Chapter Nine: Dublin, Kerry December 1909-February 1910

The office door creaked open and Dan Oliver appeared, armed with a newspaper. ‘Well, old man,’ he said with an unpleasant grin, ‘aren’t you the clever bastard?’ Paddy turned in the chair, taking his foot from the edge of the desk.
‘Hmm?’ He had been in the middle of reading essays, and his mind was more on the Romantic Poets than the tangle of his own life. He put down his cigarette in the dish. ‘What?’
‘How modest he is! Your engagement, you eejit! It’s in the paper!’ Dan came into the room, slamming the door behind him. He was a plumpish, dark-haired, oily man of thirty-four, still only an Associate after nine years with the college. A man of indifferent talents for teaching or writing, it was all he would ever be. He threw the paper on Paddy’s desk. There it was, in the Independent, a paragraph with photos. ‘By God, you lucky stiff!’ Dan went on. ‘She’s bloody gorgeous! All that and the House of Lords as well!’ Oliver hadn’t met her at the faculty drinks party at the Mahaffys’ last Thursday. He gave the announcement a cursory glance.
‘So it is,’ he said blandly. ‘It’s very nice.’ He went back to his cigarette and paperwork.
‘Nice, he says!’ Oliver grunted. ‘Faugh! You don’t deserve the chit.’
Paddy didn’t answer.

Late in the afternoon, he received a message by Tom Clarke’s eldest boy, Daly, to come round that evening. He was being summoned. After his last tutorial he shrugged into his overcoat and pulled his hat down against the cold wind, and took the tram down to Clarke’s shop. On the way, he brooded over the newspaper announcement. Mahaffy had been paternally encouraging about the engagement, and let him know on Thursday that it would stand him well in his upcoming review. J.P. didn’t know the reason for the sudden engagement of course. No one did apart from Molly’s parents; he hadn’t even told his own parents. They would find out soon enough, and meanwhile it would spare his mother the shame of it before the neighbours. When he told her that Molly's family were having the wedding at the house, rather than in the church, his mother had sniffed in scorn,
‘Married in the house like a Protestant! Is there something wrong about the church, then?’ Which put paid to any idea he had of telling them the truth, which was that given the haste of the arrangements, the priest at St. Peter and Paul’s in Baldoyle had refused them the use of the church. They might have enquired in Dublin -- St. Anne’s was only up the block-- but time was of the essence. They couldn't wait six months for dispensation, and it was out of the question - at least as far as he was concerned - to be married in the registry office. So he told his mother that Mrs. Clennaghan wanted them to be married in the house, which wasn't too far off the mark.

When he arrived, Clarke and Katie both were in the shop. They exchanged pleasantries before Tom said,
‘John MacNeill wants to have a word with ya,’ and jerked his head towards the back. ‘He's in the parlour’. Tom, plain and true, refused to call MacNeill ‘Eoin’ as he preferred, which was a source of irritation between them. Paddy felt his stomach lurch with dread. He was being called on the carpet for something, but what he couldn't imagine.
‘Right-o,’ he said, and went through the green baize curtain and through the storeroom to the door of the Clarkes' rooms above.

MacNeill sat in the armchair in the Clarke's small parlour, looking at the papers.
‘Ah, Leary,’ he said. ‘Please sit down.’ He folded the Freeman's Journal neatly away and laid it on the table beside his chair, regarding Paddy from behind his glasses like a rather dyspeptic owl. Paddy took a straight chair from the adjoining kitchen and sat before him.
‘I'm sorry to disturb your evening,’ MacNeill said, crossing his legs. ‘But I hear congratulations are in order.’ Surely he had not been summoned all this way for mere congratulations on his nuptials! He nodded cautiously.
‘Thank you, sir.’
The older man toyed with the frayed fringe on the wing of the chair. ‘There is something you should probably know however, before you embark in this endeavour, which you may not....’ He looked up. Paddy shook his head, his stomach leaden with dread. What in Jesus' name could the IRB have to tell him that would affect his marriage? Or was it that his marriage would affect his membership in the Brotherhood? No, how could that be? Others were married.
‘I'm sorry, sir,’ he confessed at last. ‘I don't know what you mean.’ MacNeill regarded him shrewdly.

‘It is not ordinarily the custom to give out information on former members of the Brotherhood,’ MacNeill began, ‘but in this case we thought it would be wise to make an exception.’ He paused. Receiving no further recognition of his topic, he continued, ‘You might be interested to know that your fiancée had been engaged before to a member of our organisation,’ he held up a warning finger when Paddy shook his head violently. They had the wrong girl surely! Molly wouldn't know a jig from a reel let alone anything of nationalists, of that he was dead certain! The girl was as innocent as she was ignorant.
‘Wait,’ MacNeill barked. ‘A member of our organisation,’ he continued strongly,’ who was found to be a spy for the Castle, and was afterwards dealt with. It was in the papers. No connection was drawn to us, of course, but I'm certain the Castle knows their boy was found out,’ he smiled a little, a tight, thin-lipped, unfriendly smile.

Paddy felt the world reeling around him. It was not in his cell, so he didn't know the man or the one assigned to his disposal. But the word had gone through the ranks... some fellow from north of Dublin... how long ago? A year, two years? Such things happened so infrequently that it would be remarkable. But a connection to Molly? This tout was engaged to Molly? She had been engaged to a Castle spy? Wicklow flashed into his mind, and her coy avoidance of his question about her virginity.... He could hardly think straight, he was so overtaken with the idea that she had deceived him, and now they were bound to be wed because of the child. The bitch, the bloody bitch! Ah but.... He shook his head violently, unable to bear the thought of her giving herself to such a person, as she had given herself to him.
‘No, it's not possible!’ He felt as if he had been struck, and sagged in the chair, staring at MacNeill in disbelief. She can't have known. She can't have. He refused to believe that she had known. Not his darling girl.

MacNeill shrugged. ‘As you will.’ He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out an old newspaper cutting and handed it over. It was from the Irish Times, dated in July of last year, an obituary notice for a Naval Lieutenant, Vincent Magilloway, who was then a cadet in the Diplomatic Corps. He had been found shot several times, with a grievous head wound. No suspects were detained. His parents, several brothers and sisters, and his fiancée survived him. His fiancée .Miss Clennaghan of Baldoyle. By the time Paddy came to the words his hand was shaking.
‘It doesn’t mean she knew anything about it,’ he said tautly, handing the paper back.
‘Perhaps,’ MacNeill agreed evenly. ‘But it would be better for you, for us, if you did not associate with the forces of oppression in such an intimate manner as you are contemplating.’
Paddy blanched. ‘I can’t not marry the girl,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I’m committed to it.’ Be damned to MacNeill if he’d say why.
‘We all must make our choices,’ MacNeill agreed idly, fiddling again with the chair fringe. He looked up. ‘You may wish to reconsider your membership with us if you feel that way.’
Paddy was out of his chair. ‘Sir I protest! I have never given anyone the least reason to suspect my loyalties!’
MacNeill raised an eyebrow. ‘Trinity College as a student and teacher, marriage to a girl whose family sits in the House of Lords?’

Paddy was pacing, so angry he could barely contain himself. Goddamn MacNeill! What right had he to sit in judgement? ‘There are valid reasons for all those things!’ he said hotly. ‘Old Tom and every man jack in my cell,’ his voice rose, harshly ‘will stand by me in this! My loyalty to Ireland and to this organisation is unquestioned! Unquestioned! And has been for twelve years. My marriage, anyone’s marriage, is beyond the jurisdiction of the Brotherhood! You cannot demand that I not honour such a commitment!’ He would have said more, but MacNeill was smiling with sour humour. He folded his hands on his knee in a little temple.
‘The best of Ireland’s heroes went to the grave without a woman clinging after,’ he observed. ‘Without a garrison woman especially.’ He squinted. ‘As it happens, Leary, Tom Clarke has spoken for you. Most forcefully, so you should thank him. The matter will be reviewed.’ He nodded. ‘Good evening.’

The curt dismissal was more of a shock then the news itself. He was being painted -- unjustly! -- with the same brush as a traitor because of the prejudices of a sour old woman. Speechless, Paddy stalked out and bolted down Tom’s hall stairs. He came into the shop again and Katie was there with the children. He stared at her beseechingly, white-faced, until she looked up.
‘Where’s himself?’ He asked. Katie nodded towards the door. Tom was outside, putting up the sandwich boards. ‘Thanks,’ he told her. ‘Good evening to you -’ he fled out the door. ‘Tom!’ Tom looked up, his blue eyes mild. ‘Eh? So you’re here, eh? Well by the look of you I was right. I told him you didn’t know.’ He picked up the broom that rested against the wall and began to sweep his pavement.
‘Tom, for God’s sake!’ Paddy exclaimed, wild with the betrayal.
Clarke regarded him benignly. ‘I’ll speak with him, Paddy,’ he said patiently. And, when he was still anxious, ‘for Jesus’ sake, he’s an old woman! The council will never cotton to ousting you for this!’ He waved his hand. ‘Go home boy, and to your supper!’ He looked up, determinedly. Paddy knew it was not as easy as that. It would take some fighting. But Old Tom at least he knew was behind him, behind all the new young men - himself and MacDonagh and Pearse, who was also a teacher. Not an intellectual himself, he could nonetheless see the way the wind was blowing. Tom MacDonagh was courting a girl, too. They would not wait their whole lives on Mother Ireland. They would make their way in the world; take up the banner -- or the rifle, more properly -- when the time came. The Old Guard was a tough bunch of minds to change, but Tom was on his side.
‘God be with you,’ Paddy said feelingly in thanks.
‘Eh!’ Tom waved him away with an encouraging look.

Paddy took the tram home, exhausted, and lay in the bath for an hour until the water had grown cold. Then he lay on the sofa for the rest of the evening, staring up at the ceiling, ignoring his work, and smoking endless cigarettes. Bloody hell. What would he do, without the IRB? Bloody girl. He wished he’d never tangled up with her. He went round and round with the cycle for three hours, lying more or less inert on the sofa amid his heaps of work. But every time he thought of abandoning Molly, that she had been amusing but was now nothing but trouble, her face in passion would be before him and he knew that he didn’t mean a word of it. She had got to him in ways, woman or girl, no female ever had. It was not the sex. It was what it did to him, what she did to him. With her he was alive in ways he had never been before. He had watched her, coaxed her to bloom. Oh yes, she had grown in ways that he could see, ripened, become more of a woman. No mere literary fiction, but blossoming and ripe, like the cycle of a peach bloom.

Yes. That is what she was to him. He mused on the Oriental quality of the image in delight, and the soft queer feeling it brought to his heart and loins, like a butterfly flitting. When he had first kissed her, he was so overcome with this feeling that he had nearly blurted that he loved her, and yet he maintained often that real love was a rare thing and hard to know, certainly not something a man fell into like a hole in the road. Oh yes, she had got to him. The taste of her was in his mouth and the sound of her in his ears forever. His Roisin, he could not abandon her carrying a child of his in her. Not for Ireland would he do that, for it would be to live without honour. He had frankly not considered the possibility but the once, the first time. After that, he assumed that she would say no if it was her time. But the shock was wearing off a little now and in truth the thought of her pregnant with his child pleased him in a deep, old, virile way, was vaguely arousing, and that was strange and curious. He had never thought pregnant women arousing before. Now when they were apart at odd times of the day he would think of her and want to touch her, feel the heat of her roundness under his hands. Now it was as if the child were a secret link between them, drawing him to her subtly. He smiled lazily, blowing out smoke that slowly wafted to the ceiling. She would laugh at him if ever he told her such things, for hers was a pragmatic nature. Most people would scoff. But he was not likely to spread his musings about, for he was no poet. Maybe that was a pity. Maybe the Brotherhood's gain was the world's loss. Maybe he was full of blather. So he drifted to a safe and peaceful harbour where the tumult of the last weeks and particularly of the day troubled him not, and so slept.

Tom MacDonagh told him afterwards when they met in Griffith's rooms in Nassau Street that he should be careful in future not to lean too much in ‘the one direction’, but that he would not be asked to resign.
‘The general feeling,’ Tom said, ‘is that while there's need to be cautious, we needn't be rash in excluding those outside a narrow perimeter, self-defined. If we are to build a country out of this godforsaken mixture of class and caste, we shall have to make provision for all of them.’ Tom's fine earnest dark face looked bitter and sullen. ‘Are we Irish for the modern world, or Irish only for Ireland?’ It was the question of a poem of his. Tom, devoutly Catholic and a committed Brotherhood man, was no insular bigot. Neither was he an idealist. If Ireland as a nation was to survive they must do it in the context of the larger world or would not at all. They could derive their inspiration from the past, but they could not live there.

‘You know my feeling on this,’ Paddy said carefully. ‘It's why I was so outraged by the attempt.’ It was impossible here to name names or be entirely candid, but Tom understood him. They had several weeks ago discussed, from the vantage of being university men, the practicality of the tactic of isolationism, the result of which was a quite lucid and genuinely searching article Tom wrote in The United Irishman, signed with the pseudonym Tone. The criticism of those who would have only ‘Gaelic Irish’ - lower and middle-class Catholics- in the movement, never stated overtly, caused an uproar. ‘Tone’ was regarded as ‘impudent’ and ‘infected with foreign ideas’. That, perhaps more than anything, was the cause of MacNeill's objection; the balance of power was shifting to the young people, and their ideas, which were not necessarily allied to the traditional Fenian view.
‘Mind yourself, though, Paddy,’ Tom said, with a keen look. ‘They still hold the reins, and if they are suspicious of you the consequence is dire.’ Well he knew it. The method of disposing of Molly's erstwhile fiancé was the preferred mode by long tradition. The conflict that rose in him because of this incident - his personal freedom versus that of the country - was one that he would not easily solve, primarily because the seeds of it were within himself, a fact of which he was but peripherally conscious. He tried diligently to bring it all to some sort of balance if not in life than at least in his mind with negligible success, due mostly as he saw it to the lack of co-operation from others involved.

There were so many hurdles. The first of these was with Grace Clennaghan, who priggishly insisted that Molly and he not be allowed out together alone. He could say nothing to convince her himself although he did plead their cause for all of their outings these days were university functions or parties with her friends. Molly was merely defiant, in a tenacious and childish way, without guile. It was Charles, to Paddy's surprise, who won the day, saying mildly from the recesses of his armchair and paper, ‘Rather late in the day for that I should think my dear, the harm's done.’ So they were allowed the usual round of pre-wedding outings without further interference.

The next was taking her to meet his family. She was still ill late in December when they walked together arm-in-arm from his flat in Anne Street to his parents' house. She was painfully thin and frail looking, still hardly able to tolerate any but the blandest food. He worried that she would be sick and give his mother a shock. She had dressed very plainly in a dark-blue woollen frock, which he found very sweet, for everything else about her shouted money, from her hat to her shoes, no matter their plainness; they looked and were of the finest stuffs. But she was making an effort on his behalf, and that touched him. Walking along with her through the dreary neighbourhoods of the Liberties, he was struck by how fragile she was, her hair fine and her skin translucent like a china doll's. She looked every inch the gentry she was, and never the laughing, unbridled, dauntless girl he had first met.

As it happened she was not ill, but there were surprises in store. While she was very polite to everyone, she was not the lively girl he had told them of, and he got some mighty odd looks from Rory and Ernie and Rosemary that evening. This milk-and-water creature had stolen your heart? Never! was the clearly telegraphed message. Only with Da did she show a shadow of her real self. Da made her laugh with his talk of Charles Chaplin at the cinema, and engaged her with enquiries and observations about various horses at various race meets.

Cate and Mo were cool. Mo had met her at the DBC cafe and made it clear then that she didn't like her, mostly because Molly treated her with the impersonal politeness she used with servants. Cate, standing tall and shrewd-eyed, merely nodded and looked over her dress with a sharp eye, and said nothing to her the entire night. Danny made cow's eyes at her from across the table until Molly looked at him with a faint expression of panic.

But it was Ma who surprised him the most. From her first obvious stifling of a curtsey when Molly said in her upper-class accent, ‘How d'you do?’ his mother made a concerted effort to treat the girl as she did Paddy's sisters, including asking her if she'd like to have a chat while they did the washing up. So there they were, all the women in the tiny kitchen together, his mother asking a thousand questions, Rosemary chiming in as she wiped the plates borrowed from the neighbours, a tidy little domestic scene. Molly said to him as they walked in the cold air to the Talbots' in Merrion Square where she was staying that his parents were very nice people. So far as he could see, she meant it.

The biggest hurdle, and the one they did not win over, was the location of the reception. Grace Clennaghan reasoned that as she had been denied a proper affair for the wedding, there should at least be a proper reception, neither the house nor the Marine hotel in Howth strand, nor even the Gresham though Molly suggested the latter. Only the Shelbourne would do, and Grace would not be moved in her insistence. She would not have her family, here or in England, shamed with a cheap and sordid affair, the implication being that the matter was otherwise just that. So the reception was held in the Shelbourne, never mind that the location proved an embarrassment for his family.

It was an uncomfortable wedding, her friends mixing with his family. He could not offend his brothers by not asking one of them to stand for him, but it was queer indeed to see great burly Ernie escorting the dainty and fastidious Mrs Talbot at the reception. He watched his girl coming into the front parlour where the company was gathered, and he thought his heart would stop she was so lovely. Pale as porcelain her olive skin was hued from the winter and her illness, translucent. The lace gown she wore was heavy as a snowfall and rich, its oyster colour hinting at her eyes. It was taut, though, he noticed, and smiled a little. She had been thinner when she was to wear it for Vincent Magilloway. There was not a person in the room who would have sworn that she carried a child, but he who knew her well could tell the difference. When he took her hand it was cold, and she looked at if she might faint, but she made it through the ceremony bravely. In the car he kissed her, turning her face upwards with one hand and holding her imprisoned like a wild bird in his grasp.

‘Paddy!’ she wriggled away at last, with a blushing glance for Ernie and Rosemary in the front of the car. But he had felt her yielding, and it stirred his hope.
‘It's been a long time, sweetheart,’ he murmured into her ear, and she blushed again like a virgin. However they had got here, she belonged to him now for good and all. Every day, every night, for the rest of his life. They had been too long from each other, but he would win her again now that she wasn't everlastingly ill.

He was no great dancer, but he did his bit in the grand receiving room of the Shelbourne with its ornate gilt and plaster ceiling and mirrored walls. He didn't fail to notice the fine picture they made as he whirled her about the floor to Strauss. He wasn't the only one to notice. In the society pages the next day the affair was written up ‘...a beautiful couple...’ It was a delight to watch them in mirrors, although he doubted the society editor would approve of his private methods.... God it was good to hold her in his arms again, if only in public. He drew her nearer, and felt the softness of her breast against his chest and the rigour of her stays. There was nothing like women, he decided with a sigh, leaning his cheek against her forehead. Nothing at all. It came again, blissful, that rippling wash of delight. I love you. I love you. He smiled down at her as their dance came to an end.
‘You see,’ he murmured with a smile, ‘I told you I wouldn't trod on your toes.’
‘Lucky,’ she twitted, and tapped his cheek, but her eyes were dancing. There's my girl, he thought, my dark girl of the roving eye. He took her hand in extravagant gallantry and kissed it, to applause.

By teatime, they were allowed to repair upstairs. Molly had drunk great quantities of champagne and was sick. He went out into the hall again briefly to ask the steward to call for them at ten and have a luncheon packed and the car brought round, and went back into their suite. Molly was standing in the middle of the room in a frilly coral-pink negligée and bare feet, with her hand to her head.
‘Where were you?’
He grinned. ‘I had to tip off the steward. We're safe now.’ He squinted at her, closing the door behind him. ‘Good lord, what are you wearing? It doesn't look like you at all.’
She lifted a frill of lace. ‘It belonged to my grandmother. A gift from my Aunties.’
‘Oh.’ He took off his suit coat, necktie and collar, shrugged into his dressing gown, squinting at her as he lit a cigarette after. ‘Are you well? You look queer. You're not going to be sick again?’
‘No,’ she sighed, and went to sit on the bed. ‘I just drank too much is all.’
‘I believe that's how we got here in the first place,’ he said wryly. She winced. ‘It's a joke, mo 'gra!’ He went to her and stood before her. ‘Look here, it's not so bad is it? We're respectable now, that's something. No more skulking about.’ He leaned over and put out the cigarette in the dish. ‘Ah, come here love, I'll make you better -’ His hands were in her hair, loosening it, removing pins. It came down in a river over his hands. She closed her eyes and his fingers went to her temples, massaging gently. She relaxed visibly under his care, all the strain of the day dissolving, her face becoming soft again and lovely.

‘M'aille,’ he murmured. His old nickname, a pun on her name in Irish. She opened her eyes.
‘Feeling better?’ he asked softly. God, the girl had the eyes of a witch, pale and strange, a faery sprite of the Danaan tribe. Her languid glance and wordless murmur sent his pulse racing. ‘Come,’ he said in Irish, and leaned to kiss her. ‘Come you my little dark one-’ in hushing soft Irish the words came, the only words he ever used to make love to her. Hers must be considered a strange knowledge of the language, confined to the bedchamber. It delighted him that it was so, that she could answer any command, and knew no other. The words drew him to her, to the earthiness of his childhood and the comforts of a boy's solitary joys spent in the lonely woods. He laid his glasses by on the stand and gathered her into an embrace on the wide bed.

In the morning they left for Kerry and they took the road through Kilkenny and Tipperary, with a stop for luncheon outside Mitchelsown. The hotel had made them up a picnic, which he rifled through for a sandwich while Molly was off in the thicket.
‘Do you know,’ he began thoughtfully, gesturing with the sandwich, when she emerged.
‘What?’
He looked at her and grinned. ‘There was a Lord Desmond who hid out in those mountains, and the law never found him out.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘The things you know, Paidín!’ She poked through the basket. ‘Have you rumpled everything? Where's the flask?’ She pulled it out after some searching poured out tea that steamed in the frigid air.
‘Ignorant girl! He was a Fitzgerald, one of your lot. Don't you know your own country's history?’
‘No,’ she said shortly, ‘it bores me.’
‘Well, fetch us another sandwich then and make yourself useful, there's a good girl.’ He leaned back against the door, stretching his legs out from where he sat on the running board.
‘Aren't you the lordly one?’ But she said it with a smile, passing him a sandwich wrapped in greaseproof paper with a look that recalled the night. They had played an old love game, and in so doing, he had achieved his end and won back her good graces through art and finesse.
‘Yerra,’ he said softly, laying a hand on her hair. ‘And you my queen consort, or concubine, maybe....’ He grinned when she shoved him in outrage with a cry, and chased her laughing into the road, to catch her round her thickening waist and kiss her soundly. She was his game girl again, and all was delight with them. He looked forward to the night, to months and years of nights; he would never tire of the mystery of her, his dark darling.

They arrived at Shay and Rose’s house in the dark. The neighbours had been expecting them for hours and poured out of the house like a horde, a river of humanity. He was some little while in greetings before he realised that Molly stood forlornly at the other side of the car, her expression one of mildly annoyed bewilderment.
‘Oh Jaysus, excuse me,’ he said to his uncle, clapping his arm. ‘Molly darlin’,’ he went round the car, put an arm around her and kissed her. ‘I’m sorry, sweetheart. Come here and meet my family,’ he brought her over to present her to Shay and Rose.
‘Aunt Rose, this is my wife Molly,’ he said. ‘And Molly darlin’ these are Seamus and Rose Halloran, my uncle and aunt.’ Molly held out her hand and gave his aunt a greeting in her uncertain Irish. But the effort was appreciated: Rose, round and much smaller than any of them, engulfed her in an embrace. She came to about Molly’s shoulder, but this did not deter her enthusiasm.
‘A beauty she is, too, like you was saying, Paidín! Isn’t she a fine one, Seamus?’ In answer, his uncle stepped forward and took Molly’s hand in old-style gallantry.
‘Welcome to Muckross and the family, my dear,’ he said with a bow. She blushed like a maiden.
‘Thank you, sir.’ She nodded. The company whispered at her accent, but Rose was not undone. She had worked in the big house for the mistress - mother of the current landlord -in the days of her youth. The gentry held no qualms for her.
‘Well, you must be perished itself, my dear,’ Rose said. ‘Come inside, and we’ll sit you down by the nice warm fire and get you a sup and some cakes.’ She patted Molly’s hand. Even bundled in her coat, Molly looked thin, and Rose, having no daughter, would of course cluck about and dote on that. They were all herded inside for the spread of tea, whiskey, and cakes and dainties. The revelry had been going on for some time already, and the second round of food was brought out, laid over the crumbs and gobbets of the first.

In the house most of the men stood holding up the walls while the older women sat on the long bench or stools, and the young ones on the floor. Except Molly. Rose gave her a chair near the lean-to alcove that was more or less in the centre of things, as well as a glass of buttermilk, which was not drunk. For the rest there was poitín passed around from a stone jug stoppered with a rag dipped in paraffin, poured liberally into the assortment of jamjars or crockery mugs the guests had brought for themselves. When everyone had a glass of something before them, Shay jumped up on a stool in the middle of the room and hushed the murmur and clatter to an uneasy silence. He then raised the glass of the craytur and pronounced abroad,
‘Here’s te our Paidín and his new bride Molly. May their days be long and their nights jolly!’ General laughter went up at this and Paddy looked to see Molly blushing again. He grinned at her and tossed back a quantity of the poitín, which ran like fire down his throat and brought tears to the eyes. This was one time he could not refuse a sup. He gasped and let out a long exclamation, shaking his head like a wet dog.
‘Ah,’ John Joe Millane said laughing, ‘he won’t be a drinking man itself.’
Molly was staring up at him dumbfounded. She had never seen him drink anything before and now this... Smiling, he leaned over and kissed her. She made a face.
‘What is that you’re drinking?’ She asked, her nose wrinkling. ‘It smells dreadful!’
‘Poitín!’ He cried gaily, for it had hit him like a roaring blaze. The heavy undertone of turf was earthy as an open grave, a lovely evocation to him who had grown up on the smell in country fires, but not to someone like her. The thought made him recklessly merry. He would show her here just what it meant to be of the country and she would love it. She was a sporting girl, after all. John Joe poured him out more and he did not protest. It was good to be home, and there was nothing wanting in the morning.

After the cakes had been passed about the trestle table was shoved against the wall and the floor was cleared for dancing. Shay and old Jim Deasy the retired peeler jumped up on the iron bed in the alcove with fiddle and penny whistle and began a jig. Paddy pulled Molly out of her chair.
‘Come on, Mallaidh aille,’ he cried, taking her hands. ‘We’re for the dancing.’ He went to the head of the room, and they were into the dance in a moment, others joining, bystanders whooping as the leaps came and he did not fall over. He had forgotten how good it was to dance the country-dances. His feet flew under him to the old rhythms of their own volition; it was in his blood, never forgotten. His lungs were burning with the quick long dance, his brain on fire from the poitín, but he knew he was alive. O, it all came back! The harvest dances, and road dances, and weddings and wakes. And he was gloriously, gloriously happy, as he never was in Dublin. Molly kept up to her everlasting credit, and when the fiddle was at last silent, he put an arm about her, heaving breaths, leaning together and laughing dizzily.
‘Grand, sweetheart,’ he murmured into her hair. ‘You were grand altogether!’
She was blushing at the public attention, ‘Padge!’ She exclaimed. He laughed, and led her back to her seat, when he downed a jar of porter at a go.

They danced and danced. He got very drunk and quite happily. He flirted outrageously but harmlessly with the neighbourhood girls, cracking jokes and making eyes, teasing them ribaldly about their husbands or sweethearts. He smoked endlessly, sang a song when prompted. Towards the end of the night, when everyone was tired from dancing, they came to telling tales and singing songs, inhibitions gone from the drink. His aunt Rose had sung a lovely song -- The Kerry Dance -- and it was Shay who said when the hallooing died away, ‘Sure, it runs in the family, singing,’ and looked at him significantly.

Paddy stood against the doorway beside Molly’s chair, arms folded, squinting through the smoky haze. He started and looked around now.
‘What no, I couldn’t,’ he protested. ‘I’ve had too much of the craytur to keep a song in me head.’
‘Ah, Padge,’ Joe Deasy said. ‘Will you never be so modest, boy? Eh, young missus,’ he said to Molly, nodding, ‘Yer man there couldha won prizes itself in his younger days for the fine voice on him. Sure, he was a right angel....’ There was much guffawing at this.
‘In the singing only,’ Mick Deasy, his son, shouted from his place beside the kitchen dresser with its neat rows of plates and cups. His blonde wife Anna poked him, shaking her head.
‘All right, all right, so, and I will.’ Paddy said. As he walked across the room to face the crowd, he asked, ‘Are there any requests? I don’t do hymns,’ he grinned. ‘Nor ould rebelly songs,’ he winked to the laughter this roused.
‘Nell Flaherty’s Drake!’ Sean Murphy called out from the door.
‘Sure now,’ Paddy agreed, scratching his forehead and pushing up his glasses, ‘That’s a fine one... but amn’t I forgetting the words to it all in me animation? Bedad, I think I’ll try something simpler, yerra.’ He looked over at Shona Millane, Murphy now, where she sat on the bench with the women against the north wall. ‘Here’s one for all me ould sweethearts, heart-broken to have lost me for ever...Ha!’ He grinned, and began in his clear deep voice that held not the hint of an uncertain tremble in it despite the liquor he’d consumed,

‘Oh all the money that e’er I spent, I spent it in good company
And all the harm that I ever did, alas it was to none but me
And all I’ve done for want of wit, to mem’ry now I can’t recall
So fill to me the parting glass, good night and joy be with you all!’

He glanced here at Molly, who sat staring at him dumbfounded, and smiled a little. There’s much you don’t know sweetheart, he thought, and much you will know, long years. He sang,

‘There is a fair maid in this town that sorely has my heart beguiled
With rosy cheek and ruby lip, I’ll own she has my heart in thrall
Oh all the comrades that e’er I had, they’re sorry for my going away
And all the sweethearts that e’er I had, would wish me one more day to stay
But since it falls unto my lot that I should rise and you should not
I’ll gently rise and softly call, good night and joy be with you all....’

He winked at Shona, in music-hall fashion, and went to Molly. ‘Time to kiss the bride,’ he said, pulling her up, and kissed her well before the hooting company until she wriggled in embarrassment. ‘It’s all the lads are jealous of me, you know,’ he told her in an undertone, ‘and not the women of you.’
‘Will you sing us a song, Mrs. Leary?’ Mick Deasy asked. She was blushing again.
‘Oh I couldn’t.’ She sounded so very different from them as she said it, that they remembered what she was. Paddy watched her meet Micko’s eyes with a measured glance that he had come to recognise from her mother. A deep silence fell, into which at last she said,
‘Very well,’ and went to stand in the centre of the floor. All the songs were acapela, and she did not disappoint them, although she looked wistfully at Shay standing in the alcove with his fiddle.

She stood, tall and beautiful, with the shadows round her pale, strange eyes, and announced in her cultured voice,
‘The song I’ve to sing is from Moore’s Irish melodies; most of you know it, I expect, The Harp that Once Through Tara’s Halls.’ She glanced about the room, and began in a thin soprano that was a surprise to Paddy for her speaking voice was quite low for such a slight person as she,

‘The harp that once through Tara’s halls the soul of music shed
Now hangs as mute on Tara’s walls as if that soul were fled
So sleeps the pride of former days, so glory’s thrill is o’er
And hearts that once beat high for praise now feel that pulse no more

‘No more to chiefs and ladies bright the harp of Tara swells
The chord alone that breaks the night, her tale of ruin tells
Thus freedom now so seldom wakes, the only throb she gives,
Is when some heart indignant breaks to prove that still she lives.’

There was silence when she finished. It could not have lasted more than ten seconds, but to Paddy it yawned like an eternity. In the room he could feel the whirling thought: ‘how does this gentry girl sing of the glory days of the Gael in a voice like a linnet?’ It was a question the answer to which he would know himself; he knew she was acquainted with Moore’s melodies for she had played them in the Ancient Concert Rooms, but he had never fancied that she liked them well enough to sing them at a gathering. When he asked her the next day as they were out walking, she confessed that they were the only Irish songs she knew, which solved the mystery, at which he could not help laughing. The room broke out into polite applause and boot stamping, and so his little wife completed her part of the initiation into the family circle; she could hold her own.

When all had retired in the small hours of the morning, he came into the house after seeing the last tottering guest down the road with Shay, to find Molly tidying up her things behind the drawn curtain of the alcove. One of the cases had been broken into and the contents strewn around and she was frowning. He threw himself on the iron bed wearily, and it screeched in protest. Jaysus, they’d have to sleep on the shagging floor, at this out else they’d be heard all over the neighbourhood....

‘Your village girls broke one of my garters,’ she complained, holding it up. She hated to sew. Well, he hadn’t married her for her housewifery. He shrugged.
‘It’ll leave till the morning,’ he said. He watched her undress in hazy interest, for he had taken off his glasses and put them on the chair. When she was down to combinations, he said to her in Irish,
‘Woman of the house, come you here to me.’
She looked at him, that measuring look, and shook out her woollen nightgown, saying nothing.
‘Did you hear me then?’
She gazed at him impassively. ‘I did. I am not a servant to be ordered about. I’m tired, and I want to go to sleep. You can or not as you like.’
He wasn’t taking that. He leapt off the bed and had her in a firm grip by the shoulders before she knew what he was about.
‘You’ll not be telling me no Molly Leary, not like that, not now, not ever. I am not one of your corner boys to be put in his place.’ He turned her and gave her an angry shove, and she tumbled over the bed rail to land on the bed in a heap. His blood was up and he enjoyed the sport, her shocked face, and the feel of her as he leaned over her. He grinned, his hands on her wrists.

‘After all, it’s part of the bargain you married for, isn’t it?’ He asked cheerfully.
‘You swine.’ Her knee came up, but she was trapped by his weight.
‘Maybe, but I have not forgotten Wicklow and Sandymount strand, darling girl. We are of a piece, Mallaidh.’ And it was a sheer delight. Even when she resisted him as she did now, endeavouring to twist away from him. She would yield, she always did. She was as much the hedonist as he. But he liked the fight in her. He enjoyed conquering that, watching her soft and fluid and lovely.... ‘Come, mo gra, give over,’ he crooned. ‘I’ll have my way in the end.’

Unable to win out by physical force, she yelled in frustration. ‘Padge-’ He laughed softly and kissed her. ‘Don’t yell too quick, mo gra, or they’ll wonder upstairs....’ he smiled wickedly. ‘Or maybe you like that, eh, m’aille?’
She stared at him balefully. ‘Go to hell.’
‘Perhaps I will,’ he murmured, kissing her again, ‘but it’s nowhere I’ll find myself alone, my little demon. Come you, my little dark one -’ his hand slid along her side, down her rounding belly. ‘Give over... ah there, yes, come now, mo chroi....’

So he won, gentling her like one of her horses, and so she trotted along to his command, while the wind rose and howled outside the thick wall behind them, rattling the window, muffling her exclamation. And he sighed in peace as he drifted off the sleep, for she belonged to him, was of him. His.

He was up at dawn, sluicing in the frigid air with frigid water, hurriedly yanking up his braces and tying bootlaces to be out with Shay to help turn the lazybeds for the planting of the spring’s potatoes. It was bloody cold, miserable work with the wind howling, even wrapped in a heavy coat, and they stopped at midmorning for the bottles of tea Rose had packed, wrapped in rags. In a rug on the cart, they were still hot. Shay’s was laced with whiskey, but Paddy kept his virgin. He had a terrible hangover, and it hurt to bend over at the work.
‘Eh, the hair of the dog,’ Shay offered in amusement, holding up his cruiscin invitingly.
‘No, thanks,’ Paddy said, shaking his head. ‘It’s a bad way for me to start. Last night was one thing, and this another.’
‘As you will,’ Shay said amiably, and topped off the steaming tea with the local brew.

They were home for the dinner. When they came into the house, he spied Molly with one of Rose’s apron’s over her frock, carrying a mutton joint to the table. He was red from the wash in the pump outdoors, but his clothes were still filthy. There was nothing of the Trinity don about him now in cracked old boots, a coarse shirt and heavy ill-fitted woollen trousers that had belonged to his Da years since. He didn’t miss her look of amazement, and grinned. When he pulled her chair at the table he gave her a kiss. She smelled of toilet water, and wrinkled her nose because he smelled of turf and wind.
‘Well, Mrs. Leary,’ he said, after the blessing, as Shay rose to carve the joint, ‘you didn’t tell me you knew your way around a kitchen. Does that mean biscuits and champers at two A.M.? Quiet theatre suppers? I’m quivering in anticipation...’ He reached for her hand under the table and pressed it. But she was game to his teasing.
‘I learnt something in school,’ she said loftily. ‘And how about you? I never knew you to farm many potatoes in Anne Street. Was it in the Penthenys’ courtyard, then?’
He laughed. ‘The Penthenys are the landlords,’ he explained to his aunt’s quizzical look.

When the meal was done, he went and stole an arm about her waist as she was hanging the towel before the range after the washing up. ‘How’d you like to see the old place before we go off on calls? Roger and Gill aren’t expecting us till two or so. It’s enough time for a hike up the hill. I can show you where I used to play when I was a boy.’
She met his eye levelly. ‘Certainly. There’s not much else to do.’
‘Then you’ll have to change your shoes, for it’s soggy as an old biscuit out there. You’ll not get out the door in those things,’ he said of her dainty velveteen house slippers.
‘Wurra, wurra,’ she said, warmly, removing his hand from her hip. ‘You sound like my nanny.’ He made bleating noises like a goat, and she laughed as she went to the alcove for her boots.

They took the long road down past the cottage to the mountains, going into the vale that climbed slowly from the rushing stream that ran across the road. To the east beside them on the right were the last stand of natural trees in the area -- for it had been mostly plundered of timber for the building trades in the last century -- a close thicket of pine and cedars, dark on the brightest days. To the west ran the hilly fields between Shay’s house and Millane’s farm. Farther on was the sea - Dingle slightly south and Tralee to the north, with the high lonely splendid magnificence of the Connor Pass between. Not for nothing was the area a tourist attraction. Behind them to the south and east rose the high black granite mountains, from whose lofty heights ran the purest, sweetest, clearest water in Ireland, so clear a man could see fish swimming half a mile down in the Lakes.... Oh even in bleak winter, he loved it here, in the peace and splendour and quiet. He climbed the fence that separated the boreen from the field, strode on towards the next in the field at the top of the hill, climbed over it and walked on until Molly’s voice far below brought him up short,
‘Paddy Leary will you give over? I’m not Chestnut!’

He looked back in surprise, came back to lean his elbows on the cold grey stone while she clambered up the hill. When she reached him, her skirt was soaking about the ankles and her coat was muddy. She reached the fence and came to fall against it, blowing her breath out in white plumes before her.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I thought you were behind me.’
‘I was behind you!’ she puffed back. ‘You might have leant a hand once in a while. I’m not one of your Kerry girls with legs like footballers.’
He smiled as she rose again from the wall and looked about them.
‘Is it always like this?’ she asked.
He admired how the feeble winter sun shone on her hair as on a raven’s wing.
‘Like what?’ he asked bemusedly.
‘So silent and creepy.’
He laughed shortly, and took in the mist-covered hills and the far fallow fields dotted with bracken, heather, and sheep. ‘Yes.’ he pushed up his glasses. ‘But I forget you are a Dub, where everything’s tame and proper.... I like the wildness of it.’

She said nothing to that, but looked around with her hands on her hips. Lovely she was, with her cheeks all red and the bulk of her coat swelling, his own roisin. He could hardly credit the sentimentality that had come over him lately concerning her, but he had no will to fight it.
‘What’s that down there?’ she asked, pointing to the collection of ramshackle buildings a quarter-mile away.
‘Millane’s farm,’ he said, musing. ‘I used to run with their sons and daughter.’ Aye, and shag the sister. Lovely sweet Shona, with a tongue on her like a scythe.... ‘Our place used to be yonder,’ he pointed towards the west and the sea, where the land was poorer than here in the uplands.
‘Can we walk there?’
‘If you like.’ He smiled and took her hand. ‘It’s on the way to town and Roger’s.’ His cousin was a victualler in Killarney. They climbed the fence together and he put her down safe on the other side, with his two hands on her waist, wishing they could stay here forever in the wee house beyond. They could be happy here He could anyway; she might if she had a horse. They and the wee ane...

On the last night they were home they went to a dance at the Deasys’, walking the way down the boreen towards Muckross with Shay and Rose. He drank nothing but buttermilk this time, and they stayed until the small hours when the drowsy shadows crept about Molly’s eyes, and he remembered the need of women in her way for sleep, belatedly. They walked home together in the frigid, still night, with the owls hooting in the trees and a sky black and moonless above them, with only the stars for light. No lady’s maid could have been gentler that he when he sat her down upon the high bed to remove her shoes and wraps. He laid her stays and the disputed garters away with musing care, and folded her into a warm and friendly embrace against the cold of the house.

Oh yes he could live this way, happily and forever. But when he asked her in the morning if she could stay she laughed so thoroughly that he pretended to be in jest, and she never knew how much it had meant to him for her to say yes. They went home to Dublin, to the house in Mountjoy Square, because it was what she wanted.

Before the spring term commenced, he went down to the Abbey one afternoon to confer with Lennox Robinson about the schedule, so to plan his students’ jaunts there accordingly. There was a rehearsal in progress onstage, and backstage he found Robinson and Mick Rafferty, who was painting a backdrop.
‘I thought I might find you here,’ he said in amusement.
Mick tossed the hair from his eyes. ‘Were you looking for me, then?’
‘--Oh, Pat’s an old hand around here, aren’t you?’ Lennox interjected.
Paddy coloured, and glanced onstage toward the actors. ‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘The college almost lost a lecturer….’
‘But he decided to get a real job,’ Lennox finished, teasing.

Mick had turned from his painting, and regarded him with amazement. ‘You were an actor here?’
He shrugged. ‘When a student. They were walk-ons only. Nothing to speak of.’ He had played under assumed names: Joseph Gunn, John Lehane, and Patrick May.
‘He’s being modest,’ Lennox said. ‘He was one of our best countrymen. Fians, soldiers, policemen, he played them all. We were sure at one point he’d join the DMP.’ He was grinning. This was rich, as even then the word had gone round that he was involved in Sinn Fein and the Gaelic League. Paddy changed the subject.
‘Lennox, I wanted to get the dates from you for this term.’
‘Ah, duty calls,’ Robinson said with regret. ‘Come, let’s go watch my rehearsal. I’ll get the schedule from Nancy.’ He clapped Paddy on the arm and they went out into the house.

When he had finished his business, Paddy went back to talk with Mick. He was absorbed in the work now and hardly looked up. The backdrop was of a harvest field in the West of Ireland.
‘This is for Casaid an tSugan?’ Paddy asked. The play was going up in a few weeks.
‘Yeah,’ Mick grunted.
Paddy squinted at the drop. ‘Good detail. This is after Cézanne?’
‘More or less.’
‘…You made the byre red.’ He noted. ‘Are you implying the murder of traditional life?’
Mick looked up, keenly, startled. Plainly, he had not expected him to have any knowledge of artistic theory. Paddy smiled thinly, self-mockingly.
‘It’s what I do, after all. I love symbolism….’ He shrugged to cover a sudden, involuntary shudder, walking back and forth examining details of the drop minutely, riven with the shimmering sense of unreality good poetry, painting, or music gave him. As if he could reach out, reach through and touch that other world, that lofty world of the mind, the soul, the force behind the creation of such images…. Ah Día, he was drowning in it. Gloriously, gloriously.

He sighed and came back into the room, seeking a mundane response to cover his ecstatic mental ramble; ‘…The cross-pinning of the hayricks is just how we did it at home.’
‘I know,’ Mick said shortly, tossing his hair back. ‘I read the agricultural reports.’ He glanced up now, grinning. ‘Four bloody hours in the Four Courts. I hope the audience appreciates it.’
‘Doubtless they won’t,’ Paddy said cheerfully. ‘…But we do.’ Their eyes met, and Paddy was swept again with the singular intensity of empathy with this prickly young man. Fundamentally, he felt they understood one another, related to the world in the same way. Mick could never be recruited for the Brotherhood, he hadn’t the heart for it, but in other deeply personal ways, they were of a brotherhood; like the Pre-Raphaelites. Bound by an orientation to life that was at once discriminating and deeply sensual. It was foolish trying to put this into words, standing here backstage, or anywhere save through poetry or painting or music. But he had been so evidently overcome that he ventured to try, because he saw the answering light in Mick’s pale glance.
‘It’s good to have you here. It means a lot. To me, to everyone…. You see beneath the surface of things in a rare way, to the richness that lies behind the familiar. That’s important to a genuine life, an authentic life….’ Mere words failed him.

There was a long and pregnant moment where fellow feeling diffused drowsily, like the aching slow twilight of the western summers. It was poignant, oh achingly beautiful and painful at once, shaking him to the core. If he had been at all attracted to men, he would have been confused, so great was the intensity of feeling. But he was not. There were others with whom he had shared this overwhelming connection. Tom MacDonagh, for one. It ebbed slowly, and Mick murmured at last, into the breach,
‘Thank you.’ He picked up his brush again, painting some more while Paddy stood with his arms crossed, watching. ‘May I ask you something?’ Mick asked, without looking up.
‘Yes?’
He tossed his hair back from his eyes. ‘Why did you leave off acting here?’
Paddy smiled a little, wistfully. ‘Other things took up my time.’
Mick said nothing to this but painted awhile in silence. Then, ‘Why did you begin? I mean, what drew you to it?’ He looked over his shoulder now, briefly.
Paddy lit a cigarette. ‘There was a handbill at TCD,’ he mused. ‘They wanted Irish speakers for Willie’s play On Baile’s Strand. So I came down with Tom MacDonagh, more or less on a lark. Met the Fays and Willie and the Grand Dame--’ Augusta Gregory. He laughed with the memory. ‘She couldn’t understand a word of my Irish. She accused me of speaking Scots. But Willie liked the contrast, and so I got in…. Why did I begin?’ He flicked ash from his cigarette with a graceful movement, sighing, his arms crossed. ‘To have our own theatre, in Irish on Irish themes-’ his voice broke in a rush of emotion, ‘-when all my life Irish Ireland was something denigrated and forbidden… to have that pride restored, in a way that was genuine with none of the music-hall condescension…’ he glanced up sharply. ‘You ask me?’

Mick was standing upright now, staring at him, white-faced with emotion. ‘You are the strangest man,’ he accused, shaking his head. ‘You say things I have only thought of or read as ineffectual propaganda, and you make them sound so natural and reasonable, when in fact they are the most discursive indictment of the garrison in this country that I have ever heard. God help us who fall under your sway.’
He laughed at this, throwing back his head. ‘That’s rich,’ he chuckled at last. ‘My sway.’ But behind the laughter, he was unnerved. Mick had verged too close upon his secret, unvoiced self, all those boyhood daydreams he shared with no one, the simple magic – magnetism, charisma – he practised on everyone. Mick saw, oh too well.
‘I’m fucking serious, Paddy,’ Mick exclaimed, swishing the paintbrush in his open basin of turpentine. ‘You’re like Fergus, I sometimes think, or Owen Roe. I see it in tutorial all the time.’ He peered at him narrowly. ‘You know it. You know we feel it. You use it, to damned good effect. You know half the lads are in your thrall and the other half hate you, but everyone feels the Fianna behind you.’

Paddy started at this. It was definitely too close to the verge. He took out his watch.
‘Christ, I’m late! I was only to be gone an hour. My wife will wonder where I’ve got to.’ He grinned. ‘Mustn’t keep the little bride waiting…. See ya, Micko.’
Mick was frowning, obviously puzzled at his abruptness. ‘Bye, Paddy.’
He was halfway through the door before he turned. ‘Oh, I am forgetting: come to our Wednesday this week, won’t you? A new institution.’ He grinned. ‘About teatime. Everyone’s invited. I’ll see you, then?’
Mick’s gaze was narrow, cautious again. ‘Yeah,’ he tossed his hair back. ‘I’ll be there.’
‘Right-o.’ Paddy said, and bounded off, down the ramp over the pit stage right and up the aisle, his heart still pounding.