Danny Boy (10 page)

‘Aye, Mammy, I am,’ Rosie said.

‘I wish I could go with you,’ Sarah said wistfully. ‘But we’re rushed off our feet. The supervisor, Mrs Clancy, would take a dim view of it altogether. She’s never had any sympathy with the uprising at all. She’s called them irresponsible hotheads from the beginning and said that they deserved all they got. She won’t even allow us to discuss it at work.’

‘I’ll find out about Sam for you too.’ Rosie said, knowing why Sarah would like to be the one to go.

‘Sam!’ Sarah cried with a defiant lift of her head that sent her black curls bouncing. ‘Don’t worry about him, Rosie, he’s nothing to me. Did he think of me when he went running off with the other halfwits he’d been playing soldiers with? He did not. Well, he can go hang for I shan’t care if he’s alive or dead.’

But Rosie knew that feelings for someone could not be turned off like that and saw the deep hurt reflected in Sarah’s haunted eyes.

The following day, after a big Sunday dinner which she could barely touch, Rosie went off to her parents’ house. She seldom went on Sundays, but wanted to tell them of her decision to go to Dublin the following day. She didn’t expect their support, which was as well, for she didn’t get it. They were scornful of the rebels’ abortive stand and thought her plain mad to go running to Dublin to see for herself. Chrissie and Geraldine, on the other hand, were astounded at her bravery and Dermot gazed at her with pure awe.

It was Geraldine who walked her to the gate as she left and said as soon as they were out of earshot of the house, ‘I wish I could go with you for I’ll worry about you every minute until you’re back.’

Going home, Rosie thought she’d be glad of Geraldine’s company, anyone’s company in fact. Anyone to help still the panic that rose in her every time she thought of going to Dublin and someone to stand beside her when she found out what exactly had happened to Danny.

But there was no help available. She would have to overcome her fear and panic and so she resolved to set off, resolutely and alone, the next morning.

Just a little later she stopped dead at the farmhouse door and stared at Phelan as he sat on a dining chair beside the table which Connie was piling with food. Rosie didn’t take into account Phelan’s gaunt state, nor his white, strained face and red-rimmed eyes. He, who’d begun it all, was here, alive, at home in his kitchen, food piled around him like the prodigal son. Anger coursed through her veins. ‘Where’s Danny?’ she demanded.

Phelan looked at her with eyes full of sorrow and shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’

Rosie put Bernadette down, leaped across the floor and yanked Phelan out of the chair and she shook him violently.

‘Here, here,’ Matt said, pulling Rosie away from Phelan but holding her tight against him, his arms wrapped around her in support.

But Rosie needed answers and she continued to yell at Phelan. ‘What d’you mean you don’t know? You must know, you were there, for Christ’s sake.’

‘Leave the boy now,’ Connie said, touching Rosie’s arm. ‘Let him eat. He’ll tell us all in time.’

Rosie sank into a chair and put her head in her hands and wept, for Phelan’s presence, without his brother and also without any news of him, seemed to bode only ill.

Phelan didn’t tell them all, he couldn’t, but he told them enough and as Rosie listened she rocked her daughter on her knee. Bernadette’s warm presence tucked against her mother soothed her and helped a little to ease the aching dread in her heart.

‘I suppose now you know I was a member of the Brotherhood?’ Phelan said with a glance around at them all.

‘We know,’ Matt said heavily, ‘though Rosie didn’t tell us all immediately. Apparently you charged her not to.’

‘Aye’ Phelan said. ‘I did, but only because I was feared for her.’

‘All right,’ Matt said sharply. ‘We know now you haven’t the brains you were born with to join such a crackpot organisation, so tell us the rest. What use was a young boy like you to them?’

‘Well, at first I was just a messenger, and Niall too,’ Phelan said. ‘I didn’t know Danny was looking for me. He’d have had a job tracking me down because I was all over the place. Anyway, Dublin wasn’t the safest place in the world to walk about looking for someone.’

Phelan stopped there. How could he tell them, his family, of the exhilaration that had filled him at being part of it all at first? That thought had sustained him in the long march to Dublin and when they’d reached the capital and he’d seen the other rebel groups assembled there, he’d felt his heart almost overflow with pride. He couldn’t share this. They wouldn’t understand. Unless a person had been there they couldn’t. He decided to stick to the bare facts instead and so he went on, ‘Even for me and Niall it was scary stuff, going from one rebel stronghold to another with messages. By Tuesday evening it was decided it was too dangerous for us to go on and we’d be more useful with a rifle in our hands.

‘We were sent to houses overlooking Mount Street Bridge. More reinforcements from England were expected on
Wednesday and they had to cross the bridge from Kingstown Harbour – we were to try and keep them back.’

Again Phelan stopped. He remembered the commander of the few men stationed in the house asking him, ‘You handled a rifle before, son?’

‘Aye, sir. We have a farm. I’ve been handling a rifle since I was twelve.’ He hadn’t added that that was a mere two years before. ‘And then I’ve been a member of the Brotherhood these past months.’

Not, of course, that they fired many shots there; each bullet was too precious to waste. ‘Each one is for an English heart,’ as Shay would say.

Phelan had remembered standing at the upstairs window early that Wednesday morning. The sun hadn’t broken through the mottled clouds and the sky was pink tinged and Phelan had watched in horrified amazement as the
Helga
sailed up the Liffey and began bombarding Liberty Hall. But a shout from below had brought his gaze away from the ship and back to the task in hand.

‘A large company of soldiers had unloaded at Kingstown.’ Phelan continued. ‘We were told to stand ready.’

He remembered his heart hammering against his ribs, and his hands so sticky with sweat he wondered whether he would be able to hold the rifle steady and pull the trigger. He had wondered too what good the handful of them would be against so many soldiers. There was rumoured to be ten thousand of them.

‘And then they were upon us. Wave after wave of them,’ Phelan said. ‘For all we killed, there was another ten to take their place. The commander had a machine gun and the rat-tat-tat of that was continuous as the men went down in rows.’

He didn’t tell his listening family how the killings had bothered him. He was a good shot, his rifle usually found its target, but Phelan had found it was one thing to kill a fox to save the poultry and to kill a rabbit for a pie or stew, but
quite another to kill another living, breathing human being. Some of the soldiers had looked little older than him and they had jerked and fallen one after the other till the street ran with a scarlet stream of blood. More than once he had felt bile rise in his throat, but feeling sick had been a luxury he couldn’t allow himself and he had fought down the nausea as he lifted his rifle again.

‘Danny found me there,’ Phelan said. ‘It had died down by then and the soldiers had routed the lot in the Green and they’d retreated to the Royal College of Surgeons. We knew when they gave a mind to it they’d be back to finish us off, so we were making plans to leave when Danny arrived. He’d met Shay outside and spoken to him.’

‘So Shay’s alive?’

‘He was then,’ Phelan said. ‘And Danny, and your Sam, Sarah. Now, I don’t know. Danny wiped the floor with the man in charge about Niall and myself. He said he didn’t want to belong to a united Ireland won by weans. I was a bit mad hearing us described as weans, but Danny was so angry already with me, I didn’t want to give him further cause to go for me, so I kept quiet and so did Niall. He said we were too young to make that sort of commitment.

‘But then the man asked him what manner of Irishman Danny was, said that we’d joined the organisation of our own free will, and they needed every man they could get and he wasn’t letting anyone go. Danny was angry, raging mad, but so was every other man there and I was afraid Danny would get himself shot. Then Shay suggested Danny took our places.

‘I could see Danny wasn’t happy about it. I mean we all know what he felt from the beginning about the violence. But he knew that would be the only way that we would be released.

‘I begged and pleaded to be allowed to stay, but it was no good. Neither man would listen to me.’

He didn’t go on to say he and Niall had watched Danny take the oath of allegiance that the commander had insisted
on. He’d sworn the same oath himself, alongside Niall, but theirs was now null and void because of their ages, while Phelan knew Danny’s oath would be for life. He knew there was no getting out of the Brotherhood once you were in it.

‘Shay smuggled us out,’ he went on. ‘Everyone was off the streets because the soldiers were taking pot-shots at any movement or sudden noise. Shay said there was a Captain Colthurst I had to watch out for, because he’d shoot the legs from under a person he didn’t like the look of. He’d killed four men stone dead just the previous day who weren’t even part of the uprising – four innocent men, gunned down for no reason. I told Shay I’d take good care not to come across him.

‘We were told to head for home, but neither of us could do that with Danny and Shay and Sam up to their necks in it, so we hung about the streets, taking care not to go too near the centre and be caught in the crossfire.

‘By the time we heard of the surrender on Saturday morning we were both light-headed with hunger and tiredness. We hung around for a bit to see if any would be released, but they marched the whole lot off. People said they were to be taken to a place called Kilmainham Jail. It was awful – the crowds pelted them with anything they could lay their hands on.’

‘I’m so sorry, Rosie,’ Phelan said sadly.

‘Sorry, huh,’ Rosie repeated bitterly. ‘That’s all right then, if you’re sorry,’ and then she pressed her face as close to Phelan as she could and said threateningly, ‘
You’ll
be sorrier before you’re much older if anything has happened to Danny. I’m off to Dublin to see for myself tomorrow.’

There was a howl of protest from Phelan, but Rosie would take no heed of it. She was determined to find out what had happened to her husband and she intended staying in Dublin until she did.

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.