

  “What you’re doing seems to be causing you some pain,” she commented.

  “It’s just…I wish I hadn’t learned the rules of writing. It would be so much easier if I didn’t know them—or had the courage to disregard them.”

  “You’ve never had trouble disregarding rules.”

  “This is different. You don’t understand.”

  Staring at the sheet of paper before him, he did not see Síle wince. “I’m sure I don’t,” she said stiffly. “I didn’t have your education.”

  “Alanna,* I didn’t mean it like that. I just—”

  “I know. We’re getting on each other’s nerves, that’s all. It happens sometimes.”

  “What you need is a holiday,” said Ned.

  She laughed. “How could I?”

  “Even Louise takes a holiday sometimes. You know she’s off to visit her friend Maggie Walshe in Balbriggan tomorrow.”

  “She always goes on the twentieth of September, because it’s her friend’s birthday and they have a party in the evening,” Síle replied, adding wistfully, “It sounds lovely.”

  “Then why don’t you and Precious go with her? Get out into the country, enjoy the fresh air, and come back the next day. It will do the child a power of good and you too.”

  “Louise and I can’t both be away overnight, Ned. Who would mind this place?”

  “I shall, of course. I’m not helpless, you know. And the lodgers won’t care who’s here as long as the lamps are lit and there’s a fire on the hearth when they come in. You just go and enjoy yourself.” He gave her a gentle spank on the buttocks, then let his hand linger, cupping her warmth until she turned to him with eyes humid with desire.

  THAT night as they sat down at the table Precious exulted, “I’m going to the country tomorrow, Uncle Henry—I’m going to ride horses!” Her face was flushed, her eyes very bright.

  “Don’t lose the run of yourself entirely,” Louise warned. “Balbriggan’s not a farm, it’s a village, and we’ll only be there overnight. I doubt if there’ll be any horse riding.”

  Henry winked at the girl. “Don’t look so disappointed, Little Business. Tell you what: I’ve been making some inquiries, and I’ve found a man who can teach you to ride. He runs a livery stable beside the Smithfield Market.”

  “Where they have the horse fair?”

  “Know all about that, do you? Well, you can start lessons next weekend if you like. I’ll walk you over there myself and buy you lunch someplace in the city afterward.”

  “Clever strategy,” Ned said, “presenting us with a fait accompli.”

  “I’m learning from master strategists,” Henry told him.

  Precious was too excited to eat. She only fiddled with her food and was packed off to bed early.

  By the time unexpected last-minute details were attended to next morning, Louise was almost frantic. “We’re all behind like the cow’s tail!” she complained as she hurried out the door. “Do come along, or we’ll miss our train.”

  Síle lingered in the hall to give Ned a final embrace, then ran after her.

  HENRY had long since left the house. He had a round of calls to make to the various businesses who employed his services as a freelancer; plus, his work load for the Bulletin was drastically increased. Attacks on Catholics in Belfast had multiplied.1 Hundreds had been driven out of the city by Orangemen and their houses burned. Between August twenty-second and September third, thirty-one Catholic men and women were murdered by loyalist mobs and members of the UVF.

  A member of the British cabinet suggested shooting “a hundred Sinn Féiners a day” to cow the rebels.

  The IRA undertook nearly a thousand raids for arms.

  The condition of the hunger strikers in Cork Jail deteriorated. Crowds daily gathered outside the walls to pray. But world attention was focused on the man in London’s Brixton Prison. An appeal for Terence MacSwiney’s release was refused by Lloyd George. Winston Churchill came out strongly against any concessions for Ireland.

  Every week the Irish Bulletin published a summary entitled Acts of Aggression Committed by British Crown Forces. “On Thursday the following residents of Dublin City were arrested in their beds without warrant or charge.” Thirty-eight names followed: dentists, county surveyors, music teachers, milliners, mineral water salesmen…all deemed enemies of the Crown and arrested without a scrap of corroborating evidence.

  Week after week. Month after month.

  “Someday our little Bulletin will be a priceless historical document,” Kathleen McKenna predicted.

  Dublin Castle was distributing its own propaganda to counter the Bulletin. A four-page news sheet entitled the Weekly Summary of Outrages was being circulated that depicted the Republicans as a gang of degenerate criminals holding the nation in thrall, while the Black and Tans were portrayed as valiant rescuers arriving in the nick of time. The Weekly Summary contained no mention of the hundreds of arson attacks, beatings, and murders being perpetrated by the British side.

  “With the Bulletin,” Desmond FitzGerald told his staff, “we’re fighting for the possession of history.”

  Notices were posted on walls throughout Dublin offering cash rewards for information on IRA members. Citizens were warned to disguise their handwriting. “This is a marvelous opportunity,” Henry commented, “for any vindictive person to have someone he dislikes arrested and get paid for it.”

  Meanwhile in Brixton Prison Terence MacSwiney was slowly sinking. Mindful of what had happened with Thomas Ashe, the authorities were reluctant to force-feed him. But neither would they let him go.

  Cruel jokes were being made about him from the stages of English music halls. The least vicious was, “Save money—let the vulgar Irishman swallow his pride if he’s hungry. He
’s only getting what he deserves for trying to bully his betters.”

  When this was reported in the British papers, Henry responded in the Bulletin with a rare show of petulance. “Vulgarity, like bullying, is an acquired characteristic. If we Irish are guilty of either, we learned it from our neighbors.”

  SHORTLY before noon on the morning of September twentieth a new story was breaking. Henry and Frank Gallagher were walking together along Arran Quay when a member of the Dublin Metropolitan Police came running toward them. Both men tensed until they recognized him as a faithful subscriber to the Bulletin. Frank caught him by the arm. “What’s wrong, Declan?”

  “I’m after being in Upper Church Street,” the policeman panted. “Some British soldiers with a lorry had called in to the bakery for provisions when half a dozen men in civilian clothes came walking down the street and pulled guns on them. There was a shootout; a couple of the ambush team were hit and several soldiers fell. I just stood there with me mouth open, gaping like a trout, I was that stunned. Then I saw one young chap’s gun jam. He knelt down beside the lorry to free it, then stood and fired again, but he didn’t hit anything. The bloody gun jammed a second time; meanwhile his pals scarpered. When he looked around and saw he was alone, he dived under the lorry—Hoping to get away in the confusion, I expect. But the soldiers grabbed him and pulled him out. I’m on my way to the station now to report.”2

  He ran off while Frank and Henry hurried to the scene. By this time the street was crowded with curious spectators: working-class men and boys in caps, a few businessmen in hats, a scattering of women. Soldiers were demanding that no one leave the scene until they had been questioned.

  Henry began methodically working his way through the crowd, interviewing anyone who would talk to him.

  Several knew the young man who had been captured. They identified him as Kevin Barry. He was only eighteen, a Belvedere College boy who was studying medicine as well being as a member of the Republican Army. Witnesses agreed that Barry had not shot anyone himself. Unfortunately, he was the only member of the ambush team whom the soldiers caught. It would go hard with him.

  SíLE was enjoying her little holiday inordinately. Balbriggan was on the seacoast some twenty miles north of Dublin, unremarkable except for a thriving English-owned hosiery business. The little town had its full complement of churches and pubs. Rows of tiny cottages occupied by factory workers were interspersed with shops on the main Dublin—Belfast road and lined the narrow laneways.

  Louise’s friend Maggie was a popular woman married to the owner of a butcher’s shop. The couple lived over the shop with two daughters and a grown son. Maggie’s birthday every year was something of a local tradition. By late afternoon her female friends had taken over both the living quarters and the shop, while their menfolk retired to their locals.

  Laughter and banter and gossip, mothers and daughters enjoying themselves together, complaints about husbands and brothers and praise for sweethearts and sons. Someone had brought a fiddle; several of the women danced together on the sawdust-covered floor of the shop. Endless platters of food were served, and endless pots of tea.

  Síle Halloran was welcomed into the group as if she had grown up in Balbriggan. No one aside from Louise Kearney knew her background. She might have been any respectable married woman in any ordinary village.

  She had never been happier.

  This, she thought to herself, was what she had been missing and never knew it. Normal life. She resolved that when they went back to Dublin the next day she would start getting around her own neighborhood more. Meet other women, make new friends. She had been hiding out in number 16 from possible confrontation with her past. But that was years behind her now, thanks to Ned. Time to live, she thought resolutely. Time to live.

  The evening was crisp and cool, a perfect autumn night. The men were still at the pub when Maggie made up pallets for her daughters and gave her guests from Dublin their bed. Síle thought she was too excited to sleep, but as soon as her head touched the pillow the world faded away. She drifted smiling into a dream.

  HENRY Mooney was attending Madge Mansell’s engagement party, which included dancing and a late supper. Ava had taken charge of planning the wedding. It would take place as soon as the bride was twenty-one. In the meantime Madge was being praised, petted, and bullied by a growing contingent of women. Every detail of the event was discussed as if a matter of vital national significance.

  “It will be the social event of the season,” Ava assured Henry.

  “Is your own family coming?”

  “My family.” Ava gave a contemptuous sniff and changed the subject.

  The prospective bride, Henry thought, looked stunned. Her young man, a barrister friend of Edwin’s, looked positively terrified.

  But Ella Rutledge was beautiful.

  In the back of Henry’s mind lurked the incident in Upper Church Street earlier that day, and the young Republican called Kevin Barry who had been marched off to an uncertain fate. He was determined not to let it spoil his evening, however—not with Ella Rutledge smiling at him as if there had never been any tension between them. It might have been the occasion, it might have been the champagne, but as they were eating supper she leaned against his shoulder and whispered, “I do hope you will call more often. You don’t need an invitation, you know. Just come. We’ve…I’ve missed you.”

  THE sound of gunfire came through the open window like a crack of lightning.

  Síle sat bolt upright in bed.

  “Merciful hour!” Louise cried, clutching at her. “Did you hear that?”

  Síle said tightly, “I think we had best get dressed.”

  A few minutes later Maggie Walshe’s husband came running up the stairs. “There’s been a brawl in the pub. One man’s shot dead and another’s wounded.”

  “Will there be trouble?” His wife was still in her nightdress with her hair hanging in a long braid down her back. As she spoke she caught the sides of her nightdress in her hands and clutched the material as if for support.

  “What do you think, woman? I didn’t see what happened myself, but I heard the dead man’s one of the Black and Tans from the depot at Gormanstown. Maybe the IRA shot him.” Walshe turned to Síle. “Gormanstown’s not three miles from here. Somebody’s sure to ring them from the hotel; they’ll be on us before you know it.”

  Maggie Walshe began to cry. Slow, helpless tears; the tears of ten generations of being a victim. Her husband cursed in a methodical monotone and began searching for some sort of defensive weapon. When all he could find was his wife’s broom, he ran down to the shop and brought back his knives and a meat cleaver.

  Síle willed herself to stay calm. “We’d best shutter the windows,” she told Maggie Walshe.

  Black and Tans in the armored cars called Crossley tenders roared into Balbriggan. Pulling up in front of the first public house they came to, they broke down the door, grabbed bottles of liquor, and set the place ablaze. Then they ran out into the road and began firing their weapons at random.

  Someone screamed.

  The Tans surged through the village, breaking windows and singing “We’re the Boys of the Bulldog Brigade” at the top of their lungs. Then they began lighting torches.

  The frightened little company above the butcher shop heard the street door being battered down. Immediately thereafter came the first whiff of smoke. “You murderin’ gobshites!” Walshe cried. Waving the meat cleaver, he pelted down the stairs with his wife behind him, tugging at his coat and tearfully begging him to come back.

  He flung open the door leading from the stairway into the shop. A blow from a rifle butt knocked him to the floor.

  Smoke billowed through the open doorway and up the stairs, driving the women back into the living quarters.

  Síle took charge. Stripping the covers from the nearest bed, she ordered, “Knot all the sheets together to make ropes and fasten them to the heaviest pieces of furniture, then climb out the back windows to
the yard. Hurry!”

  Leaving them to it, she felt her way down the smoky stairwell to see what could be done for Maggie’s husband. The far side of the shop was in flames, but there was no sign of Walshe. When she took a step inside to make certain he was gone, Síle stumbled over the meat cleaver. Just then a line of fire ran past her, feeding on the sawdust on the floor, and roared up the stairs.

  Escape that way was cut off.

  Síle snatched up the cleaver and ran for the door.

  A different kind of chaos met her in the road. The night air was cool after the heat of the burning building, but here too was roaring: the roaring of the Black and Tans. Looting was well underway. Men and women were being dragged from their premises into the road, where the men were beaten with fists and rifle butts while their womenfolk were pawed by drunken soldiers.

  One of the Tans caught sight of Síle standing in the road, uncertain which way to run. “C’mere, ya Irish bitch!” he shouted. “Lemme show ya wot a real man is like!” He held his rifle to one side and began gyrating his pelvis obscenely.

  In his leering face Síle suddenly saw all the men who had abused and degraded her. The men who had tried to kill Ned. The men who kept Ireland on its knees.

  Her scream of rage soared above the drunken singing and the roar of the fire, the smashing of glass, and the crashing of timbers. She felt no fear, no hesitation, only the fury of a hunted animal driven too hard for too long.

  Síle flung herself at her tormentor.

  He took an instinctive step back and tried to fend off the crazy red-haired woman.

  But no power on earth could stop her taking revenge. Not this time.

  With a wild cry of his own, the Tan drove his bayonet through her body.