Danny Boy (15 page)

Many times that long trek back, Danny was glad of Shay and Sam. All three men were weakened and ill-nourished from their stay in prison, but they helped one another both by encouragement and physically.

In the beginning they sang all the rebel songs they could remember to keep up their spirits. But they did this only when they were out in the open, for they were far quieter when they were passing any houses on the roadside. Danny was glad the day was cold enough to keep those who didn’t have to go out beside their own fireside and there were few to enquire where they were bound for. They knew their release would not be public knowledge yet, and so when asked they just said they were on their way up from Dublin and left it there.

They never went through the villages, either, but skirted them. Whatever Father Joe had said about the change in public opinion since the executions, they didn’t intend to put it to the test. This inevitably made their progress slower and when darkness eventually descended, the going got tougher and they were still nowhere near home.

Finally they had to rest again. Full darkness had descended and within minutes of stopping, Danny’s feet began to throb with cold, and icy fingers trailing through his body caused his teeth to chatter. ‘Jaysus, but I’m cold,’ Shay said, leaping to his feet and slapping at his body with his arms. ‘How much longer d’you think?’

‘It’s hard to tell,’ Danny said, so weary now his voice had begun to slur. ‘An hour. Maybe two.’

‘Christ. D’you think we’ll make it?’ Sam asked quite seriously, but Danny answered encouragingly.

‘Of course. Come on, we’ll set off now. Are you ready, Sam?’

‘Not really,’ Sam said. ‘My legs are shaking. They feel like rubber.’

‘If you sit much longer you won’t be able to feel them at all,’ Danny said, hauling Sam to his feet.

‘And by Christ, I’m so hungry I could get started on a table leg.’

‘We’re all hungry,’ Danny snapped. ‘Talking of it does no good.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Shay said. ‘It will encourage us, surely. Think of a plate thick with rashers, a couple of eggs and as many potatoes and bread and butter slices as you could eat.’

Danny felt saliva fill his mouth at the very thought of it. He saw it before him, could even smell it. Oh God, what he’d give for that this minute.

By the time Danny bade his friends farewell and made for the lane to the farmhouse, he was having trouble focusing, and even putting one foot before the other seemed almost too much of an effort. Twice he’d fallen on the road and had to be helped up and Shay and Sam were in no better shape – the last few miles they’d helped hold each other up.

Now he was at his own farm gate, alone, and wasn’t sure if he’d make the last few yards. His head swam as he left the support of the gate he was hanging on to. He felt himself falling after a few stumbling steps forward and saw the ground coming up to meet him as he fell heavily.

Groaning and cursing, he got to his knees and then to his feet slowly with the help of the hedges on one side of the lane. Hanging on to them, he made his way, crablike, towards the farmhouse. The light from the Tilley lamp set in the window shone out like a welcoming beacon. Eventually he stood swaying outside the farmhouse door.

Rosie had had no notification of the Government’s decision, and there had been nothing in the paper, and so the family were totally unprepared for Danny’s appearance. They were sitting down to their evening meal and each of them had a basin of thick stew served from the large pot, now put back
on the hook above the hearth to keep hot. Two dishes piled high with potatoes in their skins were there for people to help themselves. Even Bernadette was at the table in the special chair with long legs that Matt had fashioned for her and Rosie was bending over her plate, removing the skin from the potato and mashing it with a bit of gravy from the stew to moisten it.

This was the scene that Danny saw as he lifted the latch and pushed open the door. The smell and warmth made him feel light-headed and he stood gripping the door jamb to prevent himself sinking to the stone-slabbed floor.

Rosie stared at Danny aghast. Her thoughts were racing. What in God’s name was Danny doing here?

But before she was able to voice these thoughts, Danny, who knew he couldn’t take another step without falling on his face, cried, ‘Help me.’

Rosie caught Danny before he fell and Matt got to the other side of him and together they helped him into a chair before the fire. He sank into it with a sigh of sheer relief and closed his eyes.

Around the table there was stunned silence. No-one but Rosie had seen Danny since he strode away that Easter morning, but even the shambling, battered, bruised figure she’d seen just once eight months ago bore no resemblance to this man, her husband. His face was grey, what could be seen of it above the thick stubble. His cheeks were sunken, his lips cracked and chapped, his red-rimmed eyes like pools of sadness. Even Danny’s hair was now liberally streaked with white. Rosie was shocked by his thinness – even through his coat she’d felt the bones of him.

‘Mother of God, what have they done to him?’ Connie breathed, as Rosie gently unbuttoned his coat.

But Rosie didn’t answer, for at that minute Danny opened his eyes and held Rosie’s, and her heart turned over in pity for this man who’d suffered so much. ‘Food, please, Rosie,’ he said. ‘I need food.’

‘There’s plenty in the stew pot,’ Connie said, crossing to the hearth.

‘I’ll give him mine,’ Rosie said. ‘That on the stove will be too hot yet awhile.’

Danny sat, his arms by his sides, while Rosie spooned him the stew with the potatoes she’d dropped into it, as he was unable to lift his arm to feed himself. He tasted the deliciousness and warmth of it as it trickled down his throat. Bernadette, who was bewildered seeing her mother feed a big grown-up person, began shouting to be let down. ‘Hush, Bernadette,’ Sarah admonished.

‘Let her be,’ Connie said from the hearth where she still stood staring at her son. ‘She can come over to me.’

Danny’s eyes widened as the child came into view and he stared at her. He’d barely noticed her at the table, but now…He’d left behind a wee crawling baby, but eight months was a long time in the life of a child and Bernadette was now a walking, babbling toddler who stared at him with her bright eyes curious as to who this strange man was. He tried valiantly to smile at her reassuringly.

Rosie spooned the last of the stew into Danny’s mouth, and asked, ‘Do you want some more?’

‘Aye,’ Danny said shortly, and Rosie said, ‘I’ll take it from the pot, but it will be hot. You’ll have to wait while it cools.’

While Rosie busied herself, Connie, wanting to take the hopeless look from her son’s face, said to Bernadette, ‘Look, child, here’s your daddy come home again.’

Bernadette looked interested in the name she’d heard now and then, though she had no idea what a daddy was. ‘Will you sit up on his knee a wee while?’ Connie said. ‘While your Mammy is getting him something to eat.’

Bernadette would have none of it and as her grandmother tried to release her onto the man’s knee she began to writhe and struggle and scream, loud enough to lift the thatch. ‘Leave it, Mam,’ Rosie said sharply, for she’d seen the look of pain
cross Danny’s face. ‘Take her back to the table. She’s barely eaten anything.’ To Danny she said, ‘Don’t mind her, pet, she’s just a baby and doesn’t know you yet.’

‘I know that,’ Danny said. ‘Don’t worry.’

But despite Danny’s words, he was deeply hurt by Bernadette’s reaction. He’d accepted the fact she’d hardly know him on his return and had even discussed it with Sam and Shay on the way back. If he’d thought further about it, he would have known the child would have grown, but he carried in his head the picture of how she’d been when he’d left. This child was like a stranger. If she’d been a little quiet or shy with him he would have accepted it, but he’d never imagined she’d struggle and scream the way she did at the thought of sitting on his knee.

Rosie, though, thought Bernadette’s attitude understandable, but there was another more pressing concern in her head. ‘Danny,’ she said tentatively, ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I haven’t escaped, if that’s what you mean,’ Danny snapped back, annoyed. ‘I was released along with a few others this morning. I’ve been walking ever since.’

Rosie let her breath out in relief. Since he’d appeared in the door she feared the sound of army boots down the lane, kicking open the door and dragging Danny away again, this time to shoot him dead.

The stew and warmth were beginning to slowly revive Danny and this time he was able to hold the basin of stew himself. Rosie handed him a slice of bread too and he tore into it like a wild animal, revelling at being able to do so. He and his fellow inmates had tried to make the one slice of bread, given with very thin soup, last by taking small nibbles of it and chewing it to nothing in an attempt to make them feel fuller. It hadn’t worked, but now with two bowls of stew and potatoes and bread inside him, he began to feel almost human, and as he drained the second bowl he leaned back again in his chair. ‘God that was good.’

Around the table, the family still sat in shock at Danny’s sudden appearance and at the state of him, and any conversation was stilted and strained. Phelan was so affected, Rosie saw, he was unable to eat, and when he pushed his basin away and got to his feet it was almost half-f.

After the meal, as the women began clearing away, Matt crossed to the hearth to sit next to his son and saw he was fast asleep in the chair. ‘Best thing for him, I’d say,’ he commented to Connie and she nodded and fetched a blanket from their bed to tuck around him.

Rosie made tea for them all and they talked in whispers so as not to disturb the slumbering Danny. Connie said in a fierce whisper, ‘What have they done to my son? I can’t believe it, Sister Cuthbert said he was fine.’

‘She wouldn’t have seen him, remember,’ Rosie said. ‘She’d go on what the Franciscan friars told her. Anyway, if she’d known the true state of things, what was to be gained by telling you? You couldn’t help the situation.’

‘No, but…’

‘Don’t torture yourself, Mam,’ Rosie said, laying her hand over her mother-in-law’s kindly. ‘Whatever has happened to Danny is in the past. He’s home now, released and without charge. We’ll soon have him back hale and hearty, the way he used to be.’

‘God, you’re a wonderful girl, Rosie,’ Connie said. ‘God smiled on us the day Danny brought you in the door.’

Rosie was glad she’d reassured her mother-in-law, but she wasn’t sure Danny would ever be the way he was. That vibrant young man who’d strode out so confidently on Easter Sunday eight months before had gone forever, she feared.

Rosie was thrilled and overwhelmed that Danny had been released from jail. She didn’t know why nor did she care, all she knew was that he was free, a thing she thought she never would see, and she hoped and prayed that with good food and plenty of rest a glimpse of the old Danny would return.

Danny seemed to worry over his physical strength. ‘I’m as weak as a kitten,’ he complained to Rosie one day. ‘I used to break rocks six days a week, twelve hours a day, on a starvation diet but now the slightest thing tires me.’

But Rosie wasn’t worried about that aspect at all, certain in time Danny would regain his physical strength. ‘That’s reaction only,’ she told him reassuringly. ‘You must give it time. And at least there is no danger of your starving here. Your mother is determined to fatten you up.’

Rosie spoke the truth, for Connie, desperately worried for her son, was constantly pushing food before him and urging him to eat up. At first, he could do so only sparingly and even then he was often sick, the food being too rich to the person who’d lived on a plain and meagre diet for so long.

It was the kind, loving Danny Rosie missed and missed so much she often cried in bed after he had fallen asleep. She
missed the closeness between them, the way they could talk for hours, their hugs and cuddles, the times Danny told Rosie how much he loved her, what she meant to him, the sex they had enjoyed so much and she often wondered bleakly if it was all lost for good.

When he’d first come home, she had tried to hug him but he had shrugged her off and when she’d tried to tell him how much she loved him and how glad she was that he was home again, he answered her with a grunt. She wished he would talk about his ordeal, convinced that it would help him, but when she asked about it he snapped at her. But then he shouted at her for very little nowadays and would often reduce her to tears she tried desperately to hide from the family.

Matt tried to make allowances for his son. ‘Such a thing is bound to change a man,’ he told Rosie when he came upon her weeping in the barn one day. ‘Prison, I would say, has brutalised Danny, and that’s a fact.’

Phelan was with his father and said. ‘All well and good, Daddy, but none of that is Rosie’s fault. I never get a civil word out of him, but by God, I don’t deserve one. But Rosie has done no harm to anyone.’

‘I know that, son, but…’

‘And Sam went through it too and he’s falling over himself to be nice to Sarah.’

Sam was determined to win Sarah over. Though he looked as bad as Danny, he’d delivered a wrapped present to the Walshes’ house on Christmas Eve. Sarah, who’d refused to see or have anything to do with Sam since his return, was intrigued enough to open this box in her room.

The gasp she gave brought the other three women in to see what had caused it, and Sarah held up the shawl. It was the loveliest thing Rosie thought she’d ever seen, rose-pink and shot through with threads of silver and knitted in the finest and softest wool. God alone knew where Sam had got such a thing.

‘Of course, I can’t accept it.’

Elizabeth couldn’t believe she was hearing right. ‘Course you can.’

‘No, I can’t,’ Sarah said, with a regretful sigh. ‘To accept such a thing would be in the nature of a promise.’

‘You wrote to him in prison,’ Elizabeth pointed out. ‘Wasn’t that a promise?’

‘No,’ Sarah declared. ‘That was just to cheer him up. Don’t forget, we never thought they’d be released, then, did we? What do you think, Mammy?’

Connie smiled and said grimly, ‘I think, cutie dear, you must do what your heart tells you, even if your head tells you different. But don’t accept the shawl if the man means nothing to you.’

‘He doesn’t mean anything to me,’ Sarah declared, packing the shawl away decidedly. ‘I shall return it to him tomorrow after Mass.’

She tried, Rosie knew, for she’d seen Sarah remonstrating with Sam outside the chapel. She had no time to watch the outcome, the day was too cold to linger and she had to hurry home to look after Bernadette and see to the dinner so that Connie could go up to the later Mass with the men, but she did, however, see Sarah sneaking in the door later, still holding the box.

That evening, friends and neighbours called around for the usual Christmas jollification and Sam was amongst them. When, later, Sarah and Sam went for a walk, Rosie noticed the shawl around Sarah’s shoulders. ‘She’s kept it then,’ Elizabeth remarked beside Rosie. ‘If she didn’t want it, she could have given it to me. It wouldn’t have offended my sensitivities one jot.’

Rosie gave her a push and they laughed together but then Rosie caught Danny’s eyes on her, morose and brooding. She tried to repress the sigh of impatience as she made her way towards him.

He’d snapped at her already quite a few times that evening, Rosie recalled, and many times had brought the eyes of the company upon them both. He contrasted badly with Sam, doing his level best to woo Sarah. Rosie felt saddened and frustrated by Danny’s behaviour.

She didn’t know what could be done about it. She’d married him and that was that, she had to make the best of it. Crying and complaining would hardly rectify matters. And that is what she had told Phelan that day in the barn. ‘It’s of no matter,’ she said, brushing the tears from her eyes with her hands. ‘I’m silly to let Danny upset me. Sure, don’t I know he means nothing half the time?’

Phelan said nothing more, but he felt sorry for Rosie and he knew his parents did too. He was glad they were more or less back on their earlier footing for when Rosie had returned from Dublin after seeing Danny that one time, she’d seemed to hate him, and with reason, he thought, but for some time he’d felt the difference in her.

Rosie could have told him, eight months was a long time to keep hold of a hatred of someone she shared a house with.

No-one could have been unaware either how sorry and filled with shame the boy was. He did everything he could to make amends and Matt often praised the amount of work he did for one so young. Nothing seemed too much trouble for him and he did everything he could to lift the heavy work of the farm from his father’s shoulders.

But his saving grace, as far as Rosie was concerned, was the way he was with Bernadette and just as importantly how the child loved him. She knew Connie would be happy if they at least drew some sort of truce and as time went on, Rosie was able to view the whole thing differently and see that Phelan had made a mistake and had only seen the glory of war. He’d been unprepared for the blood and the carnage and the swift and overwhelming British response. He’d also been unprepared for Danny’s intervention and he’d told Rosie
this. By then, even he’d thought the mini rebellion was doomed but there had been nothing he could have done to stop Danny taking the place of him and Niall for he’d been determined to get them released. Rosie knew what manner of man Danny was and that Phelan spoke the truth and gradually the animosity between them lessened.

Sam became a regular visitor at the farmhouse as the year progressed. Sarah was now officially walking out with him and he was full of charm and good manners when he appeared at the house. In contrast, Danny was often silent and miserable looking and seldom had a good word for anyone except Bernadette, though sometimes his attitude unnerved her too. When he shouted, she was often frightened and her eyes would grow large with alarm, and sometimes she’d shake for she’d seldom heard a raised voice in the whole of her young life. But when he wasn’t cross, she’d often seek his company and he always made time for her. One February evening, Rosie was returning home from her mother’s house. Bad weather had kept her from visiting since the week after Christmas and she’d left Bernadette with Connie for she had a streaming cold. She came around the corner of the barn she was surprised to hear muted voices inside there and the sheen of a light beneath the door.

She recognised Shay’s and Danny’s voices as she approached and felt filled with apprehension. Why would Shay be skulking about the barn, talking secretly to Danny, instead of sitting up in the room like any other body? She crept nearer the door to listen.

‘I don’t care about the bloody meeting,’ she heard Danny say. ‘I want no more part in it.’

‘You signed the allegiance, Danny.’

‘Aye, fool that I was,’ Danny said. ‘You know why I was forced to do that, Shay.’

‘Danny, for Christ’s sake will you listen to me?’ Shay cried.
‘It doesn’t matter a tinker’s cuss why you signed, the fact was you did. It’s for your own good I’m saying this, Danny. It’s just a meeting, that’s all, and if you’re not there a very dim view will be taken of it altogether.’

The blood in Rosie’s veins seemed to run like ice. Dear God! Was it starting up again? She’d not stand it. She had the urge to burst into the barn and demand an explanation, order Shay from the farm and forbid Danny to listen to him. But this Danny, returned to her from Kilmainham Jail, was like an unexploded bomb, and she wasn’t at all sure how he would react if she did any of those things.

She turned away regretfully and made her way to the house, and once there was glad of Connie’s chatter for it covered her worried silence. When Danny eventually came in, he refused to even look at Rosie.

Why didn’t she ask what manner of meeting it was that Shay was so insistent he attend? But this Danny could not be asked questions like that.

She thought maybe he’d tell her when they were alone in bed, but Danny said not a word. But then, she told herself, he hadn’t been aware that she had overheard anything, and Rosie almost wished she hadn’t.

The following night, after the evening meal, Danny, instead of following his father to the other side of the fire for a smoke, made instead for the door. He took his jacket from the hook behind it and said. ‘I’m away out.’

‘Out!’ Connie repeated in surprise, while Matt asked, ‘Out where?’

Rosie said not a word. She wasn’t able to speak, the roof of her mouth had gone uncommonly dry and her limbs had begun to tremble. Danny glanced from his parents to her, but it was to his father he spoke. ‘Just out,’ he said. ‘I’m a grown man, not a wean to be questioned.’

‘It was a civil question.’

‘Aye, and you got a civil answer,’ Danny replied, as he opened the door and let the winter air in. He looked across at Rosie and said, ‘Don’t wait up, I don’t know what time I’ll be in, but I’ll likely be late.’

Rosie couldn’t even nod her head. She stood as if frozen to the spot and not until the door closed behind Danny did she feel she could move. ‘Do you know where he’s bound for, lass?’ Connie asked, and Rosie shook her head.

‘No, but I think he’s going to a meeting. I heard him talking to Shay out in the barn,’ she said, and turning to Phelan asked, ‘Do you know anything about it?’

‘How would I?’ Phelan asked. ‘Danny barely bids me the time of day.’

But Phelan did know. At least, he knew that the meeting was in O’Connor’s in Blessington, for Niall had overheard his brother say so and had told Phelan that it was called by a man nicknamed Red McCullough, because of his shock of ginger hair. He remembered Red from his own time in the Brotherhood and knew him to be a dynamic and persuasive man with a pure hatred for the English. Phelan was deeply worried for his brother. But to tell his family any of it would not help and might cause them further worry and he didn’t know how any of it was to be resolved.

Danny strode along the road with a determined step. He wondered why Rosie had not said a word to him about where he intended to go that night. She couldn’t know anything, surely? And yet she acted so strangely. Anyway, he thought determinedly, she needn’t fret, none of them needed to, for this was the finish of it – he was going to tell them this night that he’d done his share and was going to do no more.

‘I was forced into it, in order to release two young boys who should never have been allowed to join in the first place,’ Danny tried to explain to Red McCullough later that evening.

Red looked at him dispassionately and replied, ‘That’s neither here nor there.’

‘I think it is.’

‘What you think doesn’t count,’ Red said ominously. ‘Once you join up, it’s for life. You can’t pick and choose.’ He glanced at Danny contemptuously and went on, ‘What manner of man are you at all, to fall at the first post?’

Danny grabbed Red McCullough by the neck, but two other men pulled him away and held him by the arms as he yelled, ‘First post? That foolhardy plan for a few illtrained and badly equipped men to take on the might of the British Army was doomed from the start. I knew that. And yet I gave it my best shot and brought down as many soldiers as the next man, so don’t you try and say now I lacked courage.

‘And then, for this ill-fated exercise, I lost eight months in jail, as you did I know,’ he added as Red held up his hand as if to interrupt. ‘Now my wife is nervous of the man I’ve become, my child terrified of the stranger in her house, and my brother does the lion’s share of the work on the farm that will one day be mine because I’ve not regained the health and strength I once took for granted.

‘So,’ he finished. ‘Don’t talk to me about first posts. That was the last post as far as I am concerned and I want nothing more to do with all this again.’

‘Sit down, man.’

‘I’ll not,’ Danny said. ‘I’m not staying.’

Immediately the grip the two men had on his arms tightened. A chair was brought and Danny manhandled into it. He would have sprung up from it again, but he took a look around the room and knew if he tried he would be forced back down, for every man in the room was ringed against him, even Shay and Sam. Added to that, the outburst had taken it out of him and so he sat in the chair and wished he was anywhere but in that room listening to Red McCullough’s
plans for the regrouping of the Brotherhood to plan their next strategy.

Rosie was woken in the early hours of the morning and lay for a short while wondering what had roused her while Bernadette slumbered on. Then she heard the noise again. Looking across, she saw that the space beside her was empty and with a sick feeling consuming her, she slipped from her bed, grabbing a shawl for her shoulders.