Chapter Twenty: Derry March--July 1920

The green Austin touring sedan grumbled and bounced over the last mile before the stakeout spot before the RIC barracks at Bridge End. On a lonely stretch of road where the hill sloped down outside the border town into heather and bracken, Geordie Mahoney braked the car. He leaned back against the seat, looking at them.
‘There it is, lads. God be with yez.’ His glasses sparkled in the sun and the wisp of hair on his balding head beneath the RIC service cap blew in the wind.

They all climbed out -- Paddy, Tom and Seamus Kilgallen, Liam and Timmy Sullivan, Jack Dawney, Dinny Seaver, and Pat MacFarland -- carrying their rifles, the grenades, incendiary devices, and road kits. It had been a long cramped ride with the nine of them even the eight or nine miles around the Grianan to this place. They were about a mile and a half from the Donegal border on the Buncrana road. The Grianan of Ailech was behind them, and Ballyarnet -- the next nearest National station -- was to the east of them. Far enough away not to be on the scene immediately should the job not go well. The sun was just beginning to set before them and Paddy was grateful it had taken them so long to get here on that cartpath of a road. It was not his first choice to undertake a daylight raid on an RIC barracks even for arms and explosives. They were such a small company -- not even a full company, hardly a squad since they had lost two men in an explosion in the gasworks in December -- that they could hardly afford to lose anyone to accidents. It was a pity that only eight of their twenty--two men had managed to turn up.

‘Thanks, Geordie,’ Paddy said. ‘See you in Derry.’
‘Right, Paidín,’ Geordie made a salute. ‘Hey,’ he said to the lads, ‘will one of yez give me a turn?’
‘I will,’ Paddy said. ‘Go on,’ he said to Tom, ‘I’ll be along in a minute.’ He went to the front of the Austin and cranked it. When the car was started, he stood back and walked quickly away, melting into the heath as the others had done. He could take no risk of being seen on the road, especially with an RIC man. He was lucky to have met up with Geordie Mahoney in the first year they were here. It was downtown at the Grand Hotel on a Sunday lunch with Molly and the children. He was going into the jacks, following the man, Geordie, who had been in the lobby when they came in. He literally ran into him coming out. He was obviously being watched, but he never would have taken him for an RIC man. They generally kept to themselves and didn’t fraternise with the locals. Geordie apologised and went back in with him. In a few quick words, he made it clear that he wanted to help and could. He was good for it, for since then most of their information had come from him, and not a few permits and schedules besides. Paddy had asked him once why he did it.
‘Why are you?’ Geordie returned. ‘You IRB men aren’t the only ones who want the English out of our country. This seemed to me the best way for me to work.’ That was as may be, but it was a terrible risk, far greater than any Paddy himself had taken; he had not taken on Oath of Allegiance to the British Crown.

When he came on the lads, he took the field glasses from his kit bag. From where they were stationed he could just see the road leading from the barracks down past them. He had combed Ordinance Survey maps for ten miles around Derry and knew every rock and ditch. Thanks to Geordie, he also had the transfer schedules of every National station from Carrowkeel to Strabane.
‘What time is it?’ He asked no one in particular, looking under his arm as he lay in the heath beside Tom and Dinny.
Joe pulled out his watch. ‘Going on half--four.’
Lying there with the heath up to his ears, he knew it would be a long hour before the usual evening patrol went out.
‘That gives us an hour,’ he joked. ‘Did anyone bring tea? We can have a nice wee picnic.’
‘Why not,’ Tom said, ‘we’ve got plenty of eggs!’
‘Nah,’ Patsy MacFarland said. ‘The Tommies like eggs much better than we bog micks. Sure, weren’t they ateing them breakfast dinner and tea over on the Western Front.’
‘Well then,’ Paddy said. ‘They’ll be getting just what they like, now won’t they? Liam!’ He called to Sullivan, ‘you and Timmy and Jack go set up near the road. But for Jesus sake, keep down and keep before the curve of the road there. I don’t know how far up they can see from the barracks.’
‘Aye.’ Liam said, and hurried off with his brother and Jack. They set two at different points along the road; the charges fixed with a tripwire.

It was half--five exactly when the patrol was spotted coming out of the barrack yard and turning into the road. Timmy came flying over from his place a few yards away.
‘Here they come,’ Tim muttered, crouching down. He checked the rounds in his rifles with the bandolier slung across his chest. Everyone else waited tensely for the word to move.
‘I know,’ Paddy said. ‘Hold steady. We don’t want to alert them.’ He shoved the field glasses at Tom. ‘What’s their number, do you say?’
Tom spat out heather. ‘Six or eight, about even with us. The driver won’t be armed.’
‘Right.’ They waited. The lorry moved nearer. As it came around the bend, Paddy waved his arm. ‘Abu,’ he spat shortly, and they rushed the lorry at full fire, coming down from the hill in a ragged column. Two of the RIC fell off the lorry and lay on the road in blood, twitching. The others scrambled for cover behind the armoured lorry and began returning fire. There came a penetrating blaze from a semiautomatic Thompson that sent Pat MacFarland flying backward across the heath.

Paddy threw himself on the ground, firing blindly at the shadowed figures on the other side of the lorry. He looked around wildly. If he could get to the back of the lorry, he maybe could hit the petrol tank and spare the ammunition. He saw Tom’s arm pouring blood as he lobbed a live grenade into the lorry. It exploded and the lorry began to burn. The RIC dispersed.
‘Look out! It’s going to blow! Cover! Cover!’ Paddy shouted. Through the din, Liam looked up, flung down his Mauser and took a couple of running steps for the ditch at the side of the road. He never made it. The fire on the lorry reached the petrol tank and it went up in a spectacular blaze, setting off their incendiary devices nearby. Inside two minutes the whole place was a roaring hell and Liam’s mangled form was scattered about the road. Paddy covered his head in his arms in the road, the scorching heat, showering sparks and shrapnel splinters burning into his clothes. The stink was incredible.

When the blaze had died down a little, they peered out cautiously. The lorry was a smoking ruin, still in flames, and the bodies of their men and the police were strewn everywhere.
Dinny stood up. ‘Will you fucking look at that,’ he said in wonder.
‘We don’t have time,’ Tom said, looking wildly around.
‘Let’s get to the barrack before the other lot arrive,’ Paddy said. He tossed his head. ‘Come on!’ There were upwards of thirty rifles in that National station and he was damned if he was going to let them go.
‘But Liam----’ Tim began, dazed.
‘That’s an order, soldier!’ Paddy bellowed. If they lost all discipline now they were done for. Tim stopped his crying with an effort and trotted along up the road.

They put the desk sergeant under armed guard and were in and out of the place with sacks, rifles and ammunition in five minutes, and over the hill towards the Grianan under the cover of darkness. They fired the barracks on the way out with a grenade, but had sent the constabulary out into the heath first, without shoes. Ballyarnet was called out, the papers reported, but they never came near them. This was not a bandit raid on an innocent police station, as the Derry Standard called it, for the RIC were the army of occupation, watching everything and everyone. It was said that you couldn’t go to the jacks in a pub without three RIC stations knowing about it. It was not much of a joke. The sooner they were disabled the better.

‘There was nothing else for it, Timmy,’ Paddy told the distraught boy when they got back to HQ – the room above Dick Faolain’s drygoods shop. He was upset because they had left his brother scattered on the road. But they had left Patsy too, of necessity. ‘Liam was all blown to hell. They’ll never even identify all the bits.’ Tim started at him sullenly. ‘He knew what he was about,’ Paddy said, in a gentler tone. ‘He knew the risks and took them gamely. If it’s any consolation to you, I’m sorry to lose him, as well… He was the best bloody bomber I ever met with. It’s a fucking waste.’

In the end, the constabulary did manage to identify the remains of Patsy and poor Liam, and the funeral was held the next Saturday. Of the pallbearers, all were men of the column, though they went in dark Sunday suits without uniform insignia. Paddy however wore his Gaelic League pin, ostensibly part of his pose as a harmless schoolteacher. Mary Sullivan told him at the wake that she was grateful for his dealing with Tim.
‘I know you did all you could for the poor boy, or he’d have gone mad entirely.’ They were hard words to hear. He’d marched the boy and the others of their company up and down out in the Grianan for three days running and he was exhausted with it. But discipline was the only thing he knew to keep their fighting spirit up.
‘I’m just sorry, ma’am, that better couldn’t be done for Liam.’ He said, taking her hand.
‘You’re a grand fellow, Paddy,’ Mary said patting his hand in thanks. ‘And you with your own troubles.’

Molly looked up at them from across the room at this, and their eyes met. Their Eamonn had died during the Orange riots last year. He had been out on street defence with the men at the time. He did feel badly for having missed it, that she had to go through that alone, but the larger concern of their very lives absorbed him. They might all be dead if he had stayed at home. But he missed the wee ane. Eamonn was just creeping about and beginning to stand, beginning to be interesting and when he wasn’t sick he was the cheeriest wee fellow. Every day Paddy and the older children came in from school he would crow with delight and hurry along, raising his arms to be lifted up by one of them, and most often he wanted Dada. Now the house was quiet. Paddy liked having babies in the house. The children’s noise never troubled him. It was life and joyous to him, even if they were squealing and rowing.... The only thing for it was to have another, but he and Molly were having no luck that way, though not for want of trying.

For the baby’s death had worked a curious consolidation with them. Molly was convinced that had it not been for their continual harassment by the Unionists, Eamonn would not have been so delicate and perhaps that was true. It was also true that neither of them had been well at his conception and she had nearly died of flu when she was carrying him; all these things factored in. But he was grateful for her tacit support since. It made living easier not to walk in every day and face her muted hostility. As she had said, she would never be a ‘Sinn Feiner’, but she was a keen realist who could accept the way things were and honour the bargains she made and that was enough for him. They were close again, as they had been when he came back from Frongoch.

As he watched her daily struggle, putting up with the same conditions as the neighbours he grew proud of her. She was quick, smart, kind, and capable now. She had followed him into this life completely unprepared for the actuality of it and it had called up the very best in her. She was equal to it and he loved her for it, for her courage and stoicism, for her loyalty most of all. They never discussed his activities -- the less she knew the better for her – and he was always careful to send her out of harm’s way when needs be. She always went quietly, never asking why. Molly would have been shocked had he suggested she was in effect supporting the republican movement so he kept this observation to himself, and they went on as happily together as they had ever done. If only they could have another child.

He refused to allow himself to consider what would happen if he should be killed and she left pregnant or with a young baby. The Loyalists were not kind to republican widows in these parts. But he had no intention of being killed. He had survived thus far after all, and he was not foolhardy about the jobs they undertook. He wanted another child very much, for the simple reason that it was life affirming. They lived with so much death and suffering, sheer bloody terror all the time; he needed children to remind him that it would not always be this way.
He met Molly’s eye and she rose and came to where he stood by Mary’s chair.
‘Let me fill your glass, Mary,’ she said, and pressed his hand as she passed into the kitchen.

A fortnight later Paddy was in Pat Halinan’s when Shay Kilgallen came in and threw his leg over the nearest chair.
‘Hey,’ Paddy said, without looking up from the newspaper.
‘Hey,’ Seamus returned, and the tone of his voice put Paddy on the alert.
‘What’s the do?’
‘We’ve got us a spy.’ He said, sotto--voce, and ran a hand over his face.
Paddy brushed away the smoke between them, his bowels all going to water, and scowled at Shay’s crabbed brown face below the wild brown hair of all his breed.
‘Are you sure, Jim?’ The matter was of such gravity that there was no room for mistakes. Seamus nodded vigorously, and a lock of dun--brown hair fell across his forehead.
‘Sure, amn’t I?’ he muttered. ‘He came to me himself did he, the shoneen, with his tale in the strictest confidence not an hour since when I was fetching me dinner.’
‘Well,’ Paddy spat out a loose bit of tobacco as he crushed out the cigarette. ‘Well indeed.’ He squinted at Shay, tilting his head. ‘What did you say?’
Kilgallen shrugged. ‘Not much. I let him think it was all nothing to me. I wanted to let you know first.’ They eyed each other, knowing what lay ahead.
‘Good man.’ An entrance at the pub door caught his attention and he looked up, a cool chill racing through him at the sight. It was their informer himself. Sure if there wasn’t a stupider fellow in all the world he wasn’t to be found. Quickly, Paddy glanced down at the paper, muttering to Shay, ‘e fein,’ for the shoneen did not understand Irish. Shay went pale and his mouth tightened as the traitor came up with Tim Sullivan, who had been standing beside the door. They sat down at the nearby table.

Paddy glanced over, meeting the young man’s eyes, and in them he saw the guilty knowledge even before the vague flush of confusion spread over his face. Paddy’s mind was all a cold burning rage for the danger this idiot had put his men into and for his consummate foolishness in coming here. If he’d had the sense God gave a goat, he’d have taken the bloody money and fled to Birmingham as others before him. He reached into his coat for his cigarette case, and he saw the shoneen pale. Don’t worry, man dear, he promised, I am not so thoughtless.
‘Timmy,’ he greeted the boy with a nod.
‘Hiya Paddy,’ Tim said.

Paddy got up from the table and went over to the bar where Pat Halinan stood watching impassively. He leaned backwards on the bar. ‘The jig is up,’ he muttered, and Pat nodded slowly. Paddy turned around and faced him. ‘I need to speak with him first, and find out how much they know. Can we use your office?’
‘He could be watched,’ Pat cautioned. ‘They could be waiting.’
‘They probably are,’ he agreed. ‘I’ll leave Timmy out here. Give us the signal if you suspect anything.’
‘Right--o,’ Pat nodded.

Paddy went and sat down again where Seamus and Tim were making casual conversation with the shoneen. He lit a cigarette patiently, listening but not involving himself in the conversation, and observed their man without appearing to. He was nervous and fidgety, unlike his usual self so that even Tim cast him an irritated glance. He watched him unawares a long time until the shoneen finally looked up, his blue eyes barely concealing an animal fear. There was a sudden tension in their little group, and the conversation stalled. Into the silence, Paddy said,
‘Oh, Johnny--me--lad, it reminds me: we have a bit of a job to do with you.’ Their new recruit exchanged startled glances with Tim, who glanced at Seamus. Shay shrugged and tossed his head. The shoneen gave a squeak like a bird and managed, in an unnaturally high voice,
‘Oh yes.’
‘Why don't we,’ Paddy suggested smoothly, ‘step into the back and discuss it?’ He looked up at Seamus. ‘Jim, why don’t you fetch Timmy a pint? I’ll see you in the back.’ Seamus nodded. He was to clue Tim in, and Paddy rose, leaving the informer to follow after him.

Pat’s back room was a closet of a place, with a cot and a rickety desk wedged between the two ends of the walls with a space of barely six feet between. This was littered with boxes and papers and the paraphernalia of his trade. Paddy took a seat at the desk, easily, saying nothing, leaving the traitor to stand in fear and dread. Harmlessly, he smoked the cigarette he was carrying, and mashed it out at length on the tray in the gallery. He could feel the animal terror of the man behind him. If it was a trap, then this poor fool was a better actor than he imagined.

Shay came in at last, carrying a pint for appearance’s sake, for he did not drink. This he placed on the desk out of harm’s way and went to sit on the cot. Paddy turned around then and he saw by the informer’s nervous swallowing that he would find speech difficult. Oh yes, he would be knowing that queer dangerous thrill that made the knees go weak and turned all the bowels to water. Yes indeed. He learned about that right well back in ’16. Now, he proceeded slowly and cautiously with their man.

‘Oh yes,’ he nodded to their tout. ‘We have come up with a very necessary job to do with you. It concerns security, a highly dangerous and delicate matter, you know?’
‘Aye,’ the informer’s eyes darted from one of them to the other. If he was expecting a roughing up, he was wrong. They had learnt by their collective experience with the forces of occupation a better way. Terror they had learnt well.
‘Right,’ Paddy intoned, and cracked his knuckles, which had never been right since the Scrubs. ‘Now, this here must be credited Seamus, for it was he who brought the need to my attention, and rightly so. Isn’t that true, Jim?’
Seamus nodded, his brown face a quiet mask. His narrow green--grey eyes were impassive and shrewd, giving nothing away.

‘To be sure,’ Paddy continued, seeing a sheen beginning on their man’s forehead. He was knowing his fate now, rather than suspecting it. Sure, wasn’t he as versed as they in terrorisation techniques. They had learnt from the same master. ‘To be sure, security is a delicate matter. One slip to the wrong agency and the whole is for naught. Why imagine,’ he said innocently, ‘if for instance the garrison found out about our guns? They’d have the lot of us dead to rights. Imagine what would happen to our wives and sweethearts, our children and parents in these times if we were shot for arms possession? It would be dreadful.’
‘Not to mention,’ Shay put in, ‘ what would become of the one who betrayed us. We don’t take kindly to turncoats. It’s a fact, isn’t it Paidín?’
‘Historical and proven,’ Paddy agreed with slow solemnity. He leant backward in the chair for his cigarette case. As he put a match to the tobacco, there was a profound silence, which he broke sharply exhaling blue white smoke. He bent a shrewd glance at their victim.

‘You’ve been in Ireland a while, laddie,’ he said. ‘Surely you must have heard about our old traditions. Do you know, as a point of history, what we barbaric Irish do to those who betray us?’ Their victim shook his head in vigorous terrified silence. His eyes were so wide that they were more white than blue and his dark blond hair began to plaster to his skull in the closeness of the room. His face was white and there were shadows under his dilated eyes. He suddenly looked younger than his twenty--two years.

‘Well,’ Paddy said, leaning forward to brace his elbows against his knees. ‘It is soon told,’ he murmured. He took a drag on the cigarette. ‘One time in Ireland, right in this very town it was, there was a young and a brave lad come over from England looking for adventure. It was adventure he found, at the behest of the garrison’s army, for he was a soldier lad. But he took pity on the wretched conditions of the native people and strove in his mind some way to ease their suffering woes. He was taken into confidence of the heather boys and shown the old ways of our country, sworn by God into the utmost secrecy of this initiation. But it was fear that soon gripped him for his knowledge, and it was greed that betook upon his heart when a garrison captain offered him money and commission to sell the knowledge of the natives’ ways. So he was bought and sold. But it was one of his heather friends spied him at this, and soon enough he was brought before the elders of the fianna -- family, brotherhood, that is -- and on him the poor unfortunate, the creature, was passed a sentence of death.’ He paused to let the dread of the words sink in, and looked briefly at Seamus now, for up till this time he had kept his gaze fixedly on the shoneen. Shay nodded slowly.

‘Howbeit,’ he went on, ‘before they put him to death they enquired of him, as they in their turn had been enquired of by their foreign captors, the extent of his betrayal and all the information he knew of concerning the actions of his fellows. And that, man dear,’ he intoned silkily, ‘is the end of my little story.’ He and Shay rose in accord. ‘Except that now, jackeen, you are going to tell us what you know. If you try to escape, Seamus here will shoot ye --’ Shay pulled his revolver from his coat. ‘If not Seamus, then Timmy, who’s just outside the door. And Timmy has an especial dislike of touts.’ He cracked his knuckles again, saying softly, ‘So talk, man dear.’

Seamus stepped up, leaned against the door, with his revolver resting casually against his leg. But he was a crack shot, and their man knew it. Their victim licked his lips and looked from one of them to the other frantically. But here he would find no mercy, no pay--off. They had neither the money nor the lack of scruple to do it. Their victim’s mouth worked several times with a way to beginning, but nothing came out, he was so terrified.
‘Come, come,’ Paddy exclaimed impatiently at last. They couldn’t be all night about this. He had copybooks to mark at home. ‘Do the army know where our guns are?’
The tout nodded vigorously. ‘Yes,’ he managed to gasp.
‘Do they know our number?’
Again, a terrified nod.
‘Insofar as you are aware of it,’ Paddy commented briefly. Surely the garrison did not believe them stupid enough to tell all to this fool. ‘Names?’
‘Aye,’ the young man said. ‘T--those I knew.’
‘Any of our future plans?’
Nod again. Paddy scowled in disgust. ‘You didn’t leave much, did you?’ He enquired rhetorically. He paced a moment, turning on his heel sharply, then spun back again, sneering, ‘Tell me did they get this information gratis or did they give you safe passage and all?’ He flung up his hand. ‘Never mind! Jim,’ he barked, ‘tell Timmy to fetch my motor and bring it round.’ He gave their victim a look of disdain. ‘The sooner we dispatch this idiot the better. Oh, and if Tommy’s out there, tell him to get ahold of Geordie and move the cache.’ Geordie was the best friend their unit had in this area and the tout didn’t know about him.

Shay nodded. ‘Right you,’ he said and put his revolver away before slipping naturally out the door. Paddy sat down. The tout made the barest gesture toward the door. Paddy had the Webley out and ready.
‘Do it,’ he said in a deadly tone, ‘and I’ll shoot you right here. I have no qualms. And believe me I won’t dispatch you quickly, either.’ The blue eyes of their shoneen met his in horror. The boy sank down on the cot in despair. There was a long and tense silence while they waited.
‘You think we’re fairly terrible, is it,’ Paddy said conversationally, into the breach. The white face nodded with slow caution. He was condemned, but the manner of his execution was his only mystery. It was best for it to remain that way. He had no fear of a trap now; the utter dread of the boy could not be so well acted. He leaned his elbow on the desk.
‘Well, do let me tell you it’s no worse than what some of our lads have endured at English hands. Ask Seamus. He was at Lewes. Maybe he’ll tell you about it on the way up to the Grianan.’ The door opened again and Seamus himself came in.
‘The car’s ready,’ he said tersely. ‘Tommy and a couple of the lads are moving things. So it’s ready when you are.’ He glanced at the informer without pity.
‘Right,’ Paddy said, and rose. ‘Let’s off.’ He went with Seamus to the cot where their victim still sat. ‘Come on, maneen,’ he said grasping the boy under the elbow as Shay took the other. ‘We have an appointment to keep with Madame Fate.’

They took him out the back where Timmy had the car waiting and running. He jumped in the front seat while Tim and Seamus took care of their informer in the back. He drove at a normal speed, mostly through back alleyways, some of which were barely wide enough for the car, until they came to the Carrigans road and the small wee laneway that bisected it across the bog, running over around the Grianan towards Newtowncunningham in Donegal on the other side. Finally they came to a stretch of bog that was far enough away from habitation to suit him.

The sky was growing dark with rain. He leaned over and yanked the torch out of the glove box and jumped out of the car, lighting the way ahead for the other two and their burden. He stopped when they came to the straight blank face of the bog, where life fell away into poisoning, embalming water, and spoke to Tim as they passed,
‘Have you everything?’
‘Aye,’ Tim said shortly. This was no pleasant business and the sooner done the better.
‘Right then.’ Paddy switched off the torch and turned his back on the little party, keeping watch. Shay and Tim pushed their victim ahead of them, gagged and bound with hand and knee loosely spanciled. He watched down the long road in the wind from the lough, watching for passing persons or vehicles, watching the Derry lights come on, smelling the rain coming on, and listening to the soft sounds of the prematurely falling night, to the carefully muffled sounds of the execution going on behind him.

The victim went down on his knees with a thud as the spancil around his knees and ankles was drawn up. He heard the soft voices of Tim and Shay settling matters between them. The cadence of their soft speech was subtler then as they murmured a prayer for their victim in Irish:
‘May the Lord have mercy on you and comfort you in the hour of your death. Amen.’
There was the briefest of silences and then two cushioned shots which might have been a roll of thunder across the sky. He heard again the soft voices, ‘Ave Maria, gratia plena Dominus tecum...’ There was a furtive fumbling then as they struggled to get the sign about the lolling dead, and finally a splash as the body was pushed over into the murky bog--water. It would be found in a few days, weather--eaten and stained brown by the bog. But the sign would be clear. Tim wrote it on oilcloth,
‘Spies and Traitors Beware. IRA.’ That was Mick Collins’ directive.
Timmy came up behind him now. ‘Well, that’s that,’ he said matter of factly.
‘Yes,’ he sighed. ‘Now our work begins.’ He clapped Shay on the back as he came up. ‘Well done lads,’ he said without fanfare. They knew it as well as he. ‘Now let’s get back home before the ladies worry.’ He strode ahead of them and climbed in to switch on the car as it began to rain.

Molly went to Dublin early in April to visit Liz and George Talbot, now Viscount and Viscountess Fitzallen, taking the children with her. They came into Harcourt street station and found it teeming with masses of British troops, so hastily sent over that they hadn’t even proper uniforms, but were outfitted in an odd combination the British service and RIC uniforms. Instead of caps most of them of them wore tams or Glengarry bonnets. They were the most undisciplined crowd of garrison soldiers Molly had ever seen, shouting and swearing, harassing passers--by, making rude remarks to ladies -- ladies, not just women. She took Katie firmly by the hand and they hurried into Liz’s waiting car with relief.
‘Them are the Black an Tans Da was talking about,’ Joe observed. ‘He says they’re sendin them against us too, be an be.’
‘Hush,’ Molly told him, looking out the window. But she was shaking. Dublin was crawling with them. There were barricades and checkpoints everywhere, even in the few blocks to Merrion Square. Men were searched or shot in the streets in broad daylight, homes entered without warning and the men all shot, nationalists or not. There was truly nowhere safe now.

At Sunday tea, they sat in the great salon at the back of the house. George was reading out from the Times about the latest IRA attacks on the G--Division of Dublin Castle and how a bounty had been set on the head of one of them, some man named Collins, at £10,000. Joe got up and began pacing the room at this, ran his hand through his hair agitatedly. It reminded Molly so of Paddy, especially as he had grown tall this last year. He was now nearly as tall as she was, and he was only ten. They had put him into long trousers because it was absurd for him to go about in short ones. In a year or two he would be as tall as his father, but now he was still thin and beardless which was a blessing, but at a distance he could be taken for a man. It didn’t please her that he was so evidently in sympathy with the nationalists. He was a danger to himself.
Liz noticed her looking at him, and smiled. ‘He certainly is coming a handsome young man, just like his father.’
‘Yes,’ she managed to smile, and drank her tea.

She remembered the day she and Paddy had the conversation about long trousers. It was before tea and she had just put Katie down for a nap. Joe and Sally were out running with the neighbour children and so they were alone in the bedroom where she was putting away the laundry. He was so rarely home these days that she had to seize the opportunity to talk with him about it, for it had been on her mind for weeks.
‘Ah sure,’ Paddy agreed, with a smirk, ‘he’ll be a wanker any day now. I was, about his age.’
She stared at him, astonished at his boldness. He was grinning at her now and she laughed, because it was so outrageous.’ You still are,’ she teased. He came running at her, tearing the laundry from her fingers and swooping her up in his arms. She screamed and laughed and when he finally put her down after swinging her around, he kissed her.
‘Come on, Mallaidh arun,’ he murmured coaxingly in low soft tones. ‘We’ve an entire hour until teatime all to ourselves.’ He kissed her again. ‘Make hay while the sun shines, I say.’

Her pulse was racing warmly. ‘What if Joe and Sally come in?’ She asked, a not very convincing protest.
His hand was creeping up under her skirt. ‘Then they’ll know what a shameless hussy you are,’ he murmured hotly in her ear, ‘fucking in the middle of the afternoon and all the doors open.... We could use the door,’ he breathed. ‘That would keep them out...’ He had found his way and was unbuttoning her knickers with swift fingers roughened by the handling of guns. She went weak in the knees, her mouth opening in a groan when he touched her bare skin. He kissed her deeply and her underwear fell to the floor.

They spent a long time playing before finally coming down to business. They were both verging on the point of no return when they heard Tom Kilgallen stomping about downstairs, roaring,
‘Hello the house! Paddy Leary, are you to home! Jesus, where the fuck is the man? Hey you, Paddy!’
‘Shite.’ Paddy, still trying to catch his breath, all burning heat and slick muscle, put his fingers on her mouth. ‘Wisha,’ he panted. ‘Maybe he’ll go away.’ He kissed her, once, twice, deeply again, and moved hard against her, raising up, groaning
Tom’s step was heard on the rickety, noisy stair. ‘Paddy!’
‘Oh Christ,’ Paddy muttered, raising himself from her. He leaned over the bed and picked up his discarded shoe, throwing it at the wall.
‘Clear off, for Jesus’ sake!’ he shouted. ‘Give us bit of peace!’
There was a pause, and then the steps clattered back down the stairs hastily. They looked at each other and laughed. It was farcical, being caught in flagrante by Kilgallen.
‘Now, M'aille,’ he murmured when they had stopped laughing at last, his eyes kindling dark again. A quick flush came over his fair skin where the labourer’s sunburn fell away and she felt the surge of him with a jolt. ‘That was exciting,’ he murmured, with a creeping, wicked smile, enjoying her reaction. ‘Imagine, being caught out... Where were we?’

She could not imagine her Joe coming to that any time soon, especially not today as they sat in this peaceful place, looking out over the orderly garden. The riots and terror were all so far from this sanctuary, and the boy who argued tactics with his father in Derry was here well mannered and subdued in a neat dark--grey suit. It was Jekyll and Hyde with both of them. She said to Liz now,
‘His father says he’ll be awash in girlfriends any day.’

Joe looked up from where he had stopped pacing and was looking out into the garden with his hands in his pockets.
‘I’ve more important things to do than chase girls,’ he said.
Molly, suddenly tense, glanced at Sally who sat in the chair by the window with a book. Sally too had looked up. Please Joejoe, please, not here.
‘Oh, what things?’ George asked pleasantly, folding up the section of the paper he had been reading.
‘Law, sir, and politics,’ Joe said cagily, tossing his hair from his eyes. ‘I’ve a mind to make a few changes in both.’ The boy should be an actor, Molly thought. He gave nothing away.
George laughed. ‘O for the grand ambitions of the young! Well stated my boy! Well stated.’
‘Perhaps he should speak to Dicky,’ Liz said only half in jest. ‘How convenient it would be to have it all in the family.’ Dicky had been knighted for sending down half a dozen IRA men this last winter. So they were now Lord and Lady Eustace. But it had come at a price: their house in Greystones had been firebombed and an assassination attempt made on Dick in College Green. G--men trailed him now and SAS men brought down from Belfast. His protectors, Hobbles had called them when they visited yesterday.
Joe flushed and opened his mouth.
‘Darling, would you fetch my jumper?’ Molly asked him smoothly. ‘I believe I left it on the chair in my room.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ Joe nodded, and left the room.

The visit with Hobbles and Dicky had been a complete disaster. Firstly, their car was stopped and searched on the road by these bandits everyone was calling the Black and Tans, and then when they got to the Eustaces the Castle detectives were all over the house and garden with rifles. No one was allowed to take a telephone call without it first passing through the hands of these men. Susanna said that Dick hardly slept and that they lived in terror of the IRA. She went with armed guard just to go shopping in Grafton Street.

Joe came over from where he was playing chess with Dick and took three biscuits from the plate. ‘Wouldn’t it be less provocative, ma’am, if you didn’t go with an entourage?’ he asked in a low tone. Molly wished the floor would open up beneath her. Joe met her eye with a hard wild glance, so like his father’s, and went back to his chess game. Susanna hardly noticed, she was so agitated. ‘These men, young man,’ she said rather hysterically, turning in her chair, ‘are vicious brutal murderers who carry out their heinous deeds in midday on innocent people! On civil servants and lords and politicians! They haven’t the decency to confine their atrocities to the military in an orderly fashion, but attack innocent people in their homes! Provocative! Provocative! Who, I should like to know, are the provocateurs? We are virtual prisoners in this house because of these bloody--handed assassins!’

Molly broke into a cold sweat. On the one hand not trusting Joe to hold his often fiery temper, and on the other outraged that Hobbles should not remember that she was yet married to one of those bloody--handed assassins, and what they had endured. Last year, their house had been raided three times, and everything broken; last July Katie had nearly been killed when someone smashed the front window with a cricket bat. She had been sitting on the floor, mere inches from the shower of glass. She remembered Willie Noonan, who had rescued her and Sally from the hands of the Army the first year they were in Derry when she was pregnant with Katie. He was killed later in an explosion in the gasworks, this ‘bloody--handed assassin’. He was twenty--three years old.

‘Steady on, old girl,’ Dick said mildly from the chessboard. ‘It’s not so bad as that. The boy was only asking a question ---- I say, Molls, are you ill?’
She was gripping the table with both hands trying not to be sick. I must get out of this house!
‘Mammy!’ Both Joe and Sally cried, springing to their feet. Joe was at her elbow in an instant. ‘Come on, Ma, I’ll take you out. Sally, open that bally door!’ They managed between them to get her to the lav, where she was violently ill.

Things were never the same with Susanna after that. She never said a word to her about how insensitive she was, but it was difficult to be with her, for she became rather a fanatical Tory, truly a ‘West Briton’ in ways that Molly’s own family had never been. Hobbles had been a brick years ago, going to the wall for her when Mummy was on a tearing rant about Paddy and Joe. She had smoothed things over when there was a row about the chapel, and during the war over the Shelbourne. It was Hob who had talked long and long on Paddy’s good points when Mummy was roaring that they were now to be intimately connected with the barbaric natives. She defended him so well that everybody including Molly thought she must be in love with him herself. So the politicisation of one of her oldest friendships came as a terrific blow.


Paddy went over the river to fetch them at Waterside on Tuesday just as the sun was beginning to set. It was not a good sign that Molly rang saying she wanted to come home. Something must have happened. The station was full of B--Specials who were coming in from Antrim. Thinking ahead, he had borrowed Geordie Mahoney’s car for the trip. They wouldn’t bother them with a government number--plate. The B--Specials were a paramilitary force, adjunctant to the British Army, cooked up by Lord Brookeborough and composed of demobbed soldiers. He supposed they needed jobs. It was heard that war veterans were begging on the streets of London. Of course they would be sent to Ireland! But it made the odds even worse. They had been having a difficult enough time with the RIC. He remembered Molly’s astonishment when he read out from the paper about their establishment earlier this year.
‘Lord Brookeborough!’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘Know him, do you?’
‘He used to hunt with my father!’
‘Ah, well then, we’ll have to give his boys a hearty welcome.’ She didn’t appreciate the joke.
‘It’s not funny, Paidín!’ she exclaimed. ‘How can he arm troops against us? A paramilitary force! What the devil is that?’
‘Anarchy, my dear girl,’ he sighed. ‘Sheer bloody anarchy. We’re for it, you wait and see.’

He had watched the first of these troops come in. He stood leaning against his car where it was parked in front of Pat Halinan’s pub. He pulled down his hat and crossed his arms as Pat came up beside him. Others had come out to watch this spectacle as well.
‘What do ya think of them?’
‘It’ll be hard going for us now.’
‘Isn’t that the God’s truth?’ Pat said. ‘As if there weren’t enough trouble.’
Paddy lit a cigarette and said nothing. He would send to Joe Sweeney over in Donegal, and ask for arms from Sean MacMahon the General Quartermaster in Dublin. Ask the local Sinn Fein office to organise a dance. That should raise some money, maybe recruits now that this was on. He wondered how Geordie Mahoney was getting on with securing Thompsons from America. He’d ordered them through the bloody post two months ago. Imagine a country where you could order and receive machine guns through the post! They needed explosives badly. That would be the most effective thing with the barracks, with their numbers. Blow the hell out of them on night manoeuvres. As bad as it had been to this point, it was clear that all was just the training camp. They were for it, right well.

Joejoe was the first out, jumping down onto the platform with a bounce and handing down his sisters and Molly. Jesus, the lad had grown a foot in the week! He’d have to give him the old talking to before long. No point in the lad turning up with the clap or a girl in trouble when there was a fight on. He was a keen marksman already, though he’d never shot anything but empty tins out in the Grianan. Holy God, Molly cut her hair! It blew about her ears in the wind. She’d turned up the fur collar of her coat, but it did not hide the missing glories. He’d give her the Lord Harry about it, just to devil her. Tell her it would be like shagging boys. That would get her off. She looked terrible. Something had definitely gone wrong. He threw down the cigarette and came over, taking some of the cases from Joe.

‘Thanks, lad.’ They came away from the train and into the station proper. He stopped, putting the cases down, and kissed Molly and the girls.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked, lifting up her chin. Her expression was ambivalent.
‘I will be,’ she said shortly.
‘You cut your hair,’ he murmured, pulling on a lock of it. He bent and kissed her again.
Her eyes kindled now. ‘Yes but I saved it out for you.’
He smiled. ‘Good. It’ll keep me company when you’re away.’
‘Padge!’ she gasped, glancing at the children. He laughed and pressed her gloved hand.
‘Come on, yez!’ He called to the scattered troop. ‘There’s sweeties for the lot, first one to the car gets their pick!’ They went out into the cold wind together, the children racing and squealing ahead of them.

‘So, what’s up?’ he asked her as they were undressing for bed. He stood in trousers, braces and vest in front of the wardrobe, hanging up his coat and necktie.
She grimaced as she sat on the coverlet in her pretty new silk nightgown and ran a hand through her shorn hair. ‘We were out in Grafton Street and there was a man shot dead not twelve feet from us. A Castle detective.’ She looked up at him, her face grim, but she did not cry.
‘When was this?’ Though he could guess. She had been fine on Sunday.
‘Yesterday.... I shouldn’t have gone.’ She shook her head.
He came to sit beside her on the bed. ‘I’m so sorry, sweetheart,’ he murmured. ‘So sorry you had to see that.’ It had been necessary to send her away. They’d had to get the door in the basement. The children were squealing in the next room, thumping about, hitting each other with the pillows, by the sound of it. Joe and Sally. ‘Hey yez, get to sleep!’ he called out. They’d wake Katie, if they hadn’t already. The last thing he wanted was the child in here this night.
‘Yes, Da.’ Sally called, giggled again and walloped her brother. ‘Ow!’ he cried.
‘Put out that light, I’m saying!’
‘I’m just going, Da,’ Joe called. The light went out and they fell to whispering and giggling, which was fine. Paddy turned to Molly again.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. She winced at the memory, but did not cry.
‘How did we get here?’ She asked bleakly. He put his arms around her.
‘It’s a long old road,’ he murmured, kissing her hair. ‘We’ve just the luck to be the generation to come to the end of it.’
‘I want it all to go away,’ she said, against his chest.
‘So do I, M'aille. So do I.’ He rocked her in his arms, staring at the chair where his Webley lay. The way of the gunman was certainly no easy one. You did what was necessary, but there was no enjoyment in it. The only mollifying thing was that some of those on the other side didn’t share his compunctions. The Specials would take him away forever from his woman and his children in a heartbeat, without a thought, before their eyes. It had happened to others. Molly rose up again presently, facing him. All her feeling was in her face.
‘Make love to me, Padge,’ she murmured. ‘I need you.’
He closed his eyes at the thrill of the words, poignant, dear, and painful. He needed her too. ‘Come here, darlin ----’ he nodded.

The next night he was in Pat Halinan’s, drinking seltzer and listening to the grousing about the latest turn of events. From the corner came the thin, lonely whistle of a harmonica. Jim Meehan played a slow air, and then, when he had the attention of half the room, broke into Boulavogue with a graceful slide of chords. Paddy joined in the singing. When it was done, Dick Faolain shouted from the opposite corner, ‘The Ould Orange Flute!’ and was booed and whacked over the head for his little joke. There was general confusion and murmuring about what next. Pat took a beer over to Jim and whispered something in his ear. Meehan nodded, and began playing another tune. A roar went up, and the singing began again on a new song about Easter Week,

I am a merry ploughboy, and I plough the fields all day.
‘Til something came across my mind, that I should run away
For I’ve always hated slavery from the day that I was born
So I’m off to join the IRA, and I’m off tomorrow morn!

‘It’s the polis!’ Timmy Sullivan squeaked from his post at the door, and dove behind the bar. Paddy said to all hearing, with a quick glance at Tom,
‘All right, play it easy and cool, lads. We don’t want to give them reason.’
‘They’ve got fucking reason, Paddy,’ Jack Meehan declared, ‘in who we are.’ Paddy glared at him, but any words were cut short as the door was kicked open. The bar was still and hushed, and he prayed they could pull off looking a bunch of stupid eejits long enough for Dinny and Shay to clear the way out the back, so that when the shooting started they’d have an escape.

He watched the captain, a great burly man, stalk about the room. He had a Browning service revolver. Quick to shoot but slow to load. Tom was fidgeting behind him at the bar, with his gun concealed in Paddy’s coat. The seconds ran like hours.
‘You’re all under arrest,’ the captain barked. ‘Lieutenant, sergeant! Round up these men!’
‘Why’re you crashing my place?’ Pat asked in offence from behind the bar.
‘Shut up,’ the captain retorted hoarsely. He brushed Paddy’s sleeve, inches from the Webley. ‘You’ve got a fifty--pound fine. Don’t make it an arrest.’ He looked about the silent crowd. His flunkeys had not yet moved to arrest them, watching them instead, cautiously. He felt Tommy’s gun behind his arm. Tim Sullivan stood behind the bar, a towel in his hand, ostensibly the barman, never mind that he hardly looked old enough to drink. The captain was strolling around the room, inspecting faces, tapping his stick in his hand the while.

‘You think you’re all mighty clever, don’t you? Well, I heard you lot of Fenian bastards and your caterwauling. You’re all coming with us now, one way or another....’ He eyed Timmy speculatively. ‘What’s your name?’ he snapped. Tim was silent, his face a blank.
‘Lieutenant!’ the captain called sharply. The lieutenant came over. ‘Shoot this man if he refuses.’ The lieutenant nodded, a grin spreading slowly over his florid face. Paddy’s stomach dropped. He felt Tom nudge him from behind. He nodded, almost imperceptibly.
‘Now,’ the captain said silkily to Tim. ‘Be a good little taig and tell us your name or the lieutenant will blow you to hell. Now!’ He slammed his fist into Tim’s jaw, and he staggered, but there was not a whimper from him. The captain dragged him out from behind the bar and pulled his gun on him.

‘Smith,’ Tim said impudently, and was punched again. He doubled over this time. The captain grabbed Tim’s brown hair and pulled him up, his face inches from the boy’s. ‘Now listen, you little scum, I’ll give you the count three and if you don’t give your name that’s the last you’ll ever do.’ He looked about. ‘And that goes for every feckin one of you!’ He turned to Tim.
‘One.’
Paddy reached very slowly for the Webley, from along the inside of his leg. With the attention elsewhere, he managed to draw it out without notice, and laid it along the outside of his right leg. Here was a disadvantage to being left--handed.
‘Two.’
There was not a twitch of muscle from Tim. He merely stared at the captain with that cold, blank look. Paddy felt the thrill of adrenaline, cocked the Webley noiselessly, and waited.
‘Three.’

The captain’s shot rang out and Tim went flying back, a gaping hole on him from the point--blank range. He was not dead, but dying. Instantly, Paddy was out with the Webley and firing. He drilled a neat hole in the back of the bilious captain’s head, and the man fell to the floor with a thud. He managed to hit the lieutenant with the second, not fatally, alas. The room erupted.

‘Paddy!’ Tom shouted as the sergeant made his move. Paddy saw from the corner of his eye and turned his gun into the sergeant’s belly, as he was about to fire. Tom had leapt over the bar and was firing on any of the Specials that came near. Paddy crouched behind the stool and had used the last of his round before the lieutenant came near enough for him to hit. He was on the floor, reloading the Webley at lightning speed, but as he came up again he was hit in the shoulder. The right, thank God, so he could still shoot. He ground his teeth against the burning, stinging pain, and picked up the stool, hurling it at the lieutenant, who went down and was hit. Paddy loaded and fired until he was down to his last round, and when he had only two more shots he was hit in the calf. He stumbled and tried to crawl away behind the bar but was dragged out. The Special stamped on his wrist, but he clung to the Webley and kicked him, sending the man over his head. He fired and hit him, but it was disabling only. Somebody grabbed him then and smashed him with the butt end of a rifle

They were rounded up and lined up against the wall, including Pat. They had thrown down their guns on order and the surviving OC began firing from the other end of the room, randomly. Paddy muttered to Tom in Irish,
‘When I give the word, let’s make a run for it. The back is open.’
Tom’s face was a bloody mess and he had a long cut along his forehead from a bayonet, presumably. He looked startled now. ‘You’re a fucking crazy man! They’ll kill us!’
‘They’ll kill us anyway.’ A bullet whizzed past his ear. ‘It’s worth a try. Muise!’
They waited for one, two more shots, then Paddy cried, ‘Muise!’ He and Tom dove under the legs of the nearest two Specials for the back door. The room behind them erupted in gunfire. Men and bullets were flying in all directions. Shay, Jack Meehan, and some of the Specials followed them out the back, through the alley and down the way. They were at Rossville Street corner when they ducked into a back garden.

‘Bloody fucking hell,’ Tom panted as he crouched down, heaving breaths. He passed a hand over his face. ‘I think I lost most of me fucking teeth. How are ye? You’re badly done over. Can you run for it? They’ll be along in a minute.’
‘Don't look now!’ He said, grabbing Tom’s arm. ‘Come on!’ He limped up the alley, narrowly avoiding the patrol that came after them. Swinging around, they made their way down Westland Street trying for the Butcher’s Gate and doubling back through their own area in the maze of streets. Paddy could feel nothing but the burning of his leg and shoulder, which got worse as they went along. He fell farther behind Tom and Shay, who paused at a garden wall.
‘I can’t,’ he panted.
‘Come on, Commandant,’ Jack said behind him, ‘We’ll get you safe.’ The patrol, alerted now, was behind them. They had left quite a bloody trail.
‘I hope you can fly!’ Tom said as he scaled the wall.
‘Oh hell,’ Paddy groaned and made a Herculean effort with some help from Jack. He landed ungracefully in the filthy back courtyard of a tenement house. ‘Which is the best way from here, do you think?’ They were at the other end of Rossville Street. He thought of all the safe houses in this area. ‘McCann’s is nearest.’

‘Separate.’ Tom spat. ‘Then they can’t be getting all of us at once. I hope I see you there, Paddy.’
‘Right...’ He leaned against the wall, watched Tom disappear into the night. ‘Get out of here,’ he told Shay.
‘I’ll not leave you.’
‘That’s an order!’
‘Then I disobey it.’ Shay said boldly. ‘We’re lost without you, Paddy. Come on,’ he said to Jack. They hurried along with Paddy between them, Shay in front and Jack at the rear, throwing open the tenement’s back door and running down the hall, to the terror of the astonished occupants. They went out the front. Up the street and down an alley, scaled another garden wall and went up on the rooftops, and so made their way to McCann’s. Paddy by this time was disoriented from the loss of blood and Jack held him up while Shay gave the knock at the door. Mary McCann opened the door with a cry,
‘Merciful God!’

They were hurried into the house and the door was bolted behind them. Mrs. McCann was a plump broad--faced woman who reminded Paddy of his own mother. She and her husband Jim were Presbyterians, but not fanatical. They were another contact through Geordie Mahoney. He was taken into the parlour and put into a chair. Tom was not there. He fought to stay conscious while a flurry of activity went on around him. Shay and Jack sluiced off and put on fresh clothes borrowed from McCann and his son, the Mrs made up a bed for them, rousing her two sons to sleep in the one only and boiled a kettle for the doctor to wash in, while himself went off for Dr. Morrisey, who lived two doors up. It took two excruciating hours to get the bullets out – he had been hit four times – and bind the wounds, after which he was changed from his bloody clothes into some of Morrisey’s own and helped to bed. At five in the morning, Shay shook him.

‘Paddy, Abu!’ They had to get out: one of the neighbours, suspicious of Morrisey’s back and forth in the middle of the night, rang the barracks. They were at the top of the street.
‘Shite, shite!’ he exclaimed as they tumbled down the stairs. He was so stiff and sore he could hardly move, let alone run. They’d be caught for sure if they stayed with him. He said to Shay and Jack, ‘Go, go on, get yez away!’
‘Like hell!’ Shay returned, grabbing him. They got out of the neighbourhood by back alleys and saw him safely to his school in Barrack Street. Shay promised to be back in the afternoon with a pistol, and he was good to his word.

Sally and Joe came into the schoolroom at eight as usual before the others and he rose unsteadily from the chair. Both the children looked as if they hadn’t slept, and Sally had a bruise above her right eyebrow.
‘There was a row with the Specials last night, Dada,’ Joe said, looking at his sister.
‘I know,’ he said grimly.
Joe crossed his arms. ‘They made a house--to house search of the whole neighbourhood. I told Mammy you’d not be home.’ He tossed his hair back.
‘No more was I,’ he agreed. He came around the desk and kissed Sally, who buried her face in his painful shoulder. He put his arms about her. ‘Hello, mo rua,’ he murmured. ‘It’s all right now.’ He asked Joe, ‘How’s your mother and sister?’
‘Knocked about,’ Joe shrugged grimly. ‘But not too bad.’
‘How did you keep?’
‘I went down the basement, Dada,’ Joe said, with a defiant gleam in his eye. Behind the security door, beneath the floorboards, in with the arms cache. Oh, he could see it. He was proud of the lad’s quick--thinking response.
‘Good boy. We couldn’t stand to lose you,’ he clapped the boy on the arm, and winced.
‘You were hit?’ Joe asked.
‘Aye,’ he said cautiously, not wanting to make too much of it before Sally. ‘But I’m grand.’ He looked down at his wee girl. ‘You’d do better to go on home, cailín, you look all in.’ He brushed her curling hair away from the bruise. ‘Tell your mother I’m well, and I’ll be home when I can.’ She looked at him anxiously. ‘It’s all right, daughter. Haven’t I our Joe here with me? Go on now, and look after your mother for me, there’s a good girl. I’ll bring you home the work.’
‘Yes, Da.’ She rose on her toes to kiss him and went out as the first of the regular pupils was arriving.

Shay brought his package in the afternoon and he put it away in his shoulder holster during the recess – a Browning it was. A Colt would have been better. He missed the reassuring heaviness of the Webley. But beggars couldn’t be choosers. Joe came in after Shay left.
‘I heard about the captain and Tim Sullivan,’ he said. It would be the neighbourhood gossip. Every murder and funeral was sensational in their neighbourhood, the details gone over for weeks until it became a kind of folklore, part of the litany of their lives. ‘Are you the one that got him?’
Paddy shrugged.
‘We’ll beat em, won’t we Da?’ Joe asked. He looked up from the desk at his son, standing in the middle of the schoolroom so near to a man in many ways that it was easy to forget he was not. There were things he could not say to him.
‘God willing, son,’ he murmured grimly instead. ‘God willing.’

They got some of their own back. Funerals for the dead of that night went on for five days, with armed guards and pallbearers, to show that the IRA were not cowed, that they could not be broken. The funeral cortege was massive; there must have been two or three hundred people every day. Two weeks later, at the anniversary of Easter Week, all over the country IRA units firebombed three hundred empty police barracks and about as many tax offices from Belfast to Cork, destroying all the tax records. Money that would have gone to the Exchequer to pay England’s war debt went instead to the Dail Loan Michael Collins and Sinn Fein had floated, secreted in bank accounts all over Ireland. It was the biggest single action since Easter Week, and certainly more successful. The people, terrified by the Black and Tans, were behind them this time.

In response, the Orange Lodges rioted all over the North, and from May through September there were murders and firings of homes every single day, in Belfast, in Derry, in Omagh, in Newry, anywhere Nationalist resistance had dared raise its head. In those four months, Paddy never slept at home more often than once a week, and sometimes not that. He was never at the same place more than a single night. The same was true of his men. He was always on the move, at school every day, but never to be caught out sleeping. Trying to teach while on the run was a difficulty. He took to keeping late and going early to work whenever he could manage, rather than carrying around a deal of papers in a clumsy satchel. Clothes he left in the schoolroom too, rolled up in oilcloth under the window seat. Practically the only contact he had with his family was through the children at school. It was a precarious life, nerve--wracking,

Since January and the implementation of the Better Government for Ireland Act, the North had been effectively partitioned from the rest of the country, though the actual border was yet in dispute. It gave the Unionists a guaranteed Belfast parliament in perpetuity, and with the introduction of the Restoration of Order Act, internment, trial by courts--martial, suppression of coroners’ inquests became the rule of the day.Thus when Sir Edward Carson made a speech at Limavady for the commemoration of the 12th of July, calling for the elimination of the Republican menace, saying that he was ‘sick of words without action’, the Loyalists went armed into the streets for nine days cutting a swath of burning, looting and murdering across the North from Derry to Belfast and the Specials were right behind them, finishing off the work. The regime that Carson had founded with the Ulster Volunteers was in open war with its nationalist citizens. The Special Powers Act, enforced by the A, B, and C--Specials, allowed floggings and the death sentence for arms possession. In Belfast, prominent Unionists urged Protestant shipyard workers to a ‘show of revolvers’ to ‘drive the Fenians out’. The Westminster Gazette reported on 24 July, ‘It is common knowledge in Belfast… that plans were matured at least two months ago to drive all the Home Rule workers in the shipyards out of their employment.’

Monday 19 July was a Bank Holiday, and late on the Sunday night Paddy received word by one of Geordie’s boys that there was to be a sweep the next day. He was immediately out the door, first to Tom’s, then to Dick Faolain’s. The men were given their orders. No one was to sleep at home tonight; they must not be taken unawares. Back at home, Joe took Molly and the girls to visit with Mary Sullivan and the lads came for arms and ammunition. Paddy left Joe in charge of things at home, went next door, kissed Molly and the girls good--bye and said he was going up to Pat’s.

They came at dawn. Early in the afternoon, Paddy was down at the bottom of their street in a shop behind the barricade when Seanin Kilgallen came tearing in the back, hysterical with tears all over his face.
‘They got him, Paddy, they got him!’ he was shouting and crying. ‘You have to come! Da says you have to come! Ah Jaysus----’
‘Who, Sean? Who got who?’ He asked frowning.
‘Joejoe!’ The boy cried, sobbing hysterically. ‘The Specials got Joe!’
‘O Jesus God!’ He was out the door – the front door -- running madly up the street. Their lane was in a wreck – three houses were burning, there was brick and broken glass everywhere – and before his own house a crowd had gathered. The door was open and from within there came an unholy wailing. He had never heard a woman keen like that, except in Kerry. It raised the hackles on him more than the awful scene. That weird, unnatural howling of the bean sidhe. God’s curse was in it.

He pushed his way through. ‘Let me in, let me in!’ The crowd parted when they saw who it was. In the parlour on the floor were Molly, Joe, and the girls. There was blood everywhere. In her lap, Molly cradled the bloody, broken head of their Joe. He was sprawled before her, his long arms and legs at queer angles. He had been shot several times, and the marks of their damned bayonets were clear. Molly looked up at him, and he had never seen such hate in anyone’s face before.
‘Oh Paddy,’ she moaned. ‘They killed him! He’s dead, he’s dead! They killed him!’ She began that terrible howling again. He stared at the body of the boy, numb and shaking with cold, a white rage of grief building slowly in him. Men he had lost and men he had killed, but nothing had moved him to this overpowering anguish and rage. He stepped back, shook his head violently, the mad tide washing over him.

‘Not my Joe! Not my Joe!’ He shouted. Someone put a hand on his shoulder and he turned, swinging. Jack Meehan went down. Tom grabbed his arm from the opposite side.
‘Paddy!’ he barked.
‘I’ll kill ‘em,’ he swore, shaking his head. ‘Before God, I’ll kill em!’ He yanked himself from Tom’s grasp. ‘Let go of me Tommy!’ He bellowed, ‘Keep out of my way!’ He turned on his heel, the hems of his filthy dustcoat flying behind him, the Browning out, and he was halfway out the door through the speechless crowd when Tom and Seamus leapt on him. He fought wildly with the strength and advantage of the madness that was on him, but after a few minutes they subdued him.
‘It was a set up, Paddy!’ Tom cried. ‘It was a set--up!’ They had him against the wall next to the stairs, pressing on either side of him. Both Shay and Tom were panting.
‘They’re trying to draw us out!’ Tom huffed.

The words sank in. And the grief hit with it. ‘Holy Mother of God,’ he murmured shakily, and covered his bloody face with his hands and wept, great gulping, wracking sobs as he had never cried in all his life. Shay and Tom left go of him and he staggered over to the boy and Molly, crumpling on the floor to gather the broken body and shattered skull of his darling Joe, sobbing uncontrollably.

The riots went on in Derry for four days, five in Belfast. Their house was fired twice, and the second time they narrowly missed having it all go up. In all that while, they could do nothing about Joe. The undertaker wouldn’t bring a coffin into ‘that hell’ for love nor money or under threat from a gun. Paddy was in and out of the house, for there was still the neighbourhood to defend, leaving Molly and the women to look after the boy, whom they kept packed in salt laid out on the dining table, having no other means of preservation. At the end of it, there were nineteen dead and two hundred wounded. Fifty houses and shops were burned. The victims received not only the full rites of the Church -- they had fought like hell to get Tim Sullivan and the rest decently buried – but a Volunteer honour guard as well. They buried Joe in his Fianna uniform, and the lads from school piped the Dead March on penny whistles. He was as much a veteran as any man in the column.

Molly was tall and dry--eyed beside him, silent as a tomb in unrelieved black. She had cried with him in the long, sleepless night, but she would have her dignity before the neighbours. It was not upper--class snobbery. She was one of them now. She reached for his hand openly before the gathered crowd when the little boys began to play, pressing it in a painful grip when the men began to lower the coffin by the ropes. Her face was white, but stonily set. Not a tear did she cry. Her control was marvellous. He could not match it. When they had lowered the coffin of his boy into the ground and began hauling up the ropes, the appalling finality hit him: his only boy was gone, his beloved, darling Joe. They would never share a drink or the admiration of a fine--looking girl, he would never see him at university, never see him rise in a world that his mother’s connections had laid at his feet. He was a brilliant, charming, clever lad. All that brightness was wasted, all for naught… Any victory they had now would be bitter, hollow. The price was too great. He wept again, fighting every second for some small measure of control. He prayed, Wait for me, laddie. Wait for me….

The next day Tom called him over to Dick Faolain’s house across the street, ostensibly to help put in the new windows and frames upstairs, but he found Shay, Jack and Matt Gallagher there as well.
‘Is this a squad meeting, lads?’ He asked when they were done with the work and stood dusting themselves off. He pushed up his glasses.
Tom looked grim. ‘Tell him,’ he said to Matt.
A shudder of premonition went through him. Matt turned white, then scarlet, and stared at him warily. ‘Tell me what? Tell me what?’ Paddy demanded. Dick left the room.
‘The Specials knew to hit you, Paddy,’ Tom said grimly, crossing his arms. ‘They were looking for the cache.’ The words went through him like gunfire.
‘Who was it? Who told?’ He demanded, glaring at Matt.
‘Kate.’ Matt said. Paddy punched him.
‘Easy now!’ Shay cried, hauling him off. ‘He’s telling the truth!’

Matt got up from the dresser where he’d fallen, wiping the blood away from his mouth. Another foot and he’d have gone through Dick’s new window. To his credit, he faced him like a man, with a gleam in his eye.
‘It’s true. I came down this morning for me tay and she’d tried to off herself in the kitchen, but I pulled her down and had the story from her, as you might say.’ He grimaced. ‘She went to ‘em because she was afraid for the boy, Paddy!’
If they were afraid of his wrath, they were mistaken. They had nothing to fear now. There was one thing to be done, and he slipped into the place in his mind that allowed for it. A tout had gone to the British with information. That was all he needed to know. Her reasons he could not let himself care about, or that she had been under his roof for so many years. There was a job to do, and that was all.

‘Do they know where it is?’ He asked.
‘No,’ Tom said.
‘Well,’ he sighed, ‘that’s a blessing.’ He pulled out a cigarette and lit it, passing the rest around. ‘Who’s for it, any volunteers?’ Matt opened his mouth. ‘Not you!’
‘Aye, sir,’ Matt mumbled, with evident relief.
‘She’s my sister--in--law, it should fall to me,’ Tom said.
Paddy smirked. ‘You’d scare the hell out of her.’ He took a long drag on the cigarette. ‘I’ll go,’ he nodded. ‘She’ll trust me. It’ll go easier…. She doesn’t know we know?’
Matt shook his head.
‘All right, so.’ He clapped Tom on the arm. ‘Thanks, laddie.’ He went out and down the stairs. ‘Goodbye, Kate,’ he said to Dick’s red--haired wife as he passed through the parlour. ‘You’ve sound windows again.’
‘Oh, good--bye Paddy,’ she said quickly, turning around. ‘Thanks for your help.’

He went across the street to their side of the alley, passing by the parlour windows nonchalantly as if he were coming in the back. Molly was in the parlour with Katie, scrubbing the table again to try and get the bloodstains out of the wood. He went into the back alley, skirting the offal and winding his way down the narrow path, obstructed as it was by dustbins and bicycles and old household items left to rust. He came to Gallagher’s greengrocery, still with boards over the windows. The street door to the house was ajar, and he gave the knock. There was no response. Maybe she’d succeeded in offing herself. Maybe it was a trap. He drew the Browning and went cautiously up the stairs.
‘Kate.’

She was sitting at the kitchen table staring dully into space. There were long red marks on her neck, clearly from a whipcord, and purple ones on her face. Matt had beaten her up pretty well. He looked on her golden--brown hair in its low coil at the nape of her fragile white neck…. It would be a pity to ---- He put the thought away half--formed. There was nothing else for it. She had not moved, nor answered. He shouldered the Browning again for the moment.
‘Kate! It’s Paddy Leary.’ He took her bruised arm and she started and winced, pulling away. She looked at him at last, but it was through a sleepy sort of fog, like an inmate in a madhouse.
‘Paddy.’ She smiled a little. ‘Poor Paddy… the things you don’t know….’ Her glance wandered to the sink, and the faucet sparkling in the overhead light. She was he saw then, quite mad. He fought the rising ache of pity and went behind her, resting his right hand on her shoulder.

‘It’s all right cailín,’ he murmured. Her hair was silk against his fingers. ‘It will soon be all right.’ He pulled the Browning stealthily, though there was no reason to; she was paying him no mind at all. He laid the muzzle point--blank against her hair, just behind her left ear, cocked it. His hand shook briefly and he winced. She did not move. It was almost as if there was collusion between them: she wanted to die, and it was his job to kill her. He drew a slow breath past his aching throat.
‘Good night, little Katie.’
And he pulled the trigger.

Later he sat in the dining room at home with his books and papers sprawled over the new--scrubbed table, entering grades into his ledger when Tom came in the back. Squinting in the fading light, Paddy heard his exchange with Molly, who was in the kitchen making tea, and when Tom appeared he threw down the fountain pen unthinkingly and it splattered all over the open page of the book.
‘Oh damn,’ he muttered.
‘Good to see you too, man dear,’ Tom said drolly. He put his foot on the seat of the chair before him, and glanced at the swinging door of the kitchen. ‘So,’ he asked in a low voice,’ done is it?’
Paddy leaned back in the chair, looking up at Tom’s mop of tousled brown hair above the white collar and black of his Sunday suit. ‘Yes,’ he said evenly. ‘It is.’ He sighed. ‘I nearly didn’t. There was a moment…’

Tom scowled in disbelief and put his leg over the chair as he sat in it backwards. ‘Jaysus, what are you saying man? Have you gone daft?’ He demanded. ‘After –’ he lowered his voice to a whisper, throwing a glance over his shoulder again, ‘after she was telling them bloody everything and your own name as well!’
‘I know, I know,’ Paddy raised a hand to pacify him. ‘But she was mad entirely.’
‘Yeah?’ Tom leaned back in the chair, crossing his arms sceptically.
Paddy leaned forward, elbows on his knees, pushing up his glasses. ‘I’m telling you Tommy, the girl was off her head. I had to bloodywell shout at her before she heard me at all.’
‘I think it’s you’re gone daft, Paidín,’ Tom said, unmoved. ‘You ought to be knowing she’d put it on for to get round you. You, especially! Ya should have let me do it.’
Paddy shook his head emphatically, the memory of her vacant eyes and the terrible bruises she sported haunting him. He would not have laid that at Tom’s door, being family. It was bad enough that he’d done it. ‘No. It’s better this way.’ Better for him to carry the burden of it.
‘As you say,’ Tom sighed. He rubbed his face, where the beard came itching in along his jaw at this late hour. ‘There’ll be a row and a ruction when she’s found, with that family of Matt’s…Did you leave a calling card?’
‘And me in my Sunday clothes?’ Paddy asked with terrible irony. ‘I had no time to write anything, I had to get out.’ He crossed his arms. ‘They’ll know who did it.’
‘Aye, so,’ Tom agreed. He tossed the hair from his eyes. ‘By the way, I spoke to Dinny and Joe. I thought it might do us as well to break up the cache don’t you know. We’ve been intending that all along. We’ll have to move it now they know. I have some ideas for where.’

‘Yeah,’ Paddy agreed, rubbing his forehead. He had a headache coming on, and couldn’t think clearly. ‘Aye, come back after tea and we’ll go over things----’ He broke off at Molly’s voice, upraised in the kitchen, calling through the other door to the upstairs,
‘Sally, come and help me set the table!’
‘Coming Mammy!’ Sally called back. ‘I’m just coming!’
‘And tell Joe and Katie to wash----’ There was a terrible silence then, before they heard her weeping. Paddy rose and met Tom’s eye. His ferrety narrow face was full of pity.
‘Excuse me,’ Paddy said. ‘I’ll see you up at Pat’s later.’
‘Go on, Paidín, I’ll be letting meself out,’ Tom said, his voice hoarse with feeling. He clapped his arm as he brushed past in the narrow space. Tommy could be the decentest of fellows when you needed him to be.

He went into the kitchen, where Molly was collapsed on the deal table.
‘Here, dear,’ he murmured, taking her shoulders. She rose and fled willingly into his arms and he felt her shaking. ‘Here, M'aille. Whist you, I’m here, mo bheanín.’ He rocked her in his arms like a child and it raised an ache in his throat to see her so wretched. He would make her laugh again, he vowed into her disarrayed black hair. He would have her again, the dark girl of their golden summer, and no more of this endless grief. By all that he held dear, so would he when this bloody war was over. For now he only kissed her dark hair and held her tighter to still her fevered trembling. But he could not staunch her flow of tears, the grief draining her slowly like lifeblood, so he waited and supported her with much patient crooning in Irish, his own heart breaking with grief, until she leaned quietly against him, as Kate had earlier done.