6

On December 22, 1920, Eamon de Valera, president of the illegal Provisional Government, returned secretly from eighteen months in America. His exile had not cost him his thin, grim demeanor. He still looked more like the National School teacher he had been than a revolutionary hero. Bespectacled and gangling, he gave all the appearances of a classroom master who was meek with townspeople and stern with pupils. In a way, the image fit. To those outside the Republican movement he was mannered and shy. But to the men and women rebels over whom he had authority, he was forthright, stubborn, and at times as ruthless with them as he habitually was with himself.

De Valera came home as events on both the war and peace fronts were breaking in Ireland’s favor for the first time. He knew from his own experience how shocked the American public had been by the burning of Cork and the killing of civilians. The British ambassador had been publicly summoned to the White House to explain. The British at first took the line that irresponsible citizens of “Rebel Cork” had burned their own city from pure fecklessness. But no one was misled by that. Even members of Parliament denounced the government’s lie, and less diffident Auxies all over Ireland wore burned wine corks in their glengarries instead of campaign ribbons. But civilian opinion everywhere, even in London, was against them. The Irish population was increasingly vocal in its resentments of England, and there were public celebrations when the reprisal against the Auxies at Kinsale was carried out.

De Valera knew that the two great goals of the Republican effort were finally being achieved; international pressure on London to come to terms with the Irish was intense and mounting, and the Irish people in great numbers were openly supporting the rebels.

During the course of his first briefing from Collins, the president ordered that Colman Brady be brought to the safe house in Monkton, outside Dublin. He wanted to meet the man who had struck the flint that kindled these good fires.

On the morning of Christmas Eve Michael Collins ushered Brady into De Valera’s office, a small room that had formerly been the rear parlor of the modest house that served as the rebel executive mansion. Collins made the introductions, then he and De Valera chatted cordially about several matters, including funds from New York and the status of the National Loan.

It was clear to Brady that the two men were close friends. They were among the few leaders who had survived the initial Post Office seizure on Easter Monday, 1916. Brady recalled the great story of Collins’s daring rescue of De Valera from Lincoln Jail in England itself. The two shared the obvious intimacy of men who had saved each other’s lives.

After five minutes Collins left, and the president turned to Colman Brady.

“Please sit, Brady.”

“Thank you, sir.” He took the upright wooden chair by the table. De Valera sat in the upholstered chair by the fire.

“What rank do you hold?”

“I am not in the army, Mr. de Valera.”

“I assumed Mick had commissioned you.”

“No, sir.”

“Why not?”

Brady shrugged. “I’m not in it like that. I’m doing what’s necessary. That’s all. I’m a farmer. I’ve a wife.”

“So I gather. You had uninvited guests at your wedding.”

“Yes.”

“That’s what began it?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me about it.”

For two and a half hours the president questioned and listened. His manner made Brady perfectly at ease. He took in with interest the most minute details of Brady’s story. He was generous in his praises and he looked unhappy and troubled only when told of those who died. As Brady talked, revealing more and more of himself, he had the feeling that he was having the intimate talk with his father that he’d longed for and never had.

Finally Eamon de Valera said, “I don’t suppose you know why I’ve asked you here.”

“I assumed, sir, it was for this talk.”

“Yes, Colman. That was the first part. And now, since I’ve had confirmed for myself what Collins told me, the second part.” He stopped.

Brady looked at De Valera intently.

The president continued. “We’re very nearly home, Brady. The English need be pressed only the smallest bit more and the war can be over.”

“I understand that.”

“Well, listen carefully. For the sake of our political position after the truce, it is urgent that we are perceived now as at the peak of our strength. England will try to make the peace look like our surrender. If she succeeds she will concede nothing to us beyond Home Rule. We will not surrender, nor will we seem to surrender. We will have nothing less than national independence.”

“What has that to do with me?”

“We have decided to establish a special unit. We’re calling it the Active Service Unit for now. I want you to head it up.”

“What will be its function?”

“L’audace et toujours l’audace!”

“I don’t speak French.”

De Valera smiled. He regretted his own display as much as he did Brady’s ignorance. He felt like a teacher. “As I said,” he went on with the barest hint of condescension, “to assure that the world and the English and the Irish people understand that we enter negotiations from strength, not weakness.”

“A military unit.”

“Yes. Small, mobile, and deadly. With one eye fixed on the political impact of its action.”

“Action?”

“Yes. I want you to destroy the Customs House.”

The Customs House! The center of the English executive in Ireland. The boldness of it stunned Brady. But the place was massive, crowded with clerks and bureaucrats. The images of all their faces flashed before Brady.

“Mr. de Valera, I am not a killer.”

“That is why I want you. I want you to arrange to destroy the building with a minimum of deaths. We are strong. We are humane. That will be our twofold message to the world.”

“But . . .”

“I refuse to debate the matter with you, Brady. I want an answer. Yes or No.” Now the sternness. Now the bark.

“I must know what it requires.”

“It requires your total effort for as long as it takes. The timing will be a matter for me to set. Some months at the outside, I would say. And it requires your oath of silence. The unit will be composed of men like yourself from outside the army, who are known neither to the Volunteers nor to the British. And you will have nothing to do with anyone but Collins and me.”

“I must tell my wife.”

“No.”

“I can’t, then.”

“Alright. Get out.”

“Wait.”

“No, Brady. Get out of my sight.”

The swiftness of his dismissal, the extremity of De Valera’s judgment, the absolute rejection: these were what shocked Brady into changing his mind.

“Agreed. I’ll do it.”

“Your oath!” De Valera demanded.

“I swear. I swear to Jesus Christ to do as you say.”

“Report to Collins after Christmas.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You should go home today. How long have you been away?”

“Nearly a month.”

“Have you a way to travel?”

“I’ll go by train.”

“Take my car, Colman. Come back Friday.”

Brady nodded, stood and started for the door. De Valera remained seated, in the grip of a sudden mood. He halted him.

“Your wife, son,” he began mournfully, “do you love her very much?”

“Yes, I do. Despite myself.”

“Tell her that. It matters more.” Even as he expressed the nearly gentle sentiment, the president did so harshly. He was still stern and brusque in manner. Colman understood that the initial politeness of their conversation had depended on his being an outsider. But he was not an outsider anymore. In the peculiar way of the upside-down world of the revolution, it was an honor to Brady that Eamon de Valera should speak to him so rudely.

Outside De Valera’s house Colman panicked. An aide had shown him to the automobile. Brady stood looking at it, a large, closed sedan with four doors. It was nothing like the open, carriage-like truck that Nellie’s father owned. That was the only auto he had ever driven. He knew that in order to start the butcher’s truck, and for that matter the touring car that Collins used, one inserted a handle into the hole beneath the bonnet and cranked rapidly. He walked completely around the president’s car, looking for the hole. The aide seemed to be glaring at him.

“Where do you crank?” Brady asked pitifully, brushing his hand through his hair.

“You don’t.” The man pushed by him into the car. He leaned over the driver’s wheel. There was a chugging, a bang, and suddenly the engine caught.

“See?” the aide asked, leaning back, indicating the button on the panel. He obviously felt very superior about it all.

“Yes. Thanks.”

The aide hopped out of the car.

Colman stepped aboard, grasped the wheel firmly with both hands and tried to remember how the procedure went. Awkwardly and with much grinding and stuttering the machine finally began to move. The aide continued to glare as Colman coaxed the thing down the road.

Even after he was out of sight of De Valera’s house he did not relax. Suddenly he felt entirely incompetent. The two great leaders of Ireland were putting an immense trust in him. He was afraid it was misplaced. If De Valera knew he had only driven twice before he would never have given him the car. If Collins and De Valera had any idea how frightened and worried he was they would not count on him for messages, much less the Customs House. The Customs House! Good Christ! What had he agreed to do?

Brady turned on the Monkton road away from Dublin. The car stalled twice. After going toward Naas for some miles he turned onto the road for Carlow. By the time he reached that town his nervousness had eased off some, and he was driving the president’s car quite well.

Four Mile Water was beautiful on Christmas Day. The sky above the open country was pink and silver. The bark of the great chestnut was dark red. Its last few leaves glowed like copper. The Nire in the valley was a streak of glass, a winding mirror flashing the sun back at itself. The clouds moved in procession above the Druid monument like the Wise Men coming. The earth, turned under everywhere but for Moore’s field, which was given over to winter wheat, seemed to burn against the cold air. On rainy, foggy days the same scene was dead and eccentric. But in the brisk, crystal light, what could be seen from the hill was like a faint premonition of the first Christmas, or the last one.

Nellie kept her hand on his knee. Colman steered the big car around the narrow little road, laughing with the thrill of it. He was going a little too fast, but they loved it. Conor and Bea were holding onto each other in the back seat. Each time the car swept down around a blind curve they squealed together. Conor had intended to be sophisticated during his first auto ride, but the spell that turned twelve-year-old Bea into a clutch of giggles had its effect on him too. It was the most exciting thing either of them had ever experienced. It was better even than going fast on McClusky’s horse.

Nellie was thinking that she had never been as happy in her life as she was then, huddling next to Colman, crushing his leg with her hand, having him back, hearing him laugh, laughing with him and repeatedly surviving the curves in the road where she thought they were going to crash. It did not feel dangerous to her at all. Although she knew it was, very.

Colman was enchanted by the fit of the machine to the road, by the harmony of the double serpentine. He loved the order of it. Even as the heavy car hurled itself down the steep hill, all one had to do was trace one’s way along what had already been set, ordained even. That was why the risk of it did not frighten but delight. The faster they went the more Brady felt the power of his own reflexes. All he had to do was react to the road. No initiative required, no thought, no real responsibility. Only the counterfeit boldness of speed. “L’audace!”

When the pitch of the road leveled and the turns were fewer and less abrupt, they knew they were coming out into the plain. The river was just ahead and across the bridge, the village of Ballymacarberry.

“Who’s for an ice?” Colman asked cheerfully.

“Me, Colman, me!” Bea yelled.

“It’s Christmas, man,” Nellie said, rebuking him lightly. No shops would be open on the Holy Day.

Colman slapped himself in mock repentance, but he pulled the car over in the village anyway. His brother and sister ran off to find the McCauliff children, who were staying with their aunt. Colman and Nellie decided to stroll a way down the Nire.

The path running along the river was trim and neat, and the banks at that point were at right angles to the water about three feet high. The river had an aged dignity about it there, not like the youthful breaks above the village or the lazy marsh a few miles down. They walked toward the crumbling Norman keep, half a mile downstream. They held each other’s hands.

“I could enjoy the River Nire,” Nellie proclaimed, “and the love of you forever!”

“Could you now?”

“I could.”

“In that order?”

“Oh, the cruelty of such a question. Would you ask me to rank two of God’s masterpieces?”

He laughed as she wanted him to. They walked along, arms swinging between them, sharing an impression of boundless joy. Colman kept looking at her; she was tall, slim, full-breasted, more beautiful than the women he’d seen in Dublin.

He told her so.

She turned red, the color of her hair, and when she told him that he was only flattering her, she thought that was exactly the case. She was sure that in Dublin she would appear old-fashioned and faded. But she could not hide the delight she felt anyway for his saying it.

Colman had told Nellie all about Dublin and about Kilkenny and Wicklow and Wexford and Youghal and other places he had gone with Collins. He had described streets and coastline and marvelous buildings. He had talked about automobiles and lorries, huge ones. He had seen an airplane in Bandon. But he had told her nothing about what he had been doing, who he had been with, what would happen now. Since his return she had not allowed herself to feel even minutely the immense pain this silence and mystery caused her.

Not until he asked her that awful question.

They were standing in the shadow of the watchtower that had stood guard by the river since the Normans had conquered Ireland in the eleventh century.

“Nellie,” he began, slipping his arms around her waist, “what of our son?”

She would have laughed at him if the question hadn’t come like a blow to her stomach. She pulled away from him, hurling herself half over the stone wall of the little bridge that cut the water at the Keep. She made fists. Was he that naïve, that innocent? Did he really think it was automatic, that babies came, willy-nilly, the first month? If it was naïveté, why did she hear his question like a charge? An accusation? Was she sterile? Would she be barren? Why wasn’t she pregnant?

“What’s wrong?” He was stunned by her rejection.

What’s wrong! The question roared inside her head. Did he think to implant me and call it quits? Give me a baby and go off to war? Was that why he had come home, for his son? Had it not been for her at all? If he cared for her he would stay. He wouldn’t so willingly go off to fight or even die for Ireland. Die for Ireland! Was that why he wanted her pregnant? Die? Was she losing him already?

“What’s wrong?” she repeated dully, not to him at all. Her quiet resignation was all the hint he needed of the storm that was raging inside her. “What’s wrong, Colman? You tell me.”

“Nothing’s wrong, Nellie. It’s Christmas.”

“And you were hoping for the coming of the baby, no doubt. In a manger if possible. Well, I’ll tell you what’s wrong, Colman Brady . . .” She drew herself erect, her voice rose, anger poured from her cleanly. “I’m not the Blessed Virgin Mary. Maybe she could do it without a man, but I can’t! If you mean to be a father, you’ll have to be a husband first!”

Brady blushed furiously.

“But we . . .” he started.

She cut him off mercilessly. “Yes, we did, didn’t we? A total of six—no, six and a half—times!”

“Nellie . . .”

He had felt her anger before, but never her cruelty.

He thought of her father, how he withered before her blasts until finally driven to strike her. Her father’s mistake had been to try to outdo her in abuse. It could easily become his.

Colman forced calm down like a bitter draft. Her reference to his inability the second night to complete the act only strengthened his resolve not to match her emotion with his own.

“Nellie, stop it. I won’t have you talking to me that way. I’m not your pa.”

That cut short her savagery. Colman expected her to burst into tears, but she didn’t. She spoke firmly, purposefully, rationally. “It’s only that I miss you,” she said, “and I fear for your safety.”

“You shouldn’t.”

“Why shouldn’t I? I’d be happy to hear. For all I know you’re leading assaults on the stars, husband. You could be leaping off the Cliffs of Moher with umbrellas or swimming beneath the sea with German submarines.”

“Neither,” he laughed. “It’s nothing like that.”

“What’s it like, darling?” Surrender was palpable in her voice.

“I’ve met De Valera.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“It’s his auto we’re joyriding in. I must return tomorrow.”

“I knew the machine meant that when I first laid eyes on it. I knew you’d leave instantly.”

“I don’t want to go back.” The way he said this filled her with sadness. She didn’t dare look at him. She knew that he was afraid and that, whatever it was, it was very dangerous.

“Don’t.”

“I must.” His gloom, profound, bottomless, was what drew her out. She began by looking at him, ended by stroking his hair and his face. He let his hand rest on her hip.

“Tell me,” she said softly. She said it no longer for herself, for her own need to know everything, but for his evident need to speak of it.

“I don’t want to worry you.”

She laughed. She was a mountain of worry already. He could be so thick. “I’m here to be worried.”

“I took an oath, Nell. Of silence.”

“Against me?”

“Against all.”

“I thought . . .” Well, they did stick together, those fellows, didn’t they? Now she was feeling the pity for herself again. The anger. Damn De Valera! “. . . it would be different than this.”

“It will be, darling.”

“When we have a son?” The bitterness with which she said this devastated him.

When Colman drove away, from the farm the next morning at dawn, it seemed to him that just below the surface of everything was a welter of mistakes. He had made a mess of Christmas. Nell was angry and hurt. His brother and sister, ever sensitive to the emotional weather, were depressed and moody. The house itself seemed to him a stranger’s place, not his. The livestock hardly knew him, the old cow kicked while he milked her. He felt guilty about leaving the animals in the care of Conor, who was too young still, too green. The field was gone to hay, lacking the perfect tending he’d given it since it was his. He should get back soon to turn the earth. The barn sagged southward over the warping, slipping wall. The entire place cried out for him, but it didn’t feel like his. His land had filled him that morning frankly with sadness. Much as he hated leaving Nell, though, there was something about the place he was glad to be rid of. Was it just that once you’ve been to Dublin . . . ? It was a season for other things than farming.

He got the auto going, waved at Nell, who stood in the door, and headed up the hill toward the village. He stopped at St. Lawrence’s to pay a visit, feeling like an old man returning to scenes of his youth. No one was about, it still being early.

In the church he knelt at the Virgin’s statue, trying to see Nellie, wanting her forgiveness. But it was not Nellie. It was not even his mother. It was just a plaster image, nothing really. He lit a candle.

“Good morning, Colman.”

“Father!”

The priest had appeared out of nowhere, startling Brady.

“Sorry for your fright.”

“How are you? I meant to greet you yesterday, but the Mass was so crowded and . . .”

“Yes. A pleasant Christmas, I hope.”

“Yes, Father.”

They were walking down the aisle to the entrance. They were under the same compulsion to talk, but they could not do so comfortably in the church. Their movement to exit was automatic and shared. But when they stood on the steps in the dank chill outside, they both fell silent. They had so much to say. Neither knew why they could say nothing.

The road dog was barking at one of the shetlands. The Morrisseys’ goat nibbled on the stalks of dead honeysuckle at Gavin’s door. In Gavin’s yard three cows stood uneasily looking toward the door waiting for Gavin to come out and milk them. Brady, at least, left his women in charge of his cows.

“Some things never change, Father. Peter Gavin still neglects his cows.”

“Oh, they do change, though, Colman. He’s gone.”

“To where?”

“Clonmel. He’s joined a contingent of Volunteers. Real IRA, they say.”

“And he was the one to toast the King!” Brady did not stifle his bitterness. From Irish treason to IRA glory, the fickle bastard. Beneath the surface of everything was a welter of mistakes.

“If I could read your thoughts now, Colman, I think I’d be scandalized.”

“Not likely, Father. Just worried.”

“Worried for Ireland?”

“No. For Gavin’s cows.”