Rosie woke the following morning with a pounding headache after her fitful sleep and she wasn’t surprised for she was very apprehensive of what lay ahead of her. Of course, she wondered if Dublin would ever recover from the onslaught upon it. According to the papers, many of the fine buildings had been destroyed or damaged in some way. And for what? Damned all, that’s what. But what worried Rosie was the news Dublin might hold for her.
Matt Walsh, seeing the consternation on his daughter-in-law’s face, was more worried than ever at letting her go to Dublin alone. And he was equally worried about Phelan – seemed to be all at sixes and sevens and burdened down with shame. At least, Matt thought, he might have learned a lesson from it, but at what cost?
Willie Ferguson was all for sending Niall to America where he had relatives to try and keep him out of trouble, but Matt knew Connie would never agree to allow Phelan, at such a young age, to travel so far on his own. But then perhaps there was no need for it at all. When Rosie returned with the news from Dublin, whether it was good or bad, maybe they could learn to cope with it. At least they would know where they stood.
Connie insisted Rosie eat something before she went and she also packed some food in the bag she was taking with a change of clothes in. ‘I may not need them at all,’ Rosie told Connie, ‘for I may be home this evening, but I’ll not come home without news of Danny. This is just a precaution.’
‘Of course it is, darling child,’ Connie said. ‘And it’s madness to go so far and find out nothing. Anyway, I’d rather you wait till the next morning than try to get home after dark for the trams haven’t got lights and God knows, there’s been more than enough accidents, even deaths on them.
‘But mind,’ she went on, ‘find the Sisters of Mercy. Like I told you yesterday, I have an aunt in the order, Sister Cuthbert. They’re not just Holy Joes, you know, though I’m sure they pray more than enough: but they do great good besides helping the poor and sick and all. My aunt’s been in Birmingham, where they have another place, but I had a letter from her at Christmastime to say she’s back in Baggot Street in the place they call “The House of Mercy”. Anyone will tell you where it is. They’ll put you up for the night if you have to stay.’
Rosie was glad to have the name of a safe place if it was necessary and she thanked Connie and helped her pack a basket of provisions for Danny. ‘I’ve hard-boiled the six eggs,’ Connie said, ‘for Danny would hardly have anything to cook them on. And I’ve put him in some ham, a circle of soda bread, some slices of barnbrack, a bit of butter and cheese, and his pipe and a twist of baccy.’
‘Lovely, Mammy,’ Rosie said, wondering if her man would be alive to taste such delights. But she had to keep believing he was. ‘I’ve put him a clean shirt and jumper too. It will do to cover the basket as well.’
Connie suddenly bit her lip anxiously and cried out, ‘Oh God, Rosie, what if…?’
‘Mam, stop it!’ Rosie said firmly. ‘Grieve and cry when you have reason. Let me go and find out before we start speculating. My heart is already as heavy as lead. Don’t make things worse.’
She doubted if anything she said would make any difference, but thankfully Matt came in then and she knew Connie would not like to give way before him.
‘Are you ready?’ Matt asked. ‘We must be gone soon if you are to catch that tram.’
‘Aye, I’m ready, we can go as soon as I bid Bernadette goodbye,’ Rosie said, lifting the child in her arms as she kissed her and told her to be good for her granny and granddaddy.
‘She’ll be fine with us,’ Connie assured her.
‘Don’t I know that? If I had a minute’s doubt, I wouldn’t leave her.’ She hugged Bernadette tight again and the baby, although surprised to be scooped up in such a way, was only too ready for attention at any time. When Rosie eventually held the child away from her, Bernadette chuckled. She put her podgy baby hands on either side of her mother’s cheeks and laughed louder, while Rosie felt tears prick in her eyes to be leaving her behind.
But, she told herself, I owe it to Bernadette to find out whether she has a daddy or not, and so, with a melancholy sigh, she kissed her once more on the cheek and handed her to Connie. She followed Matt out to the cobbled yard where the horse and cart stood waiting, the horse tossing his head and snorting in his impatience to be off.
Phelan stood watching them from the door. Matt noticed Rosie’s slight stiffening as she spotted him and he barked at Phelan. ‘Don’t be standing about, boy, when there’s work to be done. Have you weeded the onions?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Well get to it unless you want to live on fresh air next year,’ Matt continued as he climbed into the cart. ‘I’ll expect it done by the time I’m back.’ And with a flick of the reins, the two were off.
They were on the road before Matt said gently, ‘He’s just a boy, Rosie.’
Rosie was too worried and frightened of what she’d find in Dublin to spare any kind thoughts on Phelan. ‘A boy, Daddy. You call him a boy when he was prepared to kill a man for a cause that they were bound to lose, a cause his brother may have sacrificed his life for. Don’t try and get me to feel sorry for Phelan. He was old enough to know what he was doing.’
Matt said nothing more. He didn’t blame Rosie in the slightest for feeling the way she did about the lad. There was silence between them after that, the only sounds the clop of the horse’s hooves and the cart’s wheels on the road. Both were too full of their own thoughts to try and make conversation.
Before they came to Blessington they drove along the edge of a large and very beautiful lake that was mainly fed from the River Liffey, running down the side of the Kippure Mountains. Rosie had played by the edge of that lake many a time as a child, then Matt was leaving the lake behind as he turned into the main street of the village itself.
The blacksmith was shoeing a horse as they passed, the doorway open, and Rosie sniffed and caught the smell of hot iron and steam and the blacksmith looked up from his work, the horse’s hoof held against his leather apron. ‘Hi up there, Matt. Where are you bound for?’ Matt gave a wave but didn’t slacken the pace of the horse as he shouted, ‘Can’t stop. Rosie has a tram to catch.’
‘A tram is it?’ the blacksmith said and both Rosie and Matt knew the man would probably have dropped the horse’s hoof and be standing and watching their progress down the street. Many of the shopkeepers, opening for business, came out on hearing the horse’s clopping hooves and the wheels rattling over the cobbles, to see who was passing. The little woman from the bakery was one who came out to wave and call out to them and would have stopped for a chat given half a chance.
The plump butcher was already standing in his shop doorway, surveying the day, resplendent in his striped, stained apron. His shirt was pushed up his arms and the bulging forearms beneath looked as pink and succulent as the hams he had hanging from a hook in the shop. ‘You’re out early Matt?’
‘Aye, I’m taking Rosie to the tram.’
‘Oh aye,’ the butcher said and waited for Matt to explain why, but Matt said, ‘Can’t stop. See you later.’
Early shoppers hailed them too and Matt knew many would like to know what had brought Rosie and Matt into town together so early. When Matt saw the curtains of the post office twitch as they passed, he knew they wouldn’t have long to wait to find out. ‘There’s three ways of transmitting news quickly,’ he remarked wryly to Rosie as the drove into the depot. ‘Telegraph, telephone and tell a woman. Some women are better than others, but the postmistress is in a class of her own. Our business will probably have reached America’s shores by this afternoon.’
‘Does that matter to you?’
‘Nay, I don’t suppose so,’ Matt had to admit. ‘Though many will think I’m the worst in the world letting you go all on your own.’
‘We’ve been through this, Daddy.’
‘I know, I’m just saying.’
‘Let them think what they like, the town’s folk,’ Rosie said with spirit. ‘They don’t all know what it’s like to wait day after day with no news.’
Matt marvelled at Rosie’s courage and she was glad he couldn’t hear her heart hammering in her chest at the enormity of what lay ahead.
To distract herself and Matt, she began walking around the depot. She knew it well, not because she’d ridden on the trams but because it was one of Dermot’s favourite places. She could understand the fascination it held for a young boy, since it wasn’t just a tram stop but had once been the terminus of the tram. Later the tram tracks had been extended as far as Poulaphuca.
There were mending sheds at Blessington where sometimes there would be men working on an engine in overalls, covered in dirt and oil. Dermot would watch them in silence as they worked and wonder if their mammies would give out to them for the state of their clothes and hands and faces, as his mammy surely would if he went home half as bad.
When he had asked Rosie that question one day she’d laughed, even though she really felt sorry for the boy, for her mother always had Dermot dressed up to the nines for a visit to the village. He was always warned to keep his clothes clean and tidy. His sisters never dared let him leap after the other young boys and get up to all kinds of devilment, lest he rip or soil his clothes. If he did that the sisters, not Dermot, would feel the power of their mother’s hands and fists for not keeping a better eye on him.
So before she had married Danny and left home, Rosie often took Dermot somewhere that might entertain him. And when he’d finally turn from the engines there was always something to examine in the wagons in the sidings, often waiting to be hitched onto the trams going towards either Terenure or Poulaphuca. Then there was the passing loop too and Rosie would time her visit if she possibly could, so that Dermot would see it in action.
She breathed a sigh of relief when she first saw the steam tram approaching, its horn blowing to clear the track ahead, its funnels puffing out billowing white clouds of smoke that floated into the spring air. Eventually, the tram pulled up at the stop with a hiss of steam.
Matt was delighted to see he knew the conductor. ‘Look after my girl, will you?’ he asked, indicating Rosie making her way up the tram. ‘She’s for Dublin and has never been before. Tell her where to get off and all will you?’
‘I will and it will be no bother, but Dublin’s not a place I’d be making for just now, unless I had to.’
‘It’s not from choice,’ Matt replied sadly. ‘The woman is my daughter-in-law and it’s her husband, my son, that she’s seeking news of.’
‘Was he involved in that last little lot?’
‘Yes, we think so,’ Matt said wearily. ‘That’s the very devil of it. Danny was against it from the beginning, but his younger brother was caught up in it and him not fifteen until July. When we found out he’d gone, Danny went after him. The boy’s home now, him and his friend and both unharmed, but he said Danny took his place and we know nothing more. Rosie said she must go and see for herself.’
‘She’s a brave lassie.’
‘She is that,’ Matt said. ‘She’s fitted into our family as if she’s always lived with us and has been a fine wife to Danny and a wonderful mother to their wee baby.’
‘Well, please God the news will be good when she gets into the city,’ the conductor said. ‘Don’t you worry, she’ll be as safe as houses with me and I’ll show her where to catch the electric tram later.’
‘Thank you,’ Matt said. ‘To tell you the truth, I’m worried to death about what she might find out, and on her own too. But I mustn’t keep you talking. You have a timetable to abide by. I’ll hold you up no longer.’
The conductor nodded and rang the bell for the driver to start and the tram lurched forward. Rosie, settling herself in the seat, had one last brief glimpse of Matt waving to her before they pulled out of sight.
‘Hello there,’ the conductor said suddenly beside her. ‘Return to Terenure, is it?’
‘I suppose,’ Rosie said. ‘Is that where I must change trams for Dublin?’
‘Aye,’ the conductor said. ‘There are no steam trams allowed in Dublin itself. Terenure is just on the outskirts and you have to catch an electric tram from there. But it’s fifteen and a half miles away yet, so you can relax a wee while. I’ll put you right, never fear. The next stop is Crosschapel.’
The tram rattled on, past Crosschapel village where there was a small delay because there was a siding there and a few passengers to pick up and goods to load in the wagons at the back.
‘We’ll be at Brittas in a little while,’ the conductor said, once again at Rosie’s elbow just a little later. ‘Busy stop that, and we usually have quite a wait. We bring supplies in for the Kilbride Camp and they all have to be unloaded.’
Rosie didn’t mind the stop at all, she had no wish to reach Dublin in any sort of a hurry and she was entertained by the activity at the station, like the unloading of supplies into carts and the people standing in the doorway of the Brittas Inn, looking on and giving advice that was neither asked for nor helpful, and often caused hilarity amongst the onlookers.
The woman sitting beside Rosie was becoming impatient. ‘It should only take one and a half hours to reach Terenure from Blessington,’ she told Rosie, clucking her tongue in annoyance. ‘At this rate it will be afternoon before we arrive.’
‘I don’t mind that much,’ Rosie said. ‘It’s all new to me, you see. I’ve never been on a tram before.’
‘Ah,’ said the woman, ‘well, look to your right as we approach the next station, the mountains of Mourne are visible on a clear day.’
And Rosie did see them soon after, way, way in the distance, dark green with purple swathes here and there. ‘You can see for miles,’ she said in amazement and the woman smiled.
‘We’re seven hundred feet above sea level,’ she said. ‘That’s why.’
‘Are we?’
‘Aye,’ the woman said. ‘You’ll know we are in a minute, for after we’re through this station, we’ll descend so quickly if you don’t hold tight you’ll be flung forward, so be warned.’
Rosie was glad she was, for the tram had not long left Crooksling when it seemed to almost tip forward before hurtling down the incline at a terrific speed. Rosie tried not to think about the tales she’d heard of trams jumping off the rails and the number of people killed each year. ‘Quite scary, isn’t it?’ said the woman, seeing Rosie’s knuckles whiten where she’d gripped the seat hard.
‘Aye, it is,’ Rosie replied, sighing with relief that the tracks had finally levelled out and they were now travelling at a more sedate pace.
‘My children love it whenever I have them with me,’ the woman went on. ‘But then children don’t see danger, do they? I have three and they have my hair near white at times, the mischief and pranks they get up to.’
‘Are they in Dublin, your children?’ Rosie asked, thankful to have some distracting conversation.
‘No, with their daddy in Terenure, that’s where I live,’ the woman said. ‘I’ve been up to visit my mother in Poulaphuca. She hasn’t been at all well, which is why I didn’t want to take any of the children with me this time. In fact, she was so poorly I ended up staying the night. I wouldn’t go to Dublin at the moment for a pension.’
‘Nor me, by choice,’ Rosie said, and then, despite the fact the woman was a stranger, or maybe because of it, she found herself telling her everything. The woman listened without saying a word, but her eyes spoke her sympathy and finally she said, ‘it might not be as bad as you fear, my dear.’
‘Aye, and it may be far worse,’ Rosie said. ‘But however bad the news is, it is a hundred times better than knowing nothing day after day.’
The conductor, coming up the tram jiggling his money bag and punching tickets, put an end to anything further the woman would have said, informing them the tram was approaching Embankment Halt.
‘This is where we take on water,’ the conductor told Rosie, ‘and where the mail for Staggart and Rathcoole villages is taken off the tram to be delivered by a fine fellow, by the name of John Kelly, who collects it in his pony and trap.’
‘It’s fascinating, isn’t it?’ Rosie said to the woman beside her. ‘All the things the tram carries, besides people I mean.’
The woman smiled. ‘Maybe the first few times you make the trip’, she said. ‘I’m well used to it now. When we come to the next halt, Jobstown, the carters will be waiting to load stone from the De Selby quarries.
‘Tallaght and Killinarden have quarries too,’ the conductor commented, ‘but we don’t get much there. Most of the large boulders are sent to Kilmainham Jail for the prisoners to break into smaller pieces.’
He went silent for a minute, remembering what Matt Walsh had told him about the young woman’s husband. According to what he’d heard, all those who’d survived the insurrection had been sent to Kilmainham Jail so her man could well be in that prison. Him and his big mouth!
But Rosie wasn’t offended or upset. She knew Danny in jail was the best outcome she could possibly hope for.
As the tram pulled away from Tallagh Halt she had her first sight of the Dublin Hills. She felt her stomach turn over and again doubted the wisdom of what she was doing.
A few minutes later, the woman nudged her and pointed out of the window. ‘See that branch line? It goes to the aerodrome, and belongs to the British Government.’
‘Aerodrome!’ Rosie repeated incredulously.
‘Aye, the British and Germans are flying planes now. They’re fighting each other in the air as well, or so people tell me.’
‘Dear God!’ Rosie remarked. ‘You’d never get me up in one of those things.’
‘Oh I agree,’ the woman said. ‘If God wanted a man to fly he’d have given him wings, that’s what I say.’
Suddenly, there was another sharp dip in the road, and again Rosie had to grip the seats hard to prevent herself falling forward, and then to stop herself being thrown into her fellow passenger as the tram passed so close to the gable end of a set of cottages that she gasped, certain they were going to crash into them.
‘It has been known, I believe,’ the woman said, when Rosie shared her fears. ‘Did you notice the sign?’
‘Aye,’ Rosie said. ‘“Beware of the trams.”’
‘That’s because so many people have been knocked down and injured there,’ the woman told her. ‘One man even said his thatch was set on fire by a spark from the tram’s chimney. He couldn’t prove it, of course, but still, if I lived there I’d feel in constant danger.’
‘And me,’ Rosie said with feeling.
Then the tram was running into Templeogue, which the woman told Rosie had been the old depot. She saw it still had the engine and carriage sheds and a smithy further into the village opposite a pub called Floods. But the tram didn’t stop and carried on and the woman beside Rosie said, ‘Terenure is the next stop and the terminus,’ and she began collecting her things together and Rosie did the same.
Rosie said goodbye to the woman as they both left the tram, thanking her for her company and saying she hoped her mother would soon be on the mend.
The woman grasped her hands warmly. ‘Best of luck to you,’ she said. ‘I hope you find news of your man soon, and that the news is good.’
Rosie was unable to speak for the sudden lump that rose in her throat. She was sorry to see the woman go – she had provided comfort as well as distraction – and so was grateful for the conductor coming up at that moment. ‘Just make your way down there by that whitewashed wall,’ he said, pointing. ‘You’ll pass the booking office and just after it an iron gate is set into a wall that leads onto Rathfarnham Road. You go through that and to the right you will see Terenure Road East. The halt is there, though there won’t be a tram there yet awhile. The tram you’ll want has a triangle on it and it’s the number fifteen. Have you got that?’
‘Aye,’ Rosie replied, ‘and thank you so much for your kindness.’
‘It’s my pleasure,’ the conductor said and Rosie waved to him. Carrying her bag over her shoulder and Danny’s basket in the other hand, she followed the conductor’s directions to the tram stop where she would begin the last leg of her journey to Dublin and to whatever the city might hold.