Patricia Falvey

by The Yellow House (v5)

  “You’ve a fair bit saved now?” P.J. said.

  I smiled and nodded. “Aye. I’ve a long way to go before I could think of buying any house, let alone the Yellow House. But I know one day I’ll be able to do it.”

  P.J. said nothing. He knew by the question he had set my mind in motion. Was I willing to risk my dream to get justice for the mill girls? Wasn’t I better off keeping my head down and my mouth shut? The O’Neill warrior inside me wanted to strike out and lead the charge. But then I thought of Ma sitting in that old place surrounded by madwomen. I had made her a promise. And I had made a promise to Paddy. I couldn’t risk letting them down.

  I sighed. “You’re right, P.J.”

  He nodded. “You have to learn to pick your battles, girl.”

  As I lay in bed that night, Da’s face appeared to me. “You’re a warrior, darlin’, a descendant of the great O’Neills.” I fought back tears.

  “I’m not the warrior you wanted me to be, Da,” I whispered. “I’m sorry I’m letting you down.”

  ON A SEPTEMBER Sunday in 1914, about a month after war was declared, I strolled down Hill Street in Newry, holding Paddy by the hand. We had been to late mass at Newry Cathedral. It had become our habit to go together to the twelve o’clock mass. I craved this time alone with my brother, and he seemed willing enough to go with me each week. He was a quiet lad, so we never talked much, but it was lovely just the same to kneel beside him in the church and then take his hand in mine as we dandered along the street, stopping every so often to look in shop windows.

  Old Father Dornan had given a long, boring sermon on our obligation to pray for the boys going to war, no matter what their religion, that they might come to no harm. He could have got it across in five minutes, but as was usual for him, he made a bloody big meal of it. The oul’ blatherer loved hearing himself talk. I was parched with the thirst from listening to him.

  “Will we go and get a lemonade, Paddy?” I said.

  He looked up at me, blue eyes suddenly bright, and nodded.

  I reached up and took off my hat. Unlike Ma, I hated hats and wore one only to mass. Paddy pulled off his cap, too, and stuffed it in his pocket. I shook out my long braid and inhaled the soft, cool September breeze.

  “Ah, freedom.” I laughed. “Shall we go?”

  I grabbed for Paddy’s hand again and swung him around so that we could walk in the direction of the café. As I did so, I collided with a man in a British Army uniform. Startled, I jumped back.

  “Please excuse me, sir,” I muttered. “I wasn’t looking where I was going.”

  “Well, and if that isn’t the nicest apology I’ve ever had from you,” said a familiar voice. “In fact, I think it’s the only apology I’ve ever had from you.”

  Owen Sheridan beamed at me from beneath an army lieutenant’s peaked cap. I swallowed hard, as if I’d had the wind knocked out of me. He was thinner than I remembered—not thinner, exactly, but more lean and taut. He stood erect, the sun glinting off the buttons of his jacket. I forced my eyes away from him and looked down at Paddy instead.

  “This is my brother,” I said, “Paddy O’Neill. Paddy, this is Mr. Sheridan.”

  “‘First Lieutenant Sheridan,’ if you please. I didn’t go through all that training not to get my full title.” He smiled as he spoke, the old teasing kind of smile I remembered.

  I shrugged. “Lieutenants are nineteen to the dozen these days.”

  Paddy tugged on my arm and gave me a wistful look. I remembered the lemonade.

  “I, er, I just promised Paddy I would take him for a lemonade,” I said. An odd feeling had come over me. I wanted to get away from Owen Sheridan in order to collect myself, but at the same time I didn’t want to say good-bye. I had been thinking about him on and off for months, and now here he was big as life and me at a loss for words.

  “Wonderful idea!” he said. “Please allow me to accompany you. It will be my treat.”

  Without so much as a by-your-leave, he stepped to the outside of the pavement and linked his arm in mine, urging me forward.

  “Morocco’s Café, I assume?” he said, nodding and smiling at passersby as if he were the cat who got the cream. I kept my head down as people turned around to look at us. I recognized many of them from the mill or as customers of the Ceili House. There would be quare gossip about this. The talk about his dance with me at the Spinners’ Ball had only just died down; now it would start up again. I held on so tightly to Paddy’s hand that he finally wrenched himself free and skipped on ahead.

  “Fine-looking boy,” said Sheridan.

  “Aye,” I said.

  We wound our way through the crowds that filled the pavement. Many were families with a young man in army uniform in their midst. Young soldiers were everywhere, eager and ready for adventure.

  Morocco’s Café was a popular meeting place in Newry. It had an exotic appeal with its gold-lettered signs, walls covered with paintings of faraway landscapes, and an owner of unknown origins. Mr. Morocco, if that was his real name, was dark-skinned and spoke little English. His Irish wife translated for him. She was not from Ulster, either. Their two daughters were as dark-skinned and mysterious as their father. When you entered the café, it was as if you were transported to an enchanted and slightly dangerous world.

  Paddy raced in ahead of us and claimed a table and three chairs near the window. Owen Sheridan escorted me over to the table, his hand on the small of my back radiating warmth. When Paddy and I were settled, he went over to the counter to order. I watched him as he walked up and down, inspecting the pastries and breads set out on big wooden trays and pointing to the ice-cream bin in the far corner. He chatted easily with the owner, who smiled when he saw him and reached over to shake his hand. Funny, I never took him for one who would come to a place like this. I always imagined that he would be taking high tea in some posh hotel, but it was obvious that Mr. Morocco knew him. I set my hat on the windowsill behind me and unbuttoned my dark green jacket. I was glad it was Sunday and I had worn the best clothes I owned. I was not one for style like Theresa. If I was not wearing my mill apron, I wore my band uniform—except for Sundays. I don’t think up to then I could have told you what giddiness felt like, although I recognized it sometimes in the mill girls. But now the fluttering in my stomach and the racing of my seventeen-year-old heart confirmed that even I, Eileen O’Neill, was not immune to it.

  Owen Sheridan returned with a tray loaded with food and drinks: lemonade, steaming tea, wedges of cake with pink icing, and three paper cones filled with ice cream. Paddy’s eyes widened and he clapped his hands. Dimples creased his cheeks. He stared at Sheridan in awe.

  “Thanks, mister,” he said.

  “Thanks, Lieutenant,” I corrected, grinning. “Jesus, you bought out the shop.”

  Sheridan grinned back. “I was born with a very sweet tooth.”

  We ate and drank. Between bites, I learned that he was home on leave before shipping out to France. He had two days before he left. Paddy, having overcome his shyness and stuffing in all the cake and ice cream he could manage, asked him a lot of questions about being a soldier. Sheridan answered politely, leaning back in his chair, his long legs crossed at the ankles.

  “And have you ever killed anybody?” asked Paddy.

  “Jesus, Paddy! That’s an awful question to be asking.”

  “A fair one, just the same,” said Sheridan. His smile faded and he sat straight up in his chair. The earlier ease had gone, and now he was tense as a rabbit sensing a fox.

  “I have never killed anyone, Paddy. But I do not doubt that I shall when I get into the war.”

  “You don’t seem too keen on it,” I said, finishing off the last of my cake.

  He stirred his tea in an absentminded way. “No, I’m not,” he murmured, “but it’s inevitable. I have wrestled with the thought for months.”

  He looked at me and his eyes clouded. “I just hope to God I’m doing the right thing.”

  The mood at th
e table had turned somber. Owen Sheridan became lost in his own thoughts. I was annoyed that things had taken such a turn. I didn’t want to talk about the war. I wanted to talk about lighter, happier things. This dark talk did not fit my mood. Paddy began to fidget. I pressed some coins into his hands.

  “Go and pick out a cake to bring home to Mrs. Mullen for the tea,” I said. He jumped down off his chair and ran up to the counter.

  “Damn it, I had to do something!” Sheridan’s sudden outburst startled me, and I sat up straight. “I couldn’t go on the way I was living—shallow, without any purpose. I had to find something I believed in. I had to find a way to give my life meaning, to make a difference.”

  It was as if he were talking to himself.

  “The mills give my father purpose, but I find no pleasure in them. They are horrible, sordid places.”

  I wanted to pass a rude remark, but for once I curbed my sharp tongue.

  “I’ve considered teaching,” he went on, “someday, perhaps, but not now. What life experience and wisdom do I have to pass on to young people? How to rebel against your parents?” He gave a snort and lit up a cigarette.

  “How did your parents take your decision?” I said, not just for want of something to say. I was truly interested. This was a side of the man I had never suspected. Doubts? Search for a meaning? Even in my young mind, I felt in that moment we had much more in common than I would ever have thought.

  “Well, Father was stoic as usual, but disappointed. And Mother cried for days. Not only because I’m going to the war and she fears for my life, but because I am committing the final rebellion against everything they stand for. They abhor violence. And here I am going off to kill men.” He sighed and took a long draw on his cigarette. He finally looked at me, as if just realizing I was there. “The irony is that this rebellion is different. I am not going against their values just to show them I can do it, as I did when I was younger. This rebellion is necessary to save my soul.”

  I was so mesmerized, listening to him, that I jumped when Paddy came back and dropped a huge chocolate cake on the table.

  “You didn’t eat your ice cream, Eileen,” he said.

  “Oh, right,” I said absently, and brought the paper cone to my mouth. The ice cream had melted, and some of it ran down my chin. Paddy started laughing, and I blushed in confusion. Owen Sheridan reached into his pocket and pulled out a white linen handkerchief.

  “Here, let me,” he said softly, and reached over and wiped my chin as if I were an infant. I sat motionless while he did it. Echoes of Ma’s soothing voice as she bathed a scratch on my small cheek drifted into my head. How long had it been since someone had taken care of me? I had forgotten what it was like. When he was finished, he folded the handkerchief and replaced it in his pocket. He stood up.

  “Well, I must be going, Miss O’Neill. Big family farewell dinner tonight.” He winced. “Not that I shall have much of an appetite.”

  “Not surprising,” I said, looking at the empty dishes on the table. I tried to make my voice jaunty in hopes of raising his spirits, the way I sometimes did with Ma or Da. I also wanted to shake off the memories that had just come over me.

  Paddy ran out into the street. I lifted my hat from the windowsill and buttoned up my jacket. Sheridan studied my hands as they closed the buttons. I hoped he did not notice the mended buttonholes or the frayed cuffs. Suddenly he put out his hand and touched my sleeve.

  “Would you do me the honor of writing me a letter now and then, Miss O’Neill?” He smiled. “I understand soldiers always welcome news from home. You can address the letters in care of Queensbrook House.”

  I was stunned. My thoughts and emotions jumbled themselves up, and I could not wait to get out the door to clear my head. I allowed my sharp tongue to come to the rescue.

  “And what makes you think I know how to write?” I said. “After all, I’m just a poor mill girl.”

  He smiled. “Ah, no, Miss O’Neill. You are much more than that.”

  As he walked off down Hill Street, I made a big show of buttoning Paddy’s coat and fiddling with his cap to let him get well ahead of me. I watched him until he disappeared into the crowds. He did not look back.

  9

  The war was supposed to be over by Christmas. All the news reports said so, and they were all wrong. By 1915, Japan had allied with Great Britain, and Turkey had joined the Germans in the conflict. Fighting was taking place on land and sea. It was clear the war was going to continue for a long time. In May, the fight struck close to home. First, the luxury passenger liner the Lusitania was sunk by the Germans off the coast of County Cork, and then London was bombed by the German Zeppelin airships. By 1916, the British government introduced conscription for men between the ages of eighteen and forty-one, although, thank God, it did not extend to Ireland. I assumed that Frankie must be fighting, but when P.J. came with word that Frank said he hadn’t signed up on the grounds that he was the sole support of his sick mother, I went into a rage. I had seen neither skin nor hair of my brother since that one time at the Fitzwilliam stables. Now I wanted to go back there and confront him. How dare he say he was supporting Ma! When I calmed down I changed my mind, of course, but I still didn’t understand why he would prefer life with our grandfather over going into the army. Frankie had always loved the notion of battles—he would have been in his element in the middle of a war.

  In July 1916, one of the bloodiest battles of the war took place in France: the Battle of the Somme. Twenty thousand British troops perished on the first day. The newspapers were full of the story. Almost six thousand of those killed had been members of the Ulster Volunteer Force. The sorrow in Ulster was so great that the Orange Order, a Protestant organization, canceled their annual celebrations commemorating the 1690 victory of King William, Prince of Orange, over the Catholic king James of Scotland at the Battle of the Boyne, an important event to the Protestant community.

  I could not get Owen Sheridan’s face out of my mind. I had never written to him. I had started a dozen or more letters, only to have my pen slow to a halt after the first few sentences. What was I to say to him? What could I tell him that his family and friends could not? How could I tell him that I missed him for reasons I myself did not understand? And then I thought of the looks there would be on the Sheridan family faces when they saw a letter from me addressed to him at Queensbrook House. Could they have stopped themselves from tearing it open and reading it? I would be disgraced—a poor Catholic upstart at the mill who got above herself and had the cheek to write to the likes of Owen Sheridan! And so I gave up the idea. I convinced myself that I had no obligation to write to him—after all, he had no notion of writing to me. Still, I kept my ear to the ground, hoping to get some news of him at the mill.

  At home, political unrest increased. The Irish push for Home Rule had been put on hold when the war started, but a small band of frustrated nationalists, who had ignored a call by John Redmond, Home Rule Party leader, to join the British Army, formed the Irish Citizen Army and began planning a rebellion against British rule in Ireland. On Easter Sunday 1916, some eighteen hundred volunteers seized the General Post Office and various other major buildings in Dublin and proclaimed the Irish Republic. Led by poet and schoolteacher Patrick Pearse, they proceeded to shoot it out with the British Army, holding out for a week before they were forced to surrender.

  Around Queensbrook, as in the rest of Ireland, there was little sympathy for the rebellion, particularly after it was discovered that they had tried to smuggle in arms from Germany. It was only after the leaders were publicly executed in English jails and their bodies brought back to Ireland for burial that the tide of opinion turned. The English had failed to understand the power of Irish funerals. A man might have been a schemer or chancer all his life—but put him in a box and parade him down to the graveyard with bagpipes, and toast his passing at a wake, and suddenly he was the greatest fellow ever lived. So it was with the rebels. They were idealized as martyrs over
night, and a great shift in the Irish attitude toward the English developed as surely as if there had been an earthquake.

  I had grown up knowing that as a Catholic I was in the minority in Ulster. I learned that the Protestants had been planted in Ulster by the English government, and many Catholics had been thrown off their land. Da had always been great for stories about those times and the battles that had led to the flight of the Earls and the wild geese. I took for granted that the best jobs at the mills went to the Protestants and that in general the Protestants were better off than the Catholics. It was a way of life to me, and it had not occurred to me there was much to be done about it. I planned my life on what was available to me based on my religion and status. I could be a spinner. Maybe I could be a weaver. But I could not get a job in the finishing shops doing embroidery or hemming linens. In the same way, Catholic men rarely got skilled work in the mills, let alone management jobs. The number of Protestant women who had to go out to work was small compared with the number of Catholic women. Protestant men had the better jobs and could afford to keep their wives at home.

  I suppose if I had been a Protestant in Ulster at the time, I would have been more than a bit afraid of becoming part of an independent Irish Republic, where I would be in the minority. I would not only lose my privileged advantage, but I might be forced to follow the rules of the Roman Catholic Church. So I couldn’t say I totally blamed the Protestants for getting more and more nervous as the movement for Home Rule gained support. They were practical enough to know that if they could not stop Home Rule, they could at least fight to keep Ulster out of it. But as they united behind the idea of a partitioned Ireland, it turned out they were thinking about more than a political solution. The Ulster Volunteer Force, organized in 1912, was armed and ready to fight.