The Red And The Green (33 page)

Epilogue

Dearest Frances,

I know I should have written to you ages ago but I've been rushed off my feet what with the work for the settlement and getting the house ready for the new lodgers, it's a lot of small things really but there hasn't been a moment. Jinny's a great blessing of course, and her son has been painting the kitchen and scullery, a useful decent boy and not like the run of those kids at all. I hope the new lodgers will be all right. I got so fond of the other lot, we were quite like a big family here at Blessington Street! But I expect I shall soon get just as fond of the new ones. Did I tell you one had been a major in the British Army, a very nice kind of a man, who's taking the two rooms at the top.

I loved to have the news of your family, how quickly they are growing up, it makes me feel so old to think you've got nearly grown up children now, Frances. Well, God help us we can none of us escape from anno domini and I'm lucky to have my health and strength, not like poor Millie. She's a lot better now of course, but she was never the same since her operation. I think I told you I got her out of that damp place in Eccles Street and now she has a dear little room in Dargle Road, that's off the Drumcondra Road. There's a lot of other old crocks in the house and they all call her ‘my lady', and that's still good for a wet of whiskey! I took her out to lunch the other day at Jammet's and a waiter recognized her and said she hadn't changed a bit and that pleased her so much, poor thing, though God knows it isn't true. And she started telling the waiter all about Easter Week at Boland's Mill, and I suppose she was very heroic all that time in the back room tying bandages, but she talks so loud now she's a bit deaf and all the restaurant was listening and passing remarks and I was quite embarrassed. Then after that she was on at me about Barney and how good he was to her and how she misses him yet and in the end we were both of us quite wretched. It's hard to believe it's all of ten years since poor Barney passed away, God rest his soul.

And when are you coming over here? I could make room for the lot of you at Blessington Street, there's that big sofa still in the drawing-room and one of the kids could have the camp bed. It'd be so good to talk about the old days. I've found an album full of old snaps I'd love to show you, including such a nice one of your poor father in that old mackintosh hat of his, you remember the old mackintosh hat. And there's one of Hilda at Claresville, such a pretty house and so sad that she never really lived in it. Now that you've all the children away at school couldn't you be spared to give us a visit, even if you couldn't persuade all the family to come? They say there'll be a heat wave this summer and I know it would please Millie so much if you came, she's always asking after you. And we could go and visit all the old places, Kingstown's just the same, though I still can't get used to calling it Dun Laoghaire, and Sandycove and the baths and all. I was down there the other week and went down past Finglas and looked into the garden. The old red swing's still there. You remember the old swing and how poor Andrew mended it for you and took such trouble with it. Only they've painted the house pink now which I don't like and they've renamed it Hillcrest, which is a silly name as it isn't on the crest of the hill at all. I don't know who the people are who are there now since the Porters left. I think they're English people.

Well, I must stop this scrawl and do the laundry. Give my love to the family. And do come over this summer all of you to the Emerald Isle and ‘we'll talk of old times till they put out the light' like it says in the song!

Yours with fondest love,

Kathleen.

P.S.
I've sent you some spiced beef. Don't undo the cloth, just boil it for two hours.

* * * *

‘Who's that great fat letter from?' said Frances' tall son.

‘From Aunt Kathleen.'

‘Is she complaining as usual?' said Frances' English husband.

‘Not specially.'

‘I suppose she wants us to go over?'

‘She always wants us to go over.'

‘Well, you can go. You're not getting me over there again.'

‘Oh, I don't really want to go,' said Frances.

She saw her husband folding the newspaper in the careful way in which he always folded it at the end of breakfast to make it into a flat square package which would fit into his briefcase. She saw folding inwards the headline
Franco Threatens Barcelona.
She looked at the face of her tall son and quickly withdrew her eyes. Since her son's best friend had gone to join the International Brigade Frances had lived with fear daily.

‘What's the latest in your Irish family?' asked Frances' son.

Her children always spoke of her ‘Irish family'. It did not occur to them to regard themselves as half Irish. They did not even regard their mother as Irish. They had visited Ireland four times and expressed no wish to go again.

‘Oh, they're very quiet as usual. Aunt Millie's a bit better.'

‘Quiet! Quiet as the grave, I'd say,' said Frances' husband.

‘Well, after all, Kathleen—'

‘Oh, I don't mean Kathleen, I mean the whole island. Do you remember how depressed we got last time? I never saw anything deader.'

‘Well, perhaps they enjoy it—'

‘I hope so, they certainly asked for it. They wanted to be by themselves alone, and they're by themselves alone.'

‘I liked that place on the west coast,' said Frances' son.

‘No, you didn't. You complained all the time because it was too cold to bathe. And it rained every day. I must say Ireland's an object lesson.'

‘Well, I don't mind things being quiet,' said Frances. ‘There's too much noise and rush over here. And I like rain.'

‘A provincial dump living on German capital. A dairy-farming country that can't even invent its own cheese. And if there's another war they won't fight, any more than they did last time. And that'll really finish them. ”

‘They did fight last time,' said Frances. ‘The Irish regiments were famous.'

‘Yes, and where are those regiments now? Oh, a collection of mad-caps enlisted. But most of the Irish were looking after number one. And all that nineteen sixteen nonsense that your family was mixed up in.'

‘I don't think it was nonsense,' said Frances' son.

‘It was unadulterated nonsense,' said Frances' husband. ‘Can you tell me what good it did?'

‘I don't know—' said Frances.

‘It made no sense at all. Home Rule was coming anyway. Only a lot of disgruntled fanatics wanted to draw attention to themselves. It was pure bloody-minded romanticism, the sort of thing that makes people into fascists nowadays.'

‘They weren't like fascists,' said Frances' tall son, ‘because they were on the right side.'

‘When you're grown up,' said Frances' husband, ‘which let me once again remind you that you're not, you'll realize that politics is not a matter of sides, it's a matter of methods. That's why there isn't a pin to choose between those two lots in Spain. If you ask me, it's one gang of barbarians against another gang of barbarians.'

Frances quickly intercepted her son's reply. She was used to this task of oiling the waters, a task that consisted in turning all serious discussion between her husband and children into vague generalities or harmless personal chat. ‘Father might have agreed with you. He was always against any kind of extremism. He said the Irish talked nothing but history, but had no historical sense at all.'

‘Your father sounds a most sensible man,' said Frances' husband. ‘I'm sure we would have seen eye to eye on many subjects. I wish I had known him.'

For some reason Frances had never told her husband of the circumstances of Christopher Bellman's death. Christopher died on April the twenty-seventh, nineteen sixteen. What exactly happened was never very clear. As the days of that interminable week succeeded one another, and the rebels, surrounded, bombarded, shelled, still somehow miraculously held out, Christopher became more and more frenzied. On the Thursday morning he set off on his bicycle for Dublin. That evening someone brought the bicycle back to Finglas, together with the news of Christopher's death. It appeared that he had attempted to make his way into the Post Office through Moore Street. He was killed by a sniper's bullet, no one knew from which side.

‘Well, I think those nineteen-sixteen men would have gone to fight in Spain,' said Frances' tall son.

‘Yes. But on which side!'

‘You know perfectly well on which side I mean.'

‘Storms in teacups,' said Frances' husband. ‘Who's heard of nineteen sixteen now?
You
wouldn't have heard of it if you hadn't heard your mother going on about it. It'll be the same in twenty years with these Spanish war events you make such a fuss over. Guernica, Irun, Toledo, Teruel. No one will remember.'

‘Your father may be right,' said Frances. ‘People will only remember Guernica, and that will be because of Picasso.'

‘I don't agree,' said Frances' son. He had become almost alarmingly good at keeping his temper lately. ‘These names are part of European history. Like Agincourt.'

‘There is no such thing as European history,' said Frances' husband. ‘Each country tells a selective story creditable to itself. No Frenchman has heard of Agincourt.'

‘No Englishman has heard of Fontenoy, if it comes to that,' said Frances.

‘How have you heard of Fontenoy?' said Frances' husband. ‘It's new to me that you know any history.'

‘Some Irish soldiers were there, fighting for the French. The Wild Geese, you know. There was a long poem about it. How did it go?

King Louis drew his rein.

“Not so, my liege” Saxe interposed,

“The Irish troops remain”
—'

‘Playing traitors as usual! No, no, I'm only teasing. You mustn't take me so seriously, my dear. Now I must go for my train.'

Frances' husband slid the neat square of newspaper into his briefcase, and after it the white handkerchief, fresh every morning, which he used to clean his glasses. The case clicked shut.

He paused at the door. ‘What was the fancy name you used to call Ireland by?'

‘Cathleen ni Houlihan.'

‘Well, in my view Cathleen ni Houlihan is a great bore. In this century, small nations have got to pack up, and the sooner they realize it the better. You've got to belong to a big show nowadays, and you may as well do it with sense and with a good grace. I'm sure your excellent father would have agreed with me. There.' He kissed Frances. He was a kindly man, though much given to sarcasm.

The front door banged.

Frances and her tall son sat down again at the breakfast table with the slightly guilty air of a relieved complicity which was part of their morning ritual.

‘Well, I think nineteen sixteen was wonderful,' said Frances' tall son.

‘So do I really. Though I don't quite see what good it did.'

‘It was a reminder that people can't be enslaved forever. Tyrannies end because sooner or later people begin automatically to hit back. That's the only thing which really impresses the tyrant and makes him give way. Freedom belongs to human nature and it can't vanish from the earth. Even though we forget the details of the fight, the fight goes on, and men have to be ready to go down among the details that are forgotten. And whenever it's the turn of a country, however small, to rise against its tyrants, it represents the oppressed peoples of the whole world.'

Frances felt the chill touch again. ‘What a speech! You sound just like Cathal Dumay when you say that. He used to say that sort of thing. You're even beginning to look a bit like him.'

‘What happened to all those people you knew in those days?' said Frances' tall son. ‘Do tell me again. I remember you used to tell us all about them, when we were children. But you haven't talked about them for years now and I've got them all mixed up together in my mind. What happened to Uncle Barney, for instance? He was a real comic. I always remember the touching way he told us he'd have been a vegetarian if it wasn't for his passion for sausages! Something awfully funny happened to him in that nineteen-sixteen business, but I can't recall what it was.'

Frances gave a long sigh. ‘It wasn't very funny really. Barney was going to fight with the rebels, but before they reached the place they were going to, he accidentally shot himself in the foot, and he had to be left behind.'

Frances' son laughed. ‘That sounds just like Uncle Barney as I knew him! I expect he did it unconsciously on purpose. You know hardly anything we do is really accidental. I was reading about it in a book the other day. Nearly everything we do is our unconscious mind only we don't know.'

‘You might be right that it was somehow on purpose. I couldn't imagine Barney really harming anyone but himself. He was the gentlest of men.'

‘What happened to Cathal Dumay, the chap you said I was like?'

‘He was killed in nineteen twenty-one, in the Irish civil war.'

‘The Irish civil war? I'd forgotten there was an Irish civil war. What was it about?'

‘Some of the Irish thought that we, they, shouldn't accept the Treaty, that it didn't give Ireland enough freedom, and they were prepared to fight about it. And the English helped the more moderate Irish, who accepted the Treaty, to put down the extremists.'

‘I bet Cathal was with the extremists.'

‘Yes, he was with the I.R.A. He was very brave, he led a flying column. He was only nineteen when he died.'

‘Was he killed in a battle?'

‘No. A Black and Tan officer came up and shot him one night in his bed.'

Frances' son looked thoughtful. ‘A civil war—that must be a dreadful thing to have in your own country. Were you in Ireland then?'