Danny Boy (8 page)

Rosie worriedly saw Phelan had a point. ‘So what do we do?’

‘We put all that ammunition back just the way it was and get as far from here as possible. You never come near this place again, Dermot. Do you hear what I say?’

The boy nodded, but Phelan was not satisfied. ‘I mean it, Dermot, and you say nothing, not to anyone. This is not a game.’

‘Phelan, stop it,’ Rosie said angrily, seeing the fear on Dermot’s face and feeling the way his whole body shook. ‘You’re frightening him.’

‘He needs frightening,’ Phelan said, dropping to his knees and wrapping the pistols up in the canvas cover the way they had been. ‘There are desperate men in the IRB and while me and Shay, Sam and Niall would try to protect you, I don’t know how much influence we’d have if they found out either you or Dermot had been here.’

‘Sweet Jesus, Phelan! What in God’s name have you got mixed up in? A fine organisation it must be all right, if it threatens women and weans.’

‘I’m fighting for Irish Freedom and the right to rule our own country,’ Phelan snapped angrily. ‘We’ve planned and trained for months. Surprise is the key and if that was jeopardised in some way and the British Army were waiting for us, what d’you think they’d do? Shake us by the hand? All I’m saying is neither of you come here again, or mention it to anyone at all, or you might be very sorry.’

‘Just two more casualties of war, Phelan?’ Rosie asked bitterly, putting the rifles back into the hole gently.

‘Aye, if you want to see it that way,’ Phelan said menacingly. ‘Come on, we’re finished here.’

He roughly pulled Rosie to her feet and kicked the mat into place. ‘Let’s go.’

He blew out the lamp and replaced it on the mantelshelf and then strode across the room, suddenly plunged into semidarkness, and opened the door. ‘Come on,’ he urged Rosie and Dermot in a hissing whisper. ‘Every minute we stay is more dangerous. I’ll lead the way through the undergrowth, just in case. Not a word now, and go as quietly as possible.’

Easier said than done. Rosie thought a little later as she was pulled to a stop yet again by a thorn snagging her shawl. With the fronds slapping at them and the leaves and mud under their feet, hiding the twigs that broke with a loud snap, it was impossible to move as quietly as Phelan would have liked and he’d keep turning at a particularly loud noise and hiss at Rosie who was directly behind him, ‘Quiet, for God’s sake.’

Rosie was glad to reach the end of that green tunnel, glad to straighten her back and stand up once more on the path, pulling at the leaves and small twigs caught in her hair and dusting down her clothes as she waited for Dermot. A worry was nagging at her. ‘Phelan,’ she said. ‘Dermot was right in what he said. He told no-one but me what he’d found. Well, he didn’t tell me, he showed me. But he was in a state when he came to the farm. Mammy will wonder what it was about. What shall we say?’

Phelan said nothing at first. He led them down the path a little way, where there was a broken tree, and stopped. He knew this was a problem. Connie would undoubtedly wonder at the behaviour of Dermot. He’d wondered himself, hadn’t he?

What else would generate the same excitement for a child?
What story could they dream up that would satisfy Connie? ‘You could say I found a badgers’ sett,’ Dermot said suddenly. ‘I did once, when I was out with Daddy. It was nearly dark and we saw the mother badger and two babies come out. They hadn’t heard us and we stopped and watched them. Would that do it?’ he asked Phelan. ‘Would your mother believe that?’

‘She might,’ Phelan said. ‘Aye, indeed she might. Say you called for me too on the way,’ he told Rosie.

‘Why can’t you say that yourself?’

‘Because I’m going to lead young Dermot home.’

‘You needn’t,’ Dermot said. ‘I can go home on my own.’

‘I know that fine well,’ Phelan said. ‘But today I’m coming with you. We need to talk.’

Dermot gave a sigh. Phelan would go on about not telling anyone again. He didn’t need to keep on, Dermot wasn’t stupid and he was scared enough already to keep his mouth closed.

But he said none of this to Phelan. Phelan, the boy he liked and admired, seemed to have disappeared overnight and had turned into a stern man with a gruff voice and cold eyes, and he was wary of upsetting him.

And so, when, just a few minutes after leaving Rosie, Phelan began to stress again the need for secrecy, he didn’t even show the slightest impatience. And then Phelan said, ‘I want you to do something for me.’

Dermot was now all ears. He’d do anything to get back in Phelan’s good books. ‘Aye,’ he said.

‘I want you to take a letter home to my parents.’

‘A letter?’

‘Aye,’ Phelan said. ‘I might have to go away from this place in a wee while and I won’t be able to tell my parents till I’m gone.’

‘Another secret?’

‘Aye, and I won’t have them worried more than they will be anyway. If I leave you a letter, will you take it to them?’

‘Aye, but how will I know the time to take it?’

‘I’ll get word to you,’ Phelan said. ‘After dark. Which room do you sleep in?’

‘The end one,’ Dermot said. ‘You go through Geraldine and Chrissie’s room to get to mine. Mammy and Daddy sleep in a corner of the kitchen in a curtained-off bed.’

‘Good,’ Phelan said. ‘So if I throw gravel at your window to wake you up, it shouldn’t rouse the house?’

‘No,’ Dermot said doubtfully. ‘But I’m sometimes hard to wake up. I’ll leave my window a little bit open from now on.’

‘I don’t know the exact date,’ Phelan said. ‘None of us have been told that yet, but it will be soon. I’ll come as soon as I know. I’ll have the letter written and ready. And you’ll take it to Mammy on the farm, the day I ask you to.’

‘Aye.’

‘And you’ll not say a word of this conversation,’ Phelan said. ‘If they ask, say you had your window slightly open and you found the letter on your bedroom floor later that day. All right?’

‘Aye.’

‘Good man, Dermot,’ Phelan said, and Dermot’s heart lightened, for it was obvious Phelan had forgiven him for discovering the cottage and finding the stash of arms. He was trusting him now to take an important letter to his parents when he was about business to free Ireland. This Brotherhood thing he was in sounded exciting. Dermot wished he was old enough to join. Maybe Phelan could put a word in for him later, if he delivered the letter and told it exactly as Phelan said.

He waved goodbye at the head of the lane to his farm and went in to face the music. He knew his mother would go for him. She hated the way he was always trailing up to see Rosie and wee Bernadette.

Rosie was very troubled after the discovery of the arms in the disused cottage and Phelan’s reaction to it. She didn’t know how to treat Phelan after it either, but she was anxious for him and for how his activities would affect the family.

The constant worry gnawing at her made her jumpy and it was noticed by both Connie and Danny. ‘What is it, pet?’ Danny would ask. ‘What are you fretting over?’

How Rosie longed to tell her young husband, who was looking at her in such a concerned way, two deep furrows in his brow. She wanted to tell him everything, but mindful of Phelan’s warnings of secrecy, she knew everyone would be safer if she said nothing. She wouldn’t be able to bear it if she brought danger to the family that had welcomed her so warmly, and especially to Danny and wee Bernadette. And so she’d try to smile at Danny and say reassuringly, ‘Nothing’s the matter with me, Danny. I’m grand, so I am.’

But Danny knew she wasn’t. ‘Has she spoken to you at all?’ he demanded of his mother one day as Rosie disappeared with a basket of damp washing to hang in the orchard.

‘Not at all,’ Connie told him. ‘She’s not been the same since the day wee Dermot came flying up to the place in a state of great excitement, to show them a badgers’ sett of all things.
‘Maybe,’ she went on, ‘she’s worried for the child, for he’s not been near the place since. Geraldine told her he’s nearly a prisoner on the farm and he’s been forbidden to come here as a punishment, because that day he set off without telling anyone where he was going, or asking if he might. Maybe that bothers Rosie, because for all Dermot is a spoiled wee scut, she’s powerfully fond of him.’

‘I don’t know,’ Danny said, running his hands through his hair. ‘She’s different somehow, though.’

Connie knew she was but she’d not been able to get to the bottom of it either. ‘Could be just the weather, son. Dear God it could put years on you, the constant rain and the leaden skies. I know it’s stopped for now, but not for long by the look of it. Those clothes Rosie is putting out will gain nothing, for the very air is damp and she’ll be fetching them in again shortly.’

Danny grimaced and shook his head. He knew it was more than that. Rosie never laughed any more, and the rare smiles she gave never touched her eyes. Then there was the way she behaved with Phelan. She never seemed to have anything to say to him now, yet once the pair of them had been as thick as thieves. It bothered him that she’d tell him nothing and claim everything was fine, when it so obviously wasn’t. He was her friend, surely, as well as her husband? There shouldn’t be secrets between them.

‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned, it is a fortnight since my last confession,’ Rosie mumbled in the small box in the dimly lit, cold church. It was the evening of Good Friday and all the family, indeed most of the church, would, after attending the ‘Stations of the Cross’, make a good confession that day.

And Rosie had more to confess than most, for she’d decided to unburden herself to the priest about the weapons, safe in the knowledge he could repeat none of it.

So, after the litany of usual sins, Father McNally enquired, ‘Is there anything else, my child?’

He knew there was. Years of hearing confessions had sharpened his awareness in listening to people and he knew there was more Rosie Walsh, whose voice he so clearly recognised, wanted to tell him. Rosie, although aware of the rows of people waiting outside the confessional box, knew that if she didn’t tell another person about this whole business she’d burst, and so she replied, ‘Yes, Father. It’s not something I’ve done wrong, you understand.’

‘Go on.’

‘I found something, Father. In fact it was my young brother who found it and brought me to see it. It was a cottage, an old disused place. Only it had been done up, made watertight. I wondered at that, for no-one owns it. It’s been derelict for years.’ Rosie stopped and the priest urged her on.

Rosie swallowed. ‘The floor is covered with a rush mat. There is a hidey-hole under it, cut into the floor and covered with a sod of turf that can be lifted out.’

The priest’s blood ran suddenly as cold as ice. He knew what kind of thing might be hidden in such a way in an empty, disused house. Hadn’t he had mothers weeping in the confessional before today about the menfolk in their lives, who they feared had got mixed up in subversive activities? Indeed, he’d had young men too, who asked for his blessing in their quest to free Ireland from British tyranny. He’d not been able to do that, of course, but he wasn’t surprised when Rosie went on in a whisper to tell him what she had found that day and Phelan’s reaction to it.

‘I think my brother-in-law is mixed up in this Irish Republican Brotherhood, Father,’ Rosie told the priest, ‘and he said these are desperate times and the organization is run by desperate men and I wasn’t to tell a soul what I’d seen.’

Father McNally didn’t know how to advise the girl. ‘Are you worried about your brother-in-law? What he might do?’

‘Aye, Father.’

‘Can you not discuss it with your husband?’

‘God, no, Father,’ Rosie cried. ‘The minute I mention a word of this to him, we’d all be in danger.’

‘What would you have me do, child?’

‘There’s nothing you can do, I don’t think,’ Rosie said. ‘I just had to tell someone.’

‘All I can do then is pray for you all.’

‘Aye, Father,’ Rosie said. ‘That never comes amiss, at any rate.’

The priest sighed. Ireland seemed poised on the brink of something and in Europe soldiers were being massacred in their thousands, and all the prayers in the world seemed unable to stop any of it. But this was no way for a priest to think, he chided himself. Didn’t he preach that prayers could move mountains?

‘Try not to worry too much,’ the priest told Rosie. ‘I know you might think that’s easy for me to say but really there is nothing you can do, unless you can talk to your brother-in-law and make him see sense.’

Rosie knew that wasn’t an option. Phelan now avoided speaking to her so obviously that even Danny had noticed and had asked if they’d had a fall-out. God, if only it had been just that. She doubted that even if she did manage to talk to him she could make him change course.

‘Say a decade of the rosary for your penance,’ the priest said, jerking Rosie back to the present. ‘And now make a good act of contrition.’

Rosie said the familiar prayer and then, leaving the confessional box, she headed for the side altar where she prayed earnestly for Phelan. She said not one decade of the rosary but three, playing the beads through her fingers. She lit a candle for good measure and left the church feeling she’d done all she could, yet somehow knowing it wasn’t going to be enough.

Much later that same night, Dermot heard footsteps outside his bedroom window. Since his talk with Phelan he’d slept
lighter than usual and now the sound of boots on the cobbles woke him with a jolt and he was out of bed and across the room in a flash.

Phelan was outside the window, which had been left slightly open just as Dermot had promised it would be. Dermot pushed it wide and Phelan put a warning finger to his lips. He had the letter ready. ‘The Brotherhood are off tomorrow evening,’ he said.

‘Ooh, Phelan,’ Dermot said in an awed whisper. ‘Where are you making for?’

‘Dublin,’ Phelan said and bit his lip in annoyance. He hadn’t intended to tell anyone. ‘I can’t tell you any more and it’s really best that you don’t know, then you can’t tell, whatever pressure is applied.’

‘I wouldn’t tell,’ Dermot said, indignation causing his voice to rise.

‘Ssh,’ Phelan hissed fiercely. ‘All we want now is your sisters and parents in here demanding an explanation about who you’re talking to through your bedroom window in the dead of night. I thought you had more sense. Are you sure you’re up for this?’

‘Aye, aye,’ the boy assured him, but in a whisper. ‘Please? You can trust me.’

‘Right then,’ Phelan said. ‘Now listen. I won’t be missed until the milking on Sunday morning and by then, if all goes to plan, I will be installed in Dublin. You take this letter to my family, no earlier than Sunday afternoon. Can you do that?’

‘Course I can.’

‘You must hide it till then.’

‘Aye,’ Dermot said. ‘I’ll make sure no-one sees it. And may good luck go with you, Phelan. I wish I was old enough to join.’

‘I should think there will still be work for you when you’re my age,’ Phelan told Dermot reassuringly. ‘By then, though,
the Irish tri-coloured flag will be fluttering over the capital and the English driven from our land.’

It sounded stirring stuff and Dermot was captivated. It seemed such a tiny thing to deliver a letter, but then, if that’s what Phelan wanted, he would do it and be proud of the part he’d played in the fight for Ireland.

He didn’t know yet how he’d get to leave the house by himself on a Sunday afternoon. His mother had not let him go anywhere since that day in the Easter holidays when he’d found the cottage and the guns. But allowed or not, he’d go out to the Walshes’ farm that Sunday afternoon, even if he had to sneak away to do so.

‘Give Phelan a knock, will you, Rosie,’ Connie asked as Rosie came into the room early on Easter Sunday.

‘Isn’t he up?’ Rosie asked, for at this hour he was usually out in the milking sheds with his father and Danny.

‘No, he is not,’ Connie said. ‘He must have been in powerfully late last night. I never heard him and his father will go mad altogether if he isn’t in the milking sheds and quickly.’

Connie thought it strange that she hadn’t heard Phelan come in. Although she often dozed through sheer weariness, she always heard him. Maybe, though, he’d come in later than usual to avoid his father, for when he’d nearly jumped up from the tea table the previous evening, scraping his chair across the stone flags, Matt had said, ‘Where are you off to in such a tear?’

‘Out,’ Phelan replied tersely.

Matt, usually such a quiet man, slammed his hand onto the table. ‘Don’t talk to me like that! Out where, boy?’

Phelan looked straight at his father and the look and words were both insolent. ‘Let’s say I’m going there and back to see how far it is,’ he said.

‘You cheeky young bugger, you,’ Matt cried, leaping to his feet and catching hold of Phelan by the arm. ‘You’re not too big yet for a good hiding, let me tell you.’

Rosie held Bernadette, who had started to wail, on her knee, and at Matt’s outburst her alarmed eyes met those of Danny’s. He seemed unconcerned, though, as if he thought Phelan had asked for anything he got. It was Sarah and Elizabeth and especially Connie who were looking upset.

Phelan tugged his arm from his father’s grasp and his words had a jeering note to them. ‘Like to see you try,’ he said and he strode across the room, snatched his jacket and cap from the hook behind the door and was away.

Matt would have followed him, but Connie stopped him. He sat back at the table, shaking his head. It wouldn’t be the end of it, no by Christ it wouldn’t. Jeered and cheeked by a mere boy and in front of them all. It was not to be borne. He’d have something to say to that young bugger in the morning.

Connie, attempting to change the subject, had said, ‘Well, we’d best get cleared away quickly. Sarah will be seeing her young man if I know anything.’

Sarah sniffed. ‘If you mean Sam,’ she said, ‘I’m not seeing him tonight as it happens.’

‘Oh’ Connie said, surprised, for Sarah saw Sam every Saturday evening. ‘Why’s that then?’

‘He said he had something on,’ Sarah said disparagingly. ‘In fact, he said he probably wouldn’t be seeing me for a few days.’

‘What’s he up to?’

‘Oh, Mammy, what’s he ever up to? More schoolboy nonsense. Him and his secret organisation. The whole thing gets on my nerves.’

Later, when Rosie went through the girls’ bedroom to reach Phelan’s, Sarah’s words came back to mind. Sarah and Elizabeth were still asleep, the two curled together in the double bed. They had no reason to waken yet and she crossed the room softly and tapped lightly on Phelan’s door.

There was no answer, nor was there one to her second, louder tap. ‘Phelan,’ she hissed. But the room beyond stayed
silent. There was no option but to open the door. She stood stock-still in the doorway. She’d made up his bed the previous day and it was obvious it had not been slept in since.

She wondered for a brief moment if something had happened to him. Maybe he’d been attacked and was lying in the road somewhere, or had been tipped into a ditch? But she dismissed these fears as quickly as they’d entered her head, for who would do such a thing to Phelan? No, no-one would hurt the lad, but he seemed hell-bent on hurting himself, for she was sure Phelan’s disappearance all night had something to do with the Irish Republican Brotherhood. God alone knew what, but for now, Rosie had to go and break the news to Connie that Phelan was missing.

Danny was angry when Rosie told him about his brother. He’d intended to take Phelan to task that morning for the disrespect he’d shown their father the previous night. He honestly didn’t know what had got into him the past few days. He’d been as tense as a coiled spring and inclined to snap for no reason.

Now the young hooligan was on a different tack altogether, not coming home at all. Dear God, their father would kill him when he did eventually return. Well if he did, Danny wouldn’t blame him one bit. Enough was enough.

The family all went to early Mass that Easter Sunday morning, so they didn’t see any of Rosie’s family. ‘I bet young Dermot will be glad Lent’s over?’ Connie commented as they made their way home, trying to lighten the atmosphere which had hung over them since Rosie’s discovery. ‘Didn’t he give up sweets
and
chocolates?’

‘Aye, he did,’ Rosie said, hitching Bernadette higher onto her hip. ‘And hard enough it was for him, I’d say. I hardly saw a sweet when I was growing up and Chrissie and Geraldine the same, but God if you’d see the mountain of sweets and goodies Mammy would bring Dermot from town every week, you’d know how hard it must have been for him.’

‘Your mammy’s a silly woman where young Dermot is concerned,’ Connie said.

‘Don’t I know it,’ Rosie said with feeling.