Chapter Sixteen: Dublin, Derry, Sligo September 1915

The pale morning sun flickered and danced past his window darting in and out a dozen times as grey clouds moved west over the river, like a child at blind man’s bluff. Mickey wiped the brush onto his turpentine soaked rag and stood back, frowning at the work. He hated street scenes anyway, and this one wasn’t coming right. Oh, he thought as he put down the brush on the stand and reached for his pipe, the buildings were all right, laid on in thick angles with the palette knife, and the fog--shrouded brown murkiness of Anna Liffey. That was grand. It was only this blasted woman that wouldn’t come right. The yellow--haired figure was crossing the Ha’penny Bridge and the surrounding grey made her shrink into the background like a timid governess. So he had tried scarlet. But the richer crimson colour was too much. He had wanted contrast, not a tart from the kips... Having lit his pipe, he picked up the rag and began removing the woman’s painted clothing for the third time.

Jenny called to him from downstairs, ‘Breakfast, Mick!’
‘Mmm, yeah, just a minute,’ he called back absently, smoking. Ah! He began mixing paints on the palette. He tried a blue--green. No, too cold. Dark blue he had already tried. Perhaps ochre. Frowning at the canvas, he stuck the brush into dark cadmium red by mistake. Damn! There went the whole mix. He was about to scrape it all off, when he really gave it a look. Then mixed. The colour was a deep rich plum, vibrant, warm, but soft.
‘Righto,’ he murmured to himself in delight. He knocked his pipe against the easel, and laid it back on the stand. He began putting the woman’s figure in again. Half an hour later he was surveying the effect of the plum on the scene along Crampton quay when Jenny appeared at the door. She held a plate of eggs and rashers in her hand, and looked quite put out.

He looked up. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing at all,’ she returned wryly, ‘except that your breakfast has gone stone cold these last twenty minutes. Shall I warm it in the oven or do you want it for your tea?’ A line creased above her right eyebrow. She was a very pretty girl, but she had a tongue on her like a lash. But he hadn’t married her for her soft good manners.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said lamely. ‘I forgot. I got busy. Come here,’ he sad, holding out his hand, ‘don’t you think this works much better? I changed the frock.’
She put the plate on the chest by the door, lopsidedly on top of several books and a sketchpad. ‘Again?’ She came near, frowning at the canvas.
He tossed back his hair nonchalantly. ‘The red was too tarty,’ he said flatly.
‘The Ha’penny Bridge looks well,’ she said. ‘It looks more like lace than ever.’ She crossed her narrow arms under her bosom. ‘But you left out the Chicken Mash and Dog--cake signs,’ she grinned.

‘You’re a wicked girl,’ he said.
‘The dishonesty of art, Mr. Rafferty,’ she returned in stern, mocking lecture--tones. His lecture. She had been in one of his classes on theory at the Met School.
‘If you want realism, take a photo, Mrs. Rafferty,’ he finished. It was an old joke between them.
‘It really does look better,’ she agreed. ‘Like a dream with all that fog.’
‘The last dream of Empire,’ he murmured, smoothing his moustache.
Her eyebrow went up again. ‘So I am marked as an Imperialist?’ she quipped. ‘Thank you, my da will be pleased.’ Her father was an old Fenian who had a drygoods shop in the Ringsend road near Victoria Bridge.

‘I try my best,’ he said. ‘Ever the troublemaker.’ He went over to the plate of breakfast, poking at the eggs with a fork. ‘Would these eggs be all right if put them in the steamer?’
‘I should think.’ She was examining the painting closely. ‘You’re doing a lot of knife work these days.’
He ate one of the rashers cold. ‘Mmm. It has energy.’
‘It’s very disturbing.’
‘Good.’ He looked at her, standing fair in the morning light in her plain pale blue frock. Lovely girl. Like a summer’s morning. ‘Are you coming to sit with me?’ She smiled at him.
‘I just might.’

It was a long road he had come this last year. He had met Sinead Gilligan first in July last year when she had taken the life drawing class, chanced on her in the halls coming out of Orpen’s class as he was going in to teach his theory class. A pretty girl, he thought, with her clear blue eyes and silky blonde hair. Like his sisters, but with a narrow Dublin face. Her prettiness masked a sharp mind and sharper tongue. Her wit appealed to him. But he had been then in the throes of the affair with Molly, and Jenny was nothing more than a passing thought. Then there was the day the telegram came when he was at the Learys. That changed everything. He had been out with Kate to lunch at the DBC and a walk after through Stephen’s Green. They hadn’t been in the house fifteen minutes when Rosie was ringing madly and yelling down the stairs. Jesus, the scene! Hard enough it was to feign only a Christian concern before all, but to be caught out by Paddy was too much. Mick could never convince him afterward that there had been nothing between him and Molly. No matter the emergency, no innocent sat with a woman in his lap as they had been.

While the women were fussing about her, Paddy dragged him into the study on his way out.
‘I don’t know whether to believe you or not,’ he said, running a distracted hand through his hair. His accent was thick with Kerry. ‘At this juncture, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. For her sake only!’ he said, raising his arm and pointing into the parlour. ‘ But, by god, Micko,’ he shook his head, ‘if I find it’s a lie, I’ll make you regret it.’
‘More of your Fenian business?’ Mick had sneered. He’d have said more, but Paddy’s expression stopped him.
‘You mind what you say,’ he warned. ‘It may cost you dear. Don’t make an enemy of the Brotherhood, Mick, or you’ll go the way of every shoneen.’
‘It would be traced.’ Mick said, though the words and their tone made his blood run cold. He had seen enough of that with his brothers in Sligo to know that Paddy was not boasting. Paddy only smiled humourlessly.
‘If you think so.’ He tossed his head. ‘Away with you now. We have trouble enough here this day. If you’ll excuse me----’ and he stalked out of the study and down the hall to Molly.

He felt like a cad when he heard from Kate that the child had died, and sent a discreet letter. When she didn’t answer, he ascribed it to grief and sent another, longer, not discreet at all. In it he had poured out his whole heart and all his mental conflict over their affair. She never answered and he was wild with it. Fear for her health and safety with Paddy, anger at her silence, grief for the loss of her, turned him inside out. He wrote long and raging letters now, half of which he never sent, and dragged himself through the winter days under such a cloud that Will Orpen took him aside one day in November.

‘What’s the matter with you, Michael?’
They were in the supply cupboard, putting away paints they had just mixed up in jars on the shelves. No one had asked him that in a month, not even his sister. It was a relief to be noticed.
‘I think I’ve lost my model,’ he said tersely, fighting the grief that rose up in him.
‘Ah your great lady,’ Will murmured tactfully. He shook his head minutely, ‘I can’t say I’m entirely surprised. It is the way of these things. But bad luck for you. What happened?’
Mickey leaned on the counter. ‘I don’t know, I don’t know!’ he cried. Orpen’s knowing sympathy had loosed the hold he’d kept on his emotions. ‘Things... changed along the way. I resented her ---- no, not her, her life, her husband, her life, all her ease and ... she took things so casually --’ he shook his head again. ‘She was always there, never failing, but never there, with me, always removed and a little distant, never showing the same intensity I felt. It ate at me. Everything about her annoyed me. Everything I had found so evocative. But I was still drawn. I couldn’t shake it. Can’t shake it.’ he passed a hand over his face. ‘She was a curse to me! I wanted her so, I got her, and she was a curse to me, an illness, an obsession.’ He drew a shaking breath, avoiding Will’s eye. ‘And then a month ago, there was an accident -- a telegram about her brother at the Front -- I was there, by chance. Her husband came in. And now she will not even write. I have written such letters -- Will!’ he looked up now. ‘What sort of heartless bitch is she? Why was I so deceived by a beautiful face to think that tenderness lay beneath it? I can’t get her out of my mind. I hate her, I love her, I wish I’d never seen her.’
Will put a hand on his arm. ‘You poor boy,’ he murmured. He patted his arm. ‘Come along, Michael, and sit. I’ll pour you a drink. We’ll talk then.’

They went out into the classroom and Orpen poured him a brandy in a homey mug. And then another. Will sat gathering his thoughts as Mick drank the second round more slowly, his control slowly returning and the shaking ceased. At last Will sighed.
‘You know Ellen and I are very fond of each other,’ he began as a preamble. Ellen was his wife, and model. She was an artist herself. ‘We have always been. But there was a time when I was enthralled by a beautiful society woman, like yours. She was married too, English. A tall, fine beauty. It was very diverting to her, for a while, to have me at her feet. Who would not be flattered to be immortalised by one of the great artists of one’s day?’ He said with self--mocking humour. He mused for a moment, gazing into the middle distance. ‘I loved her very greatly. It was very painful to conclude, after some time, that she did not love me. She refused my calls and letters. It was on the point of becoming a public scandal, for I had pointedly been refused at her house when all of society knew that she was at home. Finally a friend intervened, and I discovered thereby that the husband had threatened her with divorce and me with ruin if she did not desist. What was I to do? I could not suffer our private life to be dragged through the courts. She would survive, being titled in her own right, but I? It would ruin me indeed. I was unmarried, I had no income. This same friend -- I will not name him for it would do him no favour --delivered a letter to her from me, expressing my regret. That was an end to it.’

‘How ago long was this?’ Mick sniffed.
Orpen shrugged. ‘Ten years. I was young and green.’ He met Mick’s eye. ‘Since then, I restrain my attentions towards society women to canvas. It’s better that way. Not that I haven’t been tempted, once in a while.’ He smiled. ‘I was quite taken with your Mrs. Leary, for instance. A very beautiful woman. But self--interested, as most of them. And why not? What woman would be such a damn fool as to give up money and title to live in penury with an artist?’ The question was rhetorical.
‘She has an independent income, unrelated to her husband, ‘ Mickey defended, and felt absurd. Defending the gentry!
Will shook his head. ‘You’re quite wrong, my boy, if you don’t think family influence plays into her thinking. She could be disinherited yet.’
‘She doesn’t care about money,’ Mick went on. ‘I’ve never seen her lord it over anyone.’
‘I assure you she’d care very much if she had none. Most people do. Leave it, Michael, for your own sake,’ Will entreated. ‘Look what it’s done to you! Are you willing to live your life this way?’
He sighed. ‘No.’
‘Just so,’ Will said. ‘Come now, let’s lock up. Ellen will be wondering where I’ve got to.’

He took Will’s advice and avoided her thereafter, though it was difficult when she was in hospital for several weeks in November. He felt like the worst sort of cad when she reproached him, but was resolute. Late in December, he received a note from her, an apology of sorts. She had found that Paddy had intercepted his letters -- how she did not profess to know. Could they be friends once more? How could he deny her? All the old fascination swamped him. He said yes, though it would mean letters sent via the GPO only, or through her friends if she could manage it. He was not keen to arouse Paddy’s murderous suspicions. So they began again, with a strange kind of stilted infomality. But he could not verge on his feelings for her; every time he did the walls went back up. That was her bargain. He saw Orpen’s point about limiting contact to painting. He still wanted to paint her, but was thwarted even in that.

He courted Jenny Gilligan with a vengeance then, and was so relieved to simply have a good time with a girl who liked him, who understood him, a girl of his own class who had no restraints against his attention. Jenny, by contrast, was so open and artless that it was easy to convince himself to be love with her. From art teacher and student they had progressed quickly to visiting the galleries and museums together, studying art, sculpture, statuary. They went to the pictures in O’Connell Street and held hands in the dark. He saw her home from evening class, though Ringsend was far out of his way. He went to dinner with her family. They went to Mass together on Sundays at the Pro--Cathedral, alone and with his sister Kate. He was comfortable with her. She didn’t inspire him to the raging passions Molly had, but he was not uninterested in having a go at her. Nevertheless, having suffered the strain of an affair, with Jenny he did everything right. He never suggested to her that they stop alone at his house, nor did he keep her out too late.

Not that she would have minded if he had. She was a progressive girl, who wore short skirts and sensible jumpers, smoked cigarettes and was earnest and vocal about women’s suffrage, worker’s rights, and socialism. She took him to meetings at Liberty Hall, where after the first time he would have been bored had he not learned to study people on such occasions. He went to please her, proof enough of his intentions. They were on the strongest ground with art. She had a very good eye, and was thoughtful about the deeper meanings of art, even if she did not always agree with his expression. She was much more of a naturalist, tending to botanical illustrations, life studies, landscapes and architecture.

There had been talk since late in 1914 of a general conscription being imposed in Ireland, the War Office not being pleased with the levels of recruitment in Ireland, even though -- it was pointed out in the Independent -- the numbers were comparatively the same if percentages of the population were considered, rather than sheer numbers. The War Office canvassed and surveyed the whole of Ireland preparatory to conscription, for the actual numbers of men between the ages of 19 and 41. From this they deduced the number of single men. The ranks of Sinn Fein and the Volunteers swelled, particularly in the West. In Galway, a recruitment meeting attended by three hundred men yielded not a single recruit. On the contrary, upwards of fifty men fled the country for America. In Sligo, the Champion reported similar disaffection,

‘This war is not of Ireland’s making.... To pretend that we are profoundly
interested in the fortunes of that Empire would be absurd. Like any other,
we are prepared to defend our shore against invasion. We do not want a
multiplicity of enemies in Ireland. We have the English here already.’

By the beginning of 1915, there was talk that a conscription bill would be passed -- for Ireland alone -- as early as June. Mick, while perfectly willing to go over in some benign capacity of his own free will -- a medical orderly or ambulance driver or the like -- was dead set against being made to go and shoot his fellow men, even if they were Germans; particularly as the Irish regiments were clearly being used as fodder. At Mons alone in the first month of the war, an entire battalion of the Royal Munster Fusiliers had perished. Reports came daily in private letters of the complete slaughter of whole companies and battalions. These were passed about and quoted in his own paper so he could hardly fail to read them. He did not consider himself a coward, morally or physically, but the prevailing mind of the War Office turned his thoughts to means of escape, for it was one thing to die nobly in some great endeavour, quite another offer oneself up to pointless suicide. He could go to America, as others had, but he really didn’t want to leave home and country except as a last resort. He could marry and start a family; that would put him out of the running for at least the first round of conscription. But should he marry Jenny? He was fond of her, they were comfortable, easy, but that vital spark was missing in him. Did they need it? Could he live without it? He mulled these questions for three weeks before he decided that even a less than perfect life was better than to lie rotting in a Flemish trench.

So he asked Jenny to marry. It was a bitter cold night in February. They had gone to dinner and skating at the Rotunda rink after classes. Encouraged by the solid warmth of her against him as the skated in twain, charmed by her broken, paintstained nails and scarlet cheeks as they sat drinking cocoa afterward, he ventured. They took the tram from the top of the line at the Parnell Monument down to Trinity. There they disembarked and walked the rest of the way through the lamplight streets in the frigid air, huddling together hand--in--hand: they went through the vast frosted stretch of College Park to Westland row, crossed over to Great Brunswick Street and the Grand Canal. At the bridge he stopped, ostensibly to tie his bootlace, and she waited on him.

‘Will you never hurry?’ she asked, slapping her arms with her gloved hands and bouncing up and down to keep warm. ‘We’ll die of cold. They’ll find us in the morning by the side of the railing and think it a suicide pact.’
He looked up. ‘There are worse ways to die,’ he grunted, his aching cold fingers fumbling with the lace. He rose again and went to her, putting his arms around her to keep her warm. ‘It depends on what you mean by dying.’ He looked at her for a long moment, his heart thudding in his ears.
‘Are you being rude?’ she dimpled archly. She wasn’t slow, that was sure. It sent a surge of blood through him, and he was relieved that she could rouse him with mere words. He smiled.
‘In a manner of speaking... Sinead --’ his voice echoed in the still, cold air. The world dissolved around him and was only this charming girl standing in his arms, his leaping pulse. She must have felt his excitement surely, even through all their clothes. ‘Sinead,’ he murmured, softer. He raised her face with his fingers. ‘Will you marry me?’

She drew a breath. She had maybe been expecting an indecent proposal, given what he had said. She quivered under his hands. The independent girl was a faltering, blushing maid in his arms. What a delight.
‘You’re serious?’
‘Would I be out here in the blessed cold of a Dublin street at ten o’clock at night if I weren’t?’ He returned, his mouth twitching in a devilish smile. ‘There are two question only asked at this bridge, and I didn’t ask ye to go down the way to the Park. Sure,’ he tossed his hair back, ‘if I’d wanted that only I’d have asked you when we were there.... Yes, so. I am serious.’
She looked at him for a long searching silent moment. ‘Yeah,’ she said, smiling at last. ‘I will.’
‘Good,’ he murmured. He did kiss her then, well and long, opening his coat around her and bringing her in.

Jim Flannaghan, his old friend from Maynooth, married them on the 2nd of July, a first Friday, at St. Malachi’s chapel in Thorncastle Street, Ringsend. As weddings went it was quiet. Her family -- parents, brother, and sister -- his sister Kate, a few friends from the art school, the paper, childhood mates of her.. Tim Keegan stood up with him, as Orpen was a Protestant. Jenny wore a lovely white lace frock and a fashionable voluminous veil that almost completely obscured her. They had a reception at the Imperial Hotel in O’Connell Street. It was the way of Dublin weddings, he learned, to have a swank hotel reception, the best the family could afford. Only the very poorest folk retired to the house. They broke with tradition in the one way: they spent the first night at home in Townsend Street, rather than at the hotel. Grand though his salary might have seemed to him in its early days, they had to think of the future, and while her parents had been perfectly willing to pay for it, he knew it would go hard with them. So, at once defying and tipping his hat to tradition, he lifted her over their very own threshold and put her on her feet again in the hall. In the parlour, the clock ticked, the kitchen was spotlessly tidy, and upstairs the bed had been done over. Kate had been there yesterday, giving up her half--day for him. She scoffed at his having in the usual char.
‘What do they know about it?’ She waved her hand. ‘Mammy would want me to do it for you, Mick, and so I shall.’
He shuddered at the mention of their mother, but Kate had turned away before the range, so she did not see. ‘Thanks,’ he told her.

From Da and Jimmy there was twenty pounds by wire, and a telegram on Saturday morning welcoming Jenny to the family. It was a gallant thing to do. From Annie and Tom there was a set of table linen and a letter in Annie’s sprawling handwriting. Sean they had not heard from in two years, though Da thought he had gone to America, by a few hints Seamus Kilgallen had dropped. Mickey didn’t ask why. Young Fenian men who disappeared to America were better left unquestioned.

Mick blamed himself for the disappointment the Friday night. He was used to women of experience and not untried girls. He was patient with her, started slowly, coaxing her, teaching as he went. He remembered the first times with Bridie Twomey, and had sympathy for Jenny. Both he and Bridie had been fumbling virgins. But the plain fact was that Bridie was a goer, and --when they came down to it -- Jenny was put off by his frank language and franker expectations. She probably would have been happier with a boor who simply wanted a quick shag with the lights off. He was not that man, could never be. He had spent too much time down the kips and with married women. Oh, she tried, poor girl, then cried in the bath with the water running so he couldn’t hear. He tapped on the door.
‘Jen,’ he murmured. ‘Are you all right, girl?’
‘Yes,’ she cried, unconvincingly.
‘Will you let me in?’

She opened the door -- it was not locked after all -- and pushed back her hair, looking sheepish. She had evidently been crying, her eyes and face were red; barefoot in a sweet nightie, she was like a child.
‘O, Jen,’ he murmured, for she looked so unhappy. He opened his arms. ‘Come here, dear.’ He held her close and rocked her in his arms for a long time. ‘Will you come sit?’ He asked at last. She nodded, sniffling, and followed him down the hall to the bedroom. Snug abed once more, lying with his arms around her, she relaxed and he could touch her again, playing with her idly while he stroked her hair.
‘It gets better,’ he explained softly. ‘Just like this now. Isn’t this nice?’
‘Mmm.’
He had gone too fast before, now he was thinking on it. Jesus God, the girl had probably never seen a naked man outside of art class, and here he was expecting her to handle him like some old pro. It would be a good while before he could try that on again. He realised he’d have to coax her to not merely tolerate being touched, as she did now, but to desire it before she’d ever have the idea that he might really want that too. Oh, it would be easy enough to just have at her -- it would get them a child right quick -- but he was no adolescent; a quick fuck was not enough. He had been accused down in Monto of elegant and unusual tastes, but what in the name of God did they expect from an artist? He lay awake a long time, tense and disturbed. It was his own bloody fault. He had wanted a woman and married a girl. But -- the worm of discontent crept into his mind -- he was not so far wrong in thinking with her progressive chat and all that she would be emancipated in this way too. Not that she led him on, deliberately, anyway. Her experience only went so far. He turned his head and looked at her, sleeping now. Sweet as an angel she was. Well, they would manage somehow.

They went to Derry to see Annie and Tom on the morning train. After checking into a hotel, he went to find a taxi. The driver looked at him suspiciously when he gave him the address.
‘I don’t normally go there, sir,’ he said.
Mickey pushed back his hat. Nattily dressed in a new brown suit, polished shoes, and a fedora, the driver probably thought him a G--man. ‘Look,’ he said in an undertone, ‘I’m only going to visit me sister, to show off the wife. We were only just married yesterday,’ he moved back and the man peered at Jenny standing on the pavement.
‘All right, so.’ The driver nodded, with a jerk of his head. ‘Come on.’

When they were in the neighbourhood, Mick began to see why the driver had been less than enthusiastic. It looked like the Liberties. To call it working class would be a step up on the social rung. They had driven for fifteen minutes from the city centre, through the Royal Barracks gate and along the old wall of the city, past the RIC barracks and down a steep, winding cobbled street. The river Foyle was directly east of them, but in between them and the river were the linen and shirt factories; great dark prisons they were, noisy bastions of misery shackling the working poor. His sister had worked in one, until last year before Mary was born. It had gone hard with them to lose the extra money when they needed it most.
Tom and Annie lived in a row house in Lamb Street, about halfway down the hill. The driver raked the car and squinted up at the door.
‘Are you sure this it is, sir?’
‘Yes,’ Mick said warily. He counted out pound notes and handed them over to the man. ‘Look, can you come to here again about nine?’ It was nearly teatime now. ‘I’ll put in a fiver if do.’ He could see it would be almost impossible to get another taxi out here in the dark. Annie and Tom weren’t on the telephone besides, so he’d have to ring from the pub, which would lessen his chances of getting transport considerably.
The driver regarded him closely. ‘Eh, you look a decent young fellow, and I wouldn’t want the wee girl to come to any harm.’ He nodded, taking the money. ‘I will, so. But nine sharp and no shilly--shally.’
‘Right you.’ Mick got out of the car and went to open the door for Jenny.

By that time Annie had come out from the house, and with her half the neighbours wondering who this gent in the taxi was coming to their neighbourhood. Mick gave them a glance, then kissed wee Annie right there on the pavement.
‘ Jaysus and it’s good to see you darlin’!’ He exclaimed.
‘Mickeen, you gossoon!’ Annie laughed and hugged him. She was thinner than she had been before, without the roses in her cheeks but still pretty for all that. She looked up at Jenny. ‘And this must be Sinead --’ she gave her a quick buss on the cheek. ‘Welcome to the family.’
Jenny had her bride smile on, practised and charming. ‘Thank you. And thanks too for the linens. They’re grand.’
‘You’ll be needin ‘em with him,’ Annie grinned. ‘He was ever after eating the house empty.’
Jenny smiled truly now, ‘I’ll mind that.’
‘Come in so,’ wee Annie said, ‘and have a sit. You can meet the wanes. Tom isn’t home yet, but he’ll be in for his dinner.’ She opened the front door wider. ‘He works down the docks don’t you know. Like our Mick used to back home.’
Jenny stared at him.
‘Sure did he never tell you that at all?’ Annie asked, looking at them from one to the other. ‘He wouldn’t, grand gent that he is now. But oh, Jenny, you should have seen him! Had muscles on him like a prize fighter, so he did.’ Annie gave him a devilish look. It was old times.
‘I’m not so bad now,’ he protested, taking off his hat. Jenny blushed.

The house was small, dirty, and ill furnished, with peeling old wallpaper that was stained and marked with damp. Piles of nappies, children’s clothes and odd toys were strewn across the parlour. Poverty was everywhere. It would break your heart, Mick thought. It was worse than he had imagined. Three of the children came out from hiding behind the chair, the sofa, and the kitchen table. Ill--dressed, spindly, brown--haired creatures they were; the spit of Tom Kilgallen.
‘Seanín, come out from there, you wee devil, ‘ Annie said to the eldest, who was six, the one who had been lurking behind the sofa, ‘and say hello to your uncle Mick.’ The boy came forward, grinning. His soft brown hair stuck up at angles around his face like Cuchulainn in the old tales.
‘Hey d’yez dey?’ the boy said, sliding a glance at Jenny. The nasal Derry accent was thick with him.
‘Do you never look like your Da,’ Mick said, smiling. ‘Has no one ever told you that?’ The boy made a face, for of course he probably heard it all the time. He was more interested in the lady. ‘This is your Aunt Jenny,’ Mick said, taking her arm.
‘Are ye th’ oons gu’ murried yusterdee?’
‘We did,’ Jenny said.
‘Jimmy and Kate --’ Annie was saying to the other two, who had escaped to the kitchen.. ‘Get out from that and come and say your piece! That’s for your tea and not now, you greedy beggars.’

The children came. Jimmy was better looking than his brother but wee Kattie, who was just gone four, was a beauty itself with a crumpled pinny and dirty face. Her hair was tangled down her back, but the child was an angel. When they sat down, it was she who sidled up and eventually ended up on Mick’s lap. She hardly said two words, and spent most of the afternoon with her finger in her mouth, but she had his heart.
‘The others are still sleepin,’ Annie said when she came in again with mugs of tea. ‘Ah now, mind yourselves,’ she said to the boys, who dove for the soda bread, for it was white with sultanas and not their usual brown. ‘You’d think you were starving itself.’
‘Others?’ Jenny asked. She glanced at Mick in alarm.
‘Aye,’ Annie said, without looking up. ‘Tommy and our Mary.’
‘She’s the baby,’ Mick told Jenny. ‘She’s just -- what?’ he asked Anne.
‘Gone six months this fortnight,’ Annie said, passing plates about. ‘You should see her Mick. A Rafferty she is.’ So she proved when she woke a few minutes later. A very pretty baby.
‘Da would be that pleased with her,’ he said. ‘I should have thought to bring the Brownie. I could have taken a picture to him.’

‘Huh!’ wee Annie said, sitting in the chair with the baby. ‘Pictures is it. That’ll be a fine day when you take pictures of us.’ But she was pleased with the idea, he could see. She didn’t sit long. Young Tommy woke from his nap, bad--tempered as a two year old can be; Sean and Jimmy were by this time bored with company and were running screeching through the house, playing soldiers with broom handle and hurley stick, firing at each other over the stair rails. This set the little ones to howling, and Annie shouted at the boys to get down and mind themselves before the company. Jimmy took a leap from the stair rail and landed on Sean, who punched him, and Annie boxed both their ears. Mick sat watching this with no little amusement from the sofa -- that was Annie, through and through, she was just the sort of mother he thought she would be -- but Jenny sank back beside him, wondering no doubt what class of tinkers she had married into.
Tom came home as the war was subsiding, and every child that could walk came and flung themselves on him .
‘Dada, Dada, Uncle Mick is here!’
Tom met his eye from the door. ‘So he is.’ He grinned over the children’s clamouring. ‘Good to see ya, Mick boyo. It’s grand you look. Get away from that, now,’ Tom told Jimmy, who was digging in his filthy pockets. ‘You’ll have them soon enough. Annie, will you get the lad off me?’ He came across the room, cumbered by his children, and shook Mick’s hand. He would not shake Jenny’s.
‘You’ll mind it, Mrs,’ he said. ‘I’m filthy itself. But you’re welcome so.’
‘Come on, Tom, and have a wash before the tea,’ Annie said.
‘So I will.’ He gave Jenny a keen appraising look, and went out into the kitchen. Annie came back in the room with the children’s sweets, which she doled out, and his pay packet. The latter she counted up carefully.

‘There’s but eighteen shillings,’ she called to Tom.
‘I had te get paid,’ he called back.
‘In the pub was it?’ she complained. ‘Jaysus, every week it’s worse. And how many pints did you have yourself for your two shillings?’
‘I did buy the sweeties for the wanes,’ he reminded her, his voice muffled in the towel, coming in to the room in his vest with his braces hanging down. He was, as Annie had implied, a fine strong man, lean and muscular. He kissed her. ‘I only had the one meself.’
‘We’re buggered if you drink the pay,’ Annie went on firmly. ‘Am I to take in washing is it to make it up? Or would you have me stand out the corner? That’d get us a bob or two.’
‘Annie,’ Tom said, shaking his head, laughter in his voice, ‘you’ll shock the wee girlie.’ He nodded at Jenny, who was blushing.
‘It’s naught but the truth,’ Annie said. ‘There’s no shame in that.’ She looked up at him. ‘Will you look at you! No wonder the poor thing’s gone three shades of scarlet.’ She was smiling now with affection. ‘Get you inside a shirt. There’s a clean one on the bed.’

Tom came down again in a shirt and coat, with his wild hair tamed in a semblance of order with macascar. He wore no collar though, and certainly not a necktie. Those were reserved for the Sunday Mass and funerals. Mickey helped him set up the table in the middle of the parlour -- an old door braced on chairs -- while Annie took Jenny out into the kitchen with her while she got the dinner.

This solemn occasion was almost enough to awe the boys into good manners, but there was the throwing of a piece of bread, and Mickey was reminded of an old sign in the Trinity dining hall. He told Tom and Annie,
‘It said, ‘there shall be no walking on the dining tables and no throwing of bread.’’
‘Trinity swank,’ Tom grinned.
‘If they can’t keep the gentry from hooliganism, how are they to run the country?’ Annie asked impishly. It was a mockery of the old complaint against Home Rule.
‘With rifles, wee Annie, with rifles,’ Tom said, spearing half a potato with his fork.
‘Are you a Volunteer?’ Jenny asked.
Look out, Mick thought. He glanced at Anne.
‘In a manner of speaking,’ Tom grunted. They were lucky that he fancied Jenny; he was on his good behaviour. ‘But not for Home Rule, if that’s what you mean.’
‘You’re a Sinn Feiner?’ Jenny pressed. Mick clamped his hand on her knee under the table. She gave him a quick glance.
‘A what?’ Tom said. He shook his head. ‘I was never the like of that. Trumped up jackeens from Dublin thinkin’ they know shag all about Ireland --’ he grinned, ‘beggin’ your pardon Mick.’ He snorted with laughter. ‘No, Mrs. I was never the like of that. I’m a republican. We’ll have it our way or no way, dominion status be damned.’

‘Tom,’ Annie murmured.
He leaned back in his chair. ‘It’s me own house so it is. I’ll say what I like in it.’ He nodded at Jenny and Mick. ‘Do you not trust your own brother not to grass on us? Last thing I heard he wanted none of any of it.’
‘No more do I,’ Mick said.
‘So,’ Tom said. ‘There’s an end to it. Do I have time for a smoke before the sweet, darlin’ girl?’
Annie’s mouth twitched. ‘Aye, brandy and cigars in the billiard room. We’ll ring ye when the champagne is iced.’ She moved her chair back from the makeshift table. ‘Who’ll help me with the sweet?’ she asked the children. Kattie and the boys scrambled for the kitchen. ‘Are you coming, Jenny?’
She nodded. ‘I will.’

Mick was impressed by Tom’s graceful hint for a private chat. He was still a rough man, but not quite as crude as he had once been. Age and responsibility had its advantages. Tom threw a packet of fags on the table.
‘No thanks,’ he said, ‘I have my own.’ He pulled his pipe and tobacco pouch from his coat pocket.
Tom chortled. ‘It’s a regular jackeen you look,’ he said, lighting a cigarette.
Mickey shrugged. ‘Trinity and all that... What’s the do?’
Tom spit out a loose piece of tobacco. ‘You know Sean’s away to Americkey.’
‘I’d heard that.’
‘He needs a place in Dublin to go in September.’ Tom looked at him directly. ‘Can you find him one?’
‘No,’ he said flatly. ‘But I know someone who can.’
‘Not one of yer wan’s Sinn Feiners?’
Mickey smiled ruefully. ‘Hardly. No, he’s an old Brotherhood man from Kerry.’
‘Is he safe?’
Mick raised an eyebrow. ‘He was my English professor at Trinity.’
‘Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!’ Tom exclaimed, slapping the table. ‘There’s a swank cover if ever I heard....’ He smoked for a while in silence, thinking. ‘How well connected is he?’
‘I don’t know.’ Mickey said frankly. ‘But I suspect pretty well. I’ll speak to him when we get home.’
‘Don’t go tellin him all,’ Tom warned.
‘Did I just come up out of the cabbage patch? I’ll tell him what he needs to know and no more. But Tom --’
‘Eh?’
‘This is for Seanín only. I wouldn’t do it for anyone but me brothers and wee Annie. And I’ll only do it once. Once and I’m out.’
‘Sure, once is all we need,’ Tom agreed. He took a long drag on the cigarette, squinting. ‘You’re not as wet as I thought you were,’ he said frankly, blowing out smoke.
‘Thanks,’ Mick grinned ruefully.

They sat for a little, smoking in silence. Tom lit another cigarette. ‘That wee girl of yourn,’ he began.
‘Aye?’
‘Is she a goer?’
Mick laughed at the audacity. ‘Not really. Not yet.’
‘I didn’t think so. Pretty though,’ he mused. ‘Too bad.’ He grinned. ‘You’ll be sure to leave us know when she is.’
‘I’ll write yez every detail,’ Mick smiled, knocking his pipe against the plate. Hell, he’d take out an advert in the Times

The taxi driver came on the dot of nine, and they made their quick goodbyes. Within ten minutes they were back in the city centre at the Royal Arms hotel. He paid the man his extra five pounds and shook his hand.
‘Anything else I can for you, sir?’ The man said.
‘We have a train to catch in the morning,’ Mick smiled.
‘What time?’
‘Nine o’clock.’
The man nodded. ‘I’ll get yez there with time to spare.’
‘Very good,’ Mick nodded.

That night was little better than the one before. Maybe it was the hotel, being away where anyone could hear. She was fine being kissed and touched, she even let go enough to come off against his fingers, but the instant he made a move to enter her, she bolted, hysterical. But he wasn’t going to leave it this time. They couldn’t have a ruction every blessed night, with tears in the ‘loo. He leapt up and stopped her closing the door, putting himself between it and the jamb. For all wee Annie’s teasing, he was still a strong young man.

‘Let me in,’ he said shortly. He pushed the door open and she stepped back.
‘We can’t go on this way, Jen.’ He ran a hand through his hair. ‘It’s no way to go on. You’re my wife.’ He took a step and she shrank from him.
‘No,’ she said in a small voice.
‘Jesus Christ!’ he exclaimed. ‘Did you not know what to expect? Did your mother never talk to you, or your sister? A girlfriend? For Jesus’ sake, you sat in the life class for four months with yer man hanging out for all the world to see; what the fuck did you think it was for?’
‘Don’t swear at me,’ she cried, her blue eyes gone fiery.
‘Well, there’s some passion to you anyway,’ he sneered, stomping back into the suite, swearing to himself. He sat on the bed, elbows on his knees, his hair hanging in his face. He had to get a hold of himself or he’d strike her, he was that angry. He heard her come back into the room and looked up.

‘Is there something wrong with you?’ he asked earnestly. It was the only reason he could think of. She was not over--religious, nor a prude in other ways.
‘What do you mean?’ She asked warily.
‘Did somebody force you?’ he elaborated. ‘Your brother, a priest, some randy jackeen at the school? Shite, I don’t know,’ he shook his head.
‘That’s a disgusting suggestion,’ she said tartly, coming forward, about to say more.
‘It wasn’t meant to be,’ he sighed. He frowned. ‘I was in earnest.’ He shook his head again. ‘If you would just tell me what the matter is, I’m sure we’ll do fine.’
‘There’s nothing the matter.’

He was not much for psychoanalysis, but even he could spot denial when he heard it. ‘Sinead,’ he said with exaggerated patience, ‘it is not normal for a girl of your age to have hysterical fits about sex. Not without something unpleasant having happened. For God’s sake, if some man violated you, you’re not to blame! No matter what the priests may say of your sort of girl.’
‘What does that mean?’ She was bristling now.
‘Oh Christ,’ he muttered, losing his temper. He jumped up and paced the room. ‘Nothing, for fuck’s sake! It was a joke! You’re the one with your suffrage meetings, your socialist ideas, and what all! You tell me what it means! Shite.’ He flung himself into the chair and sighed.
‘It wasn’t a man,’ she said stiffly. He looked up. She was standing in the middle of the room, shaking and pale, but her jaw twitched.

‘What d’you mean?’ He had a dawning idea, but he wanted to hear her say it. And say she did,
‘It was a girl.’ Her head came up. ‘Is a girl.’ Her fists were clenched.
In spite of his suspicion, he blanched to have it confirmed. ‘Why the hell,’ he said slowly, ‘didn’t you say any of this before yesterday?’ He rose from the chair and yanked his shirt off the bed. ‘Why the hell did you let me think everything was fine? Why the hell--’ his voice rose and he was shouting ‘didn’t you have the fucking nerve to tell me six months ago that you fancied girls!’
‘Not girls,’ she defended primly. ‘A girl. I’m not a lesbian.’
He was yanking on his clothes. ‘Like hell you’re not!’ She came near, put her hand on his arm.
‘Mick --’
‘Get away from me!’ he warned her. He stomped over to the wardrobe for his shoes.
‘Where are you going?’ She demanded.
‘Out,’ he barked. Bitch. Bloody bitch. Lying bloody bitch. He was into his coat when she asked,
‘Are you coming back?’
He glared at her. ‘I don’t know.’ She was between him and the door. ‘Get out of my way girl. I can’t stay in this room and not break your blasted neck --’ He shoved past her and slammed the door behind him.

He walked, long and long, through the nearly deserted streets of the unfamiliar town. He walked until he came to the Embankment and the quayside, his heart and mind all a blackness. There he sat at the water’s edge, uncaring of the wharfside riffraff who could do anything from robbery to bloody murder. Here he was at home, from old days in Sligo, and the Dublin quays. He sat on a pillarbox next to the sounds of the lough, the ships’ bells, and the distant sea. And cried. Cried for all that he had wanted and was lost to him: home, children, and the peace of a winter’s evening with the paidrin droning to the hush of snowfall.

It was his own bloody fault, he decided when he had cried himself out for the moment. He shouldn’t have married her to get out of being conscripted into the British army. She was always so chummy, it had never occurred to him she was anything but a decent young girl. He never guessed. She was nothing like the girls down the kips who had it off with other girls in the house. She was never so bold as that. He felt sick with the thought of her with a girl. Giving herself, open and free and passionate to some great blowsy bitch of a girl. He wanted nothing of her now. He looked out over the lough. It was a fine still warm summer’s night. A perfect night for making your best girl, for getting the wee one that would come in the spring. He thought of Molly. There was a woman to roll in your arms of a summer’s night. God knows, she liked men right well. Bridie too. Though Kate said she had run to fat, she came to his mind as she had been as a young girl, plump but graceful. A fine armful. He thought of all the nameless, faceless whores he’d had. A few stood out in his mind, for their artfulness or their fine white skin, or ripe bodies, or entrancing eyes. The rest were just a fuck.

Well, he was damned if he was going to suffer a monkish existence the rest of his life, with furtive trips down to Monto. He wanted a proper life. He wanted children. Annie and Tom’s brood, wild though they were, had made him ache for that life. And all the while, Jenny sitting there, knowing it was hopeless! No, he mustn’t go that way. He’d fall apart again. He needed a drink, and decided to walk back to the hotel for a bottle of whiskey.

It was a long walk. He hadn’t realised it was so far. When he got back it was gone half--twelve. The barman was just closing up, and he slipped him a fiver for a bottle. It was Scotch, heavy with peat, but he wasn’t picky. He took bottle and glass upstairs on the lift, tossing back two small ones on the way and another before he knocked up the door to the suite.

‘Let me in, damn you,’ he said, when Jenny didn’t come to the door. The heavy whiskey hit him like a roaring fire. Come and welcome, he thought. Come and welcome. Oblivion would not be far. Jenny came to the door after a long while and much banging from him. The only sort he would get with her, he thought with black humour. She opened the door at long last, blear--eyed and mussed. She had been sleeping. Not even the fucking courtesy to stay awake with worry.
‘Good evening,’ he said with an unsteady stage bow. ‘The husband has returned. Are you going to stand there or are you going to let me in? Rude if you don’t, as I paid for the room.’
‘You’re drunk,’ she said.
‘I’ve only just started,’ he said, going past her. He put the whiskey on the table beside the bed and took off his clothes. The air was heavy on his skin. Too heavy for blankets. He flung himself naked on the bed and stretched out on the spot she had vacated while she scowled in outrage.

Ignoring her, he took up bottle and glass again and poured himself another. Two. Three. His hand was a little unsteady with the next. He’d drunk half the bottle, and his brain was afire. Jenny was nothing but a petulant disapproving blur beside him. He poured another, drinking it slowly. The room was reeling, and he closed his eyes to make it stop. He was falling into the void. Yeats’ bloody gyre. It came to him that Paddy would have spotted her as a girl hag straight away. He was quick on things like that, he and his bloody kama sutra. Mick smiled. It had its uses. Molly was a fine time. He should thank the husband for the teaching of her. Paddy would like that. He’d have his comrades come round and blow his head off one night, dump him in the river. Wasn’t that what happened to the boyfriend? No, it was during the day. He’d read it in the archives. All this fuss over a bit of kip. He opened his eyes and looked over at Jenny. She had given up on him, thinking him asleep or dead drunk. He hadn’t wanted to row with her. He hated rows. He finished off the glass of whiskey and put it on the table by the bottle. What would they do? An annulment was probably in order, unless he could convince her to change her mind and follow nature’s course. If he wasn’t so drunk he could shag her now and have done with it. It would be sweet revenge. But there was no rousing poor old Willie. The room was spinning again. Too much thinking. He closed his eyes, and drifted off.

He had a fearsome hangover in the morning. Jenny shook him at half--seven.
‘Bugger off,’ he muttered.
‘Mick, we have to catch the train, your father’s expecting us.’
‘Not much to expect, is there?’ he sneered, rolling over and pushing himself up. ‘Oh Jesus Christ,’ his hands went to his head. ‘What was I thinking of?’
‘Have some tea,’ she said, handing him a cup. She was dressed, and her cases were by the door. ‘Mick!’
‘God, Jenny, don’t shout, my head’s about to burst.’ He took the teacup from her.
‘It serves you right.’
‘Ever the moralist,’ he muttered, heaving himself up and heading for the geyser. He felt better after a shower and shave, and ate the toast she forced on him while she brushed his suit down.

‘How very wifely of you, thank you,’ he said, when she was done. ‘No one could ever tell you’re afraid of men.’
She stood up and looked him in the eye. ‘You’re a mean little gobshite, Mick Rafferty.’ There was the suffragist, the brave Dublin girl he had courted.
‘I suppose I am,’ he agreed. ‘Pardon me for being disappointed.’
‘I’m not precisely kicking up my heels either,’ she said, folding her arms.
‘Spare me your pain.’ He went to the mirror to comb his hair. ‘Just what the hell did you think would happen? Why did you do it,’ he turned to look at her, ‘if I may be so bold as to enquire?’
‘I thought it would work,’ she said, pacing. ‘I thought I could do it. For my family, for decency’s sake. I ---- I still want to try.’

He stopped and looked at her. ‘What?’
She winced, wringing her hands. ‘I tried to tell you last night…. I still want to try.’
‘Won’t your girlfriend object?’
Tears glittered in her eyes. ‘Please! I know you’re hurt, and angry --’
‘Damn right!’
‘-- But I want to try. I want to give it a chance, give us a chance. Mick!’ Her pretty earnest face was supplicating.
‘Why?’
She winced again and drew a breath. ‘Because she’s gone from me,’ she said, and he knew he was hearing the truth at last. ‘She joined the overseas nursing corps at the beginning of the war and I haven’t heard from her since.’ Jenny shook her head. ‘I don’t know if what was is real or not. I never had a chance to find out with men, before you. Mick, it would kill my parents to know. I owe it to them to try a normal life. It’s hard enough for them my being an artist. I want to try.’

Her wrenching honesty forced his own. He put the brush down and came in to her.
‘I have my reasons too,’ he said, taking up her hands. ‘You know they’re threatening conscription for unmarried men.’
She looked up at him, the light dawning in her eyes. ‘Is that why?’ she said wonderingly. ‘You were mighty fresh all of a sudden. I wondered at it.’
‘There are other reasons,’ he said. ‘But that is the main one.’
‘What reasons?’
He shook his head.
‘What could be worse than frigging girls?’ she asked, smiling. There was definitely the emancipated Dublin socialist! He would have laughed, but his head ached too much. All right, her honesty deserved a return in kind.

‘There was a woman. She was married. It went rather badly,’ he admitted.
‘You had an affair? Who was she?’
Her curiosity was laughable. ‘No one you’d know.’ There was a knock on the door. The steward. Damn. ‘Just a minute,’ he called. ‘Jen, are you serious about this?’
‘Yes,’ she said grimly. ‘I am.’
He nodded. ‘All right. All right. We can talk on the train. We have to leave.’
‘I know.’

They made it to the train with twenty minutes to spare and arrived in Rathbarren at half--past four in the afternoon. On the train, they had curled up, whispering together in the second-- class compartment for the first two hours. They made their pact: they would give it a year. If she were pregnant by then, they would keep on. Even if they didn’t care for it, they would maintain the façade for the child’s sake. If she was not pregnant, they would reassess the matter and either keep on or separate. It was a Faustian bargain.
‘How would I know a big word like that?’ Jenny murmured, smiling.
‘Aren’t all you socialist radical types in with the Germans?’ he returned. He kissed her cheek. ‘Thank you, sweetheart.’ He laid his aching head on her shoulder then, and tried to sleep.

Da was greyer, but the same as ever. Jim was a big, powerful man now, the second groom at Annaghmore House. He’d have been noticeable in any company; great for the races and hunt meets, but very bad for a Fenian, if he had any hopes that way.

The first night they were home Da had the neighbours in. The Kilgallen brothers came of course with the old man Eoghan, being but up the road and on for any craic. Mike, Brennan, and Rourke were a sad how do you do compared to Seamus, who was dashing as a matinee idol, and Tom with his impressive strength and fine dancing. It was as if the spunk ran out of the old man with the younger boys. They were thin and weedy, neither handsome nor strong. There were two sisters between, Delia and Mary, both married to dockers and living in town. The Twomeys came, and with them Bridie and her wee spawn, all to look Sinead Gilligan over with a critical eye. Jenny was grand itself, charming, impish, and friendly, setting the local idea of Dubs on its ear. Bridie was sure to look him up and down when they were at the dancing in the byre. He had not brought a stitch of country clothes with him, for he would never be that spalpeen again, but all suits and good shoes and hats. That much he had Paddy Leary to thank for by example. He stood now in shirtsleeves smoking his pipe and watching Jenny dance with Bridie’s brother Dermot.

‘It’s a right jackeen you look,’ she murmured. Tom had said the same thing, but it was irritating coming from her. She had, as Kate reported, run to fat and was plump as the Christmas pudding. She yet had fine eyes, but for the rest, he was not sorry to have been thrown over. He’d have stifled, buried alive in this place with a carping wife. He heard her comment to her mother about Jenny, ‘Scranny plain thing she is too. He’ll get weeds from that one.’ Never mind she looked remarkably like his sisters. It was spite, pure spite.
‘Are you sorry for what you missed?’ He asked her now. ‘Who got the better bargain, I wonder?’
Her face became a cool mask of indifference. ‘I wonder that I ever loved you,’ she murmured, watching the dancing.
‘The more do I,’ he agreed pleasantly.
She did look at him now. ‘Oh, you are the high--up gent aren’t you now? But just you mind, there are those as knows where you came from!’
He smiled. ‘I’ve never denied it. I’ve nothing to hide.’ The dancing was ending and he threw himself away from the wall of the byre. ‘You’ll excuse me. I’ve a mind to dance with my wife.’ And so he left it. He had not a word further from Bridie the entire week they were home, though it was hard to miss her in Coolaney, with her parents’ house situated practically at the front door of the church..

He and Jenny spent the week roaming the countryside on bicycles, sketching and painting at Rosses Point, in the Ox Mountains, along the waterside in town. He took her to the vale above Lough Gill, where in old times he had gone with Bridie, and there the old magic of the place worked its will; he had her at last. It was not perfect, but it was a beginning. They were in collusion. He told her then that the place was fabled as a trysting spot from time out of legends, because of Fiondhiabhair and Fraeoch, and she laughed.
‘I never thought you a romantic, Mick Rafferty!’
He smiled, still in the lull of satiety. ‘Oh yes.’ He turned his head to look at her. ‘What did you think then?’
She laughed again. ‘I thought you a hard--headed realist, with your angry paintings.’
‘They’re not angry.... Truthful. Somebody has to tell the truth,’ He squinted up into the summer sky. ‘It’s what art is for, telling the truth’
‘So you said,’ she murmured, with a deep note of humour. He was verging on lecture--topics.
‘All right,’ he smiled, ‘Enough chat. Come here to me, and we’ll hush and listen to the birds awhile. Maybe we’ll feel inspired.’

He took her to Annaghmore House to pay a call on Charles Keane O’Hara. In former days that gentleman would never have allowed him the house, but they met him now in the hall of the rather seedy Georgian wreck, and The O’Hara shook his hand. Odd how he had never seen the place as derelict before, and he wondered if it had been so then. That progressive landlord was, in fact, no snob and asked them to sherry but Mick hadn’t intended to stay, and so they declined. The O’Hara was pleased that he was RHA now, but concerned to what use the expense of Trinity had been put.
‘You see it before you,’ Mick said, only a little mockingly. ‘Proof that an Irishman can be civilised with the benefit of education!’ He smiled. ‘In fact sir, I hope to go abroad once the war is over. I’d like to teach, see something of the world. It’s a fine way to do it.’ Jenny stared at him; it was the first she had heard of it. In fact, it had only just come to him.

‘Splendid, splendid, my boy,’ the O’Hara said. ‘That’s what I like to hear! Useful emigration, and not the old wrack and ruin! Your father does well, I understand?’
‘Tolerably, sir,’ Mick agreed. ‘But he’s getting on. A change of climate would do him good.’
‘Oh, you’ll never get the old ones off the land, my boy, you can count on it!’ The O’Hara said ruefully. ‘The best you’ll do is to make his life easy for him.’
‘I do my best.’ Mick said. ‘Five pounds a month. He won’t take more. But he has managed to spruce things up a bit.’ True enough, Da had a proper range now, new furniture, and lamps. No electricity, but there wasn’t any in the district apart from Sligo town and places like Annaghmore.
‘Good good,’ the O’Hara said.
‘Well, we should be going,’ Mick said.
‘Of course of course!’ he turned to Jenny. ‘Lovely to meet you, my dear. I hope you’ll be very happy.’
Jenny slid a glance at him. ‘I’m sure we will, Mr. O’Hara. Thank you.’

Father Doyle she met at the Mass on Sunday. The old man, greying now but hard as ever, read their names out in welcome and said to Mick as the company gathered for the afters,
‘It’s well you’ve done by us, Micheál, I’m not too proud to say.’ He held out his hand.
All the long years of struggle between them were thus put away so neatly, as if it were nothing at all. Mick met the old man’s eye, his mouth pursing with unsaid words. He pushed back his hat, and accepted the proffered hand.
‘Thank you, Father.’ This man would be dead before he came here again, he reminded himself . It was as well to let him die in peace without knowing the misery he had caused him, the ‘priest’s boy.’

In the afternoon, he and Jenny got on the Dublin train. It was a measure of how far he had come that he didn’t stint to break the prohibition against travelling on Sunday. Da came out to the station at Rathbarren to see them off. They stood on the platform as they had done so long ago, and it was as hard, for his father was not the man he had been. Oh, still tall and straight and spare, but he was failing slowly. Mickey wondered if he had done the right thing to have Kate out to Dublin; Da had no one here but Jim now. Not a grandchild about to keep him young.
‘You’ll be all right, Da?’ he asked, anxiously.
Sean’s eyes filled with tears. ‘We’ll do all right, boy.’ In all the years of his father’s widowerhood, he had never thought of him as lonely. He did now, and it went hard. Heedless as the boy he had been on leaving this place, he flung his arms about his father in an embrace.
‘I love you, Da,’ he cried, the words hoarse in his aching throat. Come with me! he wanted to say, but he knew Sean would not.
‘Mickeen --’ Da thumped him on the back and broke away to take Jenny’s hands.
‘You mind yourselves!’ he said fiercely. It said everything.
‘We will,’ Jenny promised. Her golden smile was the right touch. ‘Good--bye sir. We’ll write when we get home.’
‘Ah, she’s a grand girl, Mick,’ Da said.
Mickey smiled. ‘So she is.’ The whistle sounded, and he looked up. ‘Ah, that’s us.’ He looked at his father again. ‘ Take care, Da.’
Sean nodded, and watched them get on the train. He remained there, a lonely figure, until they pulled out towards Annaghmore. From the overhead compartment, Mick pulled down a sketchpad and pencils.

‘Mick! What’re you doing?’ Jenny exclaimed.
He stopped and looked down at her over his shoulder. ‘I left more than my old father standing there just now,’ he said fiercely. ‘It’s a whole world, Jenny girl. A whole little world. I don’t belong there anymore, but I can’t leave it --’ He flung himself into the seat and drew for three hours while the picture of Sean standing alone at the little railway station was vivid in his mind. By that time, they were halfway to Belfast.

On 29 June, Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, old the Fenian, died in New York. His body was shipped back to Ireland and lay in state in City Hall in Dublin, viewed by thousands of mourners, until the morning of 1 August, when there assembled the largest funeral procession in Dublin since the death of Parnell. Borne by an honour guard of Volunteers and Citizen Army, the coffin was followed through the streets of Dublin by an estimated 10,000 people before the burial at Glasnevin. Mick was there for the paper, taking photographs. He had not followed to procession, being more concerned with getting out to Glasnevin and setting up a good vantage. It was a good thing he had not; it took him three hours to go the normal ten minutes from the city centre on the overcrowded special trams.

The Volunteers were out in force, with their honour guard, their speeches, and their final volley of rifle fire. Pearse, the headmaster of St. Enda’s school, caused a sensation by giving an inflammatory speech, calling for a general rising of the country while England was elsewhere occupied.
‘They think they have pacified Ireland. They think that they have purchased
half of us and intimidated the other half. They think they have foreseen everything
and provided against everything -- but the fools, the fools, the fools! They have left
us our Fenian dead! And while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland unfree shall never
be at peace!’

It was only during the volley that Mick noticed Paddy Leary standing in the line of Volunteers, smartly dressed in the grey--green uniform. He managed to make his way toward him in the general milling before the retreat, and catch him up before he fell in with the other Volunteers on their march back to Dublin.
‘Paddy!’
He turned, never more austere even in lecture hall. He was pale and gaunt, his eyes glitteringly intense behind the glasses. He had been crying, Mick realised belatedly.
‘Fancy meeting you here,’ Leary said coldly.
‘I’m here with the paper.’
The smile was acid. ‘Oh yes, Murphy’s rag.’
He faltered. ‘I wanted to say --’
‘Yes?’ Jesus, would the man give no quarter?
‘I’m sorry how things have gone with us. --’
Paddy looked out over the crowd. ‘This is hardly the time and place.’ He looked him level in the eye. ‘Nor am I much disposed in any case to listen to you. If you’ll excuse me,’ there was a mocking glint in those hazel eyes. ‘I am still on duty.’ He nodded shortly and stalked away towards a group of Volunteers standing with Pearse, Tom MacDonagh, and Tom Clarke the tobacconist. Mick sighed. Why had he even bothered?

But there was a reason: he remembered his promise to Tom. So he went during Paddy’s regular Thursday office hours up the stairs to the cramped third floor office that held so many memories. It could have been the last walk of the condemned so filled with dread was he. He tapped on the door, praying that idiot Oliver was out. The last thing he wanted was an audience.

‘Enter,’ came the abstracted summons. He did, and Paddy turned from the desk. He was as ever dressed in an immaculately tailored suit, a cigarette burning in the dish beside him; around him strewn papers and books of every description.
‘What the hell do you want?’ Paddy scowled. He put down his pen.
There was no point in beating round the bush. ‘I have a favour to ask of you, for my brother,’ he said, coming into the narrow aisle between the bookshelves.
‘Bloody cheek!’ Paddy exclaimed. He picked up the cigarette and took a long drag. ‘Why should you think I would do a favour for you?’ He blew out smoke sharply.
‘Because it is in the same cause,’ he said in Irish. ‘Your cause.’ It was difficult to ignore the barbs, but his words had the intended effect. Paddy’s eyes narrowed with interest, and he leaned back in his chair.
‘And what might that be?’ he murmured smoothly in Irish.
‘I don’t have time to play games with you,’ Mick said, shaking his head. He clamped his hand on Oliver’s chair. ‘My brother needs a place to stay in September -- you would know better why than I -- and I have been asked to help find him a place. He’s in America at the moment; his name is Sean.’
Paddy raised his head, consideringly. ‘Asked by whom?’
‘My brother--in--law.’
Paddy frowned, taking another drag on the cigarette. ‘Why did you come to me?’
‘You’re the obvious person to come to,’ Mick said dryly. ‘I’m not intimate with too many others of your stripe.’

Paddy shrugged. He could see him thinking it was as good a reason as any. He mashed out the cigarette in the dish. ‘All right,’ he said, reaching for a piece of paper and slapping it on the desk. ‘Give him this address--’ he wrote out something in that long, elegant scrawl Mick knew so well and handed over the paper. On it was an address in Merrion. ‘They will know who wrote it by the hand. It’s all I can do.’ Their eyes met.
‘It’s more than enough, ‘ Mick said. ‘Thanks, Paddy.’ His answer was a fleeting expression across that ever--mobile face. He looked about to speak for a moment, then thought the better of it.
‘I meant what I said the other day,’ Mick ventured, second--guessing, ‘irrespective of this,’ he turned the paper up in his hand.
‘Perhaps you did,’ Paddy said without emphasis. His glance drifted to the middle distance and back sharply. ‘Mick,’ he said tautly, ‘can’t you understand what a betrayal it was, from you of all people?’ It was the first he had intimated that he too mourned the loss of their early camaraderie. They regarded one another across the narrow distance. He had admired this man, loved him; still did, in a peculiar, aching way. But all was destroyed now, all for one magnificent, distracting woman. A strange brotherhood it was, of those who had fallen under her sway. The deepest bonds they had severed for her.

Mick nodded. ‘Thank you Paddy, for the address. It means a lot to the family.’
Again, there was a wash of wordless expressions across the professor’s fine handsome face. At last he nodded. They made their brief farewells and Mickey went out, shaken, as he rounded the corner for the stairs. Something fine had been lost, and they would not see its like again.