Ashes In the Wind (10 page)

The old bedsteads and odd timber are replaced by proper gates that Tomas puts together in the farmyard and hangs on long-disused iron gateposts. Michael is pleased. ‘These fields are fit for the King of Connaught,’ he says. ‘O’Brien will be looking down from heaven at the wonder of it. Fair play to the man, he was crippled with the arthritis in his last years. Now for the drains.’

Now for the drains. Digging diagonal trenches across each field, laying in the drainage pipes, then covering them over, is only a little less back-breaking than stone-walling. Tomas’s hands blister at first, then heal and harden. In the smallest field he is set to digging a lazy-bed for potatoes. As he plants the seed potatoes he remembers his first trip from Cork to Lissagroom with Denis, and the British sergeant who had stopped them on their way. And Frank O’Gowan, who hadn’t told them of the pistols and ammunition at the bottom of the last sack. Frank had left Dublin immediately after the killing of Captain Newbury. As far as Tomas knew he hadn’t been taken, but the
Skibbereen Echo
once a week was the only source of news at the farm. Michael Kelly goes into the village to Mass every Sunday. Tomas stays behind.

Although he is tired after each day’s work, Tomas finds it hard to sleep. He has nightmares – Staigue Fort, the destroyed face of Seamus O’Connell, Patrick O’Mahony’s shattered knee, William McKelvey curled up and groaning in the farmyard. Worst of all is Captain Newbury’s screaming, pregnant wife, who as she turns towards him has Eileen Burke’s face.

After his first month at the farm he starts to go into the village in the evening. The Lissagroom bar doubles as the Post Office and general store, and he is often the only man drinking in the back room. There is a wooden bench along one wall, a table with four bentwood chairs, sawdust on the floor and Guinness and Beamish posters on the walls. A small turf fire throws out little heat; this is a place not for conversation but for drinking. Soon Tomas is drinking six or seven pints of stout every evening, and after a month of scrutiny by the landlord he is offered a glass from the bottle of poteen that is kept hidden underneath the counter. This does the work of several pints. By eleven each night Tomas is only just able to make the journey back up the road to the farm, where he slumps onto his bed fully clothed. The drink banishes the dreams, at least during the night-time.

The news of the Truce in the middle of 1921 is followed by Dáil Éireann’s approval of the Treaty. Early in the following year Tomas gets a message telling him he can become Tomas Sullivan again, and that he is to go to the Queen Victoria in Cork. Michael Kelly drives him into the city, Cora pulling the trap, the journey this time uninterrupted by broken bridges and trenched roads. Outside the Queen Victoria Michael Kelly shakes his hand and says, ‘You’re a real worker. Cora will miss you.’

‘Goodbye,’ says Tomas, ‘I’m sorry we didn’t finish the last drain,’ and goes into the pub. He is given a room for the night and told to report to the Imperial Hotel the next day.

The Imperial Hotel is the temporary headquarters of the Free State Army’s Southern Command. There are two sentries outside the grand entrance; Tomas is shown upstairs by a young woman wearing the badge of Cumann na mBan.

‘We don’t take over Victoria barracks for a few months,’ she says. ‘You’ll find the commander-in-chief and his people in here.’

In the room Michael Collins is sitting at a table drinking a cup of tea, almost unrecognizable in the uniform of the Irish Army. Tomas can’t take his eyes off the gleaming brown boots, the Sam Browne belt, the peaked cap, the holstered revolver. Collins sees the look and laughs.

‘You’d better get used to it. We need to show the world we can be as smart as the British, that we’re not just a bunch of hobbledehoys. Now the Tan War is won, we’re a real army and you need to join it.’

He pauses, takes a mouthful of tea and continues, ‘It’s not clear the fighting is over. There are enough Volunteers who hate the Treaty, hate the oath, to cause trouble.’

Tomas nods – his relief at the Truce and the Treaty has left no room for worrying about the fine print of documents he has never seen.

‘Good man. You’ll be part of the Cork No. 1 Brigade, a lieutenant in the second battalion. We’ll teach you what that means; go to the barracks at Ballincollig in the morning. Donal here, you’ll remember him from Dublin, is the adjutant. He’ll sort you out and find you a uniform. Don’t worry, this is strange country for all of us.’

Strange country indeed. The same evening Tomas goes round to the O’Hanrahan house with a bunch of flowers and knocks on the door. Kitty opens it. ‘Tomas,’ she says, putting her hand over her mouth; she steps back as Tomas tries to embrace her and starts to cry.

‘We thought you were dead. Frank told us you were taken and going to be hanged.’

‘Two of us escaped from Kilmainham. I’ve been out at Lissagroom ever since. Now I’m covered by the amnesty. It wouldn’t have been safe to come here before.’

Tomas follows Kitty into the front room where they sit facing each other on two stiff-backed, velvet-upholstered chairs. The fire is unlit. Kitty reaches for a box of matches, changes her mind. In the corner of the room Tomas notices a shrine to Kitty’s father. Michael O’Hanrahan is looking out of a silver frame, the picture an enlarged version of the postcard Kitty had shown him on the hill above Cork City. In front there is a statue of the Virgin Mary, a votive lamp, two books and an unfamiliar half-furled flag.

‘Those are his two stories, and that’s the Plough and the Stars that flew over Jacob’s Factory during the Rising. He was there with MacDonagh and MacBride.’

Tomas looks at her directly; she is prettier than he had remembered, still serious, but a young woman now, not a girl.

‘It was terrible for your mother and you to lose him,’ he says. ‘I’ve thought about you often. Even at the worst times. And now the Tan War is over, it’s won.’

‘Is it, so? I’m not sure. We’ve not got our Republic.’

‘We’ve got our freedom, and that’s enough to be getting on with. The rest will come soon enough.’

There is a long, awkward silence. Kitty has stopped crying, but is twisting and untwisting her fingers. She finds it hard to look at Tomas, then suddenly says, ‘There’s something I must tell you. I’ve been seeing Frank O’Gowan. He’s asked me to marry him and I’ve said yes.’

‘Marry Frank O’Gowan? Jesus, Kitty, he’s fifteen years older than you. And he’s...’ Tomas stops, then continues, ‘He’s not the man for you.’

‘You don’t have to swear. I’ve not seen you nor heard a word from you for three years. It’s not for you to tell me who to marry.’ Kitty stands up and holds out her hand. ‘We can still be friends.’

‘That’s not enough for me,’ says Tomas. ‘When we kissed it felt like there was something good between us, something that I’ve been holding onto. I see I was mistaken.’ He puts the bunch of flowers on the table and stands up, keeping his hands by his side. ‘Good luck with Frank O’Gowan.’

Kitty takes a step towards Tomas, stops, then sits back down in her chair and starts to cry quietly. Tomas walks out of the house and down the Quays along the north channel of the River Lee. The river is high, brown and roiling, trying to escape its confining banks. Back at the Queen Victoria he starts drinking, sitting alone in the corner of the saloon bar. Denis comes in; Tomas hasn’t seen him since the shooting of Colonel Smyth in the Constitution Club.

‘How the devil are you?’ says Denis, pumping Tomas’s reluctant hand. ‘I hear you did the business in Dublin all right. I’ve joined the Free State Army; they’ll be wanting you, surely.’

Tomas grunts a reply, rebuffs the invitation to join Denis and his friends at the bar and continues to drink alone. His parting from Kitty two years before had been hard enough, and he’d been unsure of his reception, but the news that she is engaged to Frank O’Gowan is unbearable. Had she really thought he was dead? Hadn’t the news of the escape from Kilmainham been in the Cork newspapers? Frank must have known he was still alive. The questions come and go in his head, the answers blurred by the drink, until at midnight he has to be helped upstairs and put to bed by the landlord.

The next morning he reports to the barracks at Ballincollig with a blinding headache, swears allegiance to the Irish Free State and is given a typewritten commission as a lieutenant. Donal congratulates him when the short, perfunctory ceremony is over, and takes him to the quartermaster’s stores, where a sergeant measures him for a uniform, makes him sign for a revolver, ammunition, boots, leggings, a Sam Browne, a greatcoat, two shirts and two ties, and tells him to come back the next day. Outside on the square two platoons are drilling; the sergeant major shouting at the men is plainly a former British Army soldier.

‘We’ll teach you the drill in the officers’ squad once you’re properly dressed. Done any drilling?’ says Donal.

‘I’ve fired a revolver, fired a Thompson gun and thrown a few grenades. Never saluted in my life.’

‘That’s true of most of us. It’s not so hard, although some of the men resent it. They think it’s aping the British. But the Big Fellow says we need to change from being fighters into soldiers. Discipline wasn’t strong among the Volunteers at the best of times, and drill and turnout are important. You’ve been allocated a room in the Officers’ Mess.’

Tomas, who has difficulty thinking of himself as an officer, gets his uniform the following day and spends the next fortnight in a squad of a dozen lieutenants, drilling in the morning and learning their duties in the afternoon. The instructors are ex-British Army and not all of them have impeccable War of Independence credentials.

‘There were thirty-six of us at the Kilmichael ambush, and I’ve met forty-eight of them in the past three months,’ says Donal.

Tomas tolerates the drilling every morning, although some of his companions have two left feet. Nevertheless there are moments when The Squad halts or presents arms as one, and Tomas admits to himself, although not to the others, that these are curiously satisfying. He stops the heavy drinking when Donal takes him to one side in the Officers’ Mess.

‘Tomas, I don’t know the cause of your drinking and I don’t care. I do know you’ll be out on your ear if it goes on any longer.’

He makes a half-hearted attempt to see Kitty, watching Station Road from a safe distance early one Sunday morning in the hope of intercepting her on the way to Mass. Instead he sees Frank O’Gowan leaving the house, and the violent jealousy that overwhelms him is followed by a return of the despair that had turned him to drink. He goes back to Ballincollig, realizing that he cannot see Kitty or Frank again. He asks Donal about Frank.

‘Frank O’Gowan’s got a company in the second battalion. They’re at Macroom,’ says Donal. ‘I’m not sure for how long – he’s an out-and-out Republican, doesn’t try to hide it. Weren’t you with him at Staigue?’

‘I was.’ Tomas does not elaborate further, thinks that the twenty miles between Ballincollig and Macroom is distance enough.

In the second week they take it in turns to drill The Squad, and all but two are deemed competent to take on their new roles as platoon commanders. Tomas’s platoon, three sections of ten men each headed by a corporal, is slightly below full strength. His sergeant, James O’Connor, is a Connaught Rangers veteran who had fought in the Boer War and survived the German spring offensive in 1918. Tomas and he have a careful respect for each other. Tomas knows O’Connor has been a proper soldier, O’Connor knows Tomas has been one of The Squad.

Most of Tomas’s platoon have seen, or claimed to have seen, some action in the many skirmishes and ambushes of the War of Independence. Once the novelty of their new uniforms, regular meals and a sound roof overhead wears off they are easily bored. Tomas’s and Sergeant O’Connor’s solution is ceaseless activity. Drilling, a ten-mile route march once a week, weapons training, firing practice, Gaelic football and hurling are the best possible substitute for war. There is no time for disaffection. The Ballincollig bar is off limits, and the prohibition is strictly observed after two members of No. 3 Platoon are caught there and sent home.

Tomas finds the transition to lieutenant difficult, sustainable only by acting the role, a role largely improvised with few stage directions and a brief script. It is reassuring that his brother officers clearly feel the same. Only Donal seems entirely comfortable.

‘He’s one of nature’s adjutants,’ Tomas says to O’Connor. ‘He does it all without breaking sweat.’

In the Officers’ Mess the play-acting is at its most pronounced. They are waited on by women from the village, they eat off plates bearing the crossed lances of a departed British cavalry regiment with the King’s broad arrow underneath, and they stand to drink the health of the Irish Free State at a formal dinner once a week. Unease is added to the unreality Tomas has felt ever since leaving Drimnamore for Staigue Fort.

‘You’re doing great,’ says Donal. ‘O’Connor’s a good man, and he doesn’t want your job. The men like you well enough, they do what you tell them, and they all know what you’ve done during the war.’

‘How do they know that?’

‘I told them.’

After a month at Ballincollig, Tomas’s platoon wins the battalion hurling competition. Tomas feels this is a good moment to ask for a week’s leave and uses the time to go back to County Kerry.

Returning to Drimnamore is an ordeal, made no easier by his mother’s joy at seeing him. Annie Sullivan cries, hugs him, cries again.

‘It’s thanks to the Blessed Virgin Mary you’re back,’ she says, crossing herself. ‘We thought you dead until Father Michael read that you had escaped. The Tans came looking for you here several times, but I told them I knew nothing. As indeed I did.’

‘I couldn’t send a message. I’m sorry for the worry I caused you,’ and Tomas wraps his arms around Annie, who is sobbing and smiling.

‘You’ll stay here now surely,’ she says anxiously.

‘Ah no, I’m in the army now, and there’s still work to be done. But I’ll be back to help with the harvest later on, and you’d better set me to work.’

Tomas spends three days doing the jobs that were too heavy for Annie, planting out the seed potatoes, repairing the fences and re-laying half a dozen slates that had been dislodged by the winter gales. He strips and repairs the water pump in the yard, oils and sharpens the scythes and the axe, and puts a new shaft on the slane. He goes out to the old turf line above the house, digs out the drain and takes the thick four-inch layer of fibrous grass off the top to expose the rich chocolate brown. He has always enjoyed the work; with a sharpened slane it is surprisingly easy once the top is clear and in two afternoons he cuts and stacks enough to see Annie through the rest of the year.