Rosie mourned the loss of Danny as if he were dead, as indeed he might well be. Every week she wrote to him as Connie did, but he didn’t write back and this upset both women. ‘Sure, what would he have to say?’ Matt said when they mentioned it to him. ‘In there, I should imagine one day slides into the next, each day the same.’
‘I ask him questions,’ Rosie protested. ‘Surely he could answer those? And I tell him about Bernadette. You’d think he’d make some comment.’
But Matt could understand why Danny didn’t write. As for telling him about the child he was likely never to see, it must have been like a knife in his heart to read those words.
After a month of silence, Connie was all for making the journey to Dublin with clothes and food for Danny, but Rosie stopped her. ‘I think he has to wear prison uniform now,’ she said. She hesitated over the next bit, for she’d never told Connie what had really happened to the basket of food she’d given her, but she did so now, unwilling to give the governor another good feed at their expense.
‘You mean he got none of it?’ Connie exclaimed. ‘But the shirt and jumper, what happened to them?’
Rosie shrugged. ‘I had to leave the whole thing with the Governor. I doubt Danny ever got a sniff of the food in the basket and the clothes would certainly have graced someone else’s back. You must remember the meagre fare to be had in Dublin at that time, but even now, with things possibly different, I think good farm food would not get past first post and that’s the Governor’s office.
‘Added to that, Danny will not want to see you there. Write to your aunt, Sister Cuthbert. Maybe the Franciscan friars are still visiting the prison. You might get news that way.’
It wasn’t what Connie wanted to hear but she knew Rosie spoke the truth and so she did as she suggested. Sister Cuthbert wrote a lovely letter back, saying Father Joe, who’d accompanied Rosie to the prison, was just one of the friars visiting. But because he knew Danny was related to her and he remembered Rosie, he popped in now and then to see how he was.
Here, Sister Cuthbert hesitated. She hadn’t known Danny before, but Father Joe had told her of the silent, morose man, his prison clothes hanging off his sparse frame. His face had lost its ruddy glow he said, and his pale cheeks were sunken in his face, for the paltry prison fare was barely enough to keep a man alive, especially as they worked from dawn to dusk at back-breaking work like smashing large stones day after day.
In Danny’s eyes, the friar read the sorrow, exhaustion and sheer hopelessness that was lodged in his heart, but the man himself never spoke of it. Not that he was alone in these feelings, he told Sister Cuthbert, for most men incarcerated there were the same. So Sister Cuthbert told Connie that Danny was as well as could be expected in the circumstances and to keep writing even though he didn’t answer. Let him know he’s not been forgotten, she advised.
He hadn’t, and the loss of him was like a leaden weight Rosie carried constantly with her, but in the end she had to push it to the back of her mind for life had to go on. There was still a dairy to see to, a house to clean, food to be cooked, clothes to wash and a baby to rear. It saddened her that Bernadette might know nothing of the father who had walked away that day but, surrounded by Danny’s family and visited plenty by Rosie’s sisters and Dermot, she barely missed him either.
In England, conscription had been introduced in January 1916 for, as the casualty lists rose, there were, perhaps understandably, fewer volunteers. In May of that year, this was extended to married men if conscription fell below fifty thousand a month. It was never introduced in Ireland, though it was proposed, for the authorities were fearful of the reaction, especially as such a move had been slammed by the Catholic Church.
This caused some resentment in England where men were given no such choice and when Ireland announced that German ships could dock there without fear of attack, this resentment was increased, causing riots and demonstrations against the Irish Catholics in many English towns and cities.
In Ireland, Catholic fervour was at its height and the papers going on about all the Irish boys killed on some foreign field, fighting in some other country’s war, were intensifying people’s anti-war feelings.
They recounted tragic tales like that of the five Furey brothers from Wexford, who’d all been killed in the first ten months of the war, or the death of John Conlon, the young drummer boy, who was only fourteen. Could a boy have done much damage to the German armies armed with just drumsticks, the papers asked.
That was just the tip of the iceberg and there were many, many more instances. Most Catholics had read the poignant pleas for prayer and stories in the The Messenger of the Sacred Heart, the magazine sold in the churches. Each issue was similar since the war had begun. An officer might thank the Sacred Heart for his escape during bombardment. while a mother might thank the Sacred Heart for her son’s recovery from severe wounds or an infantryman would thank the Sacred Heart for protection during his twenty-two months at the front.
These were typical of many requests. And then they were the obituaries for those who had died or who were missing.
There were also reports on the courage and bravery of the Catholic priests of the front who refused to stay behind lines and shared the trenches and conditions with the men they ministered to.
Many were killed alongside the soldiers they served, and mothers and wives commented to The Messenger the things their surviving menfolk wrote of the priests and how comforted they were to have them there. Many said even the non-Catholics had nothing but praise for them.
Each Mass now had a full congregation and when Dermot, along with other boys and girls his age at the National School, made their First Holy Communion on 19th June, the church was so full that there were people standing three-deep at the back.
Dermot, with his mop of golden curls that no macasser oil could tame, clutching his white missal and playing the ivory rosary beads through his fingers, looked angelic.
Like all the boys, his shirt was pristine white and so was the satin sash he had draped over one shoulder, but Chrissie told Rosie their mother had been all for going to Dublin to get him a silk shirt for the occasion. ‘Daddy said she wasn’t to go. Dublin was a place of unrest still and he could have a cotton shirt like any other boy,’ Geraldine put in.
‘Thank God!’ Rosie said fervently. ‘Why does she always want to make Dermot different? I’m sure he must hate it.’
‘There’s more than Dermot has to do things they hate,’ Geraldine said with feeling. ‘And they have to put up with it. He gets his way in most things, as you well know. Maybe it’s a small price to pay.’
Rosie knew what Geraldine was talking about and she knew she had a point, for Dermot was thwarted in so very little, and so she said nothing more.
The Battle of the Somme began on 1st July 1916, almost a fortnight after the First Communions. So confident were the British of victory, they let the newsreels onto the battlefield for the first time.
There was no way the army could lie about the casualties now, or whitewash anything because the cameras continued to record it and it was shown on Pathé News at the cinemas. For the first time, British and Irish people saw what was happening to their menfolk. Blessington had no cinema, but the outrage of those who’d seen the films was reported by the papers, which carried many pictures of the dead and injured.
There had been so much bad feeling against Britain as the lists of the Irish boys and men killed in action rose. Requiem Masses were said throughout the land, though there were precious few bodies to bury. Many thought if their men were to die at all, let them at least die for their own country and serve under the flag of green, white and gold, struggling for Home Rule and Irish independence.
Conscious of this feeling in Ireland, and the open disapproval from America over the handling of the uprising and speed of the executions, the Government released many of the men from Kilmainham Jail before Christmas 1916.
After the execution of the leaders, Danny and the other men waited to be summoned to a court where the verdict would be decided before they had a chance to open their mouths. This would be followed fairly speedily by a trip to the stone-breaking yard to stand before a firing squad.
As day followed day and slid into weeks and months, the fear didn’t lessen, it intensified. Danny thought they were playing cat and mouse games with them all, and he, like many more, became increasingly jittery and nervous.
None of the rebel prisoners were told they were to be released. After their sparse breakfast one mid-December morning, Danny was led back to his cell instead of into the yard. He didn’t ask why, knowing that in that place it was better to ask few questions and keep one’s head down.
They’d been led back to their cells once before when the rebel leaders were taken out to be executed, and Danny wondered if it was now their turn. There had been no trial, but when did that matter? The Franciscan friar, Father Joe, continued to visit and told him the wave of public opinion had swung in their favour – people were now more sympathetic to the reason they’d been fighting – but Danny had thought, so what? People’s sympathy, however sincere and heartfelt, could not breach the walls of a prison, and so he’d taken little heed of Father Joe’s words.
He lay on his bed and waited. He wasn’t sure how long he stayed there, but it seemed an age. He closed his eyes, but didn’t sleep, couldn’t sleep. You had to be alert in these places.
He heard the tramp of boots on the stone corridors, opening some of the doors, and was on his feet and beside his bed before the key had turned in his lock. If this was it and he was to be led out to die, then he’d go with his head held high.
‘You’re for out, Walsh,’ the guard snapped.
‘Out?’
‘Out. Home. Are you deaf?’
‘Home?’
‘Here,’ the guard said, putting his hand into the big bag beside him that a colleague was holding and flinging clothes at him. ‘Get changed.’
When the door clanked shut behind them, Danny stared at it for a moment or two. Was this some sort of sick joke? He fingered the civilian clothes thoughtfully, wondering who they’d first belonged to. They weren’t his, certainly, but then his had been so tattered and worn he doubted they’d have been good for anything but the incinerator.
Suddenly he was seized with a desire to be free of the coarse prison garb and he tugged the stained, soiled clothes off in haste and pulled the shirt over his head. The trousers he’d been given hung loose on him and he wished he had a belt or braces to hold them up. There were no underclothes of any kind, nor a jumper over the shirt that might have kept him warm on that raw December day. But that was it, and he knew he should be grateful he had at least been given a coat, and he put that on and then sat on the bed again and waited.
He couldn’t totally believe he was to be allowed to go free until he was in the road outside the prison with the door firmly slammed shut behind him. There were other men with him, chatting and laughing with one another, slapping each other on the back, light-headed with relief, filled with exhilaration. ‘God, how I could sink a good few pints of Guinness now, Walsh,’ said a man beside him. ‘That’s if I had a penny-piece on me, of course. How about you?’
‘Oh aye,’ Danny said. ‘That would be grand.’
In fact, Danny hadn’t a thought of Guinness or anything else either. His one desire was to go home, to hold his dear wife in his arms and cuddle his baby daughter and give his mother a kiss.
He had a sudden, urgent desire to be away from Dublin, knowing if he ever came back to it again it would be too soon. He knew he should go and see Father Joe and tell him about his release, but almost as soon as the thought was in his head, he rejected it and turned for home.
He had no idea of the time, and the thick steel-grey clouds in the sky gave him little clue, but he knew the winter days were short and all too soon it would be dark. At first he strode out briskly, anxious to reach home as quickly as possible. However, he’d walked for little more than an hour when he was forced to rest, shocked he’d tired so easily. He was hungry too, but that mattered little: he’d not been full since before he’d entered the prison and the feeling of yawning emptiness was a familiar one.
He sat for a moment at the side of a stream, after taking a long drink of it, knowing if he was to get to the farmhouse before black night descended on him he had to get on. He couldn’t rest every hour. In his inadequate clothes he didn’t give himself much of a chance of survival if he had to spend a night in the open. He knew he’d be found stiff in a ditch, nicely gilded with frost, and the months of waiting would have been a cruel waste.
The ringing tramp of boots on the road made him suddenly alert, wondering even now if he was to be hauled back to jail. There was nowhere to hide and it would be of little use anyway. If they wanted you back, they’d hunt you down without a doubt.
But, unbelievably, Shay and Sam came into view. ‘Dan,’ Shay cried when he saw Danny. ‘Why didn’t you wait for us?’
Why hadn’t he? The thought of freedom and going home had driven everything else from his head.
‘I didn’t know if you were getting out too,’ he said. ‘And I couldn’t bear to hang around Dublin to find out.’
‘I can understand that well enough,’ Shay said. ‘But we knew you were out, we asked people, but no-one knew where you’d gone.’
‘Why have they let us lot go?’ Danny asked,
‘I don’t know and nor do I care,’ Sam said. ‘We’re out, we’re free, and that’s what matters. I’m glad you decided to take a rest or we’d never have caught up with you.’
‘Aye, maybe,’ Danny said. ‘But I was just thinking, I can’t keep resting every hour if I want to reach home today. The cold eats into you when you sit for any time.’
‘Aye. That wouldn’t be hard either,’ Sam said in agreement. ‘For it’s a bleak and icy day, right enough.’
‘Shall we go on, then?’ Danny asked, and the three set off together.
Many times that long trek back, Danny was glad of Shay and Sam. All three men were weakened and ill-nourished from their stay in prison, but they helped one another both by encouragement and physically.
In the beginning they sang all the rebel songs they could remember to keep up their spirits. But they did this only when they were out in the open, for they were far quieter when they were passing any houses on the roadside. Danny was glad the day was cold enough to keep those who didn’t have to go out beside their own fireside and there were few to enquire where they were bound for. They knew their release would not be public knowledge yet, and so when asked they just said they were on their way up from Dublin and left it there.
They never went through the villages, either, but skirted them. Whatever Father Joe had said about the change in public opinion since the executions, they didn’t intend to put it to the test. This inevitably made their progress slower and when darkness eventually descended, the going got tougher and they were still nowhere near home.
Finally they had to rest again. Full darkness had descended and within minutes of stopping, Danny’s feet began to throb with cold, and icy fingers trailing through his body caused his teeth to chatter. ‘Jaysus, but I’m cold,’ Shay said, leaping to his feet and slapping at his body with his arms. ‘How much longer d’you think?’
‘It’s hard to tell,’ Danny said, so weary now his voice had begun to slur. ‘An hour. Maybe two.’
‘Christ. D’you think we’ll make it?’ Sam asked quite seriously, but Danny answered encouragingly.
‘Of course. Come on, we’ll set off now. Are you ready, Sam?’
‘Not really,’ Sam said. ‘My legs are shaking. They feel like rubber.’
‘If you sit much longer you won’t be able to feel them at all,’ Danny said, hauling Sam to his feet.
‘And by Christ, I’m so hungry I could get started on a table leg.’
‘We’re all hungry,’ Danny snapped. ‘Talking of it does no good.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Shay said. ‘It will encourage us, surely. Think of a plate thick with rashers, a couple of eggs and as many potatoes and bread and butter slices as you could eat.’
Danny felt saliva fill his mouth at the very thought of it. He saw it before him, could even smell it. Oh God, what he’d give for that this minute.
By the time Danny bade his friends farewell and made for the lane to the farmhouse, he was having trouble focusing, and even putting one foot before the other seemed almost too much of an effort. Twice he’d fallen on the road and had to be helped up and Shay and Sam were in no better shape – the last few miles they’d helped hold each other up.
Now he was at his own farm gate, alone, and wasn’t sure if he’d make the last few yards. His head swam as he left the support of the gate he was hanging on to. He felt himself falling after a few stumbling steps forward and saw the ground coming up to meet him as he fell heavily.
Groaning and cursing, he got to his knees and then to his feet slowly with the help of the hedges on one side of the lane. Hanging on to them, he made his way, crablike, towards the farmhouse. The light from the Tilley lamp set in the window shone out like a welcoming beacon. Eventually he stood swaying outside the farmhouse door.
Rosie had had no notification of the Government’s decision, and there had been nothing in the paper, and so the family were totally unprepared for Danny’s appearance. They were sitting down to their evening meal and each of them had a basin of thick stew served from the large pot, now put back on the hook above the hearth to keep hot. Two dishes piled high with potatoes in their skins were there for people to help themselves. Even Bernadette was at the table in the special chair with long legs that Matt had fashioned for her and Rosie was bending over her plate, removing the skin from the potato and mashing it with a bit of gravy from the stew to moisten it.
This was the scene that Danny saw as he lifted the latch and pushed open the door. The smell and warmth made him feel light-headed and he stood gripping the door jamb to prevent himself sinking to the stone-slabbed floor.
Rosie stared at Danny aghast. Her thoughts were racing. What in God’s name was Danny doing here?
But before she was able to voice these thoughts, Danny, who knew he couldn’t take another step without falling on his face, cried, ‘Help me.’
Rosie caught Danny before he fell and Matt got to the other side of him and together they helped him into a chair before the fire. He sank into it with a sigh of sheer relief and closed his eyes.
Around the table there was stunned silence. No-one but Rosie had seen Danny since he strode away that Easter morning, but even the shambling, battered, bruised figure she’d seen just once eight months ago bore no resemblance to this man, her husband. His face was grey, what could be seen of it above the thick stubble. His cheeks were sunken, his lips cracked and chapped, his red-rimmed eyes like pools of sadness. Even Danny’s hair was now liberally streaked with white. Rosie was shocked by his thinness – even through his coat she’d felt the bones of him.
‘Mother of God, what have they done to him?’ Connie breathed, as Rosie gently unbuttoned his coat.
But Rosie didn’t answer, for at that minute Danny opened his eyes and held Rosie’s, and her heart turned over in pity for this man who’d suffered so much. ‘Food, please, Rosie,’ he said. ‘I need food.’
‘There’s plenty in the stew pot,’ Connie said, crossing to the hearth.
‘I’ll give him mine,’ Rosie said. ‘That on the stove will be too hot yet awhile.’
Danny sat, his arms by his sides, while Rosie spooned him the stew with the potatoes she’d dropped into it, as he was unable to lift his arm to feed himself. He tasted the deliciousness and warmth of it as it trickled down his throat. Bernadette, who was bewildered seeing her mother feed a big grown-up person, began shouting to be let down. ‘Hush, Bernadette,’ Sarah admonished.
‘Let her be,’ Connie said from the hearth where she still stood staring at her son. ‘She can come over to me.’
Danny’s eyes widened as the child came into view and he stared at her. He’d barely noticed her at the table, but now…He’d left behind a wee crawling baby, but eight months was a long time in the life of a child and Bernadette was now a walking, babbling toddler who stared at him with her bright eyes curious as to who this strange man was. He tried valiantly to smile at her reassuringly.
Rosie spooned the last of the stew into Danny’s mouth, and asked, ‘Do you want some more?’
‘Aye,’ Danny said shortly, and Rosie said, ‘I’ll take it from the pot, but it will be hot. You’ll have to wait while it cools.’
While Rosie busied herself, Connie, wanting to take the hopeless look from her son’s face, said to Bernadette, ‘Look, child, here’s your daddy come home again.’
Bernadette looked interested in the name she’d heard now and then, though she had no idea what a daddy was. ‘Will you sit up on his knee a wee while?’ Connie said. ‘While your Mammy is getting him something to eat.’
Bernadette would have none of it and as her grandmother tried to release her onto the man’s knee she began to writhe and struggle and scream, loud enough to lift the thatch. ‘Leave it, Mam,’ Rosie said sharply, for she’d seen the look of pain cross Danny’s face. ‘Take her back to the table. She’s barely eaten anything.’ To Danny she said, ‘Don’t mind her, pet, she’s just a baby and doesn’t know you yet.’
‘I know that,’ Danny said. ‘Don’t worry.’
But despite Danny’s words, he was deeply hurt by Bernadette’s reaction. He’d accepted the fact she’d hardly know him on his return and had even discussed it with Sam and Shay on the way back. If he’d thought further about it, he would have known the child would have grown, but he carried in his head the picture of how she’d been when he’d left. This child was like a stranger. If she’d been a little quiet or shy with him he would have accepted it, but he’d never imagined she’d struggle and scream the way she did at the thought of sitting on his knee.
Rosie, though, thought Bernadette’s attitude understandable, but there was another more pressing concern in her head. ‘Danny,’ she said tentatively, ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I haven’t escaped, if that’s what you mean,’ Danny snapped back, annoyed. ‘I was released along with a few others this morning. I’ve been walking ever since.’
Rosie let her breath out in relief. Since he’d appeared in the door she feared the sound of army boots down the lane, kicking open the door and dragging Danny away again, this time to shoot him dead.
The stew and warmth were beginning to slowly revive Danny and this time he was able to hold the basin of stew himself. Rosie handed him a slice of bread too and he tore into it like a wild animal, revelling at being able to do so. He and his fellow inmates had tried to make the one slice of bread, given with very thin soup, last by taking small nibbles of it and chewing it to nothing in an attempt to make them feel fuller. It hadn’t worked, but now with two bowls of stew and potatoes and bread inside him, he began to feel almost human, and as he drained the second bowl he leaned back again in his chair. ‘God that was good.’
Around the table, the family still sat in shock at Danny’s sudden appearance and at the state of him, and any conversation was stilted and strained. Phelan was so affected, Rosie saw, he was unable to eat, and when he pushed his basin away and got to his feet it was almost half-full.
After the meal, as the women began clearing away, Matt crossed to the hearth to sit next to his son and saw he was fast asleep in the chair. ‘Best thing for him, I’d say,’ he commented to Connie and she nodded and fetched a blanket from their bed to tuck around him.
Rosie made tea for them all and they talked in whispers so as not to disturb the slumbering Danny. Connie said in a fierce whisper, ‘What have they done to my son? I can’t believe it, Sister Cuthbert said he was fine.’
‘She wouldn’t have seen him, remember,’ Rosie said. ‘She’d go on what the Franciscan friars told her. Anyway, if she’d known the true state of things, what was to be gained by telling you? You couldn’t help the situation.’
‘No, but…’
‘Don’t torture yourself, Mam,’ Rosie said, laying her hand over her mother-in-law’s kindly. ‘Whatever has happened to Danny is in the past. He’s home now, released and without charge. We’ll soon have him back hale and hearty, the way he used to be.’
‘God, you’re a wonderful girl, Rosie,’ Connie said. ‘God smiled on us the day Danny brought you in the door.’
Rosie was glad she’d reassured her mother-in-law, but she wasn’t sure Danny would ever be the way he was. That vibrant young man who’d strode out so confidently on Easter Sunday eight months before had gone forever, she feared.