1949 (19 page)

The Athlone broadcasting station enjoyed an official opening in February of 1933. Ursula went down on the train for the event. As she ate the cheese and pickle sandwiches she had brought, she gazed out the windows of the railway carriage at men and women laboring together in the fields. They waved cheerfully at the train speeding past.

From Arthur Griffith, the founder of Sinn Féin, de Valera had inherited the dream of a self-sufficient nation. The plain people of Ireland were attempting to make that dream a reality. The Fianna Fáil government was rewarding them with a shower of benefits including improved health services and free milk for schoolchildren.

Mothers blessed de Valera in their prayers.

 

Athlone was roughly halfway to Ennis, so Ursula had asked if she might take a couple of extra days and pay a visit to the farm. It would be a pleasant surprise for the Hallorans and a chance to spend time with Saoirse, who was beginning to show his age.

And perhaps, just perhaps, Ned might be there. She pictured Ned and Frank in the barn, putting together a crystal set so they could listen to Athlone on the wireless.

Ursula was not expected; there was no one to meet her at the station. She did not mind walking. The day was cold and overcast but dry, and she had wisely packed her clothing into a soft bag that could be slung across her shoulder. As she set off along the road, familiar fields spread their gracious laps on either side. Familiar trees waved to her from the hedgerows. Her imagination ran ahead to summer, when ribbon grass and cocksfoot and meadow foxtail would infuse the air with an ever-deepening fragrance.

Here, if anywhere, was home; the place where something deep and sweet settled into Ursula's soul and nestled there.

In a farmyard beside the road a man was preparing to sharpen a plowshare. Glancing up, he nodded to the young woman walking past. “No rain 'til night, please God,” he said.

She smiled. “Please God.” And walked on, ears waiting for a familiar sound.

At first the iron blade rang harshly against the grindstone. The farmer persevered until the screech smoothed into one musical note, then began to purr as though stone and iron were perfectly suited.

The plow was sharp.

Ursula paused to greet a magpie perched atop a stone wall in his dazzling black-and-white livery. It was bad luck not to speak to a lone magpie.
Do I ever see magpies in Dublin? Can't remember. But I know I never hear the cuckoo
.

The clouds grew thicker; the air was textured with damp. Ursula drew a breath that filled her lungs to the very bottom.
This is what home smells like
.

Almost before she knew it, she reached the foot of the farm lane. She had once commented to Norah Daly on the length of that lane. Norah had replied, “Sure and if it was any shorter it wouldn't reach the house!” Remembering, Ursula smiled. She was still smiling when the farmhouse came in sight around the last bend. The smile froze on her face.

On the front door was a large black wreath.

Ursula dropped her bag in the lane and began to run.

Norah. It must be Aunt Norah. She's old and she hasn't been well…surely it's Norah!

For once Ursula entered by the front door. A death in the family demanded dignity. The farmhouse was eerily quiet. The clock in the hallway was stopped and the mirror over the side table was draped in a sheet. Ursula stared at the closed parlor door. Reached out to open it; drew back her hand. Ran down the passage to the kitchen.

Lucy, blank-faced, sat at an empty table. She stared at Ursula without recognition.

“It's me, Lucy. What's happened?”

The older woman gave herself a shake. “Ursula? How did you hear about it so soon? We tried to reach you, but…” Her voice faded away.

“I did not know until I saw the wreath on the door. Was it easy? Did she suffer?”

“She?” Lucy looked baffled. “She who?”

Not Norah. Oh, God. Take me away from here. Put me back on the train, put me back in Dublin, let this not be happening
. Ursula clutched her thumbs. “How did it happen?”

“No one really knows. He was digging rocks out of the upper field yesterday afternoon and just collapsed. We didn't go looking for him until dark, and then it was too late.”

It was Ursula's turn to be baffled. “Digging rocks? Why ever would Papa do that?”

“Ned? I'm talking about Frank.”

Ursula was swept with contradictory emotions: joy and grief so painfully intertwined she could not tell them apart. “Where's Aunt Norah?”

“One of the neighbors took us into town earlier to get a wreath and make the arrangements. She's upstairs resting now.”

“Should I not go up to her?”

Lucy shook her head. “Leave her be. She probably heard you come in, she'll be down soon.”

Norah appeared a few minutes later; a tiny old lady as fragile as a cobweb. When she saw Ursula she collapsed into her arms. “Thanks be to God you're here, girleen. Can you contact your father and tell him about Frank?”

“The only address I have for Papa is this one, that's why I send letters through you. I doubt if more than three or four people in Ireland know where he is at any given time.”
And one of them would be his commanding officer, but he never told me who that is. For my safety, he said
. “If you put notices in the newspapers, Aunt Norah, perhaps he'll see them. And…is there a telephone in the post office in Clarecastle now?”

The old woman nodded.

“I'll take Saoirse,” Ursula said.

The aging gray whinnied an eager welcome when he saw her coming toward his field. Soon she was on his back and they were galloping toward the nearby village.

A telephone call to the broadcasting station in Athlone went through in minutes. By the time Ursula returned to the farm an announcement was being broadcast. “Will Edward Joseph Halloran of County Clare please contact his family immediately for an urgent message?”

Ned arrived the next day. The death of his brother stunned him. “All he ever knew was the farm,” Ned said to Ursula. “It wasn't what he wanted, it was just what came to him.”

“Are we so helpless we must accept whatever comes?” she challenged. “Could Frank not have made another life for himself if he really wanted one?”

Ned considered the question. “I don't think he dared to really want anything. He was of that generation.”

“So are you, Papa. But you know what it is to want something and fight with all your heart and soul for it.”

“Much good it's done me, all that fighting. Much good it's done any of us. Síle dead, me in bits, hundreds of good men killed, and the poor sods in the north are still being hounded from cradle to grave. Now Dev is distancing himself from the IRA. Doesn't want us given weapons, doesn't want us acknowledged at all. Political expedience,” he added sourly. “If I knew how to stop wanting the Republic, I swear to God I would.”

But he did not mean it. She knew he did not mean it.

Scores of people crowded into the house for the wake. Eileen came, though without her husband. They were living at Newmarket-on-Fergus and had two children now, with another on the way. Eileen entered the house as if expecting a rebuff. Lucy and Norah ignored her but did not ask her to leave. Ned briefly touched her hand in passing.

Ursula spoke to her. “I'm sorry for your trouble,” she said in the time-honored way.

“Which one?” Eileen asked. Her hair was turning gray and her breath smelt sour.

 

Dressed in the same dark suit he had worn to Mass for twenty years, Frank was laid out in the parlor. In death his cheeks and mouth had sunken. His false teeth protruded slightly. Norah and Lucy had washed him as best they could, but dirt was still ground into the fingers that held his rosary. He would be buried with the soil of Clare on his hands.

Friends and neighbors gathered around the corpse, drinking whiskey or poitín, smoking, talking about the economy and livestock prices and the weather. Mostly the weather. Then someone began reminiscing about seisiúns in the Hallorans' house when Frank was young.

Ursula jumped up and left the parlor. They heard her running feet on the stairs. After a few minutes she returned carrying Frank's long-neglected fiddle and bow.

An old schoolmate of Frank's reached for the instrument. Blew the dust off the strings. Tucked the fiddle under his chin and tuned it with agonizing patience. Drew the bow tentatively, eyes closed, listening. Waiting for the music to come to life.

One man produced a tin whistle, another had brought a squeezebox. Jigs and reels like “Farewell to Connacht” and “the Ballinasloe Fair” soon set feet tapping. Norah Daly requested the “
Taim im Chodhladh
,” an ancient ballad she had loved in her youth, and a selection of slow airs followed. Then Ned asked for the
Cúileann
.
^*
“It was my brother's favorite,” he recalled.

As the plaintive love song filled the room, Ursula lowered her head and wept for Frank Halloran. Wept for the life he had never had.

The funeral Mass was held the next morning, with burial in the small local cemetery afterward. That cemetery held generations of Hallorans, though not Ned's parents. They were rocked in the arms of the Atlantic. Síle Halloran was not buried there either.
Nor will Papa be, when the time comes
, Ursula vowed.

She walked beside Ned as the mourners followed the casket on its black cart from church to cemetery. Once again the day was damp and overcast. There was no conversation. A foot-beaten path wound across the fields to a painted iron gate. The gravediggers in their earth-spattered smocks stood respectfully on either side.

The mourners filed through the gate and up the hill beyond. When they reached the waiting grave the priest sprinkled the earth with holy water, then stepped back.

Mist swirled around tombstones leaning against the winds of time.

The keening began.

In most of Ireland the priests dominated the burial service as they had the funeral Mass. But this was west Clare, on the edge of the wild ocean. Here the old women still spoke directly to the dead in an eerie singsong cadence, an unearthly wail.

Standing with Ned on the far side of the grave, Ursula hugged herself to keep warm while Norah Daly keened for her dead nephew.

The sound chilled the marrow of living bones.

 

Ned was going back to the north, though he would not say where. “If you need to reach me you can always broadcast another message,” he told Ursula. “I'll get a wireless for the farm; it will be company for Norah and Lucy. The IRA has its own wireless equipment now. I've learned to operate it, I might even go into broadcasting myself. I can mimic most any accent, you know, even BBC posh. I could have the sort of job that pays a real salary instead of relying on donations.”

“You're teasing, Papa.”

He nodded. “I am teasing.”

“If you want another career, what about the farm? I suppose it's yours now.”

“Let Lucy have it, I'll transfer the deeds to her. Hired men can do the work. I'm no farmer and never will be, and I have no intention of being trapped here the way Frank was.”

Yet Ned was devoting his life to a war that could not be won. Perhaps physical-force republicanism had become a trap too, Ursula thought.

I hope he does die in battle! That's the only proper end for a warrior
.

In sudden panic Ursula tried to wipe the thought from her mind, terrified lest God hear.

Ursula returned to Dublin haunted by thoughts of Frank Halloran. Finbar met her at the train station. “I come from a large family myself,” he said, “and in a large family people die from time to time. But you never get used to it.” On sudden impulse, he put his arms around her and gave Ursula a comforting hug.

She let herself melt against his body for a moment, then hastily pulled away. No traps accepted.

 

The expansion of the news department meant more political coverage. Eamon de Valera made the most of the opportunity. Public support was vital in the economic war his administration was waging on Britain. 2RN became a major source for disseminating Fianna Fáil policy. It was not uncommon for God and de Valera to be mentioned in the same sentence.

Treatyites, who believed they held a monopoly on public morality, protested. De Valera responded by quietly removing his most outspoken critics from sensitive government posts. P.S. O'Hegarty was sent to the Board of Works. He took it with good grace, part of the price to be paid for being on the wrong side of the fence.

But when General Eoin O'Duffy, the abrasive and confrontational garda commissioner, was sacked in March of 1933, he did not go quietly.

O'Duffy had served as chief-of-staff of the Free State Army during the Civil War. He now belonged to the Army Comrades' Association, a voluntary service group founded by former Free State soldiers a week before the 1932 elections. Following the elections, politically inspired violence had continued. When Cumann na nGaedheal meetings were attacked by Fianna Fáil supporters and members of the IRA, shouting “No free speech for traitors!” the ACA had stepped in to serve as stewards and bodyguards.

Working behind the scenes, O'Duffy had developed the ACA into a highly organized, quasi-military body. A Nazi-style salute was adopted, and a uniform that included a distinctive blue shirt. Inevitably they became known as Blueshirts. Treatyites were complaining that de Valera was “soft” on IRA lawbreakers, so the Blueshirts extended their remit to civil defense with the IRA as their specific target.

 

The firing of O'Duffy precipitated a crisis in public confidence, de Valera's enemies claimed the dismissal was the result of a secret pact he had made with the IRA, aimed at turning the country over to the more radical Republican element.

The general public was unaware how much the relationship between de Valera and the IRA had deteriorated. Volunteers were being arrested; the military tribunals were back.

When Cosgrave told a meeting of Cumann na nGaedheal supporters that he suspected Fianna Fáil had Communist leanings, the Blueshirts added communism to their list of enemies.

Fianna Fáil propaganda broadcasts accelerated. Ursula Halloran was kept busy at 2RN, honing the language to keep people on the side of Eamon de Valera. When he first came to power the Republicans who had supported him through all the hard years had accorded him an almost religious adulation. But as his policies took hold they saw the Ireland they had imagined vanishing before their eyes.

De Valera's economic war on Britain was beginning to have an effect—mostly on Irish farmers who no longer had an English market for their livestock and produce. Although his critics were quick to point this out, the farmers themselves continued to support Dev. Many of them had wireless sets and listened to 2RN every night.
Starve John Bull!
they painted defiantly on the sides of their barns and outhouses.

In May of 1933 Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's minister for propaganda and ethnic enlightenment, ordered the burning of all books and publications he deemed subversive to the German Reich. Among them was the just-published
The Shape of Things to Come
, a novel by H. G. Wells that predicted a terrible war enveloping Europe in 1940. A war begun by Germany.

When Ursula wrote to Ned by way of the Hallorans there was no reply. He had disappeared again. Every time this happened she tried to tell herself he had not been killed, but that which was ancient and Irish and superstitious within her feared otherwise.
I'll hear from him in his own good time
, she tried to reassure herself.

 

In July of 1933 Eoin O'Duffy was elected as leader of the Blueshirts.

 

On the twenty-ninth of August it was officially confirmed that the Nazis were rounding up large numbers of Jews and dispersing them among a number of “concentration” camps, the largest being Dachau, outside Munich. In justification of these camps Germany cited similar camps established by the British during the Boer War. An ill-omened choice, considering that thirty thousand Boer women and children had died of neglect in the British concentration camps.

The following day a 2RN broadcast startled Irish listeners. De Valera was acting “to defend the government from two groups of armed men roaming the country, the Blueshirts and the IRA.” A mass meeting of Blueshirts had been banned, an IRA camp in the Dublin mountains had been raided, and armed policemen were stationed on permanent guard outside de Valera's office.

“What's Dev playing at?” Ursula asked Helena Moloney at a Republican women's meeting. “How can he afford to alienate the IRA?”

“He's playing the political game,” Helena replied, “disowning the Republicans to enhance his relations with the British. Perhaps he thinks that will help him negotiate an end to partition. It's clear de Valera thinks he doesn't need us anymore. But he's wrong,” she added angrily.

Ursula walked home lost in thought. She had invested so much emotional coin in Eamon de Valera. His latest action felt like a betrayal.

 

The months passed; summer became autumn. The web of the wireless was expanding. France and tiny Luxembourg began bombarding British airwaves with advertising. Although hard-pressed for funds itself, the Irish broadcasting authority publicly decried such crass commercialism. By implication the Free State was above all that.

Radio Luxembourg had started up in the spring on an unauthorized wavelength. It was considered a pirate station, but many in Ireland listened. Ursula Halloran was not the only person hungry for word from the outside world.

In October Seán Lester wrote,

She purchased a map of Europe as it had been redrawn by the Versailles Treaty and pinned it on her wall.

“Danzig,” she whispered to herself, running her fingers over the map. “Poland. The Baltic Sea.” The names were tempting on her tongue.

But the reasons that made her say no to Lester in the first place were still there.

 

In a speech in December Eoin O'Duffy referred to de Valera's Spanish father by saying: “Eamon de Valera does not understand the people of this country because he is a half-breed!”
¹

Ursula went home to Clare for Christmas, a season muted by Frank's death. Ned made a brief appearance but had very little to say. Ursula hoped he would reassure her about de Valera's policies, but he would not discuss de Valera at all. He only stayed one night. The next morning his bed was empty, his room once more unlived-in.

Ursula spent most of the holiday with Saoirse. With her horse there were no awkward misunderstandings, nothing to be explained. Only a warm flowing of emotion from one to the other; friendship and love and trust.

No betrayal.

 

By the end of the year thirty-four IRA Volunteers had been convicted by military tribunal.

Although Ursula was furious about the IRA arrests, in the New Year she continued her work on behalf of Fianna Fáil.
They're what we have
, she reminded herself.
Somehow it will come right
.

Her work had become her life. “I am a career woman,” she remarked to Louise one Sunday. She had been invited for dinner at number 16.

Louise made a face. “I don't know what that means, and I'm not sure you do either.”

“It means,” said Hector Hamilton, “that she's getting too long in the tooth to find a husband.”

Strange new words, “Americanisms,” began to pepper wireless broadcasts. There were references to such alien objects as
refrigerators
and
television
and
robots
. A woman's program even mentioned
slimming
, an unimaginable concept in a land still haunted by the memory of the Great Famine.

“We shall have to learn a whole new language,” Ursula wrote to Henry Mooney in May of 1934. “But I suppose it is already familiar to you.”

 

Ursula was restless and irritable and did not know why. The thread of her patience was stretched to breaking point.

Her moodiness was a source of comment in the broadcasting station. Finbar Cassidy felt it too. She lost her temper over trivial matters. Even avoiding politics was not enough to escape the lash of her scorn. “You're so provincial!” she exclaimed one evening when he made a comment about preferring mutton to beef.

“Provincial? And me only ordering supper. What's wrong with you, Ursula?”

“Nothing's wrong with me, I'm just bored to the back teeth with…with…” She waved her hands in the air, trying to create a shape to indicate her sense of walls closing in.

Wisely, Finbar devoted himself to his food. But when he took her back to Moore Street he lingered at the door. Without saying a word he put his arms around her and folded her tightly against his chest. He had expected resistance. Instead she went boneless in his embrace. He was surprised at how small she felt. He had imagined her as larger.

He pressed his lips against the top of her head. “Please tell me what's bothering you,” he murmured into her hair. He was ready to defend this fragile creature against the world and all its troubles.

Ursula did not answer. It was not possible to answer, though she realized his question was kindly meant. But how could she explain her worries about Ned and her feeling of being stifled as a person and…Lewis Baines. How could she possibly tell Finbar Cassidy that she was yearning to hear the voice of Lewis Baines?

Lewis, who had forgotten all about her.

Ursula closed her eyes and listened to Finbar's heart beating against her ear. Steady and strong. As if they had a will of their own, her fingers slipped inside his jacket. Slid down his body. Hooked in the waistband of his trousers.

“Come inside with me,” she whispered.

“I thought your landlady had a rule about—”

“Devil take the rules. Come.” She gave a tug.

Finbar followed her through the blue door.

The gaslight in the stairwell had been turned off to save money. Dusty darkness smelled of old wood and peeling paint and the soap jelly used to scrub the stairs.

Finbar fumbled for the handrail.

“We're not going upstairs,” Ursula said.

“But—”