EIGHT

‘How long d’you think he’ll be?’ Connie asked Matt.

‘How should I know,’ Matt answered shortly, anxiety for his younger son’s disappearance and his elder son’s mission to find him making him tetchy and his voice sharp. ‘It’s a tidy walk to Dublin, you know, if he doesn’t catch up with him on the road somewhere. And that’s not the whole of it. Dublin’s not like Blessington, a wee small place where everyone knows everyone else’s business. Sure, I would say there are numerous places there where a young man not wishing to be found could hide out.’

So that’s it, Rosie thought. Could take any time at all. It was like asking how long was a piece of string. She sighed, the burden of what she knew about the hidden arms weighing heavily on her, and she wondered for the umpteenth time if she should tell them. But for what? She doubted that knowledge would make them feel better and she remembered Phelan’s warnings well enough. There was no way she would risk bringing further danger or sorrow on this family.

The following day she wrapped Bernadette in her shawl, picked up the chocolates and sweets she had bought as presents, and went across the fields to her parents’ house. Bernadette was becoming more beautiful every day. Now her fair hair was beginning to curl as she grew, just like Dermot’s, much to his delight. Her eyes, though, were a deep lilac-blue, ringed with dark lashes, while her nose was a cute button. Her mouth was wide and when she smiled you could see her four little teeth at the front. She was going on for ten months old now and could say some words and pull herself up on the furniture. Rosie loved the very bones of her, as did all the Walshes and Rosie’s sisters, while Dermot continued to be enchanted by her every word or action.

Rosie’s parents took little notice of their only grandchild and Rosie tried not to mind, telling herself it was only what she’d come to expect, but she’d have loved to discuss the baby’s progress with her mother, or laugh together at something she did.

But all Minnie was interested in now was Dermot having sneaked away to their house the previous day. ‘And with not so much as a by-your-leave,’ she cried, indicating the boy standing before her, his face flushed and shuffling his feet on the stone floor of the cottage.

Rosie knew he’d told his parents nothing about the letter, either before he delivered it or after, and she was pleased. Connie had advised Rosie to say nothing of Phelan’s disappearing and Danny in pursuit if Dermot hadn’t already. ‘Sure, we don’t want half the county alerted,’ she’d said. ‘They might be back before we realise they’ve gone and least said, you know…’

So Rosie didn’t enlighten her parents to the reason for Dermot’s visit the previous day, but stung by their indifference to her child and by the discoloured bruise on Geraldine’s cheek, she cried out, ‘Why shouldn’t he come and see me, his own sister, and the wee baby he’s uncle to? As for not asking permission, if you’d let him come when he wants, he’d not have to sneak away.’

‘When I want advice on how to bring up my own son, I’ll ask you,’ Minnie snapped back.

‘Aye,’ Rosie commented wryly. ‘That’ll be the day, but I’m warning you now, tying the boy to your apron strings is not the way to go on. No wonder he deceives you.’

Never had Rosie spoken in such a way to her mother and she looked at Minnie’s outraged face after her outburst and wondered if she’d order her from the house. ‘Look,’ she continued in a conciliatory way. ‘Let’s not quarrel. Never mind what Dermot did yesterday. Today is a new day. Let’s sit down to the fine meal Chrissie and Geraldine have got ready, and after it I’ll share the sweets and chocolates I have with me.’

‘Well,’ Minnie said at last. ‘I’ve never been spoken to in such a way before. I hope you don’t think, Rosie, because you’re a married woman you can show such lack of respect for your parents. We’ll say nothing about it this time, but I’d like you to remember it for the future.’

Rosie bit her lip and took the rebuke without any retort. She heard her sisters’ small sighs of relief and saw the look of gratitude Dermot flashed her.

The next day, the Walsh girls, returning to work after the Bank Holiday, came home in a state of great agitation. ‘There’s been a rebel uprising in Dublin,’ Sarah said. ‘I hope to God Sam and Phelan aren’t mixed up in it.’

‘What did you say?’ Matt asked, shocked.

‘An uprising, Daddy. It’s the talk of the place. We brought you the Dublin Express to see for yourself,’ Sarah told him, handing her father the paper. The main picture showed Dublin’s General Post Office with British soldiers littering the ground before it. From the roof there fluttered two flags and the reporter described them. One was the tricolour flag of Ireland and the other a green flag emblazoned with a harp and the words ‘Ireland’s Republic’.

‘They have taken areas on both sides of the Liffey,’ Matt read out to Connie and Rosie, who had stopped their preparations for the meal at the girls’ news. ‘They also hold the South Dublin Union, The Four Courts and Boland’s Mill,’ Matt went on, pointing at the pictures in the paper.

‘By Christ,’ he declared. ‘What in God’s name are they thinking of?’

‘You don’t think they have a hope then, Daddy?’ Sarah said.

Matt answered gently. He knew she was thinking of Sam, and he was thinking of his sons, one possibly embroiled in the mayhem and the other walking straight into danger because of him. ‘How could it succeed, cutie dear? It’s like tipping a bucket of water into the Liffey and hoping to make a difference, even ten buckets, a hundred buckets.’

Rosie’s mouth was so dry she could barely speak. Fear clutched at her heart. Her Danny, her darling husband, was marching straight into that hell-hole, and all because of bloody Phelan! Surely to God Danny was too sensible to get involved? He was totally against any rebel activity. It wasn’t his way. He was a farmer, a pacifist, and although he wanted Home Rule and a united Ireland as well as the next man, he wouldn’t think it would be achieved by taking on the might of the British Army.

Connie listened horror-struck to Matt’s words and her heart seemed to stop. Phelan wouldn’t be involved in any of this. He was but a boy, only fourteen years old. But if he was and she’d charged Danny to bring him home…Oh God, it didn’t bear thinking about. Her two boys…

With her heart hammering against her ribs and fear showing in every vestige of her face, she said, ‘Phelan wouldn’t get mixed up in this, sure he wouldn’t?’

It was a plea to Matt, a plea for him to tell her of course Phelan wouldn’t. But Matt had worked alongside the boy day after day and knew more of his views than Connie. The look he cast her spoke volumes and she moaned, ‘Oh dear Christ, no.’

Rosie could stand no more. She put down the plates she’d been holding since Sarah and Elizabeth had burst through the door and took the cutlery Connie clutched in her hands, putting it on the table and holding Connie tight, two women in distress, taking comfort and giving comfort. Rosie’s cheeks were wet when she released Connie. ‘Come,’ she said, leading her before the fire. ‘Sit down, I have something to say to you all.’

She knew then she had to tell them of the cache of weapons she and Dermot had found. The veil of secrecy hardly mattered now, and she knew the place would be cleared. Every gun and bullet would be needed for this uprising and though she doubted her news would help the family, she couldn’t let them go on in ignorance.

Rosie crouched before her mother-in-law and told them every last detail.

‘Why didn’t you tell us sooner?’ Matt asked, stunned.

‘What difference would it have made, Daddy?’ Rosie asked, raising her head to face him.

‘I could have kept a weather eye on him,’ Matt said. ‘Stopped it going this far.’

‘Daddy, no-one could have stopped him,’ Rosie said. ‘He was fully committed to it. I know that much. Anyway, he swore Dermot and I to secrecy. He said if news of where the guns were stored got out, revenge could easily be taken by some of the desperate men of the Brotherhood. I was scared and yes, I admit it, but I wasn’t only scared for myself and Dermot, I was frightened for all of you. How could I tell you after Phelan said that, and put you all in danger?’

‘That’s what made you so jumpy and nervy?’ Connie said, remembering back. ‘Danny couldn’t understand what was the matter.’

‘I hated keeping it secret from you, but the alternative seemed worse.’

‘Aye,’ Connie said with a sigh. ‘You could do little else.’

‘Well what’s to be done?’ Sarah cried. ‘We can’t just sit here and…’

‘That’s exactly what we must do, all we can do is sit here,’ Matt said.

‘Maybe Danny will send news to us soon,’ Rosie said. ‘He told me he’d try to if he couldn’t bring Phelan back with him straight away.’

‘Let’s hang on to that at least,’ Matt said. ‘And we’ll hope and pray for the safety of both our boys and Sam too. I’m away up to the Fergusons after my dinner to see for myself if Willie has any more news of Shay.’

But Willie Ferguson knew nothing further, Matt told his family on his return, though whatever was in the offing, Shay and Niall were fully involved, for both were missing too.

The next day and the one after, Connie expected a letter, a telegram even, to say they were safe, but nothing came and each evening the girls brought home the Dublin Express.

It made grim reading and brought only further heartache. There were other minor insurrections in County Meath, Galway and Wexford, the paper reported, but the skirmishes were brought under control quickly, the rebel leaders dealt with and martial law declared.

On Wednesday evening they heard of the ship Helga that had sailed unchallenged up the Liffey and begun bombarding Liberty Hall, the headquarters of the Citizens’ Army. British guns had been set up in Trinity College and were shelling Sackville Street and the General Post Office buildings, while rebels ambushed a party of ten thousand reinforcement soldiers at Mount Street Bridge, on their way from the harbour at Kingstown. Another gang of rebels had assembled in St Stephen’s Green.

There had been heavy British casualties, but eventually the rebels were forced out of the Green and into the Royal College of Surgeons. But by then the whole centre of Dublin was burning.

Food was not getting through to the shops, the paper reported. Normal life for the average Dubliner had stopped. The centre was a no-go area with the army shooting anything or anybody that moved and while Dublin burned, its citizens starved.

Friday’s paper told of further reinforcements pouring into the city and the evacuation of the General Post Office. ‘This must be it,’ Matt commented. ‘They can’t hold out any longer, surely to God.’

He looked around at the womenfolk, all ashen-faced, and admired their stoicism even though sorrow was deeply etched on their faces. He was coming to realise that he might never see either of his sons again and he wondered if they’d thought that far ahead.

Rosie had. She took Bernadette into bed with her at nights, for the big bed seemed very empty. She was more precious than ever, a wee part of Danny, and, Rosie thought, all she might ever have of him again. She’d never known worry before, she realised, not this gnawing, nagging worry that seemed to occupy every hour of the day. It had lodged like a hard immovable lump in her stomach.

She wished she could do something other than read about what was happening in her capital city a few miles away, but each night she’d see the shattered and shelled buildings in the pages of the newspaper and hear of the Dubliners trapped in their homes and knew she could do nothing but wait and pray.

And then, as suddenly as it had begun, it was over. Matt had gone into Blessington especially to buy the evening paper, as Elizabeth and Sarah finished work at lunchtime on Saturday.

That night they sat around the table and discussed the surrender. ‘Maybe I should go and see the situation for myself, Matt said.

‘How could you?’ Connie snapped. ‘Dear Christ, aren’t you run off your feet already and this the busiest time on the farm?’

Rosie glanced at her father-in-law. She knew Connie spoke the truth for the farm work was usually split between Matt and his two sons. Matt was out from dawn till way past dusk each evening and his face was often grey with fatigue.

And yet she understood his need to know, to do something other than sit there and wait. It was killing her too. Someone had to go to Dublin Town and see what had happened to Danny. Phelan could jump into the Liffey for all she cared, yet she knew that Connie would want news of him too. She was also becoming fast aware that she was the only one who could go, for she could hardly expect an older woman like Connie to do it and Elizabeth and Sarah had jobs to go to.

But Rosie had gone nowhere all her life except Blessington village. She was not a seasoned traveller who could nip onto a tram with ease as if she’d done it every day of her life, and now the thought of visiting that war-ravaged city filled her with dread. She remembered the pictures in the paper, the shattered and burned buildings and the ground around littered with the bodies of soldiers and felt a shudder run through her. When she spoke, however, her voice was firm and determined so no-one could guess at her true feelings. ‘I’ll go,’ she said suddenly. ‘That is, if you’ll mind Bernadette – I can’t take her with me.’

‘Oh Rosie! Dear God. Don’t do this,’ Connie said.

‘I must, Mammy,’ Rosie said firmly. ‘Danny means the world to me. If…if he’s dead, I have to know, I’d want him brought home and buried decently.’

‘But it’s dangerous.’

‘No more, Mammy,’ Rosie said. ‘And don’t tell me you don’t want to know what has happened to Danny and…and Phelan?’

She had trouble even saying the young boy’s name. She knew if Danny died, she’d not forgive Phelan for as long as she lived. But maybe he lay dead too. She couldn’t go on like this. She’d have to go and find out, but for all her brave words to her mother-in-law she was terrified of what she’d see and hear there.

She didn’t allow herself to think of it any more though. Instead, she said, ‘I shall go on Monday morning if you’ll see to Bernadette.’

‘Ah cutie dear, do you have to ask?’ Connie said. ‘I’ll look after her and welcome, if you are determined.’

‘Aye, Mammy, I am,’ Rosie said.

‘I wish I could go with you,’ Sarah said wistfully. ‘But we’re rushed off our feet. The supervisor, Mrs Clancy, would take a dim view of it altogether. She’s never had any sympathy with the uprising at all. She’s called them irresponsible hotheads from the beginning and said that they deserved all they got. She won’t even allow us to discuss it at work.’

‘I’ll find out about Sam for you too.’ Rosie said, knowing why Sarah would like to be the one to go.

‘Sam!’ Sarah cried with a defiant lift of her head that sent her black curls bouncing. ‘Don’t worry about him, Rosie, he’s nothing to me. Did he think of me when he went running off with the other halfwits he’d been playing soldiers with? He did not. Well, he can go hang for I shan’t care if he’s alive or dead.’

But Rosie knew that feelings for someone could not be turned off like that and saw the deep hurt reflected in Sarah’s haunted eyes.

The following day, after a big Sunday dinner which she could barely touch, Rosie went off to her parents’ house. She seldom went on Sundays, but wanted to tell them of her decision to go to Dublin the following day. She didn’t expect their support, which was as well, for she didn’t get it. They were scornful of the rebels’ abortive stand and thought her plain mad to go running to Dublin to see for herself. Chrissie and Geraldine, on the other hand, were astounded at her bravery and Dermot gazed at her with pure awe.

It was Geraldine who walked her to the gate as she left and said as soon as they were out of earshot of the house, ‘I wish I could go with you for I’ll worry about you every minute until you’re back.’

Going home, Rosie thought she’d be glad of Geraldine’s company, anyone’s company in fact. Anyone to help still the panic that rose in her every time she thought of going to Dublin and someone to stand beside her when she found out what exactly had happened to Danny.

But there was no help available. She would have to overcome her fear and panic and so she resolved to set off, resolutely and alone, the next morning.

Just a little later she stopped dead at the farmhouse door and stared at Phelan as he sat on a dining chair beside the table which Connie was piling with food. Rosie didn’t take into account Phelan’s gaunt state, nor his white, strained face and red-rimmed eyes. He, who’d begun it all, was here, alive, at home in his kitchen, food piled around him like the prodigal son. Anger coursed through her veins. ‘Where’s Danny?’ she demanded.

Phelan looked at her with eyes full of sorrow and shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’

Rosie put Bernadette down, leaped across the floor and yanked Phelan out of the chair and she shook him violently.

‘Here, here,’ Matt said, pulling Rosie away from Phelan but holding her tight against him, his arms wrapped around her in support.

But Rosie needed answers and she continued to yell at Phelan. ‘What d’you mean you don’t know? You must know, you were there, for Christ’s sake.’

‘Leave the boy now,’ Connie said, touching Rosie’s arm. ‘Let him eat. He’ll tell us all in time.’

Rosie sank into a chair and put her head in her hands and wept, for Phelan’s presence, without his brother and also without any news of him, seemed to bode only ill.

Phelan didn’t tell them all, he couldn’t, but he told them enough and as Rosie listened she rocked her daughter on her knee. Bernadette’s warm presence tucked against her mother soothed her and helped a little to ease the aching dread in her heart.

‘I suppose now you know I was a member of the Brotherhood?’ Phelan said with a glance around at them all.

‘We know,’ Matt said heavily, ‘though Rosie didn’t tell us all immediately. Apparently you charged her not to.’

‘Aye’ Phelan said. ‘I did, but only because I was feared for her.’

‘All right,’ Matt said sharply. ‘We know now you haven’t the brains you were born with to join such a crackpot organisation, so tell us the rest. What use was a young boy like you to them?’

‘Well, at first I was just a messenger, and Niall too,’ Phelan said. ‘I didn’t know Danny was looking for me. He’d have had a job tracking me down because I was all over the place. Anyway, Dublin wasn’t the safest place in the world to walk about looking for someone.’

Phelan stopped there. How could he tell them, his family, of the exhilaration that had filled him at being part of it all at first? That thought had sustained him in the long march to Dublin and when they’d reached the capital and he’d seen the other rebel groups assembled there, he’d felt his heart almost overflow with pride. He couldn’t share this. They wouldn’t understand. Unless a person had been there they couldn’t. He decided to stick to the bare facts instead and so he went on, ‘Even for me and Niall it was scary stuff, going from one rebel stronghold to another with messages. By Tuesday evening it was decided it was too dangerous for us to go on and we’d be more useful with a rifle in our hands.

‘We were sent to houses overlooking Mount Street Bridge. More reinforcements from England were expected on Wednesday and they had to cross the bridge from Kingstown Harbour – we were to try and keep them back.’

Again Phelan stopped. He remembered the commander of the few men stationed in the house asking him, ‘You handled a rifle before, son?’

‘Aye, sir. We have a farm. I’ve been handling a rifle since I was twelve.’ He hadn’t added that that was a mere two years before. ‘And then I’ve been a member of the Brotherhood these past months.’

Not, of course, that they fired many shots there; each bullet was too precious to waste. ‘Each one is for an English heart,’ as Shay would say.

Phelan had remembered standing at the upstairs window early that Wednesday morning. The sun hadn’t broken through the mottled clouds and the sky was pink tinged and Phelan had watched in horrified amazement as the Helga sailed up the Liffey and began bombarding Liberty Hall. But a shout from below had brought his gaze away from the ship and back to the task in hand.

‘A large company of soldiers had unloaded at Kingstown.’ Phelan continued. ‘We were told to stand ready.’

He remembered his heart hammering against his ribs, and his hands so sticky with sweat he wondered whether he would be able to hold the rifle steady and pull the trigger. He had wondered too what good the handful of them would be against so many soldiers. There was rumoured to be ten thousand of them.

‘And then they were upon us. Wave after wave of them,’ Phelan said. ‘For all we killed, there was another ten to take their place. The commander had a machine gun and the rat-tat-tat of that was continuous as the men went down in rows.’

He didn’t tell his listening family how the killings had bothered him. He was a good shot, his rifle usually found its target, but Phelan had found it was one thing to kill a fox to save the poultry and to kill a rabbit for a pie or stew, but quite another to kill another living, breathing human being. Some of the soldiers had looked little older than him and they had jerked and fallen one after the other till the street ran with a scarlet stream of blood. More than once he had felt bile rise in his throat, but feeling sick had been a luxury he couldn’t allow himself and he had fought down the nausea as he lifted his rifle again.

‘Danny found me there,’ Phelan said. ‘It had died down by then and the soldiers had routed the lot in the Green and they’d retreated to the Royal College of Surgeons. We knew when they gave a mind to it they’d be back to finish us off, so we were making plans to leave when Danny arrived. He’d met Shay outside and spoken to him.’

‘So Shay’s alive?’

‘He was then,’ Phelan said. ‘And Danny, and your Sam, Sarah. Now, I don’t know. Danny wiped the floor with the man in charge about Niall and myself. He said he didn’t want to belong to a united Ireland won by weans. I was a bit mad hearing us described as weans, but Danny was so angry already with me, I didn’t want to give him further cause to go for me, so I kept quiet and so did Niall. He said we were too young to make that sort of commitment.

‘But then the man asked him what manner of Irishman Danny was, said that we’d joined the organisation of our own free will, and they needed every man they could get and he wasn’t letting anyone go. Danny was angry, raging mad, but so was every other man there and I was afraid Danny would get himself shot. Then Shay suggested Danny took our places.

‘I could see Danny wasn’t happy about it. I mean we all know what he felt from the beginning about the violence. But he knew that would be the only way that we would be released.

‘I begged and pleaded to be allowed to stay, but it was no good. Neither man would listen to me.’

He didn’t go on to say he and Niall had watched Danny take the oath of allegiance that the commander had insisted on. He’d sworn the same oath himself, alongside Niall, but theirs was now null and void because of their ages, while Phelan knew Danny’s oath would be for life. He knew there was no getting out of the Brotherhood once you were in it.

‘Shay smuggled us out,’ he went on. ‘Everyone was off the streets because the soldiers were taking pot-shots at any movement or sudden noise. Shay said there was a Captain Colthurst I had to watch out for, because he’d shoot the legs from under a person he didn’t like the look of. He’d killed four men stone dead just the previous day who weren’t even part of the uprising – four innocent men, gunned down for no reason. I told Shay I’d take good care not to come across him.

‘We were told to head for home, but neither of us could do that with Danny and Shay and Sam up to their necks in it, so we hung about the streets, taking care not to go too near the centre and be caught in the crossfire.

‘By the time we heard of the surrender on Saturday morning we were both light-headed with hunger and tiredness. We hung around for a bit to see if any would be released, but they marched the whole lot off. People said they were to be taken to a place called Kilmainham Jail. It was awful – the crowds pelted them with anything they could lay their hands on.’

‘I’m so sorry, Rosie,’ Phelan said sadly.

‘Sorry, huh,’ Rosie repeated bitterly. ‘That’s all right then, if you’re sorry,’ and then she pressed her face as close to Phelan as she could and said threateningly, ‘You’ll be sorrier before you’re much older if anything has happened to Danny. I’m off to Dublin to see for myself tomorrow.’

There was a howl of protest from Phelan, but Rosie would take no heed of it. She was determined to find out what had happened to her husband and she intended staying in Dublin until she did.