1921

by Morgan Llywelyn

  Remounting his bicycle, Henry returned to Tralee. He wobbled as he rode. He was trying to hold the pain at arm’s length, but if his concentration lapsed to the smallest degree it rushed in on him.

  By dawn next morning he was back at Ballymullen, trying to get a list of the dead. There was still none available. The guard remembered him from the day before and let him in anyway, thinking O’Daly had sent for him.

  Henry pretended to take a wrong turn and wandered through the building. The barracks was depressingly grim: cell-like rooms, narrow passageways, flaking paint, insufficient light. As he passed an open doorway Henry noticed a sandy-haired Republican he had known before civil war broke out, a man who was now in the Free State Army. He was standing behind a table, sorting out personal effects taken from the pockets of dead men.

  Henry entered the room and struck up a conversation, being careful not to look directly at the objects on the table. Slowly he brought the topic around to them. “The bombs at Ballyseedy did so much damage it’s hard to identify the men,” the soldier told Henry. “All the remains of one of them could be fitted into his tunic with the sleeves knotted. But there is something…wait a minute, I’ll show you.”

  Bombs? Bombs plural?

  The soldier produced a slip of paper with a badly charred edge. The printing on the paper was almost illegible with blood, but when Henry held it up to the light and squinted, he could make out part of a safe-conduct pass signed by Michael Brennan.

  That night he drank until the publican refused to sell him any more, but he was still stone sober.

  Blood dripping from the trees. Birds picking at ruined flesh.

  He could not go to bed because he did not dare close his eyes. The nightmare would get him if he did. His brain sat thick and heavy in his skull and he could not make it work. No moving parts. Just a dense, soggy organ; inert. He knew he should think; but he did not remember how to think.

  Exhausted, he wandered the narrow lanes of Tralee and cried out in his heart for Ella, for Ursula. For somebody.

  OTHER Republican prisoners were taken from their cells and transported to a barricade at Countess Bridge. Bombs in a barricade there killed four of them. Five more died in similar circumstances near Cahirciveen.

  Horror upon horror. Hatred expanding outward in a great wave.

  On the ninth of March Paddy O’Daly sent a message to Dublin. “It has now transpired that an Irregular prisoner, Stephen Fuller, escaped during the mine explosion at Ballyseedy. It is stated that he has become insane.” A reward was issued for Fuller’s immediate capture.

  The mutilated bodies of eight men had been distributed among nine coffins.

  Henry recognized the comment about Fuller’s “insanity” as an attempt to discredit any version of the event the man might tell. But terrible stories already were circulating through Tralee and the surrounding countryside.

  To Henry’s frustration, the names of the dead were still not being made public.

  Recalling that someone else had carried a safe-conduct pass from Michael Brennan, Henry went back into the hills, to the little cabin with the swaybacked roof.

  He arrived to find a family in mourning. They had just been notified by a government messenger of the death of their patriarch. At Ballyseedy.

  As if they had heard a banshee wail on the wind, the neighbors were already gathering.

  Knowing Ned might still be alive did not spare Henry from grief. No one in that cabin was spared; grief came to meet each person who entered, wrapped its cold arms around them, opened its gaping maw and swallowed them whole.

  “Sorry for your trouble,” Henry whispered to the widow, repeating the time-honored phrase. Then he went to stand with the other men beside the hearth. Passing around the whiskey. Smoking clay pipes. Talking in low voices.

  After a time the door opened and three figures entered, two men and someone who was wrapped in a shawl like a woman, but did not move like a woman. He edged crabwise, like a man in great pain.

  Curious, Henry drifted closer to hear this person say to the widow, “Sorry for your trouble, missus. My name’s Stephen Fuller. I knew your husband well; I was with him when it happened. I come to tell you he was brave to the end. God took him without letting him suffer none.”

  The woman lifted trembling hands and put them on either side of his face, pushing back the shawl to reveal a gaunt young man with boulders for cheekbones, and haunted eyes. His face was badly bruised.

  “You were with my man at Ballyseedy?”

  “I was.”

  Suddenly her legs gave way. She collapsed as if her bones had turned to chalk dust.

  While the other women rushed to help her, Henry moved closer to Fuller. “Would you be willing to talk to me?” he asked. “I used to write for the Irish Bulletin.”

  Fuller’s eyes scanned his face. “No word of a lie? I used to read the Bulletin.”

  “Then you know my name: Henry Mooney. Can you tell me what really happened at Ballyseedy?”

  “You can’t write about it, not now,” Fuller said.

  “I realize that. But a friend of mine may have been there; I have to know. Ned Halloran?”

  “There was no Halloran with us. It’s one of my own friends we’re mourning today. Them who brought me here didn’t want to, but I owed it to my friend. I’ll be leaving soon, though. The IRA has a safe house for me back in the hills, and in a few days there’ll be a dugout ready for me to hide in until they can get me out of Kerry. You didn’t see me at all, remember.”

  “You have my word on it.”

  Fuller whispered urgently, “Don’t write this down. It could mean your life as well as mine. Just listen.

  “I was in a cell in Ballymullen the evening the government soldiers came for us. They told us, ‘We’re going to blow you up with a mine.’ We were removed out into the yard and loaded into lorries, and made to lie flat in the bottom and taken out to Ballyseedy crossroads. We couldn’t see nothing and they told us nothing, but we knew it was bad.

  “We arrived out anyway and they marched us up to this pile of stones and logs in the road—a barricade, like, but you could see it wasn’t no real barricade. The language the Staters used to us was fierce. One fellow called us ‘Irish bastards,’ and he an Irishman himself. One of our lads asked to say his prayers and they told him, ‘No prayers. Our fellows didn’t get any time to say prayers. Maybe some of you will go to heaven and meet some of our fellows there.’

  “They tied us then with our hands behind us, and made us stand in a circle with our backs to the stones. And they tied our legs and tied our shoelaces together too so we couldn’t run. The lad next to me closed his eyes and started praying, but I kept watching-like. The lad on the other side said goodbye and I said goodbye, ‘Goodbye, lads.’ And I saw them pull the trip-wire. And up it went. And I went up with it.”2

  Henry realized he had been holding his breath. “Government soldiers set off the mine themselves?”

  “They did surely. More than one, I think. There was a boom and another boom, and maybe another again.”

  “How in God’s name did you get away?”

  “When I saw them pull the trip-wire I threw myself sideways-like. Next thing I knew, I was lying in a ditch with the ropes blown off me. Me back and hands and legs was burnt something terrible. Our lads was writhing in the dirt with stones raining down on them and guns was blazing, the Staters was shooting them on the ground like dogs, and everything was burning and screaming and…” Fuller’s words ground to an agonized halt. Tears streamed down his ravaged cheeks.

  Henry gave him a cup of whiskey. After draining it in one long swallow, Fuller continued. “In all that confusion no one noticed me. I crawled into the stream, right down under the surface in the muck, and escaped that way. I don’t know how long I was dragging meself through the night and across the fields before I found help. It’s all of a mist now. A red mist.”

  “Were any of the government soldiers hurt?”

  “The bombs d
idn’t take a feather out of them. They took care to stand well away while they blew us to pieces.” Fuller drew a ragged breath and fixed his eyes once more on Henry’s face. “What happened?” he asked in baffled tones. “All us lads who fought side by side to make Ireland free…What happened to us?”

  “I can tell you,” said Henry, “because I’ve chronicled it day by day. But I don’t think you or I will ever understand it.”

  Chapter Forty-six

  THE following morning the names of those killed at Ballyseedy were published and their bodies released to their relatives. As they were carried out the gates of Ballymullen, the townspeople fell upon them in outrage. “Trash coffins! Condemned coffins!” they cried, smashing open the splintery, badly fashioned boxes and lifting out the pitiful remains. Other coffins were brought and the dead men placed within them, but not before hundreds of people saw the condition of the mangled corpses.

  There were riots in the streets of Tralee.

  HENRY returned to Dublin. Ballyseedy had broken him. He sat on the floor with his head in Ella’s lap and wept like a child.

  “I’ve seen hell with the lid off,” he told her.

  Next morning he insisted on seeing Richard Mulcahy. Someone had to give an explanation.

  “I realize things may have got out of hand in Kerry, Henry,” Mulcahy said, “but you must not be taken in by Republican propaganda. I have great faith in the honor of our army.”

  “What I saw with my own eyes was a lot more than propaganda!”

  “I truly am sorry for those who lost their lives.”

  “I believe you, Dick. I know that you personally would never have sanctioned atrocities. Any more than Liam Lynch would have,” Henry added deliberately.

  Richard Mulcahy winced. A tiny movement, so small one would not notice it unless he was watching for it. But that sign of pain satisfied Henry.

  Mulcahy said, “You must understand that I can’t talk to you about this, either on or off the record. There will be an official hearing.”

  “Will the press be allowed to attend?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Call me as a witness, then. For God’s sake, Dick, I saw—”

  “We must avoid any suspicion of using biased witnesses, Henry. Your republicanism is too well known.”

  “Who’s going to be on the hearing panel?”

  “Major General O’Daly and—”

  “You’re saying he’s not biased? He issued the damned orders!”

  Mulcahy stood up behind his desk. “It is impossible for me to believe my army could do such things,” he said. “I know those men, Henry. They’re the best in the world. The military inquiry will determine just what did happen, and I have every confidence they’ll be exonerated. Now, you know your way out, I believe?”

  Henry turned away. It’s all to be covered up, then; swept under the table. For the sake of the new state. That will be their justification.

  But how do you erase a man’s memories? How do you forget the unforgettable?

  HE did not write to Ursula about Ballyseedy. He could not inflict those horrors on her. He told her only that as far as he knew, Ned was not a prisoner in Kerry.

  She replied that her father had sent her a brief note explaining he was with Liam Lynch but hoped to be home soon.

  “You could go to Clare and meet him,” Ella suggested.

  “It’s enough to know he’s alive. I don’t think this is a good time for us to confront one another.”

  “Would it be a confrontation, then?”

  “Oh yes,” said Henry. “Oh yes.”

  His life seemed fractured. Ireland itself was fractured. “I’m thinking of giving up journalism,” he told Ella. “I can’t write about what’s going on in this country; I don’t even want to think about it. I feel like I’m sane among madmen, and that’s worse than the other way around.”

  She dropped her eyes so that her lashes swept her cheeks; cheeks blushing pink. “Perhaps you need some good news.”

  “Is there any, Cap’n? Anywhere?”

  “In this house there is,” Ella replied. “You’re going to be a father.”

  The terrible world contracted; dwindled to a cold black cinder; exploded in a rose-and-gold sunrise.

  HERE I am in church again, God. At Ballyseedy I swore I’d never speak to you again. So you have spoken to me. Does that prove you exist? Or do I just want it to prove you exist?

  Henry knelt in the pew with his head bent over his folded hands. A child. That’s always been your gift to us, hasn’t it?

  I beseech your mercy and protection for this tiny new person. A son. Or a daughter. If I promise not to doubt your existence anymore, if I promise not to give up on my fellow human beings…would it be too much to ask for this first one to be a daughter?

  HE was writing again. From the haven of an upstairs room in Sandymount, looking east to the sea, to the sunrise.

  “We need to reimagine the past in a more instructive mold, not as myth but as guidepost,” Henry suggested, concluding his latest essay on Ireland’s troubled history. “Over the centuries we have made tragedy an icon. Yet surely if we believe in God at all, we believe our Creator gave man the gift of free will. We can make the future different.”

  Ella read everything he wrote before he submitted it for publication. She was not an uncritical audience; if a sentence was awkward or a meaning unclear, she told him. Her knowledge of correct grammar was more extensive than his. “I’ve never put my education to use until now,” she admitted. “I like pretending to be your editor.”

  He gave her a hug. “You are my editor, Cap’n. You’re putting a polish on me.”

  “I enjoy working with you. Being part of a team. Henry, do you suppose someday we might buy a newspaper in a small town and publish it ourselves? I could do political cartoons. Sign them ‘E. Mansell.’ ”

  Henry held his wife at arm’s length and studied her face. She was quite serious. “You amaze me,” he said.

  “You would like that, then?”

  “Like it? Cap’n, I can’t think of anything better! But we won’t use your money, not a penny of it.” Not a penny of it, Edwin!

  THE war dragged on. Each side accused the other of barbarous behavior. Fact and fiction merged. Doggedly, Richard Mulcahy struggled to find a way to end it all without more lives being lost.

  By late March even Liam Lynch was forced to conclude the Republicans were losing. Tom Barry in Cork still had faith in the ability of his columns as long as they were used offensively, but saw no point in wasting men on purely defensive actions, which was what the war had become. The strong support given the Republicans earlier had been eroded; people longed for a more settled economic and social environment.

  Lynch called a secret executive meeting of the IRA and invited de Valera to attend. At very real risk to himself, de Valera joined Lynch and nine of the sixteen Republican commandants in a remote glen south of Clonmel. Over the next four days the military position and the possibilities for an honorable truce were discussed from every angle. At the end of that time a vote was taken to end the war.

  Peace lost—by six votes to five.

  The meeting was adjourned with an agreement to meet again in the second week of April, when all the commanding officers might be present.

  Government forces learned of the plan. With a sense of relief at being able, perhaps, to end the war in one stroke, Richard Mulcahy issued orders to encircle and capture the entire leadership of the Irish Republican Army.

  ON the eleventh of April a news item flashed over the telegraph to Dublin. A few stark words with no explanation. “Liam Lynch shot dead in Kerry. Details to follow.”

  Henry joined the pack of reporters besieging the office of the minister of defense. Matt Nugent was among them. “There have been rumors for weeks that the IRA was ready to give up,” he told Henry.

  “I know; I’ve heard them too. So why kill Lynch now? What a waste, Matt! What a goddamned waste!”

 
Richard Mulcahy was not available to reporters; there were rumors that he was devastated by the news. A typewritten statement was handed out: “Liam Lynch, chief of staff of the so-called Irish Republican Army, and several of his colleagues, were surrounded yesterday by Free State troops on the slopes of the Knockmealdown Mountains in County Tipperary. General Lynch was shot long-range by an unidentified sniper, the bullet passing right through his body just above the hip. The wound appeared to be fatal. He insisted that his companions go on without him to save their own lives. When government troops reached General Lynch, he identified himself and asked for a priest. A field dressing was applied to his wound and he was brought down out of the mountains in great pain on an improvised stretcher. From Newcastle he was transported to Clonmel in an army ambulance and given every care, but to no avail. It is reported he gave his fountain pen to one of the officers who had captured him, and said, ‘God bless you and the boys who carried me down the hill.’ Death came to General Lynch at 8:45 yesterday evening. He has asked to be buried beside his friend Michael Lynch who died on hunger strike in Cork Jail.”

  Henry, tight-lipped, read the statement twice. Then he took out a pencil and drew a heavy black line through “so-called.”

  SO Liam Lynch was gone. As for Ned Halloran…where was he? No one seemed to know. His name was not on any casualty list.

  More than one bog in Ireland contained a Republican whose name was not on any casualty list.

  On the fourteenth of April Dan Breen was captured in a dugout in the Glen of Aherlow. Starved and exhausted, he had kept himself alive by drinking melted snow. He was said to be one of the last surviving leaders of the IRA.

  “I never thought they’d take Dan alive,” Henry wrote to Pauline in one of the very rare letters he sent to Limerick.

  The civil war was winding down; it was over in all but name. The past lay in ragged tatters, and men and women spoke anxiously of the future, with little idea what form it would take. Ireland would have to be built from scratch.