Patricia Falvey (8 page)

“I knew there was a baby coming, but it was no matter to me. In fact, I loved that baby for bringing Mary to me.” He leaned toward me. “I loved Frankie,” he whispered. “I could not have loved him more if he was my own flesh and blood. He was part of Mary, and he was the reason Mary came to me.”

Tears welled in his eyes and he blinked them away.

“But did you never ask her?” I whispered. “You know, about his daddy?”

“Ah, sure it made no difference to me,” said Da. “If Mary had a mind to tell me, all well and good, and if she didn’t, it was no matter.” He sighed deeply. “Och, Eileen, we were so happy. You know, child, there’s always one in the pair who loves more than the other, and that makes it enough for two. And anyway, I think your ma loved me just a little bit.”

I was crying now. I sniffed back the tears. “She loved you a whole lot, Daddy,” I whispered. “I saw it in her eyes every day.”

“Aye, until the last day.”

“She was astray in the head the last day. You said so. And I could see it for myself.” I leaned forward and took his hands in my own. “She loves you still, Daddy,” I said. “I’m sure of it.”

I looked at Da now as if seeing him for the first time. His lovely red hair had turned white. In the months since Ma left, I had not noticed my da turning into an old man.

WE NEVER FOUND
Lizzie’s grave, so P.J. and the boys arranged to have a headstone put in the field next to the house where Da’s da and grandda were buried. Two angels were carved on the stone, and it faced out toward Slieve Gullion. I knelt there often in those days, talking to Lizzie, telling her not to be afraid.

While the days coming up to Christmas of 1912, and Paddy’s fourth birthday, passed quietly and slowly at the Yellow House, the thunder of trouble rolled across the Irish landscape. P.J., Terrence, and Fergus talked of nothing else. The promise of Home Rule was fading under the growing threat of a world war. The English hadn’t time for Ireland and her problems, Terrence said they were too worried about their own skins. Meanwhile the Ulster Unionist Covenant had been passed, declaring its fierce opposition to any kind of Irish rule in the North of Ireland. The growing rebellion down in the South was spilling over into the North, and the Ulster Volunteer Force, a quasi-military organization known as the UVF, was formed to oppose any rebellion in the North. There were stories of them throwing Catholics out of their houses and businesses and burning property. P.J.’s predictions were coming true—the violence was not just around Belfast anymore, but was drawing closer—Newry, Camlough, and Rostrevor.

“It’s heating up,” P.J. warned. “It’s only a matter of time now.”

“Until what?” I ventured.

P.J. bent and tapped out his pipe on the hearth. “Until the flames of war are all around us,” he said.

“Och, don’t be scaring the girl,” Terrence said.

“I’m not scared,” I said.

But I was. That night, the faceless ghosts came again to haunt my dreams. This time they carried torches of fire. I put my head under the sheets, but I could not blot them out.

THEY CAME IN
the early hours of the morning of March 17, 1913, the feast of St. Patrick and a Holy Day of Obligation. St. Patrick’s Day was a solemn day marked by mass and a closing of the pubs. To wear a shamrock or carry the Irish tricolor flag in Ulster was to invite trouble, even though the Protestants were free to bang their drums as loud as they wanted on their own day of celebration, the twelfth of July. So St. Patrick’s Day usually passed quietly like any other religious feast day. But the one in 1913 was an exception.

I lay in bed, restless as always, waiting for the sun to rise over Slieve Gullion so I could get up and distract myself with work. At first I heard voices in the distance and the dull thud of feet on the road. I thought maybe I was still dreaming and sat up just to be sure. I looked over at Paddy in his bed beside mine, but he slept peacefully. Da must have heard the noise. The bedsprings creaked in the next room as he got up, and I heard the shuffle of his feet on the floor as he pulled on his trousers. I tiptoed to the door of my room and opened it. Da felt his way along the landing in the dim light.

“Who is it, Da?” I whispered.

He swung around and put his finger to his lips. “Och, probably just some young fellows home after a night on the drink,” he said, “making up for the pubs being closed tomorrow. Go back to bed now, darlin’, and watch Paddy.”

But I did not believe him, and I knew he did not believe it himself. I waited until he was down the stairs, and I crept out onto the landing. The dying embers still glowed in the hearth and cast shadows on the walls. Cuchulainn roused himself from his place beside the fire and padded to the front door behind Da. I held my breath and waited.

A loud thud broke the silence as a stone hit the front door. Da jumped back.

“Who’s out there?” he shouted.

Voices grew louder, male voices, shouting and cursing.

“Open the door, Tom O’Neill,” a voice called. “It’s your friend Billy come to visit you.”

“Jesus,” Da muttered, “what’s that eejit doing at this time of night?”

I relaxed. It was only simple Billy Craig come to play a trick on us. He had not come back to the house at all after the other Music Men told him to stay away from the music sessions. I supposed he was still angry with us over Ma’s leaving. He had never been right in the head. He’d probably been out drinking and was egged on by some blackguards to come up and scare the daylights out of us.

Da opened the door. “What in God’s name do you think you’re doing at this hour, Billy,” he began. “It’s home in your bed you should be—”

Thud! Another stone hit the front door as Da spoke. Billy jumped back and looked around.

“We’ve come to teach you a lesson, Tom,” he said, his voice high with excitement, “a lesson for sending Mary away. Haven’t we, boys?”

I crept to the bottom of the stairs and could see Billy plainly. The earlier relief I felt had fled. In its place was a sinking, heavy fear deep down in my stomach.

“Come out, Tom,” shouted Billy.

“Don’t go, Da,” I cried.

Da swung around. “Get upstairs, Eileen,” he shouted. “Now!”

I had never heard Da raise his voice like that, and it startled me.

“Now!” he repeated.

I turned and fled up the stairs, but I stood on the landing to watch. I saw Da run into the kitchen and return with an old and rusty rifle that had rested for years on the mantel above the fireplace. It had belonged to Da’s da. I had never seen Da touch it. I always supposed it was there as a keepsake only. I raced back down the stairs and hovered behind Da. The voices grew louder, and burning torches scorched the darkness. I saw the outlines of thick bodies running toward the house. A flame shot through the air and hit a window. It was followed by another, then another.

“Burn the fecking place,” cried a voice. “Burn the fecking papists out.”

A sizzling sound made me swing around. One of the torches had caught a curtain at an open window, and flames roared upward toward the ceiling. “Ma’s curtains,” was all I could think to say. “They’re burning Ma’s curtains.”

Suddenly Da was just outside the door. His voice roared above all the others.

“You’ll not take the O’Neill house as long as I’m standing,” he shouted. “Youse’ll have to kill me!”

A voice screamed, “No!” It was a scream from purgatory. I realized it was mine.

I watched Da fire the rifle, his gnarled hands gripping the metal, bullets flying helter-skelter into the darkness. I put my hands to my ears to drown out the noise. I watched his face glow in the flames as bright as the day he had ridden out of the sun carrying his lucky yellow paint. I watched him clutch his chest and fall backward from the open door into the hallway. I watched Cuchulainn run to him and stand whimpering over his limp body. I watched the look of horror spread across Billy Craig’s big face as blood pumped from Da’s chest. I watched it all as an observer watches a scene of horror from a distance, separate and apart, with no emotion and no involvement. I watched Billy bend, sobbing, over Da.

“I didn’t mean for this, Tom,” he cried, “only to frighten you a bit. I didn’t mean for this.” And then he shook Da like a rag doll.

Flames were everywhere now. I smelled scorched grass and bitter smoke. As if in a dream, I went upstairs and put on my coat over my nightdress. I didn’t bother with my boots. Then I took Paddy from his bed and dressed him quickly. I led him downstairs and stood at the open door beside Da’s body.

Paddy strained to get away. “Da,” he cried. “Da.”

Billy Craig shook me to my senses.

“Get out now, Eileen, and take the child. If they realize you’re here… Come on now.”

His big hands turned me around and shoved me into the kitchen.

“But Da,” I cried. “I have to stay with Da.” I pushed against Billy, but he would not move.

“I’ll see to your da. Out the back door, and stay low. I’ll distract them.” He looked at me, his big face twisted with grief. He turned and reached for Da’s fiddle from the shelf on the wall and the black-and-white photograph of the O’Neill family outside the Yellow House. Then, as an afterthought, he snatched Ma’s hat from its peg. He shoved everything at me. “Here, darlin’, take these. Go to P.J.’s house. Go on now, for God’s sake.”

The grass was wet under my bare feet as I stumbled away from the house in the direction of Slieve Gullion, one of my arms around Paddy and Da’s fiddle and the photograph under the other. Paddy clutched Ma’s hat. I got as far as Lizzie’s headstone before I fell down. I lay down behind the low stone wall that enclosed the graves and cradled a weeping Paddy under my coat.

“Ssh, love,” I whispered. “Ssh.”

He quieted, as if he knew the danger. I watched as flames engulfed my beloved Yellow House. Never had she looked as bright as she did now, flames swirling in every window like giant kaleidoscopes. Da always said she should be a beacon of light in the darkness. If he could have seen her tonight, I thought. Maybe his soul was watching her along with Great-Grandda Hugh and the merry ghosts.

Looking back now, odd as it sounds, I remember I felt a flood of relief that night as I watched the Yellow House burn. All my worst fears had come true. Even the bad spirits must be out of tricks now. They had done their worst. The waiting was over. I remember hearing the distant bells of the fire brigades as they rushed toward the burning house. I remember lying flat in the grass as heavy boots thudded past me, making their escape. I remember the pride I felt that my da, Tom O’Neill, had died a warrior, and as his soul entered mine in that moment, a new warrior was conceived inside me. The legacy of the O’Neills had been passed on. I held the fate of my family, and my beloved Yellow House, in my hands.

Queensbrook Linen Mill

E
arly on a May morning in 1913, I rode the tram from Newry up to Queensbrook to start work at the Queensbrook Spinning Mill. Paddy and I had moved in with the Mullens after we fled from the Yellow House. Now P.J. was taking me to start my first job. He sat with me, looking out the window and remarking on the lovely fields of flowers and how grand the mountains were. But I paid scant attention to him, lost as I was in my own thoughts. It had been a spring morning such as this when I rode with Ma to the Royal Bank of Newry and she had saved the Yellow House. How happy and proud I had been—the O’Neill family had overcome their troubles and would have a new beginning. Now I no longer believed the blather about spring and new beginnings and hope. I straightened my back against the hard wooden seat of the tram and followed P.J.’s gaze.