1921

by Morgan Llywelyn

  “I hoped she would at least wave to me, give me some sign. When she didn’t…”

  “Ella can be pig-headed too, Henry. She felt it was up to you to make the first move. Instead you seemed to be abandoning her all over again—at least that’s how she saw it.”

  “She’s wrong! I’d fight for her to my dying breath. I’d fight Congreve or anyone else…except her own brother.”

  “Well, I can fight him.” Ava lifted her chin. “You wait right here, Henry Mooney. Don’t dare step out of this doorway until I come back.”

  Before he could stop her, she melted into the crowd.

  Henry tardily realized that the funeral cortège had passed. It was already moving away up the street. He had intended to follow, marching with the thousands who would accompany it on foot all the way to Glasnevin. Then he saw Ava coming back toward him with her arm firmly linked through Edwin Mansell’s.

  She pulled her husband into the doorway beside Henry. “Now then. I know people think I’m a frivolous fool with nothing in my head but clothes and parties, but that’s because I can afford to be. I have Edwin. You,” she added to her husband, as if there were some danger he might not know whom she meant. “I’ve given thanks for you every day since we married and I want the same thing for Ella. Henry Mooney’s a fine man and you know it, yet you’ve driven him away with your bloody-minded nonsense. You so rarely lose your temper that when you do, you make a fool of yourself. But this time I won’t have it.”

  Her well-modulated voice filled with steel. “I won’t have it, Edwin Mansell. You tell Henry that he is welcome in our house anytime and that you will be proud to marry your sister to him, or I will not sleep under your roof tonight. I’ll take a suite at the Shelbourne and stay there until you come to your senses.”

  Fascinated eavesdroppers were gathering around the doorway.

  Edwin muttered, “Ava, this is no place for—”

  “This is the perfect place for! Did you hear what I said? If you didn’t, all these people are witnesses and I’m sure they will be glad to repeat my words for you.”

  Edwin gave Henry an embarrassed look from his good eye. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Say yes, avic” urged one of the onlookers. “We can fight each other but sure there’s no fighting the women.”

  “I mean it,” Ava warned her husband. “I expect you to be big enough to admit you were wrong. We shall be ‘at home’ as usual this coming Thursday, Henry, and I expect you to call. Tell him, Edwin.”

  “You see what I’m confronted with?” Edwin said to Henry instead.

  “I’m beginning to.”

  Edwin summoned a rueful smile. “A good officer knows when he can no longer hold a position. I suppose there’s nothing to be done but apologies. God knows I could use a friend at court,” he added, holding out his hand.

  Henry gave it a hearty shake.

  “That’s better,” Ava said with an air of satisfaction that reminded Henry of Little Business dusting the parlor at number 16. “Now we must be on our way to the cemetery. Henry, would you care to share our cab?”

  “I…mmm…I think not, thank you. I want to walk with the procession. He was my friend.”

  “Very well then. We’ll expect you on Thursday afternoon at two.” She steered her husband away as efficiently as she had steered him to Henry.

  The journalist gazed in awe at her departing back.

  “Yer wan,” said an onlooker, a man whose rough clothes and rougher speech identified him as a Dublin guttie. “She a gorjus mot like that ’un?”

  Henry blinked. “She’s not a classical beauty like her sister-in-law, but to me she’s…”

  “S’all right,” the other replied consolingly. “Me oul wan’s no oil painting neither. But oo looks at the mantelpiece when ’e’s pokin’ the fire?”

  In spite of himself Henry smiled.

  The smile grew, spread across his face like sunlight thawing ice. It was inappropriate given the day, but he could not help it.

  He began running to catch up with the funeral cortège.

  WILD rumors were racing through the city: Collins had been shot by one of his own men; he had been the hapless victim of a ricochet bullet; he had been assassinated by the British because they were afraid he would abandon the treaty and go back to the Republicans.

  When it was learned that Eamon de Valera had been seen in the village of Béal na mBláth only minutes after Collins’ military convoy passed through, some believed the story of the attempted truce negotiations. Others insisted upon a more sinister interpretation.

  A wave of anger unlike anything that had gone before swept Ireland. The fighting had stopped on both sides as a mark of respect during Collins’ funeral, but now it resumed with unprecedented savagery.

  HENRY was anxious to go down the country and try to learn the truth. After Thursday.

  For Michael Collins the world had stopped permanently. For Henry Mooney it had stopped until Thursday.

  Chapter Forty-three

  HENRY arrived at Herbert Place scrubbed, brushed, and polished, nattily attired in his best suit, his trilby, and an expensive new Arrow shirt with a collar so stiff it already was chafing his neck. His pocket watch informed him the hour was half past one. Ava had been explicit: we’ll expect you at two.

  Do everything right this time, you eejit. Don’t go banging on the door early like an overanxious schoolboy.

  But I am overanxious. What if Ella won’t see me? What if…what if…

  He bit his lip and turned away. Half an hour. Thankfully, he had something to keep him occupied. As he was leaving number 16 he had met a boy from Posts and Telegraphs coming up the steps with a letter. Addressed to Henry Mooney, in Ursula’s handwriting.

  Henry strolled off down the street until he was out of sight of the Mansell house, then took the letter from his pocket.

  “We have news of Papa,” Ursula had written. “He had not contacted us for some time, but in my new position with Cumann na mBan I have learned how to find out things through the IRA network. You will be proud of me.”

  I’m always proud of you, Little Business.

  The letter continued, “When Michael Brennan chose the Free State side, Papa did not want to have to shoot men who had been his comrades in arms. So he joined the Eastern Command under Ernie O’Malley. He was with the Republicans occupying Wexford Town. I suppose he did not let us know because he did not want to worry us, but he has been very ill in hospital there since the second week of August. Influenza.”

  Henry read the sentence again. In hospital since the second week of August.

  A sense of profound relief washed over him. Until that moment, he had not admitted to himself just how afraid he had been that Ned Halloran’s finger had pulled the fatal trigger at Béal na mBláth.

  “Papa is slowly recovering,” Ursula’s letter went on, “but he will not be released for another few days. I am hopeful we can arrange for him to be sent home to convalesce. I looked up ‘convalesce’ in the dictionary you gave me so I could spell it.”

  At exactly two o’clock Henry knocked on the door in Herbert Place.

  Ava herself opened the door. Drawing him inside, she whispered conspiratorially, “Ella doesn’t know you’re coming, but everything’s arranged. At breakfast this morning Edwin announced that he had acted rashly when you were here last, and made a mistake he now regrets. He said he had no objections to you as a brother-in-law and hoped it wasn’t too late.”

  “How did Ella respond to that?”

  “She gave him a withering look, threw down her napkin, and left the table. She’s been in her studio ever since. Go up to her.”

  Henry hesitated. “Will she let me in?”

  “I doubt it. But this is your opportunity to demonstrate how you really feel.” Ava’s eyes twinkled. “The door to the studio isn’t very heavy and the hinges are old—they’ll pull right out of the wall under a strong enough blow. Like a man’s shoulder. A determined man.”

&
nbsp; “The army needs a strategist like you,” Henry remarked.

  “Once you’re inside,” Ava continued, “tell her exactly what you told me the other day. About your mother, your family, everything. If you really love her, you must give her a chance to understand.”

  “Even if she does, do you think she’ll forgive me?”

  “I can’t say if she’ll ever forgive you or Edwin, but you won’t know unless you try. Scoot, now.” She gave him a little shove.

  Lingering in the hall, Ava listened to the sounds from upstairs. A knock. A louder knock. Then a sudden ferocious crash.

  Smiling, she went to the telephone and rang her husband’s office. “Edwin dear,” she said, “I’m afraid we shall have to replace the studio door.”

  DEAR Ursula,

  “You cannot know how thankful I am to have news of Ned. You and Norah will take the best possible care of him and soon have him on his feet again. He has not been truly well for a long time, so perhaps this is enforced rest is just what he needs.

  “On a happier note, we are counting on having you here on the twenty-first of October. If Ned does not want to come I shall understand, but Ella wants you for her bridesmaid. It is to be a very small ceremony. You will require a white dress with a blue sash, the women tell me.”

  AFTER so much tragedy it seemed as if the tide had begun to turn for Henry, if not for Ireland. Michael Collins’ death had made international headlines. Newspapers and periodicals in America were clamoring for hard news from Ireland. “No more ‘Irish color,’ ” Henry remarked with satisfaction to Louise as he waved a sheaf of cablegrams. “Dev laid the foundations, but Mick’s tugged at the world’s heartstrings. Suddenly we’re important, and I’m the boyo who knows everybody that matters. The Boston Herald, the New York World, the Dallas News, even the Toronto Star Weekly—they all want me as their Irish correspondent.”

  “Och, you’re on the hog’s back now,” said his cousin, beaming. “You’ll be buying a house for your bride soon.”

  “We’re going to rent one first. Take our time, find something we both really like. I’m not about to make a decision like that without consulting the Cap’n.”

  Louise was amused. “Cap’n—is that what you call her? And what does she call you?”

  “Mr. Mooney sir,” Henry replied, straightfaced.

  “She does of course. While you’re at it, would you ever pull the other one? It has bells on.”

  EAMON de Valera was being reviled in press and public. “Maybe he didn’t fire the shot himself,” an angry Matt Nugent said to Henry when they met in the Oval, “but his men have murdered the best chance Ireland had. And on his orders, I’d wager.”

  “I doubt that,” Henry replied. “Dev’s a complex man, but he’s not an assassin. He has a very rigid relationship with God. He couldn’t live with his conscience if he’d ordered Mick shot in cold blood. Until I talk to people who really know, my best guess is that a company of Republicans happened to be in the area because Dev was there, and Mick’s convoy accidentally drove right into their laps, so to speak. Mick always was reckless. They may not even have known who they were shooting at when they brought him down.”

  “Perhaps,” Nugent conceded. “If you ever learn the truth of it, will you tell me?”

  Henry started to agree. Then the words of a Cork telegraph operator echoed in his memory. “Sometimes,” he told Matt Nugent, “you have to forget you know the truth.”

  ELLA was upset. “I don’t understand, Henry. We’ve just sorted things out between us and now you’re going away again. And with only weeks until our wedding.”

  “Journalism is how I make my living, remember?”

  “But do you have to go back to where there’s fighting?”

  “I’ve gained a reputation as a freelance war correspondent, Ella—an eyewitness. Anyone can issue statements, but what people do reveals the truth about them, makes them heroes—or villains.” He put his arms around her and rested his cheek against her soft hair. “Don’t fret, Cap’n, I know how to take care of myself. I promise I’ll be here for you on October twenty-first.”

  DE Valera sneaked back to Dublin with an eight-man escort of bodyguards who later described him as being in a highly distressed state. Even before Collins’ death he had realized a military victory was not possible. Now he hoped to regain control of the Republican movement with himself as its head and negotiate through politics what could not be won on the battlefield.

  To this end he discussed various options at length with Richard Mulcahy, but nothing was achieved. Mulcahy understood the situation better than de Valera himself. De Valera had nothing to offer; he could not guarantee to bring the Republicans back into the fold. The IRA was Liam Lynch’s now. The men who were fighting so desperately against the idea of a partitioned Free State were the philosophical heirs of Cathal Brugha.

  The Provisional Government was drawing up an Emergency Powers Bill enabling military courts to impose the death penalty without civil trial or the right of appeal.

  Tom Barry was moved to Kilmainham, then escaped during an effort to transfer him to Gormanstown. He made his way back to Cork without being captured.

  HENRY Mooney was on the road again, covering a war that had been almost over, then exploded into uncontrollable fury.

  Although he faithfully wrote to Ella every day—reassuring letters that did not convey the horrors he was witnessing—Henry did not always mail them. Usually he waited until he was with National troops and asked them to post his mail back to Dublin. The power was with the government now.

  September was a brutal month. In County Mayo, the government garrison in Ballina surrendered to the IRA without a fight and were allowed to leave unmolested. In County Sligo, six Republicans were murdered by National soldiers after surrendering. One of the slain men was the son of Eoin MacNeill.

  The Free State Army had landed troops all along the southern coast. Most of the larger towns were now occupied by Free Staters. But war raged unchecked in rural areas. Henry saw men fight one another with guns and pitchforks, with bombs and grenades and fists and feet and teeth. Whatever ancient code of military chivalry had once dictated their behavior was forgotten. “Some say decency died with Pearse,” Henry wrote. “Certainly it has died with Collins. To the very end he kept the lines of communication open between himself and his former friends on the opposite side, always hoping to win them back. Now that is impossible. They fight with a boiling bitterness that summons an equal response. No matter how this ends, the scars will last for generations.”

  W. T. Cosgrave succeeded Michael Collins as chairman of the Provisional Government. Richard Mulcahy was appointed commander in chief of the Free State Army, as well as minister of defense. On the ninth of September, the Third Dáil Éireann convened to elect Cosgrave president of Saorstát Éireann.

  The Provisional Government had few friends. Unionists condemned it as the creation of Catholic zealots intent on turning Ireland over to Rome rule. Republicans reviled the same government as a British puppet regime.

  Against this backdrop Eamon de Valera was working to recover his personal prestige. He formed a “Republican government in opposition” that included Liam Mellows as minister for defense. Since Mellows was in jail, de Valera arranged with Liam Lynch to cosign all necessary documents.

  “De Valera hopes by this means to bring Lynch back on side,” Henry wrote.

  Meanwhile, in the hills of West Cork, Erskine Childers valiantly continued to publish An Poblacht with the help of a small handpress and Kathleen O’Connell, de Valera’s secretary.

  DEAR Ursula,

  “I have arranged through Richard Mulcahy for a small band of National soldiers to be on the train with you when you go up to Dublin for our wedding. They will be in civilian clothes so as not to risk drawing enemy fire. This is being done as a special favor to me, so if you ever have the opportunity, I should appreciate your thanking the minister of defense personally.”

  September became October,
crisp and golden, the sky hazed with the smoke of turf fires, the harvested fields standing empty in the sun.

  Men fought and died in those fields. Machine-gun fire stripped the leaves from hedgerows. Wide-ranging hens pecked at blood puddled in the dirt.

  “I love you, Ella,” Henry wrote. There seemed nothing else to say, nothing else that was really important.

  A thinner, hollow-eyed Henry Mooney returned to Dublin on the fifteenth of October with a slight limp and suffering from nightmares. He was willing to let Louise fuss over him, “But I can’t lie in bed till all hours,” he warned his cousin. “We have to find a house to rent, and quickly.”

  Two days later Henry and Ella agreed on a semi-detached Georgian villa on Sandymount Avenue and began shopping for furnishings together. Henry enjoyed their shopping expeditions and surprised her with his knowledgeability. “I keep making new discoveries about you,” she told him. “I never took you for someone who would be interested in decorating a house.”

  Henry chuckled. “I’m lots of different people. I have that on good authority.”

  On the twentieth of October the headline in the Irish Times carried a shock announcement:

  DAVID LLOYD GEORGE RESIGNS AS PRIME MINISTER

  Both the Tory Party and the Liberals were in disarray, though it was expected the Tories would form a majority government. However, the Times predicted with some alarm, the British Labour Party’s strength was growing.

  “I’m in favor of Labour having more seats in Parliament,” Henry told his fiancée that afternoon as they were pricing curtain fabric in Clery’s department store. “Workingmen will be more sympathetic to Ireland; they know what it means to be the underdogs.”