Ashes In the Wind (12 page)

Most of the daughters are curious enough to ask for a detailed explanation of what he does; several find it exciting that John has carried the stable-yard into the ballroom. John sounds the same as the other young men, but looks different. He is tall, lean, with his mother’s fair hair and his father’s strong features, and his hands and face are tanned. He has a strength and independence that is attractive and, to ambitious mothers, dangerous.

Hunting, racing, dancing and tennis appear to be a subordinate but important part of the campaign to keep Ireland within the Empire. At a tennis party at Kilkee Castle, John, who is an erratic but occasionally brilliant player, is paired with the daughter of the house. He’d met Nesta Fitzmaurice, a small, energetic, fair-haired girl, at a dance a month before, where she had shown a healthy interest in John’s explanation of how the covering of the mares was organized.

‘You mean the teaser stallion never gets the mare? What kind of a life is that?’

‘It’s the only one they know.’

‘I’d not settle for it.’

After their narrow defeat in the final of the tennis, Nesta takes John down to the lake to look at the black swans. The swans are gone; she makes up for their absence by showing John the summer house, where she advances John’s sexual education by several important and enjoyable steps. A few weeks later they meet again at a garden party at Ballybrittas. When John sees Nesta take an older ex-soldier to look at the orchid house, he realizes she is not going to advance his education any further.

It is not only John’s occupation that marks him out. The story of the kidnapping and killing of Eileen is widely known but never discussed. When John first arrived at Burke’s Fort, Charles and Cis had offered a few sympathetic words but never referred to Eileen again. He no longer relives the kidnapping. His visit to Kilmainham Jail and the brushing of the sleeve across Tomas’s eyes have convinced John that his worst fears about his mother’s end – torture, rape – are unfounded. What remains is bad enough, but easier to escape through his long working days with the horses.

In the stallion yard he is insulated from the outside world. He has stopped reading the
Irish Times
and begins his day with the
Sporting Life
. He hears about the Truce in the middle of 1921 from Sean, recently returned from hospital with a pronounced limp and no desire to look after The Elector again, happy to be working with the hunters alongside Michael. Many months later he learns of the general amnesty, but he never attempts to find out whether Tomas was either pardoned or hanged.

Over lunch early in 1923, Charles asks John to get The Elector ready for the Dublin Show at Ballsbridge.

‘We need another big rosette. We need to show him off, bring in more mares. Only thirty-five last year, and a lot of them wouldn’t pay the full thirty pounds.’

‘We’ll need to build him up, change his feed, give him more exercise.’

The stallion can’t be ridden, but takes kindly to trotting and cantering around the large paddock on the end of a lunging rein. He gets an extra ration of oats, linseed and a secret preparation from Michael guaranteed ‘to put a shine on the coat of an undertaker’.

There is a preliminary outing to the show at Abbeyleix, where The Elector wins his class, from, it is true, only four other stallions. By the time of the show he looks magnificent. There is a slow journey up to Dublin in the horsebox, a converted army truck. The Elector takes an hour to be convinced to walk up the ramp; John has renewed the padding inside and barred off a space at the front where he can stand and steady the stallion.

It is John’s first visit to Dublin since he went to see Tomas in Kilmainham Jail. The city is still full of soldiers, but ones who wear the unfamiliar uniforms of the newly formed Irish Army. The Royal Irish Constabulary have been disbanded and replaced by the Garda Síochána. Both are full of former rebels who are now on the side of law and order.

There are three elements of the Dublin Show; the showjumping, which attracts teams from all over Europe; the serious judging of horseflesh, from Connemara ponies to heavyweight hunters; and the riotous dances in the big hotels every evening. The stallion competition is on the Thursday and has twenty-seven entries.

‘They’re judged on conformation, and that means looks,’ says Charles. ‘How he behaves in the ring will count. And some of the others will already have won at bigger shows than our fellow.’

John is uncertain how his horse will react to the crowds, the noise and the other stallions – the mares are kept well away from the stallion ring. The day brings out the showman in The Elector, who arches his neck and strides out around the ring, coat gleaming, hooves oiled and polished, mane plaited and tail combed. He is one of five called in from the original twenty-seven. The judges – sombre men in bowler hats, breeches, boots and hacking jackets, notebooks in hand – take an age to winnow two from the last five. The Elector is one; both horses are asked to stand while a judge runs a careful hand down each foreleg. The Elector takes this well, but his rival, a beautiful four-year-old grey from the Mount Juliet stud, backs away. The judges consult their notebooks, talk in low voices in the middle of the ring, ask for a further trot towards them and away, and after an age announce The Elector as the winner of the stallion Supreme Championship.

John trots his stallion around the ring in a lap of honour, the large rosette flapping against The Elector’s head-collar, while the small crowd clap respectfully. Charles comes up to John afterwards, beaming, and presses fifty pounds into his pocket.

‘Best day of my life, best day of my life. We’ll have a queue of mares after this.’

‘He’s come on a lot since Abbeyleix,’ says John. ‘And he made the most of himself, liked showing off to the crowd. Michael’s mixture did the business.’

Several complete strangers insist on shaking John’s hand. One of them, a small, sharp-featured man with a weathered face, says, ‘It’s good to see Burke’s Fort in the prize-money again. And you showed him off well in the ring. You’ve been feeding him right, I’d say.’

Later Charles tells John that this is Desmond Curran, the Master of the Limerick, ‘Best eye for a horse in Ireland’. John travels home in the back of the horsebox, smiling with pleasure all the way. He stops stroking The Elector only to look at the red, white and blue rosette and the Champion’s silver salver.

R
AISING
THE
GREEN
, white and gold flag over Charles Fort is the high point of the War of Independence for Tomas; it is also the moment that Ireland begins to break apart. Tomas is recalled to Ballincollig, leaving Sergeant O’Connor in charge.

‘There’s little enough for the men to do here,’ says O’Connor, ‘except talk about the Treaty and the Republic. Some of the boys might run, especially the hard ones who liked the fighting. Jimsy Malone and Con O’Donnell, for two. I could be left with the johnny-come-latelys, the ones who’ve never fired a shot.’

‘Keep them as busy as you can, and let them go down into Kinsale only on a Saturday,’ says Tomas. ‘I expect I’ll be back soon enough.’

Passing through Cork, he avoids Station Road but calls in on Victoria barracks, where he receives a frosty welcome from the guard at the barracks gate.

‘All of us here are for the Republic. We owe our allegiance to the Executive in the Four Courts. If you’re one of Collins’s men there’s no place for you here.’

Tomas doesn’t argue. Back at Ballincollig he tells Donal.

‘We’ve known that for a while now,’ says Donal. ‘It’s a stand-off at the moment; no one wants to bring it to a fight, though that’s the way we’re heading. People change sides and back again every week. The Commander-in-Chief wants you in Dublin as his ADC. You’re a captain from today. Congratulations.’

‘What does an ADC do?’

‘It’s French for dogsbody. You go wherever Michael Collins goes and you do whatever he tells you.’

‘That’s it?’

‘That’s it. But you’ll know what’s going on, that is if anyone does, and you’ll be at the centre of things. It’s not a soft job. There are plenty of hardline Republicans who’d like to kill Michael Collins and not mind about taking you with him.’

‘They’d never kill Michael Collins, surely to God?’

‘He’s our commander-in-chief, not theirs. The way they see it, he’s the man who gave away the Republic, who agreed to the oath, who lost the Six Counties. It’s all changed. Changed utterly, as your man Yeats wrote.’

Back in Dublin, the city he left with a price on his head and in disguise, Tomas reports to Michael Collins in Beggars Bush barracks. Collins returns his salute with a bear-hug.

‘Good to have you here. My last man got the vapours, couldn’t stand the pace. I hope you’re made of sterner stuff. But you’ll need to smarten up your leather and your cap badge – we’re on display all the time. What’s good enough in Ballincollig won’t pass muster here.’

Tomas mutters an apology, which Michael Collins cuts short.

‘We’ve work to do. The country’s in a bloody mess, and we can’t blame the British any more. The Republicans are holding General O’Connell as a hostage in the Four Courts. At the moment we can count on seven out of sixteen divisions; we’ll have to sort the rest out. We’ve come to the end of talking.’

Two days later Tomas is sent to the Four Courts with a message, which he delivers to Rory O’Connor, the commander of the Four Courts Republicans.

The Officer in Charge,

Four Courts

I, acting under the order of the Government, hereby order you to evacuate the buildings of the Four Courts and to parade your men under arrest, without arms, on that portion of the Quays immediately in front of the Four Courts by 4 a.m.

Failing compliance with this order, the building will be taken by force, and you and all concerned with you will be held responsible for any life lost or any damage done.

By order

Thomas Ennis

O/C 2nd Eastern Division

O’Connor reads it and laughs.

‘We’d take you as a hostage alongside Ginger O’Connell, but you’re not senior enough. Off with you now, sonny, and tell Tom Ennis and the Big Fellow they’ll have to come and get us.’

During the following day National Army troops occupy buildings around the Four Courts. The Republicans are under orders not to fire first and make no attempt to prevent the en­­circlement. Emmet Dalton is sent to collect two borrowed eighteen-pounders from disgruntled British gunners in Phoenix Park. Dalton, who joined the British Army in 1914 and ended the war as a major in the Dublin Fusiliers, sometimes wears his Military Cross on his major general’s uniform.

The British Royal Artillery major looks at Dalton with resentment, sees the blue and white ribbon. ‘Where did you get that MC? Off the body of some poor bastard you ambushed?’

Dalton enjoys the question. ‘George V pinned it on me at Buckingham Palace. I commanded a company of the Dubs when we took Ginchy during the battle of the Somme. I don’t remember seeing you there. Perhaps I’d only recognize your back view.’

The major takes a step towards Dalton, thinks the better of it, checks the paperwork and hands over the guns.

The next day the attack on the Four Courts begins. Tomas is an onlooker from the comparative safety of Merchants’ Quay on the other side of the river, watching in disbelief. Until this moment he had thought that the split would heal itself, and would never end in Irishmen firing on Irishmen. Several members of The Squad are on the Republican side.

After three days of intense fighting a huge explosion destroys the western wing of the Four Courts and the Public Records Office, and what is left of the buildings catches fire, although Gandon’s great dome still stands. When the Republicans surrender, Tomas sees one hundred and eighty men, his former fellow Volunteers, march out into the street without their weapons to be escorted by soldiers of the Free State Army to Jameson’s Distillery.

The road in front of the Four Courts is covered in rubble, beams, spent ammunition, tangled tram wires, plaster. The head of one of the Corinthian columns, its acanthus leaves and scrolls still intact, lies upside down on the edge of the embankment. Someone has scrawled ‘WE HAVE NO TIME FOR TRUCERS’ on the side of the abandoned armoured car.

Inside the building the surrendering Republicans have left piles of disabled rifles and revolvers, ammunition boxes, mattresses and blankets, discarded clothing, stale and mouldy food. There are papers and documents from the Public Records Office scattered all over Dublin on the wind of the fire – wills, census returns, writs, judgments, some black, some grey, some white. Tomas picks up a half-burned ledger detailing government expenditure on victuals, ammunition and horses in the year 1798. We lost that one, he thinks, but what kind of victory is this?

On his way back to headquarters he walks down O’Connell Street where the fighting has been fierce. Shops, offices, pubs and hotels are all closed, many of them badly damaged. When he brings the news of the Four Courts’ surrender, Collins is exultant. ‘That should put an end to it,’ he says, beating his hand on the table. ‘The others won’t last long.’

Michael Collins plans a trip to the South against the advice of his staff. ‘They’ll not shoot me in my own county,’ he says.

‘You’re running short of lives,’ says Tomas. ‘The British nearly got you a dozen times, your car was blown up two weeks ago when by chance you weren’t in it, and you’re not exactly in disguise any more.’

‘Never mind that, the devil looks after his own. I won’t need you tonight – I’m off to Kilteragh to dine with Horace Plunkett.’

‘You’ll need an escort, sure.’

‘No, and that’s an end of it.’

Tomas asks another staff officer what’s going on.

‘He’s got his escort sure enough – it’s Hazel Lavery, his Friday wife.’

‘I thought he was engaged to Kitty Kiernan,’ says Tomas, shocked.

‘So he is, but the Big Fellow is generous with himself, and he makes his own rules, you should know that by now.’