8

Colman laughed out loud, laughed with delight.

“What?” Nellie asked, pulling the blanket over her bare shoulder.

“George M. Cohan.” He whistled a tune.

“Sing it,” she begged.

“How you gonna keep ’em down on the farm —” he sang pathetically, but she loved it “— after they’ve seen Paree?”

“Once they’ve seen the farm, you mean.”

“Just show ’em London. They’ll be back.” He hugged her.

“Briefly.”

“I beg your pardon. I’ve been home more than a month, with no plans to leave.”

“But you wake up singing ‘Paree.’”

“It’s a long way to Tipperary . . . ,” he sang.

“You haven’t seemed to fit the place. You work without . . .”

“The slow horse reaches the mill.”

“You weren’t slow before.”

“Hard churning makes bad butter.”

“And a good beginning is half the work. Don’t be quoting proverbs to me.”

“You’ve a sharp eye for my discontent, woman.”

“A blunt eye would do as well. I suppose you’re too important for farm labor now.”

“Perhaps I am.”

“There’s more dignity, I presume, in carrying Michael Collins’s suitcase.”

“Nellie Brady!”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not. You’ll take a crack at me for every day I was gone.” He hugged her, and she pushed her head up under his chin, inviting him to stroke her with it. He did. He touched her softly and repeatedly, then lifted her face so that he could look at her.

“The point of a rush,” he said, “would draw blood from your cheek.”

“One of your whiskers will do.”

He rubbed her lightly with his chin again.

But suddenly she rolled away from him, showing her back.

“Nellie, what’s wrong? Tell me.”

“It’s too soon,” she said into the pillow she crushed at her mouth.

“What’s too soon? What do you mean?”

“To be certain . . .” She turned back, showing him her burning eyes. “I’ve a feeling I’m . . .” She crushed herself against him, weeping.

“Pregnant?”

“Yes.”

“But why the tears?” He wiped her cheeks. “That would be wonderful.”

“It makes me feel all the more . . .” She could barely bring herself to say it. “Alone.”

“Nellie, I’m home. For keeps.”

“Colman, what’s horrible and devastating—I don’t believe you. You’ve left so often. It’s so . . .”

“I swear it, Nell. The same oath I gave to them I give to you. The very same.” He waited for that to have its effect on her.

It did. “I won’t hold you to it,” she said, sniffing, “if I’m not . . .”

“Don’t be a fool. I’m home for you. Not for your belly. Whether it’s empty or full.” He ran his hand down over her navel. She raised her mouth to him and he kissed her.

“When will you know?”

“Very soon. Very.” She pressed his hand down on herself and they kissed again.

The day that Nellie knew for certain she was pregnant was the same day the terrible news came from London.

The Irish Independent for Wednesday, January 2, carried the blatant headline “P.M. Says Ireland Capitulates!” The news story described a speech Lloyd George had made to the House of Commons on the occasion of the start of the Irish Dail’s official consideration of the treaty. Lloyd George declared, “The representatives of Dublin yielded on every point of the English agenda, including and especially so, the Oath of Allegiance. Every Irishman’s representative in the Dail must swear it, and the King collects his due each time over.”

“The son of a bitch!” Brady cried, slamming the paper down on the table. “The lying son of a bitch! It was ‘faithfulness,’ not ‘allegiance’! Bloody goddamn ‘faithfulness’!”

“What’s the difference?” Nellie asked in all innocence.

Colman turned on her. “What do you mean ‘What’s the difference?’ The difference is we negotiated in good faith, which that bastard is going to exploit to assure the humiliation of Ireland.” Colman opened the paper again to reread the article. Shaking his head, engrossed, gone from her, he said out loud but to himself, “They’ll kill Mick and Dev with this. They’ll kill them!”

Brady was half right.

Lloyd George’s gloating convinced those who called themselves separatists that with acceptance of the treaty all hope of gaining the full measure of Irish freedom would be forfeit. They denounced the English concessions as bribes to defer the real freedom—a declaration of independence entire from the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth. They had taken an oath to the Republic, and if war was the only alternative to the Republic, then it must be faced. Those who sought to put that war away from Ireland were traitors.

“De Valera Denounces Treaty!” the headline blared a week later.

Brady couldn’t believe it. He read the story in shock and rage. In his speeches before the Dail De Valera sided with the separatists against Collins, who was cast in the role of appeaser and sellout. Something clicked in Colman. Betrayal from Lloyd George was one thing. But De Valera! “Eyes front,” Mick had said, “present arms, forward march, and shoot yourself!”

“Nellie,” he said, “they’re killing Mick. They’re killing him.”

Colman was white as bleached bone, flat up against the wall in the kitchen. The mid-January freeze was on and he was shivering. She would have gone to him and held him. But she heard him clearly. She knew before he did what he was saying. She felt like wrung rags. She knew she should eat something. But the thought of food stirred the bile in her throat.

Colman’s eyes were fixed on the beam in the ceiling. She saw the paper spread on the table.

“I don’t understand,” she said wearily, taking a seat. She pushed the paper away.

“Nor do I. The President lied.”

“Some lies go farther than the truth.”

“What the hell does that mean?” he asked, looking at her sharply.

“You’re going.” She was resignation itself.

“You bloody martyr! I hate it when you whine!”

“You swore you wouldn’t go!”

“I haven’t even broached the subject!”

“But you’re going. It’s written all over you.”

“You’ll be crushed if I don’t. What wound would you lick? What pussy sore would you rub in my face? You bitch, goddamn it!” He slammed his fist on the table in front of her with such force that the wood cracked. A teacup fell to the floor and broke into pieces.

They stared at each other in silence.

Finally Nellie said, “He probably needs you more than I do.”

“I imagine he does, Nellie,” Colman said with a bitter nod. “I’ll say this; he never invited me to leave.”

“You don’t want a martyr. Neither do I. Go.”

She infuriated him. His anger prepared him to go, but he could not. If he went, he knew, it would be only to spite her.

There would be no winners in Dublin. The Dail would eat itself. It was more crucial than ever to stay out of it. Collins could stay afloat alright. What could Brady possibly do there? “I made my oath to you. It’s not martyrdom to keep it. There are splintered words enough in this country without my adding to the pile.”

“I don’t care.”

“Well, I do. This is my home, my farm. You have my oath. You carry my child. I’m here for myself, not merely for you.”

“Merely.” Nellie rose, wrapped her shawl around her shoulders and walked with as much dignity as she could muster through the door and out into the freezing yard. She went into the jakes, where, amid the stench of waste, mold, and lime, she vomited and wept.

Brady went to his barn and shoveled feed at his cows.

From that day on he was slower at his chores even than before. He habitually bundled himself in his slicker, for the air was always some degree of wet, and made across the hills, wandering pointlessly. When his neighbors greeted him he would stop for a chat but, soon restless, would move on quickly. He ended his daily meanderings at Morrissey’s, hoping for the papers up from Clonmel.

“Hey, Peadar,” he said to Kelley coming in one day. It was a week after his fight with Nell, and he sought a refuge from her silence as much as his pint. Kelley was leaning on the rail. Andrew Morrissey, who’d lost his son Richard in the Purcival ambush, was craning over a paper, the Independent.

“The treaty won,” Kelley said. “Mick Collins’s side won.”

“Mother of God!” Colman said, crossing to see. “Dail Approves Treaty,” he read, “64- 57.” When he looked up he saw that Morrissey was weeping as he read. Brady resumed reading. An ache he had ignored flared up in him. He did want to be there. “When the Clerk to the Dail, Mr. Diarmud Hegarty, declared the result of the vote, Mr. de Valera rose slowly to his full height and declared, ‘It will be my duty to resign my office as Chief of the Executive.’ He was interrupted by loud cries of ‘No! No!’ which he silenced by raising his hand palm outward. ‘The people established the Republic and only they can disestablish it. This vote changes nothing!’ Then Mr. de Valera sat. There was applause throughout the Chamber.

“Mr. Collins then rose and, looking at Mr. de Valera, said, ‘I don’t regard the passing of this thing as establishing or disestablishing anything. Many things have been said against me, but I say this here and now. We are still one nation! And I have just as high a regard for those opposite as I have always had. The President knows how I tried to do my best for him and he is exactly in the same position in my heart now as always.’ Mr. Collins paused emotionally before adding, ‘What I propose is a joint committee of the two sides to arrive at . . . ’

“Before he finished, Mr. de Valera stood again and interrupted, saying, ‘A Joint Committee at this time would be frivolous. Faithful Republicans should henceforth convene in separate caucus.’

“Mr. Collins cried, ‘Dev! Dev! Don’t say that! Our common love of Ireland allows us the right to differ!’

“Mr. de Valera removed his glasses and said, ‘Before we leave I should like to have a last word as your honored President. Up to this we have had a glorious record of four years of magnificent discipline in our nation. The world is looking at us now . . . ’

“He got no further. Overcome by emotion he broke down, resumed his chair and sat for a moment with his face buried in his hands. He made one attempt to stand again, but failed, collapsing. His shoulders shook. The painful silence was soon broken in every part of the Chamber as men on both sides of the issue, including this reporter, sobbed and wept like children.”

Brady looked up at Andrew Morrissey, whose face was wet with tears. He looked older than ever. He seemed unable to focus his eyes. Colman looked at the paper again. They love it, he thought, this misery, they bleeding love it!

“What do you think, Colman?” Kelley asked.

“I think, Peadar, the curse of God sits on us. Snap out of it, Andrew. I need my pint.”

Morrissey drew him a Guinness. Brady raised it to the two of them. “Here’s to a life in Ireland, fellows.” And then he downed the drink, thinking for the first time in his life that the only Irish with real brains and real nerve were in Australia or the States.

“No, I mean,” Kelley pressed, “what do you think of Collins? What’ll he do now?”

Brady shrugged. “What he did before. The country’ll survive the loss of Dev. Mick won the vote, thank God.” Maybe now Brady’s guilt at having left him would evaporate.

“But Dev’s got an army.”

“Don’t be a fool, Peadar. The government is Mick’s now. De Valera’s gang will gripe for a month and then come along. They have no choice.”

“Not after last night.”

Brady glared at Kelley. “Last night? What of it?”

“I just come up from Clonmel. Dev’s boys hit the barracks armory, got themselves the whole Brit arsenal: Sterling rifles, Brownings, machine guns, Colts, Welbys, and bullets to go with.”

“That’s not possible! The Auxies would have smashed them like bugs.”

“The Auxies left yesterday. The Brits have been pulling out all week, since the treaty’s passed and signed.”

“But they wouldn’t leave behind their weapons!” Brady was incredulous and afraid. If the malcontents were armed, then by God, Collins was in dutch.

“They did,” Kelley asserted. “Fellow at the GPO told me it was the same everywhere. The Brits left their stockpile behind, a little fare-thee-well, and passed the word on to Dev, so as to . . .” Kelley drank.

Brady stopped listening to him. Of course! Just like the English bastards to give Ireland not only a measure of freedom, but also a civil war! And Dev played right into it! How Mick must be tormented, Brady thought. But Mick would hold his turf, he assured himself. Mick would be alright. Brady accepted another pint from Andrew and drank.

“And you know what else?” Kelley tugged at Brady’s sleeve, bringing him back. “The foray into the Brit barracks in Clonmel, guess who led it. Guess who was one of the first to declare his eternal loyalty to De Valera and enmity to Mick and the Free State traitors. Guess.”

“No, Peadar,” Brady said evenly. “Tell me.”

“Gavin, the son of a bitch. Peter goddamn Gavin.”

Brady made no comment. He shook his head, finished his pint and left the pub, out into the soft January drizzle. Australia? he wondered. Should it be Australia or the States?

But it would be neither, and he knew it. Irishmen with land did not leave. There was treason enough in that country without his adding to it. So, after that, Colman Brady forced himself to concentrate on the winter chores. Over the next months he shored up the sagging beams of the barn and built a new shed adjoining it. He repaired harnesses and sharpened tools and brought up new seed from Dungarvan. He was determined to make the spring crop the best yet, and he continually forced thoughts of Collins and the worsening civil war from his mind. He even began avoiding Morrissey’s, where the talk was of little else. He and Nell arrived at a cool truce of their own. She was having a hard time of it with the child and spent most of the winter in bed. Conor and Bea spent as much time as they could at the school and with their mates. They hated the mood of the house, which, though free of outbursts, seemed grimly uneasy to them.

One morning in May Colman was digging a ditch to drain the bog at the southeast corner of his field. The spring rains had soaked the earth. No more water could be absorbed. If he didn’t find a way to spill off the pools, a third of his barley seed would rot before it sprouted. While he was at work the moving speck of an auto on the road from Ballymacarberry caught his eye. He ignored it at first. More and more motor traffic could be seen in the Nire, but this one headed west at the fork instead of north toward Clonmel. That was when Brady began to watch it between spades full of muck.

He stopped shoveling altogether when the auto halted at the point in the road nearest his field a quarter of a mile away. He thought at first it was stuck in the mud, but then he saw a figure walking away from the car and into Landers’s pasture. It was a man, a large man. A thought crossed Brady’s mind, but he dismissed it. It was impossible. It could not be Collins.

But it was.

Brady began digging again, channeling his sudden overwhelming emotion into the act. How could Collins be here? What did he want? How could he ever face the commandant now? He pretended not to know that Mick was drawing up behind him.

“Colman Brady.”

Colman straightened and turned and feigned surprise with an unnatural smile. “Commandant,” he said heartily. But he was shocked by Collins’s appearance. He looked tired, dangerously exhausted. His eyes were sunk in dark hollows and the skin on his face was pale, nearly the white of chalk. He was wearing city clothes, and their loose fit betrayed the enormous loss of weight. How different was this arrival from that other time! Collins’s shoes were ruined and mud was spattered on his serge trousers.

“Colman Brady,” Collins said again.

“Hello, Mick.”

The silence hung stubbornly between them.

Collins coughed. He bent momentarily with the force of it, and when he straightened his eyes were glazed. “You recognize me,” he said.

“You look unwell.”

“I meant it’s been so long.” Collins coughed again.

The sound of it went through Brady. The last question he wanted to ask was the only one he could think of. “How goes it, Mick?”

Collins smiled morosely. “Splendidly. We’ve a stout roaring war going. The glamor of bearing arms for one’s principles is irresistible. The young prefer it to clerking at the post office. We’ve thousands of recruits. So does Dev. Lads who couldn’t see their way to join us against England are leaping in for a crack at their cousins. Patriots all, enthusiasts, unfettered by common sense. I hate them.” Collins started to cough.

Do you hate me, Mick? Brady wanted to ask. Instead he said, “And the campaign?”

“Dev’s boys took the Four Courts.”

“I heard.” The Republicans had seized the huge judicial building in Dublin at the end of April.

“Oh?” Collins said. “Did you hear about Hunt?” Ginger Hunt was second-in-command to Collins, his chief of staff.

“No.”

“He’s been kidnapped and they’ve got him at the Courts. They’re holding him hostage. Dev swears to kill him if I attack.”

“Mick . . .” Colman wanted to ask Collins not to tell him more, but the general went on. He was using his own agony as a blade.

“Churchill says if I don’t attack, he’ll take ‘full liberty of action.’ I’m fighting against Irishmen to appease Englishmen.”

Brady did his best to ignore the despair in Collins, but Collins had indulged it as much as he would that day. He corrected his posture and altered his tone. “And you, old friend, how are you?”

“Well, Mick, thank you. Up to my knees in cow dung, as you can see.”

The general laughed. “Same as me, only yours has the manners to be the real thing. I’ve thought about you, Colman. How’s Nell?”

“She’s having it hard with the kipper.”

Genuine concern showed in Collins’s eyes. His face softened and he seemed about to step toward Brady. “God, Colman, I hope she’s alright.”

Brady was not prepared for a taste of Mick’s love. He felt a jolt of emotion, a fresh dose of guilt at having failed both this man and his wife. He felt an acutely physical desire for the old camaraderie he’d had with him and a like desire, simultaneously, for the unstilted fondness he’d had for Nell. Brady tried to smile, but his face cracked like wax. He had been holding himself rigid—against such feelings—for months. He was afraid now of being overwhelmed by them. “She’s a strong lass, Mick,” he said. “She’ll weather it.”

“I envy you your love, amico. You were right about me.”

Oh, if you knew, Brady thought. But he said, “Yes. I’ve been blessed,” and hated himself instantly for the sentimental falsehood. What if he simply told Collins the truth? That he was a moody solitary man unworthy of anyone’s love, much less Nell’s, much less Mick’s. That he hated the farm and the dull, mean narrowness of bucolic life. That he longed for a board on which to stand with his lever from which to move—as he knew he could!—the damned earth itself! That was the truth! The arrogant, prideful evil of it. It terrified him and left him nothing but this grim, resigned detachment. Colman Brady was tasting suddenly his own despair, the ashes of it.

Michael Collins saw none of that, not because his faculty for reading men failed him, but because he chose to see none of it. He had come to Four Mile Water because he needed, however vaguely, a blast of Brady’s strength. He was surrounded in his command by desperate failures. Brady’s very distance from the war had come to represent his wisdom, his capacity for deeper loyalties than those which had driven Ireland to its orgy of fratricide. Collins turned and looked up at the megalith that dominated the hill. “It’s still here,” he said as if amazed.

“Aye. After two thousand years, that’s dependable.”

Collins grinned at him. “You’ve a stone like that in you somewhere, you bloody Druid.”

“I’ve that stone in me, Mick.”

Collins nodded.

“What brought you here?” Brady asked.

“I’ve been feeling . . . very done up. Colman, I need you.”

Brady thought Collins was going to collapse right there in the mud. For his part, he did feel that ancient stone, its strength, its chill. “Mick, what could I do?”

“You could take Hunt’s place at my side.”

“You know I can’t. I can’t leave Nell.”

Anger welled up in Collins, not aimed at Brady exactly, for his further refusal, but at the irony; what Collins needed in Brady was the very thing that made his refusal inevitable. If Brady said yes and came, Collins knew, he would soon be a walking carcass like the rest of them and therefore useless. But still Collins pressed, “But what of Ireland, amico?”

“What of it?”

“You ask the question coldly, friend. Have you no feeling for your country at a time when she’s on the cross?”

“My only feeling in the matter, Commandant, is for you.”

“Stop, Brady!” The general felt the truth of Brady’s statement. He knew it and he could not bear it. “Stop,” he repeated weakly. “This island is afloat on lies.” Then he gave in to a new fit of coughing.

Colman stepped toward him to touch him, but Collins raised his arm. “No,” he said. “That’s the point, isn’t it?”

Brady did not answer.

The general turned and stumbled away from him, lurching across the field. Colman shuddered to think that that was how he would have to remember Michael Collins.

Two days later, the first shell was fired under Collins’s orders from a British artillery piece. He knew that if the new state were going to survive, much of Dublin would have to be destroyed. Later, after the Free State bombardment ceased, the Four Courts with its garrison of rebel Irishmen had been blown sky-high. O’Connell Street north of Nelson’s Pillar was irrevocably ablaze. The Gresham and the Hammar were destroyed. Ginger Hunt had been executed as promised, and dozens of Collins’s old comrades were dead. The rebels were driven out of Dublin.

On June third Collins received a telegram from Winston Churchill. “If I refrain from congratulations,” it said, “it is only because I do not wish to embarrass you.”

Collins carried the assault then to the country outside Dublin, and he mustered from himself and from his men renewed energies that came from the desperation to bring the war to an end. His own brush with physical collapse had frightened him terribly, and, if he recovered from it, it was because he willed to. He wanted, among other things, to spite Brady for his pity. By the end of spring he was fit again and rolling.

The Republicans had the initial advantage of holding a large proportion of the barracks in the regions of Munster and Connaught vacated by the British. Macready had enabled that. The land from Waterford to Limerick and most of the country to the south was in their hands. But the killing of the Four Courts leaders had resulted in confusion. De Valera was in hiding. The National Army under Collins was superbly led, and its summer campaign was coordinated and brilliant.

Four Mile Water was in territory more or less controlled by the Republicans, but it was far removed from the fighting. The army barracks in Clonmel, which had once quartered Purcival’s men, were now occupied by De Valera’s. But they were a motley group, inexperienced boys mainly, and their isolated offensives in the area were pointless and ineffective.

Once Peter Gavin, who was one of them, went home for a visit. He was an officer, a captain, and that alone, in the opinion of his neighbors, was reason enough to think the Republicans would lose.

He’d been drinking in Morrissey’s all afternoon when Colman Brady arrived for his pint before dinner.

“You,” Gavin said drunkenly, staring at Brady.

“Hello, Peter,” Colman said, and then to Dick Morrissey behind the bar, “half, Richard, if you please.” Brady reached past Gavin to get his glass of stout.

The others gave them room, drawing back the way leaves turn over before thunder.

“You heard this one, Colman Brady?” And with that Gavin threw his head back and began to sing. He had a good voice, and he sang with a drunk’s energy, eyeing Brady all the while.

“England blew the bugle/And threw the gauntlet down/And Michael sent the boys in green/to level Dublin town.”

“Don’t sing that song in here, Peter,” Brady said quietly.

“Why not?”

“Because I said not to, Peter.”

“Do I detect an implication of condescension in your voice, Brady?”

“It’s not an implication, Peter.”

“Your problem, Brady, is your cowardly indifference to your country.”

Brady drank his glass off and then faced Gavin. “That’s not my problem, Peter. It’s my solution.” Brady winked and smiled.

Gavin drunkenly took a swing at him, but Colman easily seized his forearm before the blow landed. He held it firmly.

“Peter, you get out of here.”

“You’re hurting my arm.”

“Don’t darken these roads with your shadow until this shit is ended!”

Gavin left Four Mile Water then, but with an oath to himself and to God that he would return.