Chapter Twenty Two: Derry, Sligo, Dublin 1923--1924

The walls of Derry were nothing to the mental and social walls that had cleaved Ireland since the formalising of the partition with the end of the civil war. In Derry now the nationalists stood alone, cut off from their counterparts in the South by an artificial border, by the repression of the republicans in the Free State, and by the outlawing of the IRA by the Northern government. Crossing the border to Donegal to speak with Joe Sweeney became a major undertaking for Paddy. Further, though the city and county of Derry were almost overwhelmingly nationalist, the districts were now gerrymandered in such a way that the nationalist votes accounted for only 23%. Voting became pointless. His discouragement amounted to a depression. Everything he had fought so long and hard for lay in ashes. They were far more entangled in the machinery of the Northern State than they ever had been before the Easter Rising. Not since the penal times had the repression of Catholics been so systematic.

After Mick Collins died and was no longer paying out to National schoolteachers, Paddy, steadfastly refusing to be paid by the Northern government, had the choice of applying to the university at Coleraine with a false address or giving up working entirely, retiring to Dublin or Kerry. Even Dublin was tempting at this point, though in his heart he longed to go home to Kerry and be left in peace, the IRB be damned. But duty won out as it had for a quarter--century: after much thought, he decided that he couldn’t abandon his men here in Derry, and stayed, living in retirement. He spent his days reading, writing, and studying. He and Molly fell into a pleasant routine during the days when the girls were at school. It was almost as when they first met. They played music on the gramophone, chatted about the everyday news; he would occasionally go fishing, which amused her. They took picnics and walked in the country, stopping the car at odd little places with a view, up in Donegal when they could manage it, which was wild enough to remind him of parts of Kerry. The IRA jobs were very few and he would have considered his life stilled to a kind of peace for which he had always longed, if he had not been ill.

From September of 1922 he began to have violent headaches at a frequency of about two or three a month, heart palpitations on exertion, and blackouts. This last happened three times before Molly came on him one day during one; she had been out shopping. He lied and said it had never happened before. He did go to the doctor. Very conscious of her sitting anxiously outside the surgery, he answered the doctor’s questions as briefly and cagily as possible, though it was evident he had been shot up more than once; the scars were unmistakable. X--rays were taken, and the diagnosis was complicated: he had several ‘old lesions’ on the brain, some from 1913, which were causing the headaches and blackouts, but his heart was very weak; old scarring from Wormwood Scrubs had caused obstructions that would only get worse with time. He was given digitalis and told to take life easy. Would that it were so simple. The doctor likely suspected the truth of whom he was dealing with, but not a word was ever spoken on it.

The diagnosis and instructions were repeated to Molly, who not unnaturally became overbearingly solicitous. She had always been motherly, but for weeks afterward she treated him like an invalid. It was only after one of their weekday picnics to Donegal, when he proved emphatically that he was still as virile as he had always been, that she let up.

They entered a wonderful period. It was as though everything they had been through had been distilled into absolute essence, evoking in them a numinous quality of mutual accord. Musing on it in his lone moments when she was out, it struck him that what had been called from them both in different ways was a spirit of sacrifice almost holy in its purity, a sensation of giving unto others that approached the sublime. They had come at it from opposing camps, as it were, from opposite ends of the Irish spectrum, but they had come to expiation and solicitude in a way that reflected their early passion. It was as though those golden days of 1909, with their long hours of sublime connection in passionate abandon, were but a foreshadowing of what they were to come to, through the agonised upheaval of the times through which they lived. Not that they were not passionate still. That had endured through every hell and shift of feeling between them. Sometimes, it was all they had.

In July, the marching season began early and went long. Last year had not been too bad, only a few houses had been set alight, but this year the rioters’ ammunition was better and they were heavily reinforced by the RUC and B Specials, who were determined to wipe out the last vestige of the IRA in the North at all costs. For a fortnight they had barricaded themselves into the Bogside and Creggan, holding off the Orange rioters for the most part, although by the end of that time they were dangerously low on ammunition. At the barricade up by the RUC barracks, where he spent a good part of the second week, Paddy joked to Tom and Shay Kilgallen that they’d have to hold them off with hurley sticks if it went on too much longer.

He had been home only twice in all that long while, both times briefly in the middle of the afternoon, and the last time on Sunday. It was with a terrible prescience that he walked into the house the last time. He knew he would not walk in the door again. After an hour, the girls went over to Annie’s to play and he went in the kitchen where Molly was standing at the sink washing up the luncheon dishes. He slid his arms around her waist, fighting the terrible feeling of poignancy that washed over him.
‘Leave them,’ he murmured into her ear. He felt her shudder and she leaned against him, murmuring wordlessly. She lifted her wet hand and touched his face, turning her head to the kiss he gave her. The kitchen door was open, and the warm summer sun poured in behind them, slanting sharply across the floor. She turned in his arms and her fervid, almost desperately aggressive response set his heart racing.
‘Not here, sweetheart,’ he smiled when he broke away for an aching moment. Her colouring was hectic and her eyes as dark as a storm. She tossed her head, with all the vivid splendour of arousal. Every breath was fire and every glance sparked with intensity.
‘Too bad,’ she murmured throatily in her low voice.

They made it as far as the parlour sofa, which was very unsafe due to the proximity of the windows all round. He left his loaded guns on the floor next to them. Had the Orange lot broken through any of their ill--defended barricades, they would have been killed had anything come through those windows. He was half--conscious of this the while, but Molly was apparently not. She was as she had ever been, a delight. Briefly, in the glorying eddies of coming off with her in the warm light of the room, he forgot everything else and soared with her to where their true meeting place had always been in that swell of ecstasy. Feeling overwhelmed him. Crying, he regarded her tumbled beauty with wonder. He had not lived until he had plunged in the tossed sea of her eyes.
‘I love you,’ he said earnestly, and kissed her. Her expression was poignant, and tears glittered in her eyes.
‘Oh Padge…’ She flung her arms around him and held him tightly.
It was the last time he ever saw her.

He stopped at Annie’s to say good--bye to the girls. He kissed them both – Sally, now tall and lovely with a young girl’s burgeoning curves; and sweet little Katie, whom he had come to love as his own.
‘Look after your mother for me,’ he charged Sally.
‘Are you goin away again Dada?’ Katie asked. He leaned over and lifted her up though she was getting too big for it now.
‘Yes, darlin, for a little,’ he said, kissing her. ‘So be a good girl and mind your mammy.’ He smoothed her shining blonde hair with regret. He looked over at Annie, who watched from the kitchen doorway with baby Niall in her arms. ‘I’ll send Tom along for a wee rest,’ he promised.
She nodded. ‘Ta.’ They regarded one another across the room. Her eyes glinted but she did not cry. Not wee Annie. ‘You mind yourself,’ she said fiercely. He smiled at her, but it came out more a grimace, and nodded. He put Katie down and went out the back, up the alley and across to the barricade.

On the Tuesday, a day fine and clear of rain, he was jolted awake at three o’clock in the morning by the shrill scream of a shell as it exploded overhead. Instantly, he grabbed the rifle beside him, and watched the red glare of the shell as it crashed into a rooftop, spreading fire.
‘Jesus Christ,’ he muttered to Jack Meehan beside him, ‘can’t they let a fellow sleep?’ He had dozed off on the fifteen--hour watch, the catnap of maybe twenty minutes being the first sleep he’d had in two days. He had to go down to the barricade at St. Columb’s in two hours to see how things were going there before knocking off. He rubbed a hand over his face and righted his glasses. Yawning, he asked,
‘Is there any tea?’
Jack shook his head.
‘Well, I’ll make some then,’ he said, rifling through his kit for a trench lighter. ‘I’m dead.’ As they all were. He had twenty--three men holding eight positions armed with forty rounds apiece against the might of the British Army with their endless supplies and forty thousand men, of whom probably a thousand were in this area. That would put the odds at 42--1. This meant they were on seventeen--hour shifts with five hours off for sleeping and the rest as cushion time to go where they were needed in emergencies. No one had slept much and Paddy not at all since spending his precious two hours on Sunday with his family. It was like Easter Week all over again: he was too agitated to sleep unless driven past the point of complete physical exhaustion. Now he knelt and made tea in the workers’ way in a billycan, with tea and milk and sugar all stewed together. It bore little resemblance to the pallid beverage of fashionable Dublin drawing rooms, but it did in a pinch.

‘What’s the do?’ he asked.
‘Not much.’ Jack took the proffered tin cup of thick tea. ‘That shell was a real knock--up, as you know, but nothing else, like. It’s the RUC like to sleep, I guess.’
‘Somebody should, in all this,’ Paddy said, into the mug as he gulped down the restorative tea. He laced his hands around the warmth of the cup in the chill off the river as he sat in the alley with his knees up against his chest like a schoolboy. They sat together in silence for a long time and presently, the tea having revived him somewhat, he got up and rinsed out the cup in their water bucket. It was best not to see what condition the water was in. He put the cup away and looked at his watch, squinting to see the dial in the dark. It was nearly four, and would be light in an hour or so.
‘Dinny should be along soon,’ he said. ‘And Peadar.’
‘Yeah,’ Jack agreed, glancing over his shoulder. ‘I’m off to MacFarland’s after this for me sleep.’ Paddy looked around.
‘Where the hell is Matt?’ He had been here earlier, before he fell asleep.
‘He went up to the barrack, like, to fetch the mail.’ Jack said. Any messages that came down regarding their activities were transcribed by the clerk and smuggled out with the empties in the morning.
‘Ah,’ Paddy said. ‘Well, he’s good for something.’

He was at the barricade in Fahan Street in the afternoon when the RUC broke through. They had spent the afternoon putting out fires from incendiary shells and firing on the Orange rioters on the other side of the wall of furniture and carts. The rioters had broken through in Cooke Street earlier and had come up from the Abercorn Road; they had breached William Street also. Now there was relative silence, but they were waiting for the next hit to come. Paddy was ashen. He had been at every barricade in the last two days. He felt Tom’s eye on him as he sat with his eyes closed behind the glasses. Who was it that could fight constantly without adequate food or sleep and still think clearly enough to issue crucial orders in the heat of the moment? It was to their advantage that the men, even Tom, thought him invincible, but the truth was he was at the very end of his endurance and his nerves were badly strained. Twice in the long day he had to fight for consciousness as the world swam around him and his heart knocked hard. The men should never know how ill he really was. He had secretly given over the command to Jack Meehan.

‘Jesus Christ!’ He was jerked out of his haze by the heavy roar of an armoured lorry charging at them from the Bishop’s Gate. They would break through this time, with all the force of a blizzard; their armoured cars were mounted with machine guns and protected with wire caging to deflect grenades. With it, the Specials would come storming. They were for it now. The armoured lorry came careering down the street at top speed at their barricade.
‘Duck!’ he shouted and he and Tom lunged for the side of the street as the lorry came crashing through at full fire from the machine gun on the top. Barney and Danny Maxwell were writhing on the ground on the other side of the street. Shay was barely visible over the splintered wreck of the broken desk. Only the top of his head and the gleaming barrel of the Winchester rifle were to be seen. The heavy firing went on as the lorry moved down the street, but no soldiery followed it in. Paddy rose up, throwing up his hands though he was armed, and made for the street.
‘No!’ Tom shouted.
‘They’ll run them down!’ Paddy shouted over the noise of the lorry. The lorry was indeed coming in reverse on the return fire from Shay.
‘They’re dead men already!’ Tom shouted.
‘Not if I can help it,’ Paddy bellowed as he went out.
‘Paddy, you’re a fucking idiot!’ Tom called. ‘Keep down!’

But it was too late. He was not halfway across to the wounded men when the RUC opened fire again. He felt it before it came: he was hit in a barrage that lifted him back in a burning torrent. He hit the ground, choking, his vision seared white, and rolled over, rising to his knees. His mind was alight; electric with weird colours and the only thing he saw clearly was the lorry. He staggered to his feet, and looked over to Tom, reached out his hand. He wanted the rifle. And fell.

The chaos went on around him for a long time while he struggled, choking, for breath. The RUC were now out of the lorry, pouring into the area from side streets and buildings, infiltrating the stronghold of the Volunteers. They had been there already, waiting. After a long time Shay came to him. He was burning, feverish, in and out of consciousness, his mind all colour and weird, vivid pictures: flashes of Kerry during the Land League upheaval, Tom MacDonagh at the surrender, Molly’s face on the dock when he came back from Frongoch, his mother cleaning and binding his arm after its restitching at Jervis Street Hospital, Molly last Sunday, in Kerry when she was pregnant with Joe, Joe – Joe was waiting at the end of the street, his hands stuck in his pockets and his head cocked.

His ears were ringing loud, and through the din he heard Shay crying his name.
‘I’m all right,’ he muttered feverishly. ‘I’m all right. Just give me a minute, like.’ He heard Tom’s voice and swam back through the encroaching dimness.
‘Paddy, you’re an ass,’ Tom said, crying. ‘Why’d you want to go an be a hero for?’
‘Ha,’ he couldn’t keep his eyes on one point, and he fought the greyness that was descending. He was drowning in blood, every breath a terrific effort. This was death. It was different from what he thought it would be. It was a weight. It was the world closing in around him, growing very small. It was over. He’d done his bit, through a quarter century. It was over. Gasping now, choking on the blood that came up, filling his mouth, he fought to get the words out over the roaring, drowning tide,
‘I fought a good wee fight… for the old bitch… Tommy.’ He tried to reach Tom’s sleeve, but his arm was heavy. ‘Tell my girl… I love her….’
‘Ah, Jesus, don’t----’ Tom pleaded, raising his head up painfully in his lap. ‘Paddy don’t go on us -- ah, fuck ‘em, the bastards! Look at ye... Paddy ----’

But it was all right. The pain was lifting, and the darkness left him. Tom’s face was clear again. The whole street was clear again in his vision. It would be all right now. Joe was waiting at the end of the street. I waited for ye, Dada.
‘Tommy, it’s over,’ he said in a clear strong voice.
And so died.

The evensong bell was ringing at St. Columb’s when Tom Kilgallen ran in the door. Molly was standing in the middle of the wrecked parlour, looking round in despair. The girls were still hiding in the cupboard under the stairs. For the last four hours the police had swept through the streets with the rioting Loyalists, breaking down doors and dragging people into the streets and shooting them, wrecking buildings, shattering windows, looting. And for the last four hours she and the girls had huddled trembling in that cramped space that was hardly big enough for one person, hardly daring to breathe while the police ransacked the house. She thanked Paddy’s clever thinking to have the concealed door made to the otherwise unusable space. It had no handle and on the outside was indistinguishable from the moulding on the stairs. If they kept quiet, they were safe. They had hidden there many times before.

Across the street at Faolain’s they had dragged Dick out into the street and shot him in front of Kate and the children. Anne’s voice was upraised next door, calling out the names of her children, fetching them from their hiding places. Molly was too numb to go over to the Faolains’ yet. She stood in the parlour, just staring. Everything was wrecked. Everything. She couldn’t be glad yet that they hadn’t had the house burned over their heads. She looked up at Tom in alarm as he came in the open door. His face was white underneath the grime and blood and his hair stood on end like some ancient Gaelic warrior’s.

‘Paddy’s been shot,’ he said, gasping. ‘The men are bringing him up now. Make a place if you can find one----’ He broke off as three men came up the lane, carrying Paddy in a makeshift stretcher of their coats. Her heart thumped wildly as they came into the house. One of the men was Tom’s brother Shay; she could not remember the names of the other two. They passed her by and she looked into Paddy’s face. There was peace there, and the uncanny stillness of the dead. He was dead.

He was dead.

She could not take it in. He had been shot so many times and was covered in blood. It covered his clothes, the men’s clothes. The traces of it, wiped away but still marked, ran down his cheek on the one side. His skin was a pale shade of blue grey and his limbs heavy. It could not be. He was always such a graceful, lithe man, quick moving as he was quick thinking. How could he have bled so much?

He had bled to death in the street. After all that he had survived the Orange mob had killed him! He had been safe, retired, ill, but happy. They had been happy! How dare they take away their happiness at long last! He was dead. Oh how could he, he! be dead? When not two days ago he had been so very alive, gloriously alive making love with her on that very sofa, that now ruined sofa – How could he be dead? She watched, unable to move, as they laid him on her dining table where they had laid Joe. These same men, laying out the shot--up dead, her dead, on her table. She watched numbly as they removed his guns and tucked them away in their belts. It was the first time since 1916 that he was unarmed. He had slept with a gun or guns loaded on a chair next to his head on that side of the bed. She had grown used to it, used to his being armed at every moment, and now he was defenceless. Dead. He was dead. She felt Tom take her arm.

‘Are you all right, Molly? You’re not going to faint away?’
She looked up at him, with his narrow, high--boned face with the scar running along the cheek, and was grateful for the concern. She had never liked him, but she did now. He was kind, and had been too when Joe died.
‘I never have before,’ she lied. She looked over at Paddy’s body and started shaking. ‘Dear God,’ she murmured in a trembling voice barely recognisable as her own, ‘I must do something….’ She went over to Paddy, touched his face where the blood had run down. His glasses were lost somewhere, wherever they had been. She didn’t even know where he died. She passed a shaking hand over his chest, afraid to touch him, afraid to lay her hand on that cold. bloody mess and feel only stillness. How could he be dead? The coat he wore was a very old one from Kerry days before they met. It was soaked in blood, ravaged with bullet holes. Ruined. They had ruined him.

‘I’m sorry for your trouble, Molly,’ Shay said in a voice thick with emotion. She looked up. She had forgotten he was there.
‘Thank you.’ It was all she could muster. She looked at the other two. Who were they? She had seen them about the streets. Who were they and why were they alive when Paddy was dead?
‘I’m sorry for your trouble ma’am, ‘ they mumbled one after another, and looked at Shay. He nodded.
‘We’ll just be off,’ he said to her. ‘Tommy, I’ll be over to Abbey Street.’
‘Aye,’ Tom nodded, frowning at her. He waited until the others had cleared out before he asked again, ‘Molly, are you all right, lass?’ She heard him but the words did not register. She looked at Paddy again. What happened to you? What happened to us? Why Paidín? Why? She couldn’t go on that way. She reached out and picked up his hand from the far side of the table. She should take off his wedding ring before the rigour set in, to save it out for Sally. She tried, but she couldn’t get it past the knuckle, and the struggle undid her.
‘Damn it, come off!’

She choked on a sob, leaning her cheek against his dead hand. How many times he had reached out at odd moments to touch her face with the back of his fingers? Long, white fingers that were forever ink--stained. They were mottled now, blue, with the nails gone dark. He would never touch her again. My husband is dead. My husband is dead! She broke into wild angry sobbing, clutching Paddy’s hand, howling. She flung herself on his chest, riddled and bloody as it was, screaming and crying so hard she could not breathe. This went on for some time before Tom came behind her and took her shoulders.
‘Here, lassie, come away now,’ he said.
‘Get away from me!’ she cried. She fought him with everything she had, wildly, but she was no match for him and he soon had her subdued, his arms wrapped tightly around her while she cried.
‘Wisha, wisha, there lassie,’ he kept murmuring, rocking back and forth with her. When she had cried herself out for the moment, he stood away. They were both filthy now, reeking and gore--covered. ‘You’re a right mess,’ he said, touching her blood--matted hair. ‘And you always so pretty.’
She stared at him.
‘Aye,’ he said to her surprise. ‘I did always think so... but don’t be telling wee Annie I said it.’ He grimaced. It was as near to a smile he could come. That he too was grieving struck her then.
‘What happened, Tom? Why did the Orange mob have to shoot him up so badly?’

Tom paled and drew an unsteady breath, shaking his head. ‘It weren’t the Lodge, Molly. The RUC had a machine gun mounted on an armoured lorry. They broke in and started shootin.’ He sniffed, and ran a hand through his hair, looking over at Paddy. ‘He went out to try and get a couple of our men who were wounded in the road. They opened fire on him. He had his hands in the air ----’ he met her incredulous look with a grimace ---- ‘and they shot him up...’ He winced, swallowing, his voice rough with admiration. ‘But he got up, Molly.’ He shook his head. ‘Jesus, I don’t know how. Twice he did, when they put enough lead in him to bleed a river. The will of the man is ---- was, something fierce.’ His voice broke and tears filled his eyes. She nodded. He coughed and scratched his head, sniffing. ‘He said ta tell ye that he loved you. It’s about the last thing he said... Shite, I dunno, he was going on half in Kerry bloody Irish, I could hardly understand him. He died well, you’ll be proud to know. He died like a Fenian, brave to the last. He wasn’t afraid. You can be proud of him. We all can be proud of him.’

The words were ash. She didn’t want to be proud of a dead Fenian. She wanted to be tender about an old grandfather who died while napping waiting for the fish to bite. Anything but the way it was. But it evidently meant a great deal to Tom to speak those words. It would mean a great deal to everyone, to Paddy’s parents, to Rory and Cate. Like it or not, she was the widow of a republican, and had to accept the condolences that went with it, however difficult to hear, however much she disagreed with them. She sighed and raised her head. She really was calmer, at least for now. She was very tired, but there were things to be done. She must ring Dan and Trina in Dublin, first thing.

‘Thank you, Tom,’ she said, practising the words for the first time. ‘I’m sure we have reason to be grateful.’ She pushed back her filthy hair with both hands and remembered the girls.
‘Oh my God, Sally and Katie!’ She took a step towards the hideaway, but Tom laid a hand on her arm.
‘I took ‘em over home. They’re with Annie. They’re fine.’
She shook her head. ‘How, when --’
He jerked his head towards Paddy. Ah. When she was crying over him.
‘Well, thank you for that.’
He shrugged. ‘What do ye need me to do?’
She sighed. ‘Oh Lord, I don’t know. Everything’s a wreck.’ She looked around. ‘Call in at the undertaker, I suppose, and have a coffin in. I need to wash him. Ring the parents, ring the church, ring the railway, ring Glasnevin...’
‘You’re takin’ him to Dublin, then?’
She looked up at him. ‘He deserves to be buried with his own people. He’d rather be in Kerry I’m sure, but that’s too far away for the girls... Oh. We probably have no clothes left at all after their rampage. Could you find a suit in the proper size?’
He nodded. ‘I can do better than that. I can find him a uniform.’
She frowned. ‘A Volunteer uniform? There isn’t one in the house.’
‘I’ll find him one.’
‘Isn’t it rather dangerous?’ She protested.
‘Sure, what more can they do to him? An it’s in Dublin and all.’ He crossed his arms. ‘He would want it.’

That was true. So this is how it was to be, even the funeral taken from her by the IRA. Well there was nothing for it, no use fighting over it. It meant so much to them and nothing to her. She would have preferred a less military equipage, but it was true that Paddy would have wanted it this way.
‘As you will,’ she sighed.
‘I’ll go straight,’ Tom said, nodding. ‘Do you want me to send wee Annie over to help wit’ him? You’ll need help.’
‘Yes, thank you.’ It would be good to have Annie here. She could cry then. ‘And Tom --thank you about the girls.’
He had moved away towards the door, but stopped and looked back at her. His eyes filled with tears again. ‘I’d do anything for him, Molly. Christ I wish it had been me instead.’ He went out then, hurriedly, and she was alone with Paddy.

Methodically, she began undoing all his buttons. It was difficult through the mess. She came to the last and pulled the tatters of shirt aside, and gasped. His chest was a mass of bullet holes but the startling thing was the small black rosary that straggled down his chest. He had been wearing it round his neck for at least the last two days. Maybe longer. They never had undressed entirely the other day. One of the beads had been shot away, and she pulled the strand up and off of him, holding it, gory and poignant, in her hand. It was the sort one received for First Communion, kept all these years without her ever knowing. The great sceptic and critic of the Church, with no patience for all that palaver as he called it; the wearing of scapulars and rosaries and holy what’s--its like the country people. He had always said he didn’t have one, saying rosaries at funerals by keeping count on his fingers. He was not superstitious, never of a mystical bent, but a thought crossed her mind: Did he know he was going to die?

‘Why would you wear such a thing, Padge?’ She asked him in wonder, shaking her head. He was an endless mystery to her. She found this one simple, dear token of faith oddly moving. Not being religious herself, she was awed and perplexed by people who were. Closing the beads in her hand, she leaned and kissed his mouth, dropping silent tears on his face for that little boy who had lived in him to the end, who cherished a small string of beads as a token of his covenant with God. She washed them off later and kept them in her jewellery box, in a necklace case with his wedding ring and his Gaelic League pin.

Annie came, with towels and soap in hand, and immediately started boiling up a kettle for washing. Molly meanwhile walked up the lane to the pub, ducking into an alleyway as a lone constable ran by. Inside, she rang the rectory, where they promised to ring Dublin and Glasnevin for her, but no one in Hogan’s in Dublin could find Rory or Dan, and she did not want to leave a message. She put up the phone as Pat Halinan came up beside her.
‘Are you all right, lass?’
‘A bit stunned.’
‘Aye.’ She realised then she was still in her mucky clothes. She had washed her face at the kitchen sink when Annie came, but her hair was still matted and gory. ‘Do you want a drink? On the house.’ Pat offered. ‘You’re white as ashes. I’ve sherry.’
‘No, thank you. I don’t know what would happen if I did.’ she laughed a little hysterically, conscious of the men staring and rose from the bar stool. ‘I’ll stop by again, if you don’t mind. I couldn’t reach his family in Dublin.’
‘The phone is always here,’ Pat said.

When she got back to the house, she found the priest had arrived. Annie came rushing over from the alcove, muttering swiftly,
‘Father Mullens is here, Molly. He wants to speak wit’ you before he gives the wee blessing and all.’
‘Oh dear.’ She squeezed Annie’s hand. ‘Thanks.’ She went into the parlour, smoothing her stiff, encrusted frock. She held out her hand boldly, with her head high.
‘Father. Thank you for coming.’
‘I’m sorry, my child. Such a terrible day for everyone it has been.’
‘Yes.’ She took a chair beside him and looked at the little case he had brought along, at Paddy’s nails gone dark. Annie had wiped away the worst of the mess from his chest and face. But the bullet holes were gaping, angry reminders of the cost of resistance. Paddy would have cared for this because it was the custom of the country. The priest folded his hands and frowned at her in thought.

‘Mrs. Kilgallen tells me that this happened up at the barricades. Mrs. Leary, I know your grief, but this is a very serious matter. You know well that there have been several men from our parish lost in this... rebellion, and you know, I am sure, the policy of the Church towards the ----’ he glanced at Paddy, ‘insurrectionists.’
‘Yes,’ she said shortly, staring at her wedding ring in her lap. ‘We lost our own son, you will recall.’ Known IRA men were excommunicant. If the local priest were not sympathetic, he often refused absolution and communion on some other pretext. Not that it would have mattered to any of them, to Tom or Shay or Paddy. Or so she had thought until today. ‘Priest--ridden’, he had once sneered of Ireland, and they agreed on that point. She looked up at Father Mullens. ‘I am aware of your constraints, Father,’ she said in her best drawing room tones. ‘But does it not count for something that he was out there defending us against the Orangemen? His family do not know,’ she lied easily, ‘and it would be killing to them if he hadn’t the blessings.’ He opened his mouth to protest further, and she went on coldly, ‘Is it so much to ask for you to do the one thing? He is being buried in Dublin. Out of your jurisdiction.’ She thought of poor young Tim Sullivan, about whom this man had been dreadful. Mary was so very upset....

The priest looked both relieved and chagrined. ‘Well, as you say...’ he began, colouring.
‘He was out in defence of innocents.... Let us hope no word of it reaches the Bishop, is all.’
He went to his little case and began opening vials and setting up. It occurred to her then that he had intended to do so all along, but felt it necessary to express his disapproval, exercise his power.
‘Thank you, Father.’ she said evenly. ‘ Oh and I would like a Mass said for the people here.’ He stared at her, alarmed, but it was a request he could not deny, and she knew it. She smiled, a wistful, mournful little smile. Annie told her when he’d gone that she should have been an actress. Molly glared at the closed door. ‘That bloody man!’ She sighed. ‘Well, let’s get to work. With any luck the undertaker’s men will be along presently.’ The last thing she wanted was a repetition of the awful time with Joe. Bodies in the house for long periods were not good for the children.

Together, they stripped the ruined clothing from Paddy piecemeal, dropping it onto the floor and washed him with carbolic soap in the water Anne had kept hot on the stove. It was familiar work now, and Molly could do it without flinching if she didn’t think about it. But it was embarrassing to have him naked and vulnerable in front of Anne, indecent. However, she was glad it was Anne with her and not Kate Faolain or Mary Sullivan; that would have been even more embarrassing. There were no secrets left. That lover’s body she knew so well was now an object to be manipulated with difficulty. The old scars, the bullet wounds, the way the hair grew up his belly, the moles here and there, how fit and virile he was. All these things were stark and curious now. He was still beautiful, even with the ugly wounds -- she counted those as they came upon them, there were twenty--six -- still beautiful with his white skin like a hero out of tales, and fine auburn hair that cast his legs bronze. He had nice legs.

Anne left the delicate work to her and while she washed him, mechanically as she would one of the children, refusing to let her mind stray to intimacies, they talked of Kate Faolain and Dick. How Anne should have known already, she had no idea, but Dick was only wounded and his life could possibly be saved yet. There was a blessing for someone, at least. With difficulty, she held him up while Anne washed the table under him. By the end of it all she was exhausted from moving fourteen stone of dead weight for two hours.

She found a sheet upstairs that was more or less intact to wind him in until Tom could find a suit or a uniform. When she came down and saw him lying there, clean and beautiful, his greying hair curling damply around his forehead, the impact of his death hit her again and she broke sharply into tears. It was too much to look on. He should not be dead. He was still young and virile. She wanted him, her lover, her beautiful lover. She wanted long afternoons making love and babies, and growing old, sitting in the garden watching grandchildren frolic. She forgot all the bad times. They were outweighed now, by the awful sudden ferocity of this terrible pain. She cried, turned away from him with her head against the wall, in wracking gulping sobs.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said to Annie when it was over. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. Annie grimaced.
‘It’s all right, darlin. I’d do the same if it were me Tom,’ she said grimly.

They did not cover his face. It was unmarked, and she couldn’t bear to cover it yet. . Covering him over like a piece of furniture seemed disrespectful. It would frighten the girls. He needed to be shaved besides, and she would rather do it herself than have in a barber. Oh she could think of ten reasons not to, but the plain truth was she couldn’t bear to cover him over yet. They sat down on the floor in the parlour with whiskey and a glass brought from next door.
‘To peace,’ she said and took a sip of the awful stuff, handing the glass to Anne. It did make her feel better, more able to cope.

‘What will you do now?’ Anne asked after a little.
‘Take him to Dublin.’
‘No, I mean... after.’
She thought for a moment. ‘Notify my tenant and open up the Dublin house again, I suppose. I’ve no reason to stay here.’
‘But what ----’ Annie began, then stopped. ‘Never mind. I’ve no leave to be asking that.’
‘Asking what?’ Her ears were ringing from the whiskey.
Anne looked at her sharply. ‘Well, I was thinking, wondering like... with our Mick gone to America, that you might follow suit.’ She was blushing as Molly had never seen her blush before. She laughed and almost cried again at the painful surge of feeling the words caused.
‘I can’t think about that,’ she said shortly. The occasional friendly letters from Boston she could cope with. Details of Katie’s progress, she could cope with. Starting anything again with Mick or going abroad was beyond the Pale.

‘I’m sorry,’ Anne mumbled. ‘I should mind me own business.’ She took a drink of the whiskey.
‘Oh, no!’ Molly said quickly, reaching out to lay a hand on her arm. ‘Not you!’ She sighed. ‘I just ...can’t...’ she shook her head vehemently, ‘think about it. I know how he feels,’ she said, the words ringing staccato. ‘But I just can’t consider it. I won’t.’ She took the glass from Anne and drank some of the whiskey, for she was shaking again. ‘I may feel differently after I’ve been widowed for a while,’ she admitted, ‘but there is so much to sort out there. I just want to be left in peace.’

Later, when the girls were home again and Katie was put to bed in Molly’s room, she went up to Pat’s again, leaving Sally in charge of the house and minding her father, which she reluctantly did. She had bathed in the kitchen sink -- they had smashed her bathtub and there was a large piece of it lying in bits on the inside -- and found a frock that was whole in a box in the small attic. It was musty, but everything else was wrecked. She took Paddy’s felted winter hat and mac, which had somehow escaped the general destruction, and put them on over the frock, more for anonymity than a need for warmth, though she still ran chills off and on. The pub was full of men now and she the only woman. She pulled the hat lower against their numbers and asked Pat to use the telephone.
‘Sure, Molly, it’s all yours.’

After a long time, the trunk call was put through and someone at Hogan’s on the other end ran up the way to fetch Dan. It was nearly closing time, and he must know it was bad news for her to call him out so late. The connection was bad, and she had to shout to be heard.
‘Dan, it’s Molly.’
‘Molly darlin, sure isn’t it past your bedtime?’
‘Dan ----’ Her throat closed. How could she tell the man his son was dead? She knew the shock of those words. She struggled to breathe, coughing. ‘I’m sorry... Dan,’ the words poured out in a rush, ‘Dan, I’ve bad news. You know the Orange marches here, and how bad they are. Dan, Paddy’s been killed in it.’ She choked on the starkness of the words and started crying in front of everyone. When she had got hold of herself a little, there was still a long silence on the other end.
‘Dan?’ Perhaps the line had been disconnected or he’d had a stroke or, oh anything because of the awful news.
‘Aye, lass. I’m here.’ his voice was broken, badly shaking. He faltered, and she waited. The next thing she heard was Rory’s voice on the line.

‘Molly, what’s the do about our Paddy? What happened? Was it today?’
She was shaking again. ‘This afternoon,’ she managed haltingly. ‘At one of the barricades. The RUC came in with a lorry....’ She broke out crying again. ‘Oh, don’t make me say it!’
‘All right, it’s all right,’ Rory said. ‘I get the picture,’ he said grimly. ‘You’re all right, yourself, and the wee anes?’
‘Yes,’ she managed.
‘Just a minute... Molly?’ The line crackled badly.
‘Yes, I’m still here.’
‘Da wants to know was it hard going on him or what.’
‘Oh my God, I don’t know!’ she exclaimed in distress. ‘He was all shot through, Rory...
But don’t tell your father that, please!’
‘No, no of course,’ he said to pacify her. ‘Have you made arrangements?’
‘The undertaker here has been called on, and the church.’
‘Well, don't worry now,’ Rory said. ‘ Ernie and I will take care of everything at this end.
You just get here as soon as you can. But let us know straight away.’
‘I will... Thank you, Rory, you’re a brick.’ She said feelingly.
‘Sure, Molly, what else can I do? We’ll see you soon, so?’
‘Yes.... Rory?’
‘Aye?’
‘I’m so sorry it had to come this way.’
‘I know, darlin,’ Rory said roughly. ‘Get here soon.’
‘Yes.’ She rang off and put up the phone, sitting limply leaning against the bar.

‘Would you be wanting that drink now, Molly?’ Pat’s voice brought her out of herself. She looked up.
‘What? Oh, yes, thank you.’ She took the sherry he proffered.
‘On the house.’ He raised his glass of seltzer and looked around the suddenly hushed bar.
‘Here’s to Paddy Leary,’ he said thickly. ‘The best man any of us ever knew. May Ireland take him to her bosom, and may his lady find comfort in her grief.’ There were cries of ‘hear, hear!’ and ‘To Paddy!’ Molly drank the cloying sherry and it was galling. She didn’t want a dead hero.

She walked home down the deserted lane, avoiding the patrol and let herself in the house. She had never been so tired in all her life. Sally had fallen asleep at the table beside her father and she woke her and helped her upstairs to bed with her sister. On the last trip back down, after tendering bedding borrowed from Anne, she stuck her hand in the pocket of the mac, and found an extra pair of glasses there, old, bent, and dusty. Pulling them out as she came into the parlour, she heard her own voice in far ago Wicklow -- ‘They get in the way.’ Nerves and exhaustion and that bittersweet memory came crashing down on her and she fell into the ripped, sprung chair and wept. Her lover, her husband, the laughing young man of the Portmarnock races and the brute of her return from Dublin. She loved him, really loved him, but he had loved Ireland more than her, and gambled his life away with the IRA, and she was bitter. Oh, bitter.

Tom Kilgallen was good to his word and found a Volunteer officer’s uniform, which he brought round the next day. With his brother and Jack Meehan, they dressed Paddy and laid him out nicely in the coffin that had arrived from the undertaker’s. On Friday at St Francis Xavier’s in Dublin there was a rosary, at which a man she did not know came up and introduced himself. He was handsome and personable, although he made Rory bristle beside her. Why she could not guess, for he wore a dark suit and tie and was perfectly decorous.

‘General Mulcahy, Mrs. Leary. I knew your husband in the old days. I’m very sorry for your trouble ma’am. He was a good man.’
She accepted his hand and bent him a welcome glance, for he was not as tall as she was.
‘Thank you, General. You are very kind. I know my husband would appreciate your sentiments.’ She had worked out the little speech on the train coming down.
‘Do you know who that was?’ Rory prodded her when he had gone.
‘No,’ she said serenely. ‘I’ve no idea. I assume it is one of your republicans, though you don’t appear to care for him very much.’
‘It’s Richard Mulcahy, the bloody Free State goon,’ Rory swore vehemently. She looked at him with weary patience.
‘Rory,’ she murmured as gently as she could, for after all he had arranged everything here in Dublin for her at considerable inconvenience. ‘I am not interested in quarrels. Anyone who is kind enough to be here deserves a decent reception.’ That shut him up. She asked Dan about the General when they arrived home, and he said, ‘Oh yes, he’s an old IRB man.’ That explained the connection. How many people from Paddy’s secret life would come out of the woodwork in the next days?

She received a condolence card from Mrs. Mahaffy, now a widow, which was very nice of her considering what transpired to be a Republican funeral with every paramilitary organisation in existence attending, followed by burial in the Republican plot in Glasnevin. Before Saturday, she didn’t even know there was such a thing. Frances wrote a lovely note enclosed, speaking of ‘fond reminiscences of that brilliant boy’. It made her cry, because the Mahaffys had loved him come what may and that meant so much.

The most surprising schism came from within the family itself. After the funeral, she went back to Ernie and Rosemary’s in Bride Street in their borrowed car. The tension could have been cut with a knife. Ernie was typically laconic, but there was a quality in his glance at her when he paused at an intersection in Church Street that set her teeth on edge. Rosemary, usually friendly -- not to say over--friendly -- had nothing at all to say. Molly exchanged glances with Sally in the back of the car, as if to say ‘what now?’ Sally shrugged, as mystified as she.

The mystery was solved when she went upstairs to change her shoes. In the bedroom opened for the ladies’ use, Maureen was already there changing her dress shoes for everyday boots. Molly took off her hat and the thick veil and laid them on the bed. She went to the mirror to see to her hair and Mo moved aside with evident disdain.
‘Pardon me,’ she said coolly.
Molly drew herself up. ‘I beg your pardon, what is the matter with everyone here? Ernie looked daggers at me in the car. My goodness, you’d think I was one of the Auxies!’
‘You may as well have been!’ Mo snapped.
She was appalled. ‘Just what is that supposed to mean?’
‘It means,’ Mo drew out the word, mocking her accent, ‘that if it hadn’t been for your encouragement he’d not have gone to Derry. He’d have stayed home, stayed out of it. He only went because you went with him!’ Her voice rose and she was at the edge of tears.

My God, she was saying that she abetted Paddy’s activities! ‘I went,’ she cried, ‘because he was ill and needed me! I went to keep my family together! I went because there was nowhere else to go after his internment! We could not stay in Dublin; he’d have been arrested! They knew his name, his face, and every organisation he belonged to because they stole everything from us! I should like to know what you think we should have done in the face of that!’ She was shouting.
‘He never was involved before you came along!’ Mo shouted back.
‘Before I --’ She was so astonished she could hardly breathe. She who had known nothing of the depth of his involvement until the British raided the house after he was interned! ‘Just a moment, Maureen! I had nothing to do with Paddy’s being in the IRB! He was in even in Kerry,’ Mo paled and she nodded strongly. ‘Yes!’ she cried, ‘even in Kerry when he was only a boy! So pin that on your frock!’ She yanked open the door, but Mo’s next words stopped her cold,
‘You’re so high and mighty, aren’t you, Molly Clennaghan? You and your bloody family. At least one of my brothers never compromised a girl then refused to marry her!’ Molly turned to stare, and Mo nodded triumphantly. ‘So the boot’s on the other foot! Ha, so much for your gentleman brother! You never troubled to wonder why he ran off, did you?’
Molly looked down her nose in disdain. ‘That’s as may be, but at least I’m enough of a lady not to admit to something like that, whoever she was.’
‘No,’ Mo countered, her face ruddy with emotion, ‘you just had a six--months’ baby everyone sniggered at!’
That was too much! ‘Well I didn’t have it all by myself!’ She shouted.

There were quick footsteps on the stairs. Rory came up behind her and shoved her unceremoniously into the room, slamming the door behind him.
‘Jaysus, will the two of you shut up! They can hear you all over the neighbourhood! If you want to row like two cats in season, do it outside. You’re upsetting Mammy and people are wondering what the hell is going on. A fine way to behave at a wake, I must say and him not cold yet! Have you no respect for the dead?’
‘Your sister started it,’ Molly said coldly. ‘Apparently some people in this family think I’ve murdered Saint Patrick.’
Rory raised an eyebrow at her. ‘I don’t care who bloody started it, it’s to end. I won’t have Mammy upset anymore. And you,’ he said to his sister, ‘ quit your picking fights. Haven’t we all been through enough? Leave the poor woman alone!’
‘Oh yes, poor Molly! Always poor Molly! I could let on a few choice things about poor Molly!’ Mo glared. What could she possibly know? Molly wondered if she was deranged.
‘She could be a damned Bolshie for all I care,’ Rory spat. ‘But if either of you breathes another uncivil word, Paidín won’t be the only one in Glasnevin yard this night.’ He opened the door and bolted down the stairs.
Maureen sneered at her. ‘Just you mind yourself!’ she muttered, and went out, leaving Molly to wonder what had just happened.

What had happened was that the day before her arrival, when Rory was making the funeral arrangements, there was a row between the Republicans in the family -- Dan, Rory, and Cate -- and the anti--Republicans -- Ernie, Rosemary, and Mo -- about the particulars, and Ernie and Mo were very upset that the others had won out on the strength of Paddy’s indisputable involvement. And then when the coffin arrived from Derry and was on view with Paddy in an officer’s uniform, Ernie and Mo had threatened to boycott the funeral until their mother intervened. Molly just happened to be unlucky enough to be caught in the middle. It was Cate who told her all this, standing in the kitchen. Tall, gaunt, lovely Cate, who had once been so diffident towards her. She had been in the Cumann na mBan since its inception, and was one of the honour guard the last two days.
‘But I only agreed to the uniform because Paddy would have wanted it,’ Molly protested.
‘It was not my idea.’
Cate smiled wanly. ‘That’s what I told Ernie, only not that nicely,’ she admitted. ‘It’s just bad luck for you, Molly. But I wouldn’t worry about it. They’ll get over it.’

While she was home, she went to see Dick Eustace in his office to write up a will and settle any pressing affairs of Paddy’s. They talked of the difficulties of selling the Derry house. She got a surprise when Dicky asked her how she wanted to allocate the remainder of his estate.
‘What estate?’ She smiled, thinking he was joking. ‘He hadn’t a penny.’
‘On the contrary, Gerry,’ Dick said, handing a paper across the desk. ‘There’s a pension from Trinity at £3000.’ There it was in black and white, signed by J.P. Mahaffy.
‘How can this be?’ She frowned. ‘He resigned....’
‘He was not sacked,’ Dick pointed out. ‘He had tenure. And there was a provision made by the Provost on account of ‘special circumstances.’ I assumed you knew of this.’
She shook her head. ‘I had no idea.’

Dick folded his hands into a little tent. He had gone very grey in the last few years, but it was not bad looking at all, though it made him look older than he was. ‘So what do you wish to do with it?’
She shook her head again. ‘I don’t want it. I don’t need it.’
‘What of the girls?’
There was only Sally to consider that way, though that little secret would not thankfully come out until she was dead. She shook her head again. ‘No. We are well provided--for, as you know....’
‘Why not set up a scholarship fund?’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘For aspiring republicans?’ She smiled. She could only joke this way with Dicky. Anyone else -- Liz, George, Susanna -- would be scandalised.... A thought came to her -- ‘Wait. I do know someone who could use it.’ The Kilgallens. ‘But it must be from this office, and anonymous. They wouldn’t take it otherwise.’ It was a small way to make their lives easier, in thanks for their friendship these seven years. It would be more money than Tom could ever make, and would allow them to move into one of the housing estates in the suburbs. She knew it was the right thing to do.
‘We can arrange that,’ Dick agreed warily. He evidently couldn’t see why she should want to be so secretive. But she didn’t enlighten him. Let that stand between her and the Kilgallens. She knew Paddy would approve. It was his money, after all.

When they got home to Derry, Molly and the girls had a picnic for tea on the parlour floor, and afterward they took turns reading from Georgey’s Menagerie, which was about right for Katie to read, as it had large print and the words were only occasionally difficult. Paddy had given it to Joe when he was four and it was conveniently left behind at Mummy’s in Baldoyle, found when they were visiting on the Sunday. July though it was, the weather had gone thundery as they arrived at Waterside and it began to rain as they came across the bridge. They hadn’t coal for the grate, and it was too wet out even to go over to Annie’s to beg some, so they huddled under the borrowed bedding. Tomorrow when the girls were at school, she would go out shopping and begin to restock the house. She was reading, ‘With his face very serious the boy came to his mother for explanations; but she only answered by reminding him of a promise he had made her as a condition of being admitted to the room,’ when the front door, which had been bolted, crashed open against the wall and half a dozen RUC came running in with rifles and machine guns. Katie and even Sally were screaming and she was on her feet in an instant as the lieutenant stalked into the room, his boots loud on the bare floor.

‘What do you want breaking in here! We are a house in mourning!’ she cried over her hammering heart. Her knees were jelly. The Lieutenant shoved past her and she staggered.
‘We know enough about that. Your husband was Fenian scum we should have blown away long since!’ Men were rushing in with guns at the ready, swarming over the house, blocking the exits. They were trapped, dear God. She began shaking violently, and gathered up Katie, who was crying, ‘Mammy, Mammy!’
‘My husband was no Fenian!’ She lied stoutly in her best drawing room tones, but the RUC Lieutenant evidently didn’t know the distinction, or thought she was putting it on. He was tearing the shreds of drapery aside, looking for God knew what, and stalked over, looming large for he was taller and bigger than she, and she shrank from him when he grabbed her arm. Her mind filled with all the horror of the last seven years: burning, looting, rape, murder. Nothing was beyond them.

‘You’re a lying bitch,’ he muttered, and struck her. ‘We know he was hiding guns in this place, now show us where they are and no one gets hurt!’
Her face was smarting from the blow. Sally had Katie in hand and was cowering beside the grate, her face utterly white.
‘Believe me, Lieutenant,’ she stuttered in terror, ‘if what you say is true, I have no knowledge of it! My --’
‘Irish!’ he snapped, and drew the pistol he carried, grabbing her again and shoving her over by the girls. ‘You’ll come up the barracks, ya Fenian bitch, and find out what happens to those who interfere with police business.’ He kept the gun on them, loaded and cocked while his men began ripping open the walls with bayonets and smashing whatever little had not been destroyed last week. She heard the crash of rifle butts against the bathtub. The iron bed was shot up. Something went through the front windows upstairs. From the kitchen came a ferocious barrage of machine gun fire. She looked up once from bending over Katie, covering her head in her arms as she screamed and screamed, and found the lieutenant studying her with the most awful, familiar leer. He smiled nastily at her expression and yanked her chin up.
‘You know, I could let you off if you’d be nice,’ he suggested odiously. ‘You’re not a bad looker for a Fenian. Not like some of these cows.’

The words went through her and she snapped, in a white rage. They could kill her, and she would rather die, but he would never get away with it as long as she had any fight in her. She tossed her head, pulling herself from his grip.
‘You’re disgusting,’ she spat in his face. ‘Irish I may be,’ she cried, and he recognised her accent as truly British at last, ‘but I am not so desperate as that!’
‘You bitch!’ he struck her and she went flying, landing painfully on the sharp, exposed edge of the ruined sofa. But he didn’t shoot her. Her mouth and nose were bloody, and she stifled a cry, though it hurt more than anything. She wouldn’t give these savages the satisfaction. From the corner of her eye, she saw Katie kick him.
‘Don’t you hurt my Mammy!’
‘Katie!’ she cried, her voice high. She lunged for her, but the lieutenant was quicker. He picked her up bodily and, with a hand over her mouth, for she was shrieking like a wild thing, opened up the cupboard under the stairs and threw her in, slamming the door. They knew about it! It was horrifying. There was nowhere safe in this house at all! He pointed a short, fat finger at Sally.
‘The next one who tries that will be shot!’
The sergeant came in then, skidding to a halt.
‘We found it, sir, in the basement below, it must be,’ he glanced at her. ‘There’s a bank safe door inside and we can’t shoot through it. Hodges thinks we should dynamite it.’
‘Whatever gets it open!’ the lieutenant snapped. ‘So you didn’t know they were there, did you?’ he said to her. ‘That could make you a lifer for concealing information. Or maybe execution for arms possession... Get that bloody door open, sergeant!’ he shouted at the man.

The explosives rocked the house a moment later, and smoke poured into the room, choking them. Through the dim grit came a parade of men in heavy boots, carrying more arms and ammunition than she had ever seen in her life. She leaned against the wall in weak amazement, looking on the endless line with stupefaction. Running guns! He could have blown them all up and half the neighbourhood with them! How could Paddy do such an irresponsible thing and never even tell her? My God, Joe used to hide down there! Had he known, her baby boy? Is that why they killed him? My God, my God! Tom Kilgallen’s words on the day he’d come with the uniform came back to her: The less you know, the less they can get out of you. He knew! They all knew! Liars and murderers, one and all!
The sergeant came and went with a report.

Then, another officer came in through the broken front door, past the now dwindling line of men. The officer, a Major, wore the coat and brown cap of the regular army. He had a long moustache that obscured part of his face, but he was vaguely familiar. She stared at him as he spoke with the lieutenant.
‘I see your information was correct,’ he said, glancing about in distaste. He looked at her, and the nagging familiarity came again.
‘Yes, sir, although this Fenian bitch here was reluctant to comply at first. We’re about half--finished down there. Most of the rest is explosives. Gelignite.’
‘How much?’
‘About a hundred pounds, I would guess, sir.’
The Major whistled and glanced at her again. Suddenly, she knew him.

‘John!’
He looked at her closely, and the lieutenant started.
‘Madame?’ the major said coldly.
She couldn’t believe it. The last time she had seen him was in 1916. He had stopped by the parents’ house on his way to Clontarf with the emergency troops. John Whitcombe, Colonel Whitcombe’s son, her near neighbour since she was four.
‘John, it’s Mary!... Molly!’
There was no recognition.
‘Molly Clennaghan!’
He was taken visibly aback, and switched his stick to the other arm in confusion.
‘My God!’ he exclaimed.
‘Do you know this woman, sir?’ the lieutenant asked.
‘Yes.... Molls, I can’t believe it’s you! Whatever are you doing here? Vince isn’t in our Division? No, but he was Navy... That’s not right either.’

She could have laughed had the situation not been so tragic. ‘He was in the Navy,’ she said with a haughty glance for the lieutenant. ‘He worked for the G--Division after and was killed before we were married --’
‘Yes, it was in the papers...’ John said, thinking.
‘I married a university professor, Trinity College. I got rather more than I bargained for.’
‘I know,’ John said ruefully. ‘Poor Molly. Your husband was quite the genius,’ he said with a measure of admiration. He turned to the lieutenant. ‘Lieutenant Stanes, if Mrs. Leary has said she knew nothing of the matter, you may believe she is telling the truth. I will vouch for her personally--’
‘Sir!’
‘As an officer and a gentleman,’ John said, with a glance at her. ‘I owe it to an old friend.’
‘Thank you,’ she murmured sincerely.
He tipped up his stick, nodding. ‘Stanes! Carry on, and see that you abuse this woman no further, or you shall have to deal with me. What a disgrace!’
‘Yes, sir.’ The Lieutenant glared at her. John was out the door.
They regarded one another with loathing.
‘Next time,’ he muttered. ‘Next time. Just you mind your back.’
She raised her head and said nothing, but drew a shuddering breath.

She sent the girls to Mary Sullivan’s for breakfast the next day and while they were gone she sat on a straight chair in the parlour, the only intact one left in the house, and tried to think of what to do first. She had a crashing headache, and her arm and shoulder were purple where the lieutenant had grabbed her. Sally told her she had a ‘big bruise’ on her back when she was washing at the kitchen sink earlier. They had slept in their clothes on the floor. She had only the dress she stood in. Even their cases had been ripped open. It was one way of unpacking, she supposed. After calming Katie down, sleep had been impossible, worrying that they would come back. Now she was exhausted. She hadn’t sent the girls to school because they weren’t fit to be seen. The sooner she got out of here the better. Mummy had given them the run of the Baldoyle house until January when the lease was up in Gardiner Street. They could all use some time in the country.
Annie’s blonde head appeared in the kitchen doorway before she hurried inside.
‘I came as soon as I could. Mary Mother of God, did they do that to you at all?’ She exclaimed. ‘You look like three rounds under.’
‘Yes,’ she said dully, rubbing her forehead. ‘Annie, why didn’t you tell me Paidín was running guns?’ She demanded. She waved her arm toward the barrack and winced. ‘They thought I was lying! Thank goodness for John Whitcombe or I’m sure we’d all be dead or worse this minute! How could you not tell me, Annie! I was wild when they came in, and then all those guns, and explosives---- Explosives! Sweet Christ, I married the stupidest man alive! He could have blown us all to hell and back! Why didn’t you tell me?’
Annie’s blue eyes were enormous and guilty as she stood in the middle of the room. By her expression she had known all along. ‘He made us not tell you,’ she said at last, in a slow, small voice. ‘Sure, wasn’t it out of concern for you, Molly? He knew you’d fret. I told em both it were a bad idea, from the start, but they’d never listen. Stubborn, the pair of them. I’m sorry Molly, you must believe me, really I am. I never liked deceiving you.’
She thought of everything they had been through. Surely, that much must be true. Annie was incapable of outright lying. It always showed on her face. What she had done, she had done with good intent and unwillingly.
‘I believe you,’ she said, because she wanted to so very much, and fought sudden tears. She was so tired, and this had been the absolute last she could endure. Nothing in her life had been what it seemed.
There was a noise at the back door, heavy boots, and they froze. But it was only Tom.
‘Hey you, wee Annie, is there not a woman to be found in the house, then?’ He looked across at Molly. ‘Jaysus, what happened to you at all?’ Evidently he hadn’t slept at home.
‘Our neighbours up at the barracks,’ she managed coolly. ‘You saw the basement, I take it.’
‘Aye, aye,’ he agreed, without a trace of guilt. ‘Are you all right, like, and the wanes?’
She thought of the day he had brought Paddy home, and the strength of him when he held her in his arms. He had said the same thing them. She didn’t understand him at all.
‘Yes,’ she said simply. They were alive and relatively unhurt. That was enough for the moment.
‘I’ll fetch your breakfast,’ Annie began, but he put an arm around her.
‘No, have your wee chat up. I’ll fetch it meself.’ He leaned to kiss Annie briefly, and went out again. She and Anne stood looking at one another. They were turning a corner now. Seven years would fall or stand depending on her response. The scales were heavily weighted: Anne had been there unfailingly at every moment from births to deaths, tireless, uncomplaining, the best of friends; but her complicity to Tom and Paddy’s activity had also contributed to those deaths, to the endless raids.... Molly felt grossly betrayed, but the truth was that no amount of histrionics on her part would bring Joe and Paddy back. Then, Annie had her losses too, just as hard. They could only go on from here.
‘Do you have a broom?’ Molly asked. ‘That’s a start.’
Annie sighed, her eyes brimming tears. ‘I do,’ she murmured, her mouth working.
‘I’ll just fetch it.’ She ran out and was back in a little with her cleaning things, as she had done long ago. They had swept out the dining alcove and the parlour and were beginning on the hall when there was the noise of a heavy lorry coming down their street. They looked at each other and ran to the parlour window. There before them were six or eight men pouring out of the vehicle, running down the alley, breaking in both doors at once.
‘Tom!’ Annie shrieked and ran stumbling towards the back door. Molly caught her skirt on a lunge and dragged her back.
‘No!’ she cried.
‘But they’ll kill him!’ Annie shrilled at her. She was dead white and her eyes were hard as sapphire. ‘And my baby. My baby’s in there! Molly--’ The tears came pouring and she wrenched herself loose. ‘Molly, let me go, let me go -- I can’t let them kill him!’ They both stooped paralysed by the sounds of gunfire from next door.
‘Tom!’
Molly grabbed her again, as Tom’s lithe figure went sprinting past the alley windows towards the front of the house to tear away. He was a big man, but she never saw anyone move faster than he did in those seconds, it must have been though it seemed like hours. Out the door and down they alley. Finding himself pursued, he sprang back trying to shoot his way out, but he was trapped between the two barricades of men -- reinforcements who had arrived. He whirled as they began firing, the world exploding in the crackling thunder of revolvers and machine--gun fire. It was sickening, and Molly struggled with Anne that she would not see, but she wrenched herself out of the stranglehold and went tearing through the house and was in the alley hardly before the firing had ceased.
‘Tom!’ she screamed, and was wailing hysterically by the time Molly reached her. She saw why. She retched at the sight. It was worse than Joe, a hundred times worse. He had been hit so many times that the head above the bloody mess of his chest was completely destroyed. There was no way to even tell if he had been fair or dark. Anne was screaming hysterically, and kept running her hands over that poor destroyed man. It was more awful than anything Molly could ever have imagined. She leaned against the wall and retched, even when there was nothing left to come up. The RUC by this time had disappeared as if they had never been. Niall was screaming upstairs and the children were all crying at the windows.
‘Mammy, Mammy!’ Sean came skidding round her front door. ‘Oh my God, Da1 Oh, Jesus, Da, they’ve murdered my Da!’ He flung himself on the body with his mother, joining in the terrible orgy of grief. Sean lifted up his head then, swearing blue and incoherent, dark with his father’s blood.
‘You filthy murdering bastards!’ He shouted at the departed police. ‘You’ve murdered me own Da! Bejaysus, just you look out, just you look out! It’s the IRA will kill you all in your murderers beds some night! Dirty fucking murderers! Limey scum! We’ll beat yez, we’ll kill yez all! Ah, Jesus, Daddy, Daddy, me own Da ----’ He fell into weeping again, retching and cursing. Molly sat down on the filthy cobbles, never mind the dark blood spreading everywhere, because her legs would no longer support her. She covered her head in her hands, shaking violently, and wished for once to faint, to escape the terrible scene. It did not occur to her that the madman there flung over the mangled body with his distraught mother was only a fourteen--year--old boy.

In September she discovered she was pregnant.
She had been sick since coming back from Dublin, but she thought it from the shock alone, with everything that had happened. She had missed periods after Joe died too, but she now could keep nothing down at all and was afraid it was her old consumption so went to the doctor in the city. When he told her in his consulting rooms that she was pregnant she became hysterical and they gave her a sedative and made her lie down until she was better. She would never be better. She had wanted babies, but not like this. This was too awful. War widows had sometimes had posthumous babies, but this was different. This was too awful. She went home and cried for a fortnight and hardly could drag herself out of bed.

On Guy Fawkes Day she went shopping with Annie up in the second--hand stalls by the Butcher’s Gate, more for the outing than anything else. She would never buy anything there. Annie did, though; a couple of dresses for the girls and one for Niall. She wouldn’t use but sparingly the money that had begun coming in last month, although she could have gone to any of the shops in town and bought new things; more money arrived in a fortnight than Tom as made in a year, if he worked at all. The last two years he had not, and the family had been supported by the Sinn Fein fund, which was not huge.
When the first draught arrived at the Post Office, Annie came tearing home and knocked up her door in a hurry, bursting into the room. Molly was lying on the sofa sleeping and was jolted awake.
‘Dear god!’ She exclaimed. ‘I thought you were the Specials!’
‘Did you do this?’ Annie demanded, waving the receipt. ‘You did this, didn’t you?’ She started crying because it was thirteen pounds. Molly yawned and sat up, pushing her frock down to her knees.
‘It was Paddy, actually,’ she admitted. ‘It’s his pension.’
‘I can’t take it,’ Annie said, though her face was glowing.
‘I’d like to know what else you intend to do, with the eleven of you without an income,’ Molly said frankly. ‘Take it for Paddy. He would have wanted you to have it. But don’t spend it all in one place; it only goes for twenty years.’ She smiled at Anne’s confusion and gratitude. Normally undemonstrative, Anne came and hugged her.
‘Thank you,’ she murmured fiercely, ‘thank you.’
They were walking along the Wall after the shopping and had just passed the RUC barracks and were about to round the corner to their street when shots rang out from the tower. Molly knew to go down on the pavement now and wait until it was clear. There was not a word from Annie, who usually would have been muttering under her breath about the inconvenience. Molly raised her head after several silent minutes and saw why: her packages were sprawled on the pavement and she was facedown, her limbs at weird angles; she had been shot in the back.
‘Oh no,’ Molly moaned. She scrambled up and hurried over, pulling Annie into her lap. But she was dead. Molly looked around wildly. There was no one in the street, only the wind howling off the river.
‘Somebody help me!’ she screamed. After a long time, while she sat shaking and crying, Pat Halinan came out of his pub.
‘Oh Jesus!’ he cried, and dashed back inside for help. He brought Shay Kilgallen and Dinny Seaver with him and they helped her home with poor wee Annie.

She took the Kilgallen children to Sligo on the train. Shay had intended to come, but two days before he got a job and so she went alone. Seanin stayed behind in Derry with his uncle. He refused to go to Sligo and she had no authority to compel him, especially with Shay willing to take him in. Blood was thicker than water, even when the near relation was an IRA man; or especially, in Sean’s case. She was afraid the boy wouldn’t live long if left in Derry, but he had told her rudely that it was none of her business.
It was a ghastly journey. She was sick and Niall was sick and the little Kilgallens were as boisterous as ever in the first--class compartment. She was relieved when the train finally stopped in Sligo town and she saw three men with a cart standing outside the station waiting for them. One was so evidently Mickey’s father that she didn’t have to ask. He was a tall thin man with stooped shoulders and a gentle, weary face. He had a shock of white hair, and the familiar blue eyes. The other two must be Kilgallen’s brothers. She gave Niall to Sally, for he was squirming, and held out her hand, saying in her uncertain Irish,
‘Mr. Rafferty, I am Mrs. Leary, sir.’ She faltered, not knowing what else to say to him. But he smiled and took her hand warmly.
‘Welcome, my dear,’ he returned in Irish, and she saw his pleasure that she knew the language. ‘Welcome to Sligo.’ He looked around at all the children with tears in his eyes and greeted them all in turn with a kiss or a pat on the head. He took Niall in his frail arms and bounced him, staring significantly at her Katie. So he knew. She coloured and put her arm around this child.
‘These are my daughters Katie and Sally,’ she said.
‘How do you do?’ They asked one after another. Katie hid her face in Molly’s coat.
‘Where’s Seanin?’ Mr. Rafferty asked at last.
She coloured again, coughing. How to tell the man his namesake was off following his father’s cause with just as much hatred? She remembered that the other brother, Sean, had met his end in the rebel cause, too.
‘In Derry,’ she managed at last. ‘With Shay…’
The old man shook his head. ‘It’s a terrible thing, this rebel business...’ She thought of Mick, who would have said the same. She had left writing the news of Anne’s death to Shay; he had been livid enough about Paddy. She didn’t want to hear anymore of his diatribe against her remaining in Ireland. She had the genuine excuse of illness not to answer his letters. Heaven knew what he would say when he heard about her lump. She debated if she had reason to tell him. What did it have to do with him, after all?
On the ten or twelve miles to Mr. Rafferty’s small holding, the children jostled about in the back of the cart, glad to be out of the train and in the sunshine, even if it was cold. She had no idea of what to say to the old man so she looked about at the scenery and tried not to mind the uncomfortable seat. After years of motorcars, the jolting was unbearable. Her gaze wandered to the heath--covered Slieve Gamph Mountains that Mickey and Anne had spoken of so fondly. The land was wild and hilly, but not so much as Kerry, with a softness to the hills that Kerry did not have. They came to Colloony town. Mick had not been exaggerating to say it was two pubs, an all--in--one and not much else. They turned up the road before an unused train station.
‘The train used to be coming here,’ Sean Rafferty said. ‘But that was years ago itself, when our Mick first went off to Dublin town.’
She nodded silently. They went under the trees and up another road before pausing before a little four--room cottage with a new ugly slate roof and a couple of small outbuildings. There had plainly been additions to the house. She remembered that the old man had been a carpenter by trade. Coffins. She was glad she had made plans to stay in the village rather than incommoding him.
‘Here it is, sure,’ he said, climbing down after the two Kilgallens who had been stuffed in the back with the children. They took the cases into the house three at a time.
‘Brennan, Rourke,’ he nodded to them. ‘Ta.’ They were scrawny, dispirited men, unlike their brothers as could be. When the cases were unloaded they made their awkward good--byes.
‘We’re just up the road, so,’ Rourke told her. ‘Yez can send Jim along when you’re ready to go into Colloony.’
She looked at Mr. Rafferty.
‘My son Jim,’ he said. The only one left, apart from Mick. The poor old gent.
Inside, they sat down at the table and she wrote out her address in Dublin, and Dick Eustace’s office as well. She didn’t bother with the exchange numbers as he wasn’t on the phone. He was proud about the pension money, as proud as Anne or Mick would be. She saw where they got it.
‘But sir,’ she entreated, ‘it’s not right that you should be burdened in your age with the financial responsibility for nine children! It’s only that they have no other relative that I thrust them on you at all. I couldn’t leave them to the Union. But you should not be burdened by them’
His blue eyes were steely. ‘Aye, but it’s not right for me to be taking money from a woman, and a widow at that.’
She grimaced. ‘That sounds like Mick,’ she complained.
‘He was well brought up,’ Sean said, ‘if poor. I do all right, Mrs. And too, does our boy send me the fiver every month, so I’m not wanting for aught.’ Five pounds a month from the twelve dollars a week he earned; no wonder Mick could never save anything. Not that she grudged his father the money, but it made the transference doubly important. It would take a burden off Mick, into whom such chivalry had been bred. She had a crashing headache and the close room with the smoke from the turf fire made her sick after the jolting of the cart and the noise of the train. It made concentration difficult. She wanted to go into town and have a lie down. But not before business was settled here.
‘But with all these children!’ she exclaimed. She shook her head. ‘It’s not my money. It was my husband’s, his university pension. It should be put to good use. Please, sir, ignore the garrison you see in me. It’s not from charity that I offer this! If you can’t take it now, then let it be put aside for them! Please sir! My husband and I loved Annie. It’s such a small thing.’ She turned her head away and coughed miserably, fumbling for a handkerchief. She had been warned to avoid emotional upsets. How one was supposed to do that in the midst of such desolation was a mystery. Sally was over in an instant, standing sentinel beside her chair while she struggled.
‘Mammy,’ she said gently. Molly held her hand on her shoulder, grateful for her presence. When she could breathe again she sat back in the chair, shoving the ruined handkerchief into her pocket.
‘I’m sorry,’ she gasped.
He was frowning. ‘You are very ill, Mrs. Leary,’ he said in distress. ‘And in your condition’ He had heard the unmistakable rattle in her chest that was only too plain when she drew a breath.
She shook her head. She didn’t want his sympathy, it was too unbearable. He would be concerned for Katie, tell Mick, and then what? Then what? Would he come back? She didn’t know that she could live with the intensity if he did.
‘I’ll be all right,’ she insisted. ‘… Will you take the money, sir?’
‘All right lass, all right, as it means so much,’ he consented. ‘I wouldn’t like our Mick to say I was the death of you.’
She stared at him, her heart pounding in horror that he had actually said it, acknowledged that he knew who she was, had been, to Mick. ‘Thank you,’ she managed to choke, and bolted some of the tea before her, rattling the cup in the saucer.
Before they left, he took her aside into his tiny neat room with a cheap gilt--framed picture of the Scared Heart hanging above the chest. On the chest were a votive candle, a set of rosary beads, three photographs and his pipe. He picked up one of the pictures and showed it to her, saying,
‘That was my Kathleen. That was taken back in ’85 when she and me were wed. Sixteen she was then and the prettiest girl clear to Mayo.’
She looked at the photograph. As a young man Sean had been as gangly and awkward--looking as Mick on the first day she saw him; they must have been about the same age. He smiled at her a little.
‘So I knew the truth when I saw your little Katie. Mick told us years ago, sure, but you doubt. You doubt.’ He opened the top drawer and removed a tiny box of mementoes. From inside it, he withdrew a small holy medal of St. Michael the Archangel and pressed it into her hand. His own hand trembled then, and there were tears in his eyes. ‘This is for the child,’ he said, ‘it were our Mick’s. He’d want her to have it.’ Mick’s christening medal. She looked up at him, too moved to speak. The poor old man. ‘God bless you, daughter,’ he said in the country manner, but it carried here a deeper meaning: he accepted her into the family, however irregularly.
‘Thank you, sir,’ she said sincerely. He nodded and blinked, and her heart broke for him. If Mick was to come home, it should be here with his old father and not to Dublin with her. The old man loved him and needed him, much more than Mick might perceive she did.

When they got home to Derry, she was sick with the winter weather. Sally did nearly everything about the house, minded Katie and looked after her as well. They had planned to be back in Dublin for Christmas, but she couldn’t travel at all so they stayed on.
Two days before Christmas she had a miscarriage and bled so much that she had to be taken to hospital. Worst of all news, the child was a boy, a boy to carry on the name. He could never have replaced Joe or Eamonn, but it would have been some comfort. She was devastated. The staff told her, to give her some answer to her endless moaning ‘why?’ that she’d miscarried because of her TB. But that was not the terrible question she wanted answered; she did not want clinical reasons for what had happened to her. She wanted to know why everyone she had ever loved had been taken from her violently and they could not answer that. After nearly six months, she missed Paddy more than she could have imagined when he died. She cried from morning ‘til night for three days until they gave her laudanum. Doctor Morrisey tried to encourage her by saying that it was efficacious for her TB as well. That was no encouragement. She might get well; but things would never be better. It wouldn’t bring the child back, bring Joe back, bring Paddy back. Things would never be better now, not after what she had endured. How could she ever forget? She did nothing but cry for the fortnight she was ordered to bed.

They had to move after the New Year. She complained to her mother that she was incapable of packing and moving house and so Mummy made phone calls and soon her cousin Dorothy arrived from Cavan and did everything for her, shepherding them to Dublin in the frigid second week of January 1924. She stayed for a fortnight, until she was sure they were properly settled. Mummy said later that Dodo told her she thought they shouldn’t be alone in the Gardiner Street house because it might upset her and delay her getting well.
‘It doesn’t matter.’ Molly said dully in response. ‘Nothing matters.’ None of Grace’s exhortations about the girls could move her. She listened to it all dully. Grace only left off when she went into a coughing fit that ended in a spectacular haemorrhage. Mummy frantically rang for Dr. Powers at the Mater.
In an hour she was in hospital again. She was quickly transferred to the sanatorium in Wicklow, the National Hospital for Consumption at Newcastle, where she endured radium treatments and an operation wherein they scraped her right lung, hoping to arrest the lesions. The surgery Fa had never allowed when she was a girl. It left her very weak and the x--rays made her violently ill, but it was successful by the doctors’ terms and she slowly recovered. At the beginning of June, she was home again. She had been ill for nearly a year.

Chapter Twenty One: Derry, Dublin 1921--22

In September, the British Government sent over a gang of CIG men, formed in Cairo by General Sir Henry Wilson, the Army’s former Director of Military operations and now the head of Central Intelligence, whose purpose was to assassinate the political members of Sinn Fein, so to draw out the IRA leaders – particularly Michael Collins and his Squad of hand--picked assassins, jocularly known as the Twelve Apostles, whose job it was to ‘put out the eyes of the British’ in Ireland– and break their hold on the country. They became known as the Cairo Gang, and they were given carte blanche by Wilson to use any method to apprehend Mick Collins, who was at this time cycling round Dublin unarmed, with a price of £10,000 on his head; the most wanted man in Ireland. He was counted ‘extremely dangerous’ according to the police gazette Hue & Cry, and the order was given to ‘be sure he does not fire first.’ The Cairo Gang, ostensibly police detectives, were not uniformed, but went round Dublin in business suits, working only at night after the curfew, assisting the raiding parties of the Tans and Auxies. Brigadier General Crozier, the OC of the Auxiliaries, didn’t think much of them, calling them a ‘sub--rosa murder gang’, part of a ‘police plot to do away with Sinn Fein leaders and put the blame on Sinn Fein.’

They did their work well. They assassinated the seated and former Lord Mayors of Limerick, and nearly succeeded in doing in the Bishop of Killaloe, Co. Limerick. They did murder John Lynch in Dublin, an old businessman whom they mistook for Liam Lynch, OC of the North Cork Brigade of the IRA. A plot was then uncovered in October to assassinate Arthur Griffith, then acting head of Sinn Fein. The Squad managed to get wind of the plot beforehand, and Griffith held a press conference in Wynn’s Hotel, publishing the information they had gathered.

The time had come to act. Collins and his Squad had amassed mountains of information, and selected thirty--five men who were to be dealt with. At the insistence of Cathal Brugha, Dail Minister for Defence, this list was pared down on the grounds of insufficient evidence to twenty by the night of 20 November, when Mick Collins, Dick Mulcahy, and Dick McKee met with Peadar Clancy and others of the Dublin Brigade met in the rooms of the Topographical Society in Lower Gardiner Street. The Squad were given a list of names; they would go out in the morning and on the dot of nine begin their operations. At six locations, groups of eight men each carried out the order, picking off fourteen of the twenty on Mick Collins’ list; the others were not where they were supposed to be, and so escaped with their lives.

Number 28 Pembroke Street was by far the worst; eight men were killed there. Some of them refused to come out of bed, and so were shot there. Others were shot as they opened the door. Two were shot in the hall. The stairs ran with blood. One young fellow of the Squad was shaking so badly that he-- with a loaded revolver -- was a danger to everyone in the hall. Paddy Flanagan, a captain in ‘C’ company, herded the agents downstairs to the basement and lined them up against the wall. After asking their names, he shot them neatly behind the ear. One of the agents in Number 92 Lower Baggot Street tried to climb out the window in his pyjamas and was shot on the sill. By nine thirty, it was over. By ten, Dublin Castle was in a state of complete panic.

General Crozier of the Auxies had come from Number 22 Mount Street, where he had kept one of his men from killing one of the Squad, Frank Teeling, with the remark that if a spy was shot, it was part of the game; but Crozier was ex--Army. Not long afterward he resigned his commission in protest over the ‘gross indiscipline’ of his men, and the backing they had from the Government. In the Castle, a shocked officer said to him in the hall: ‘About fifty officers have been shot. Collins has done in most of the Secret Service.’

The game was up. G--men, Secret Service, RIC and regular Army all herded into Dublin Castle for protection. One poor fellow was so undone that he shot himself, rather than wait for Collins’ men to do it. Crozier wasn’t the only one without sympathy for the murdered men. Lloyd George remarked privately that ‘they got what they deserved. Beaten by counter--jumpers.’ Mick Collins had indeed put out the eyes of the British in Ireland. But it came at a terrible price: At 3.15 PM, the Black and Tans arrived in armoured lorries at Croke Park, where a Gaelic football match was in progress. The Tans were there ostensibly to search for the men and arms responsible for that morning’s shootings. The game halted. From the railway overpass at one end of the stadium, a machine gun opened fire on the crowd. There was mass panic. People poured onto the field, screaming and running. Several were trampled. The machine--gun fire went on and on. A Tan had lined up the teams on the field and was walking up and down, waving his loaded revolver. An Army officer went up to one of the team and murmured, ‘He means to finish you all off.’ One of the players, a fellow named Hogan, was shot point blank in the forehead. It was said in the papers afterward that the Tans had been fired on as they came in by ‘an IRA sniper’, but several eyewitnesses, Paddy’s brothers included, proclaimed this to be a bloody lie. In the end, there were twelve killed and seventy wounded.

In Parliament, there was no mention at all of Bloody Sunday, as the Croke Park murders were quickly called. There was much talk of the murdered officers, who had been given a State funeral, and Sir Hamar Greenwood, the Under--secretary of State for Ireland decried the massacre of ‘unarmed British officers’. This caused Joe Devlin, MP for West Belfast, to leap up and enquire whether the Honourable Member had any knowledge of the appearances of His Majesty’s Forces on the football field. He was leapt on and beaten down to cries of ‘Kill him! Kill him!’

But that was not the end. The night before the mass raid on the secret service agents, Dick McKee and Peadar Clancy and an innocent man, Clure, were captured in Vaughan’s Hotel in Parnell Square and taken to Dublin Castle. There they were shot while ‘trying to escape’. Rigged photographs were sent about to support this preposterous charade. They were obviously tortured -- beaten, bayoneted, their fingernails ripped out – before they were killed. Clancy had a bullet--hole in his forehead, and on their faces were clear marks of knives and other weapons used against them when they were retrieved from the morgue of the Mater Hospital. Mick Collins was distraught at the loss of these two good friends, and risked his life by marching into the Pro--Cathedral where they lay in state with two Volunteer officer’s uniforms to dress them in. The next day, as the coffins were being removed from the church for burial, he stepped out of the crowd and stuck a note on Dick McKee’s coffin:

‘To the memory of two good friends, Dick and Peadar, two of Ireland’s
best soldiers, Miceal O’Coilleann, 25/11/1920.’

He then took his place as one of the pallbearers.

There was wild and furious rioting in the streets of Dublin by the drunken Tans that night. Rory was away at a safe house, and good thing because both the parents’ house and Ernie’s were raided. Somebody had been watching them. Rory was later arrested in the sweeps and taken to Richmond Barracks and beaten up pretty badly, but he managed to keep his mouth shut and was only given a year in the internment camp at the Curragh for being a member of an illegal organisation.

On 28 November, a week after Bloody Sunday, word came from Cork of the success of Tom Barry’s column: they had ambushed a company of Auxiliaries at Kilmichael, killing seventeen. In reprisal for this, the Auxies went on a rampage, burning most of the centre of Cork City to the ground, looting shops and killing two men, the Delaney brothers, in their beds for the hell of it. A priest was shot dead without cause or provocation. The next day, the Auxies went round with burnt corks stuck in their bonnets.

In the House of Commons, Sir Hamar Greenwood went on in full rant about how ‘there was no evidence that the fires were started by Crown forces’, claiming that the City Hall caught alight by the fires in Patrick Street; never mind that to do so, the fires would had to have miraculously leapt the River Lee, a kilometre away. A young sergeant, O’Donoghue, wrote to family from Dunmanway that he personally rounded up twenty men for the enterprise, which began with their lorries being bombed from over the barrack wall. Houses in the vicinity were set afire, and so commenced the path of destruction. Those in the company who had been in Flanders said that nothing they had experienced there was like the destruction of Cork. The British Government decided that the publication of the report on the burning of Cork would be ‘disastrous’ for its whole policy in Ireland, and so the official findings remained a dead letter.

There was some sympathy and understanding of the IRA and their cause on the British side, however. Lieutenant General Sir Henry Lawson wrote,
‘The captains of volunteers appear to have been almost all quite young men, farmers’ sons for the most part, some of them schoolmasters, most with what, for their class, must be considered a good deal of education, ignorant, however, of the world and of many things, but as a class, transparently sincere and single--minded, idealists, highly religious for the most part, and often with an almost mystical sense of duty to their country. These men gave to the task of organising their volunteers their best in mind and spirit. They fought against drunkenness and self--indulgence, and it is no exaggeration to say that, as a class, they represented all that was best in the countryside.
‘…The Irish Republican Army seems to be particularly free from ruffians of the professional type, and the killings of police and others, sometimes under circumstances which evoke our horror, were almost certainly done by members of the IRA acting under military orders…Behind their organisation there is the spirit of a nation – of a nation which is certainly not in favour of murder, but which, on the whole, sympathises with them and believes that the members of the IRA are fighting for the cause of the Irish people.’

When Dev got back from his American fund--raising tour in January of 1921, he put it rather more succinctly to the American press
‘We took office knowing that the people wanted us to be a government in fact as well as in name…One of our first governmental acts was to take over control of the voluntary armed forces of the nation. From the Irish Volunteers, we fashioned the Irish Republican Army to be the military arm of the Government. This army is, therefore, a regular State force, under the control of elected representatives and under organisation and a discipline imposed by those representatives, and under officers who hold their commissions under a warrant from those representatives. The Government is, therefore, responsible for the actions of this army. These actions are not the acts of irresponsible individuals or groups, therefore nor is the IRA as the enemy would have one believe, a praetorian guard. It is the national army of defence.’

To Paddy’s mind, reading this pronouncement in the newspapers, these were rather hopeful sentiments given their actual circumstances and the slow reformation of the Republican Army since 1917. He recognised the political imperative to legitimatise the volunteers in the eyes of international opinion. But it was also indicative of Dev’s personal need for respectability, because of his illegitimate birth. Dev was and always had been, violently opposed to the volunteers’ being called murderers or assassins, when most of them wrote such comments off to British propaganda. His insistence in this direction as regards policy matters wasted precious time, in Paddy’s opinion, which could be better spent getting on with more important things. The boycott of Belfast trade for instance, or the breaking down of the Belfast parliament, and with it the partition of the six counties. Innocent people were dying in the hundreds up here, and the pussyfooting that went on in Dublin about what the world press thought was infuriating. They had lived under the shadow of the untrammelled Unionist regime for a year now, and nothing, but nothing had been done by the Dublin Government.

‘They’ve let us out,’ he complained to Tom Kilgallen when the women were out one afternoon in March. ‘They let the fucking partition go through without a murmur of protest. Are we negligibilities, then? Half a million people!’
‘For Jaysus sake,’ Tom drawled, putting his feet up on the dining table, ‘calm down. We’ll manage.’
‘Calm down? Calm down, is it?’ Paddy exclaimed, pacing. ‘I’ll not be made a foreigner in my own country!’ He was in a fine rage. ‘How shall we manage with the noose tightening every bloody day, I should like to know?’ He raised his arm, pointing towards Belfast. ‘You heard what that jackass Craig said! He intends his boys to wipe us out, every man woman and child, if we won’t go! Well I’ll not go, bejaysus I won’t. We’ll stand to the last man if we have to, though that may not be long at this rate!’ He paced again. ‘And Dev! You heard what the Big Fellow told McKee, you heard Frank Aiken tell me what Dev said before he went off to America: ‘Let the North go, give them that and we can have our Republic in the twenty--six counties’. Traitor. Bloody, fucking traitor! And him the last Commandant from Easter Week! Jaysus, Tom Clarke is spinning in his grave this moment--’

‘We can get guns from Americkey,’ Tom reasoned. ‘Sure the Irish there are great with us.’
Paddy shook his head. ‘That’s not the point! The point is the unity of the country. Ireland is thirty--two counties and cannot be parcelled out. They can’t shunt us off without our consent. It’s a bloody dictatorship…. I won’t go backward. I won’t live in penal times in 1921. We have the right to be heard, and bloody Sinn Fein with their bloody abstentionist policies handed down from Dublin will be the death of us…. What do they know about things here? Nothing! Nothing because they care shag all! They have their bit, they have the British on the run and that’s all that matters to them. The curse of God on small--minded shoneens! They’ve been the ruin of the country since MacMurrough!’

Tom crossed his arms, undeterred by such obstacles. ‘How long do you reckon we can hold out, if we have the men and guns?’
Paddy frowned. ‘That depends on what they send against us.’
‘How long?’ Tom insisted.
Paddy considered. ‘If things stay as they are, if we have a steady supply of recruits and arms... I suppose in theory, indefinitely.’
‘Just so.’
Paddy shook his head. ‘But that’s not likely to happen. More realistically, I should say maybe six months at the longest.’ He passed a hand over his face, looking up at the ceiling cracks. ‘Christ, and then what?’
Tom’s feet hit the floor. ‘Ya worry too much, Padge. We’ll take it as it comes.’
‘I have to worry.’ He said. ‘Yez are my responsibility. And I’m thinking of those that come after. We owe them a free country.’

Tom sprang up now. ‘We owe them fuck all,’ he insisted. ‘Let them fight their own battles as we have.’
‘I’d like to spare them having to fight at all,’ Paddy smiled with weary irony. ‘I’d like to finish the job, sit--spot.’ He grinned. ‘Can ye see us, Tommy, a pair of old--age pensioners out with the Mausers and the Thompsons, eh? ‘Up the Republic’ thirty years on! That would be a fine how--do--you--do!’
‘Speak for yourself,’ Tom grinned. ‘Are you tired of it then?’
‘Aye,’ he sighed. ‘And the whole bloody world. But you keep on, do what you must.’ He peered narrowly at Tom. ‘Can you honestly say you’d rather this than be out with the lassies minding a pub in some country town? I can’t.’
‘Christ,’ Tom exclaimed, ‘I’d die of fucking boredom! I’ve been at this so long there isn’t anything else.’ He grinned. ‘We’re not all bookish like you, Professor.’
‘Aye, so,’ Paddy agreed. He reached into his pocket and drew out his cigarette case, handed one over to Tom. ‘But I’ll tell you this, laddie,’ he squinted over the lighter, ‘I’ll keep on as long as it takes. I won’t ever give in to their goddamned partition, and that’s the God’s truth.’

At the end of April, Sir James Craig went to Dublin to talk with DeValera. Lloyd George already having sent Lord Derby as his emissary to propose Dominion Home Rule to no effect he now sent in the big gun of Sir James, with similar outcome. They met in Sutton, north of the city, and pleasantly enough though it was ultimately to no purpose. When Sir James returned north, he found the Belfast Newsletter to have reported in a banner headline ‘Sir James in the Camp of the Enemy.’ Sir James called Dev ‘impossible’.

This was followed close by with elections in May throughout the country for both the Belfast and Dublin parliaments. In London, Lloyd George was meeting with Sir Henry Wilson,, Chamberlain and Churchill, to explore the avenues of complete martial law throughout the twenty--six counties, his ‘peace’ emissaries having failed to do the trick. All normal life was to be suspended. Churchill urged for ‘a tremendous onslaught… the most unlimited exercise of rough--handed force.’ Two days before the Irish elections, the Cabinet declared that if matters in Ireland were not in hand by 12 July, complete martial law was to be declared in the South. For the North; such an action would have been redundant.

In the North for the elections the B Specials were brought in to ‘keep order’, which they did in their inimitable fashion, killing thirteen people and driving 150 more out of their homes. In Derry, the Nationalist balance shifted slightly at the Guildhall-- the seat of local government -- but the Sinn Fein Lord Mayor, H.C. O’Doherty, kept his year--old government together by dint of will and charm, although it was increasingly ineffective as time wore on due to the infiltration by Unionists and the moderate foot--draggers of Sinn Fein. But they could not hold out forever against the steady and inexorable force of the Unionist parliament at Belfast, where Sir James Craig had been elected Prime Minister of the six--county state. They were undermined in the Dail as well by their TD Eoin MacNeill, the Dail Speaker, who pushed the southern parliament for non--recognition of the northern one against the wishes of the majority of his constituents. This stance went hard with them, and further divided the public mind of the Northern Nationalists from that of their colleagues in the South. The bitterness against their position was growing.

On the 22 June, in an unprecedented move, King George opened the Belfast Parliament. His speech was remarkably conciliatory, if not naïve, calling for his appearance in Ireland to be,

‘The first step towards ending the strife among her people, whatever their race or creed. In that hope I appeal to all Irishmen to pause, to stretch out the hand of forbearance and conciliation, to forgive and forget, and to join in making for the land they love a new era of peace, contentment, and goodwill. It is my earnest desire that in Southern Ireland too, there may, ere long, take place a parallel to what is now passing in this hall; that there a similar occasion may present itself, and a similar ceremony be performed. For this the Parliament of the United Kingdom has in the fullest measure provided the powers. For this the Parliament of Ulster is pointing the way….’

Having read out the King’s speech in the Derry Journal at the breakfast table the next day, Molly was offended when Paddy leaned back in his chair and started singing sardonically,

‘Oh, croppies ye’d better be quiet and still,
Ye shan’t have your liberty do what ye will
As long as salt water is formed in the deep
Our foot on the neck of the croppy we’ll keep
Remember the steel of Sir Phelim O’Neill
Who slaughtered our fathers in Catholic zeal
And down, down, croppies lie down…’

‘That’s a disgusting song!’ she exclaimed.
‘No more than what the King is asking of us, darlin’ girl,’ he said easily, picking up a piece of toast from the rack. ‘To be good and quiet while the Unionists wreck our homes, kill us, and bash our heads in.’ He glanced at the girls, who sat white--faced and tense, and drank his tea.
‘He’s calling for peace,’ she reasoned.
‘And so you think the Orange Lodge will go for that?’ he smirked over the teacup. ‘They’ll have us out, and nothing less. That speech was for nothing more than our capitulation.’ He crossed his arms.

‘You do him an injustice,’ she murmured. ‘It says he is appalled by what is happening here.’
‘As well he might be,’ he shrugged. ‘The puppet king of a corrupt government…’ He shoved himself away from the table and began pacing the floor in one swift movement, knocking the table askew. ‘We do not require his grace or permission for our government or our existence!’ He intoned. The patronising tone of George’s speech infuriated him. Conscious of the girls’ staring, he minded his language. ‘When will they get that through their heads?’ He rounded on her. ‘Tell me that! When will the like of your uncle get that through their heads? They don’t own us!’ He ran a hand through his hair. ‘We are not slaves, but free men, and by God, they’ll be made to know it!’ He sighed and flung himself into the chair again.
‘But at what cost?’ Molly begged. He looked at her and tears glittered in her eyes. Joe was suddenly among them, his absence achingly palpable. ‘Haven’t we suffered enough? Can there never be peace?’
He regarded her grimly. ‘Not while they hold the whip hand over us,’ he said. But he took her hand on the table to soften the harshness of the words.

On the 26 June, the Dail agreed to a programme put forward by Michael Collins in preparation for the dark times foreseen ahead; agreed to, but held in reserve for implementation. This was to be all out war, in response to the threat of total martial law throughout out country. The Big Fellow had warned Dev that this new tack on the part of the British military would be ‘of the most rigorous kind and will be supported by three times the present military strength,’ something which the Volunteers would not be able to counter, even with the support of the people. He proposed the wholesale shooting of agents and Auxies, ‘a regular, all--round, thought out onslaught on all the departments which operate on behalf of foreign Governments in Ireland.’ Notices were to be issued to all parties concerned that it would be illegal to support or dispense English law in the country; they would be liable to ‘certain penalties’. No English connection would be tolerated.

On the 28 June, Lloyd George sent a public letter to Dev proposing a peace conference, ‘so that the King’s appeal for… peace in Ireland shall not have been made in vain.’ Dev could bring ‘any colleague’ he wished, a remarkable concession from the spring, when the PM stipulated that Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith were in no way to be included in the negotiations. Craig was invited to the table as well. The Government were suing for peace. In private talks with Smuts, the South African President sent over to Ireland as an emissary, Dev declared, when it was pointed out that it would be a mistake to seek a Republic of Lloyd George’s government, ‘If the status of a Dominion is offered to me, I will use all our machinery to get the Irish people to accept it.’ One Irishman was having none of it, Republic, Dominion, or Crown colony – Sir James Craig remained in Belfast. He said that he would ‘sit on Ulster like a rock. Let the PM and Sinn Fein settle it. I’m satisfied with what we have got.’ As well he might. It was to his advantage to keep out of it.

A Truce was declared, effective at noon, Monday 11 July, a fortnight hence. Dick Mulcahy issued a communiqué to the IRA that operations were to cease only as of that hour. All over the South there were bonfires, parties, and wild elation in celebration. Not everyone in the Volunteers regarded the Truce with elation, for their position all over the country was very bad, and if the Truce should fail, they were done for, for as Mick Collins said, ‘We shall be as rabbits coming out of our holes.’ In Derry there were, predictably, riots from the Unionist elements, who wanted no part of the cease--fire required. For five days after the announcement was made they had no peace whatever in the Bogside and only intermittently thereafter until the Truce went into effect. The Loyalists ran riot and the UVF and the B Specials were right there to help them out. Fourteen people died, then or afterward from wounds, twenty buildings went up in flames and nearly a hundred people decamped for the South.

Paddy and Tom nearly came to blows about the Truce during this tense period. At a meeting in Geordie Mahoney’s out in the suburbs in Waterside, Tom said to hell with the Truce, they should keep on if provoked by the Loyalists, as they were sure to be. The room stilled. Paddy was sitting facing the garden windows at the dining table with eighteen of the men, Geordie, and Joe Deeling and Michael MacRae, both Secret Servicemen. From his place near the centre of the table, Paddy looked up briefly from his papers, without moving his head. He said, tonelessly,
‘I am not authorised by GHQ to sanction such an action. If it is undertaken, this command will not take responsibility for it.’ He looked up now, slowly, towards Tom who was on his feet across the table.
‘So that’s how it’s to be?’ He exclaimed angrily.
Paddy lifted his head back. ‘That is how it’s to be,’ he agreed softly. ‘Sit down, Tom.’ He shuffled through the papers before him, indicating that the subject was closed.
Tom did not sit down. ‘So you’re Dublin’s man after all, is it?’ He baited. He picked up his cap off the table and hurled it across the room in disgust. ‘Pulling rank, toeing their line, after everything….’

Paddy was out of his chair, it crashing behind him on the floor, his expression murderous. Dinny and Jack looked ready to dive under the table; the rest were still and bloodless. ‘I would remind you who the OC is here, Tom, and where,’ he put emphasis on the words, ‘my jurisdiction lies!’
‘Oh yes,’ Tom went on recklessly, ‘bloody IRB, bloody Collins, bloody Dublin jackeen I say, lording it over the rest of us! Well, let me tell you this, Commandant,’ there was withering scorn in the word, ‘this a fucking volunteer army and not I nor none of us have to take this treatment from you!’ He looked round the table for support, but met with chagrined or carefully blank expressions.

‘If you don’t like the treatment,’ Paddy said coldly, sitting in the chair Dinny had hastily retrieved for him, ‘you can go. It is, as you say, a volunteer position.’ He looked up, coolly, the challenge clear: He glanced round the table. ‘That goes for everyone here. We’re likely to face a bad patch, make no mistake. We need the time to rearm and equip ourselves, recruit in case it goes badly. Dig in. But on the face of it, we must appear to be amenable. To be sure, it’s the other side are doing the same.’ He glanced at Mike MacRae, who nodded cautiously. ‘Any of yez who are against this policy are better out of it. There’s no room for negotiation. And that’s my word on it. If yez want to fight about it, I’ll meet ye outside….’ He waited, but no one moved or spoke. He shrugged then. ‘If yez all are against it, then I resign and ye can do what ye like, but my name won’t be on it.’ Again, there was silence. The clock ticked behind them in the parlour. Paddy waited, his eyes on the papers in front of him. Tom sat down in the thundering silence. ‘Good man, yourself,’ he murmured. It would not be the end of friction on this subject between him and Tom, but there was peace for the moment.

The trouble, as he had known since Easter Week, was that Tom had not his IRB training, loyalties, or mentality, which was that they did what was expedient under the circumstances to gain the end, which was the manifestation of the Republic. The means changed with the times, but the end, never Tom was in it for the fight; he hated the British and their Government, but it was indiscriminate; he could not see the difference between the Government and the people of Britain. He did not fight them for a purpose, save that hate. He genuinely could not envision a day when the terror would cease and the guns fall silent once for all, that was clear. For him, as he had admitted back in March, there was nothing but the fight left. Paddy had said nothing about this, even privately, not being concerned with the opinions of his men as long as they followed orders and did their duty, but, or perhaps because, he could see that it was an insoluble issue between them better left unproved. He had wondered, in odd moments, whether Tom Kilgallen called himself a Republican because it was a convenient vent for his own volatile nature. It was true that Tom was a brave man, but he reminded him of Rory, a comparison not to be taken lightly. There were certain jobs Paddy wouldn’t have trusted his brother with. He trusted neither Tom nor Rory not to let loose with the kind of torture the Auxies and Specials engaged in: hearts torn out, tongues cut out, skulls bashed in, castration by gunshot… the catalogue went on and on. They were capable of it.

In London, when the Truce was a mere week old, Sir James Craig had contemptuously declared that it was up to the British people and DeValera to come to terms with the area ‘outside his jurisdiction’ and that he was going home to carry on as Prime Minister of that Government. Dev complained and demanded an assurance that the northern issue was not a dead letter to the British Government before continuing talks, whereupon Lloyd George craftily replied that he was responsible for neither Craig’s statement nor Dev’s reply. This was not a good sign. Further indication of the British position came from Michael Collins, writing from Cork,
‘The spirit animating the enemy…in the parts of the County I visited is
arrogant and provocative. They are trying to regard the position not as
a truce but as a surrender on our part…generally speaking, I fancy the
idea is to have preparations made to attack us the moment they decide
to finish their offers.’

The offer from the British Government was Dominion Home Rule, which Dev publicly and steadfastly rejected time and again. Privately, at home, he was using every means to wrest conciliation from the Dail, arguing on 22 August that they had ‘not the power, and some of them had not the inclination to use force with Ulster.’ He would not be responsible for such a policy. He favoured, if the Republic were recognised – as he was fair certain by then it would not – letting each county decide for itself whether it wished to be part of the Republic. He was recognising the Northern State, granting Craig’s government the autonomy to remain separate. This let out the will of northern nationalists, who in no way wanted to be part of a Northern State where they were worse than second--class citizens. It was abrogating their will, their wishes, for the sake of his own political expediency. There it was: Dev publicly cutting them loose, as he had privately done two and a half years before. His fine words on each county voting its place in the Republic were a political smokescreen, as he knew he would not be called upon to make good on them. He was, after all, a politician only, a paper Republican.

Kilgallen, of course, took his old commandant at his word, ignoring his stance on the Northern Government, and stuck by Dev’s ‘hard--line’ Republicanism to the deterioration of the relationship with Paddy. After one too many nights of listening to his harangue in Pat’s, Paddy gave up on him as his second in command and in future all such communications as had previously gone through Tom went through Jack Meehan instead. Tom noticed of course, and joked with him in the lane one morning in September as they walked down from a visit to Geordie Mahoney in the city,
‘Sloughing me off, are ya?’
Paddy shrugged, taking a drag on his cigarette. ‘We need neutrality. As soldiers we cannot espouse political opinions.’
‘Ha!’ Tom crowed, ‘you’re a fine one for talking! As if you yourself have no bloody opinions!’
‘But I don’t bandy them about in the pub,’ Paddy drawled, looking out over the river.
‘Jaysus, will you listen to him!’ Tom asked the skies. ‘Paddy, it’s us, for Jaysus sake, and us only in the place.’
‘That’s not the point,’ he insisted shortly.
‘Are ya saying I’ve a big mouth, then?’ Tom asked grinning, though he was obviously hurt, behind the smile.
Paddy said nothing, but grimaced. They walked in silence until they came to their corner, and then he turned to look at Tom. ‘I’m sorry Tommy,’ he peered at him keenly. ‘But it’s the way it has to be.’ Tom said nothing, his face white, walked away into his own house, and closed the door. Paddy sighed, wincing, his mouth twitching with the effort to still the sudden rush of grief. It would go hard to lose Tom.. He sighed again, running a hand through his hair, swearing, and went into his own house then.

‘What’s the matter?’ Molly asked him when he shut the door. She was sitting in the chair beside the partition door sorting Katie’s hair ribbons in her lap.
He was grim. ‘If there was ever a time I wished we had gone to Kerry, this would be it,’ he said frankly.
She stared at him. ‘But there’s murder in the streets there even now!’ she exclaimed, alarmed. She turned in the chair. ‘What’s happened, Paidín?’
He sighed. ‘I just had a row with Tom. Things are very bad.’ He stood in the middle of the room, pensively, until she put aside her chore and came to him as she had of old, with her arms around his neck. It raised the ghost of a rueful smile from him, but her low--murmured, breathy words brought him to tears,
‘We can always go home a mhuirnin.’
He broke down and clutched her tightly, choking back a sob. ‘Can we ever?’ He murmured into her hair. ‘Can we ever?’

In November, the Loyalist element made an outright breach of the Truce in the North by attacking Sinn Fein County Councillors, disrupting Council meetings at the point of a gun, and other strong--arm tactics, in Tyrone, Fermanagh and Derry principally, showing that they meant to go on as they had begun. They were unopposed by both the Northern Ireland and the British Government. Sinn Fein offices throughout the Province were petrol--bombed and known officers were tendered death threats. All this was in response to a rumour from London that the PM had agreed to reorganise the Boundary Commission. This would mean the probable loss of Tyrone, Fermanagh, and parts of Armagh, Down, and Derry. The Unionists were having none of it. In the end, it proved only a ploy of Lloyd George’s.

In the small hours of 6 December 1921, in time to make the morning papers, the British and Irish delegations in London signed the Treaty, thus creating the Irish Free State; Ulster was under ‘consideration’ as regarded the Boundary Commission, a neat phrase of the PM’s which in practice signified absolutely nothing. The word from Frank Aiken was that the wording of the Oath to the Crown had, after consultation, been handed down from the IRB to Mick Collins. The Treaty was not regarded by the Brotherhood as anything more than a device by which to gain the necessary military strength to smash the lingering British machinery in the country, including the Northern State. Mick had signed the Treaty with no intention of taking the Oath to the Crown, with every intention that as the British had broken the Treaty of Limerick in the time of Elizabeth Tudor, so would the IRB break this one when it suited their purposes. The Treaty was a means to the end.

Paddy said nothing to anyone of his opinions of the Treaty or any aspect of it. It was well known however that he was in Collins’ camp, and there was some confusion among the men as to his intentions. He told Jack Meehan to tell them one thing, and one only, ‘The fight continues.’ Jack was a Brotherhood man, so he already knew the reasons; Tom Kilgallen was another matter.

‘Haha, me boyo!’ Tom crowed on sight of him as he sauntered into Pat Halinan’s the night the news of the Treaty broke. ‘What did I tell you so? Yer man’s nothing more than British lapdog after all! Dev will never let that Treaty go through, you wait.’
With one movement, Paddy got up from where he sat hunched over the bar talking to Pat, and landed Tom a punch that laid him out flat. He had the advantage of surprise. For half a minute or so, no one in the bar moved or spoke while Tom lay out cold on the floor. Truth be known, Paddy thought he’d broken his hand on Tom’s jaw. He stood, pale and grim, looking dispassionately at Tom on the floor. Finally, Dinny Seaver whistled, murmuring,
‘Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, will you look at that!’
. Dinny his loyal scout, Dinny the yes--man. If the situation wasn’t so tragic, it would have been comic. But his musichall expression broke the awful spell.
‘Joe, will you get some ice,’ Pat said to his barman, ‘he’ll need it when he comes round.’ Joe went off. ‘And yourself,’ Pat said to him, ‘how are you? Will you stay or go?’
‘I’m grand,’ he said easily, though his fingers were swelling now and his knuckles were bloody. It was a bloody stupid thing to do, he couldn’t draw a gun now if he had to
‘I’ll stay,’ he nodded.

Tom came round with the ice on him – he had a couple of teeth knocked loose – and literally didn’t know what hit him. He sat up, shaking his head like a wet dog. Paddy by this time was kneeling beside him on the floor,
‘Are you alright, maneen? Am I clear to you? Do you know where you are?’
‘Aye, aye,’ Tom said, a hand going to his head. ‘Christ, I feel like three days on the spree…What the hell happened?’
Paddy smiled a little, ruefully. ‘I’m afraid my temper got the better of me. I’m sorry, Tom.’ He held out a hand. ‘Can you rise?’
‘Aye, yeah, just a minute,’ he shook his head again. ‘What the fuck did you hit me with, a shillelagh?’
Paddy shook his head. He held up his bruised and bleeding left hand. To everyone’s astonishment, Tom burst out laughing.
‘Three years in the ring and no one ever did that! Ha!’ He leaned forward heavily on Paddy as he was helped to a chair. ‘Well, there’s one up for ya, ya bloody Fenian bastard.’ Paddy had done the one thing Tom could respect. Things were easier between them after that and good thing, because by the end of the year they were back to bloody mayhem from the forces of occupation.

On Christmas Eve there were massive pogroms in Derry in response to the attempt earlier in the month to break members of the Derry Brigade, two of whom were Paddy’s own men, out of jail. The only stipulation from GHQ had been that firearms could not be used, as this would flagrantly invalidate the Truce. It went badly, thanks to an inexpert use of chloroform. Two warders were killed, and fifteen prisoners, including a former warder who was in on the job, were tried for murder; three of them were to hang. There was also a raid on the IRA training camp in the Sperrin Mountains in eastern Derry that Paddy was attending, during which he narrowly avoided both arrest and being killed. The bullet whizzed so close past his ear that it burned his hair; a fraction of an inch closer and he would have been dead.

On the 27th there was a meeting in Clones, Co. Monaghan of IRA OCs, at which Eoin O’Duffy, the new Free State Chief of Staff reiterated what Aiken had sent in communiqué, that the Treaty was only a feint. Further, he said that he would never dream of taking the Oath, nor would he ask any other man to take it. The offensive was to go forward from that hour.

Accordingly, in the middle of January, while in the South the Treaty debates were raging, a group of Monaghan men, including the 5th Division OC were arrested in Tyrone – ostensibly on their way to a football playoff – with arms and ammunition for the Derry break. They too were jailed. When the case was appealed to Craig, he suggested that if the men applied for bail, it would not be refused. This let out the Derry prisoners, of course. The trouble with this, as well Sir James knew, was that by giving bail the Monaghan men would be acknowledging the Northern courts, something they were opposed to on principle.

On Tuesday, 7 February -- the very day the British had reprieved the Derry men – forty--two Orange officials were kidnapped and taken across the border. The original plan, scheduled for a fortnight before, had been for a hundred in Tyrone and Fermanagh, but the job was delayed by negotiations between Craig and Mick Collins about the Monaghan prisoners. As Sir James put it in a telegram to Lloyd George:

‘Large bands of men crossed frontier at Derry, Tyrone, and Fermanagh. They attacked and occupied houses of leading citizens on Ulster side of boundary. Numerous leading citizens including a High Sheriff were wounded or kidnapped and taken across border to the South. Bridges were blown up Twenty Ulster Specials at Rosslea (Fermanagh) were kidnapped and taken across border. The Ulster police captured 11 men who were identified as members of the IRA from Longford and Leitrim. They were armed with bombs and revolvers and had transport. Sir J.Craig regards this as deliberate and organised attack on Ulster.’

As well he might, for it had been planned for nearly two months at that point.

Neither Paddy nor his men were innocent in this adventure. Their part had been to organise matters on the Derry side; arrange that the Donegal and Fermanagh men knew the addresses of the Derry Unionists; take a hand in the wrecking of bridges (the detonators at the Craigavon Bridge had not gone off, but were found by the Specials later); and to ‘keep order’. That night Paddy’s men took out all the pent--up frustration of the months of the Truce, the pogroms they could neither defend nor retaliate, and he let them. They paid the Orange lot back in their own bloody coin for six years of continual terror. He found out what he was capable of then. It was a dirty night’s work. Their targets were political and economic figures, no civilians, women or children; that was in their favour.

The British Cabinet went into shock, and in Ulster the reprisals were bloody and fierce. There were continual riots for a week, and in Belfast, after a skirmish between the B--Specials and the IRA in Co. Monaghan, a Catholic schoolyard was bombed and six children were killed. The Tommies in the South were put back on active duty, a curfew was imposed, martial law once again declared, and Craig asked for and got in excess of £5M in arms, ammunition and supplies from the British Government. This after Craig repudiated the Boundary Commission, saying his Government would resist any changes it did not like, which meant any changes at all. The truth was made ringingly clear when it was announced that henceforth the Specials would be paid by the British Government. It was a clear repudiation of the Treaty, made possible by James Craig’s earlier statement that the Treaty was between Sinn Fein and the British, and had nothing to do with him.

But that didn’t keep the Volunteer Executive down. On the 17th of February, Mick Collins instituted a programme to pay the National schoolteachers from the Secret Service fund, thus subverting the running of the newly transferred Northern Government. He also paid the Nationalist County Councils. It was all part of the plan of non--recognition of the Northern State. As Dick Mulcahy put it in a memorandum: ‘The general aim underlying all operations in Carsonia is to disorganise the economic structure of the territory and to make the hostile inhabitants realise that aiding and abetting the activities of the Enemy does not pay.’

Kilgallen was jealous that in addition to his £5 a week from the IRA Executive as an officer, Paddy received £10 from the Free State Government for his teaching work. That this went mostly to the Volunteers Dependants Fund – to people like himself who were unemployed – moved Tom not at all.
‘Trinity swank,’ he grumbled at Paddy’s comparative ease. They were frugal in the house, but by the standards of the neighbourhood they were the Sackville--Wests. Tom would have sworn blue murder if he knew that the money in the house really came from Molly’s generous allowance. That Anglo--Irish money was funding IRA operations, even in the manner of keeping them alive, troubled Paddy not at all as he did not see inherent evil in wealth, but Tom would not have swallowed it.

In March, a Northern Military Council was set up, between Mick Collins’ men in the Free State Army and the Northern units of the IRA, headed in the North by Frank Aiken, Commander of the 4th Division. In Paddy’s own neck of the woods, the 2nd Northern, the OC was then Charlie Daly, but when the looming civil war in the South began he went anti--Treaty and was replaced by Tom Morris. There was a central arms dump for the North set up in Cavan. This was a particularly dangerous enterprise as the Northern Government had outlawed the IRA with the Special Powers Act after the border incident, and had recruited 32,000 men into the Specials, who thus outnumbered the IRA in the North some ten times. Outlawed or not, under the Big Fellow and Mulcahy’s order, in April the 2nd and 3rd Northern Divisions launched a major offensive against the RIC and the Specials; there were reprisals all over the Province.

The Craig--Collins peace pact of January was in tatters, but not Collins’ determination: in April he sent 400 Lee--Enfield rifles North with a thousand rounds each, to Donegal to Joe Sweeney, the Divisional OC. There the rifles, which were British issue, had their identity codes filed off by the Donegal men and were sent to Omagh for distribution via an oil tanker. The man who was in charge of the latter operation was John Haughey. Paddy drove to Omagh in Pat Halinan’s lorry and picked up his consignment: twelve, with the accompanying rounds so that at least each man in his company would be armed. The cache was hidden under a tarpaulin and boxes of whiskey. God bless John Jameson’s, the ploy worked. For the Cavan dump, rifles were exchanged with Anti--Treaty men in Liam Lynch’s North Cork Division so to allay Government suspicions.

It was a small boost for them in the North, where the daily outrages took up to two columns in the newspapers every single day. In May, John Moylan defended the IRA in the Dail, saying,
‘Raids and acts of obstruction have been enumerated and it was stated that this work has been done under the cover of the Boycott. It has not been done under cover of the Boycott. It has been done as part of the Boycott work until this affair in the North – these murders and so on – is stopped.’

This was after Tom Morris ordered the 2nd Northern Division into action early in the month. They attacked the RIC barracks in Derry City and County and in Tyrone. Six RIC and Specials were killed. From that time until the end of July there was continual warfare. The order went out to all Brigade OCs:

‘Operations are to be continued all over the division until further notice.
These operations are,
a) General destruction of enemy property, wires, bridges, etc.
b) Destruction of property owned by prominent Orangemen living or having residences in your Brigade area.
c) Reprisal-- all reprisals must be taken at once. Reprisal must be six to one so as to prevent the enemy from continuing same.
d) Spies and informers to be shot on sight.’

In all, the IRA caused some £1M damage. The reaction was fierce. The death toll was in the hundreds. Internment was introduced and a prison ship now lodged off the Antrim coast. All nationalist and Republican organisations were banned. Every effort was made to depopulate the Nationalist city and County Councils, though Doherty stood his ground in Derry. The last straw was a Bill in the Imperial Parliament abolishing proportional representation; the gerrymandering that had gone on since the founding of the Northern State in 1920 was now institutionalised.

The summer campaign had taken everything they had. Paddy for his part had lost sixteen men, pulling his number down to eight, three of whom were in no condition to fight due to wounds. He himself had been shot up, but not too badly so as not to carry on, but they were completely without ammunition, and with the machinery of the nationalist clubs gone into hiding, it was very difficult to obtain funds for his men. Along with most of the Northern units, they were in a state of semi--starvation. An official IRA report noted,
‘Many officers and men are forced to go on the run, necessarily in their own restricted areas. They find it difficult to get accommodation with the people now… the enemy are continually raiding and arresting; the heavy sentences and particularly the floggings making civilians very loathe to keep ’wanted men’ or arms. The officers are feeling their position keenly…under the present circumstances, it would be impossible to keep our Military Organisation alive and intact, as the morale of the men is going down day by day and the spirit of the people is practically dead.’

The spirit of the people. That elusive, marvellous thing that was the real cause of their former success. With the people behind them they could accomplish anything. Hadn’t James Stephens said that back in the old Fenian days? Dick Mulcahy, as Minister for Defence, wrote to the Big Fellow late on in July,
‘Our officers seem to realise that there is no other policy for the North but a peace policy of some kind, but the situation for peace or war has gone beyond them, none of them feel they are able to face the policy of one kind or another’.

Accordingly, a meeting of the officers of the Northern Divisions was held in Portobello Barracks in Dublin on 2 August to outline the new policy. Paddy went, with Molly and the girls staying out in Baldoyle. Grace was gone to Europe but had given them leave of the use of the house in her absence. It was a kindness Paddy did not forget, given the explosive situation in Dublin where the Free State forces were busy conducting a civil war. O’Connell Street was destroyed half way down its length; the Four Courts and the Custom House were gone. The GPO never had been rebuilt. It was like after Easter Week all over again, with armoured lorries and troops and checkpoints everywhere. Better for Molly and the girls to keep out of it. The meeting at Portobello Barracks was depressing, but something of a relief. There was one consolation in the words of the Free State Army’s new Commander in Chief, Mick Collins. He was in the uniform of Commandant General, and leaned into the podium before which he stood with all the fire and sincerity of former days. The bitterness of the civil war had not soured him. He promised them all, with words as ringingly IRB as ever,
‘With this civil war on my hands I cannot give you men the help I wish to give and mean to give. I now propose to call off hostilities in the North and to use the political arm against Craig so long as it is of use. If that fails, the Treaty can go to hell and we will all start again.’

Three weeks later, Michael Collins was dead. The word came on the 23rd with the morning papers. It was a cruel irony that in Derry, being British subjects, they had the news before those in the South, for the cable from Cork where he was ambushed had gone through London. It was an ordinary summer morning. They had planned a holiday up in Buncrana on Lough Swilly through the weekend, and the girls were very excited to be getting away on a holiday twice in a fortnight. Paddy came downstairs whistling and rounded the corner of the kitchen door, kissing Molly as she stood at the stove with the breakfast fry--up, before his eye lit on the black--bordered headline in the Derry Journal:

MICHAEL COLLINS KILLED IN AMBUSH

‘Oh my God,’ he murmured, stunned, and broke into choking tears. Behind him, Molly turned, alarmed,
‘Padge, my God, what’s the matter!’
He turned into her arms, numbly, weeping uncontrollably. ‘They’ve killed Mick Collins,’ he murmured, though he could hardly get the words out. He couldn’t take it in. There was no room for questions in his mind about who or why. He couldn’t take in the bare stark fact that the Big Fellow was dead.

The girls came downstairs, curious at the uproar, but he could not be brave and stoic before them. After some time, clutching Molly in the middle of the floor, he stumbled over to the table with her and they sat and he listened while she read out the piece in her clear public--school tones. She was shocked at the news, at the killing of any public official that occurred, but it did not mean to her what it meant to him. She was patient and kind as he wept again after the piece, and sent Sally next door to the Sullivans for some whiskey for him.
‘What will you do?’ she asked, holding his hand on the table. The girls finished up the breakfast fry and took it into dining alcove, leaving them to sort themselves out.
He shook his head. ‘I have to go to Dublin,’ he murmured. ‘Pay my respects….’ His face crumpled. Joe had hurt this much, and like Joe’s death, he knew it was a wound that would never really heal. Mick had been the only one in the Dublin Government on their side, steadfast through it all. There was Mulcahy, but he was Army.
‘We’ll come with you.’ Molly said.
He looked up, into her clear grey eyes, startled. ‘Why?’
She smiled a little, tenderly, and reached out to brush away his fallen hair from his eyes. ‘Because our place is there, with you.’ She murmured. This was the woman who had come with him from Dublin, knowing nothing of what such an action would entail. She had endured it all, all the terror of the last six years, mostly without him while he was gone in defence or on the run. She was the bravest woman he ever knew. He leaned over and embraced her again, weeping in gratitude now, for that love and faith.

In Dublin, 500,000 people lined the streets and 100,000 followed the funeral cortege of Michael Collins to Glasnevin. Paddy was among them in the uniform of the Volunteers, behind Dick Mulcahy who marched alone at the head of the Army. Ten days before he and Mick had marched together at the funeral of Arthur Griffith, who had died of a stroke. He was Commander in Chief now, in Mick’s stead. Dick had issued a communiqué to the Army and the IRA:

‘Stand calmly by your posts. Bend bravely and undaunted to your work. Let no cruel act of reprisal blemish your bright honour. Every dark hour that Michael Collins met since 1916 seemed but to steel that bright strength of his and temper his gay bravery. You are left each his inheritors of that strength and of that bravery. To each of you falls his unfinished work to build a nation…’

At the graveside, he said,
‘…And surely our ‘great rock’ was our prophet and our prophecy, a light held aloft along the road of ‘danger or hardship or bitter toil.’ And if our light is gone out it is only a the paling of a candle in the dawn of its own prophecy…
‘Men and women of Ireland, we are all mariners on the deep, bound for a port still seen only through storm and spray, sailing still on a sea full of ‘dangers and hardship and bitter toil’. But the Great Sleeper lies smiling in the stern of the boat, and we shall be filled with that spirit which will walk bravely upon the waters.’

In this, Ireland’s darkest hour, all partisan concerns were laid aside, as they had been at the funeral of Parnell thirty--two years before. That it took the death of the bravest and best to effect such a union was truly a bitter shame.