Shamrock Green (39 page)

‘What's going on here?' Sylvie said.

‘Nothin',' Maeve said. ‘Did you find my summer blouse?'

It was on the tip of Sylvie's tongue to order her daughter upstairs but she hadn't the heart. She admired Maeve's adaptability. She too would have to adapt if she were to have any hope of holding the family together until Gowry returned. She must write to Gowry, she reminded herself, send him something useful like a pair of woollen stockings or a tin of cigarettes.

Sylvie shook her head. ‘Sorry, dearest, no.'

‘Didn't you find any of my clothes?'

‘Everything was burned to cinders.'

‘You should have tooken me with you,' Maeve said, irritably. ‘I'd have found somethin' we could use. Heard any news about Turk?'

‘No, nothing.'

‘He'll be in Richmond Barracks with the others. What about Jansis?'

‘I spoke to no one,' Sylvie said.

‘Not much use, are you?' Maeve said and, rotating the baby on to her shoulder, turned and stalked into the tenement, with Algie trotting at her heels.

*   *   *

Glasnevin Cemetery was just across the canal from the bottom of Endicott Street but the route taken by most funerals was along the Phibsborough Road under the shadow of the Mountjoy.

For the best part of a week cortèges trundled up the Phibsborough Road, plumed horses pulling carts draped with laurel and crape, men walking in great long winding snakes behind them. Motor-cars too, shiny limousines from posh funeral homes where someone of importance had been laid out. Priests by the score, widows and orphans, those brothers who remained at liberty all trudging behind the coffins until it seemed to be just one interminable funeral with the sound of the bagpipe – salvos were banned – like the voice of a nation that has wakened to find itself mourning a whole new crop of martyrs.

Four hundred and fifteen souls were laid to rest close to Parnell's tomb and the grave of that wild old Fenian rebel, Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa, whose body had been brought home from Staten Island less than a year ago. There was no air of celebration now, however, only grief and anger.

Sylvie was still lying low in Endicott Street, but there was no holding Maeve who, with Algie as her guide, roved the lanes and alleyways and attached herself to every funeral party that rolled past and walked with them for a piece.

It was Maeve who found the newspapers that had been thrown out of the back door of a doctor's consulting room, who discovered among the listings the name of Miss Jansis Kennedy, late of Ardee, a civilian victim of the fighting. As soon as she saw the name, she rushed home, rushed up the iron stairs, screaming at the pitch of her voice,
‘Jansis is dead, Jansis is dead.'

Sylvie was peeling potatoes into a bucket but the instant she heard Maeve's cry she threw open the door and let Maeve fling herself into her arms.

Poor Jansis had been ‘lost' for a week. Her body had been brought to the city hospital on an army truck and stuck in the morgue until Peter had told the authorities who she was and her parents had been notified and, accompanied by her three brothers and two small sisters, had hastened to Dublin to fetch her home to Ardee. She had been buried in the graveyard near the river with the wake in the cottage in which she'd been born, and those who had loved her best had not been there to bid their friend farewell.

It was a bad time for Maeve, the worst time; Sylvie feared that her daughter would injure herself with weeping. Sensing his half-sister's distress, the baby wailed too and turned so red-faced and breathless that Sylvie had to shout for Pauline to come up and take him away for a spell.

She was glad to be in Fran's bed that night, far from the Sperryhead Road and Sutter Street where Jansis had met her end.

She held Maeve in her arms, for she understood what grief meant to the girl, that raw, peeled feeling around the heart when waves of recollection and regret rippled over you. She was too self-centred to suffer that sort of pain and did not suffer it now, not for Jansis and not for Fran. Lying in bed listening to Maeve's sobs, she wondered if she would ever be possessed by grief of that magnitude and if Gowry died would her heart break?

Gowry would not die, though. Gowry would live through the war and come back and forgive her. That was Gowry's way, his role.

Fed and changed, the baby was asleep in an old creel that Pauline had found in the cellar. Sylvie, worn out, was almost asleep too when Maeve stirred.

‘I need to see Turk,' Maeve declared.

‘How can you? He's in prison.'

‘Take me to see Turk.'

‘I wish I could.'

‘If you won't take me, I'll go by myself.'

‘No,' Sylvie said, sharply. ‘Don't you even think of it.'

‘I want to see Turk. I want to see Turk. I want to see—'

‘Hush, you'll wake baby.'

‘I don't
care
about baby. I don't care about
you.
' Maeve sat bolt upright, her face white in the darkened room. ‘If you hadn't lain down with Fran none of this would've happened. Jansis wouldn't be dead an' Turk wouldn't be in jail.'

‘Maeve, that just isn't right.'

‘I know what you did with Fran. It was more than the huggin'. You did the thing that makes babies, the thing that made Sean. I know what it is, an' don't you think I don't.' Sylvie reached out but Maeve did not want consolation. She waved her arms and kicked against the bedcovers. ‘If you hadn't let him put his – his thing in you we wouldn't be here. We'd be at home with Daddy.'

Sylvie caught Maeve's arms and pushed her back against the bolster.

‘Stop it this instant. Do you want the whole building to hear?'

‘I don't care.'
Fresh tears spurted from Maeve's eyes.
‘I want my daddy.'

Sean was awake too now, and girning.

Lying in the darkness with her daughter and son crying, it dawned on Sylvie that what Maeve said might be true, that it was her recklessness that had brought disaster in its wake, that she
was
responsible. She had thought of it only as a love affair, something written in the stars, but it had been nothing of the sort: she had loved not the man but the love-making. The rest had only been play-acting, her own little drama, too personal and absorbing to include the larger issues that had driven Gowry away and caused Fran to be murdered.

‘You can't have your daddy,' Sylvie said. ‘You're stuck with me. All right, all right, if you stop crying I'll take you to see Turk.'

‘When?'

‘Tomorrow.'

‘What if the peelers are waitin' for you?' Maeve said. ‘What if Mr Vaizey's got scouts at the barracks?'

‘I thought you didn't care what happens to me?'

‘No,' Maeve said, soberly. ‘What if they are?'

‘Too bloody bad,' said Sylvie.

*   *   *

For the military authorities Richmond Barracks was merely a clearing house for rebels but for the police it was their last chance to settle old scores. Sylvie was taken aback by the ease with which she and the children were admitted. Escorted by armed soldiers, they were led past the guardhouse to an earthen square sectioned by barbed-wire fences. The surrounding buildings were three storeys tall and in the windows of the second- and third-storey rooms Sylvie could make out prisoners crammed against the glass. Soldiers were everywhere and sullen little groups of peelers in dark green uniforms eyed her suspiciously. She had no Sunday-best dress but she'd borrowed a bonnet from Pauline and had washed her hair and screwed in curl papers and, all in all, presented a picture respectable enough to impress the men in khaki, if not the men in green.

It was a cold, grey morning. Spring seemed to have retreated from the proximity of the barracks and the air was heavy with the smell of cooking and smoke from the coke braziers around which soldiers on stand-down huddled for warmth. Behind the wire were rows of washstands and two standpipes with great dribbling puddles of water around them. There were two doors in the front of the building, each guarded by a sentry with a rifle. Maeve and she were told to wait by the fence while the prisoner was brought down. Two soldiers positioned themselves about ten paces behind them. Sylvie held Sean to her shoulder so that he could look at the soldiers, which, goggle-eyed, he did.

Maeve was less sanguine than her brother, though, and shot daggers at any soldier who had the temerity to glance in her direction.

‘Don't,' Sylvie said.

‘Don't what?'

‘Make faces at them.'

‘I'm not makin' faces.'

‘Behave yourself, please.'

Sylvie placed the brown-paper parcel on the ground at her feet. Maeve was looking towards the building, waiting for Turk to emerge, when an officer came striding up behind them. ‘Is that parcel for prisoner Trotter?' he enquired. ‘Please stand to one side while the contents are examined.'

‘Sure an' what d'you think's in it?' said Maeve. ‘Gelignite?'

The officer, who was handsome in a boyish way, looked down at her and, not without amusement, said, ‘One never knows, does one?'

‘One might find out when one cuts the bloody string then,' said Maeve.

‘You people, you never will learn, will you?'

‘I'm not people,' Maeve said. ‘I'm Maeve McCulloch.'

On the officer's signal a corporal came trotting over, knelt beside the parcel, untied the string and spread the wrappings. The parcel contained four mutton chops, a string of sausages, two tins of kidney soup and an oval loaf, split and buttered.

‘All clear, sor,' the corporal announced.

‘What about the tins?'

‘Will you be wantin' me to open the tins, sor?'

‘Just give them a good shake.'

This the soldier did.

‘Also all clear?' said the lieutenant.

‘Aye, sor, clean as whistles. Will I be wrappin' the stuff up again?'

‘Leave it as it is.' He glanced at Maeve. ‘Is it in the sausages?'

‘What?' Maeve said.

‘The gelignite.'

‘Hah-hah!' Maeve said, then, turning, lit up with joy as the love of her life, Turk Trotter, emerged from the barrack-room door.

*   *   *

‘Well now,' Turk said, ‘if it isn't a treat to be seein' you again. Seems like a lifetime since we were all together singin' songs in the Shamrock. Why, my sweetheart, I reckon you've grown even prettier since I saw you last.'

Maeve blushed and offered him the sausages coiled on a sheet of wrapping paper. ‘We brought you something to eat.'

Turk eased the gift through the wire, lifted the sausages to his nose, and sniffed their bouquet.

‘Manna from heaven,' he said.

‘How bad is it inside?' Sylvie asked.

‘Not so bad,' Turk said, ‘but there's twenty of us in every room so it does get a bit stinky.'

‘Are there beds for everyone?'

‘No beds at all. We sleep heads to the wall, feet in the middle. Aren't enough blankets to go round, so it's cold in the night. I don't mind the hard floor so much now my hipbones are gettin' used to it.'

‘Do they beat you?' Maeve said.

‘Nah, nah. They get us up at six. We go out for a wash, one room at a time, and then they feed us. Mostly it's slop. Aren't enough spoons or knives so you have to be makin' do as best you can. I bought this old jack-knife from an English soldier and it does me well enough, except for the porridge.'

‘How do you eat the porridge?' said Maeve.

‘Like this,' said Turk, scooping a cupped hand to his mouth.

‘Do you have money?' Sylvie asked.

‘I'd two quid in my pouch when I was captured.'

‘Didn't they steal your money?' Maeve said.

Turk shook his head. ‘They bargain for favours, but they're not thieves.'

Sylvie passed Sean to Maeve, lifted the chops, bread and tins and passed them through the wire. Turk held out the gifts for the guards to see, then wrapped them in the paper and laid the package on the ground. He still wore the uniform of the brotherhood, though the emblems had been torn from the sleeves and shoulder. He seemed well enough, Sylvie thought, but he'd shaved cold that morning and pinpricks of blood peppered his jaw-line.

‘How were you captured?' Sylvie asked.

‘I gave up,' Turk replied. ‘Surrendered.'

‘You said you'd never surrender,' Maeve told him.

‘I done it for Peter. If you'd been there you'd have seen how pointless it was to go on after the warehouse had fallen.'

‘Pointless!' Maeve shrilled. ‘The cause – pointless?'

‘Where is Peter?' Sylvie put in.

‘Upstairs in the room with Charlie and me.'

‘Is he all right?'

‘He's wounded but he ain't goin' to die. He took a bullet in the side. They done him proud in the hospital, I'll give the bastards that much. He would still be there recuperatin' but he told them he was a soldier an' if they were goin' to be shootin' the rest of us he wanted to be lined up against the wall too. They handed him over to the military who brought him here.'

‘Are they goin' to shoot
you,
Turk?' Maeve said.

‘I doubt it. I think most of the shootin's been done.'

‘They shot Fran,' Sylvie said.

‘Jaysus!'

‘Vaizey ordered it. I saw it.'

‘Jaysus, Jaysus!'

Turk scratched his brow, a hand over his eyes.

‘Where did Jansis die?' Sylvie asked.

Turk sighed again. ‘She was trapped on the roof with me an' Peter, sore wounded. She fought to the last but she was dyin' before they reached us.'

‘Reached you?' said Maeve.

‘Before I showed the white flag,' said Turk.

‘Hopeless, was it?' Sylvie said.

‘Aye, hopeless,' said Turk. ‘Totally outnumbered, we were.'