Danny Boy (13 page)

The Post Office was a burned-out shell. Some walls were still standing but looked as if a sudden push would send them toppling over, and many had giant holes in them. Inside were piles of debris and the acrid stink of burning lodged in Rosie’s nostrils as she looked about in amazement. ‘At one time, Dublin was burning from Talbot Street down to the Quays,’ said Father Joe, waving his hand to the right. ‘Once these used to be buildings, shops, houses; now there’s precious little left.’

It was just a sea of rubble. Here and there a building had escaped and still stood, Nelson’s Pillar being one, but Rosie couldn’t help wondering how safe those buildings were.

‘There were barricades everywhere,’ Father Joe went on. ‘That’s what helped the fire take hold so quickly. Every road they held they barricaded the corners of with bed mattresses and pillows and they had barbed wire strung across with rebels on guard.’

‘I know they commandeered cars and lorries and carts and all sorts for the barricade at St Stephen’s Green,’ Rosie said. ‘I went in on my way to Baggot Street to see for myself.’

The priest was talking again and pointing to the right of the post office. ‘Henry Street is impossible to go down due to falling masonry, and Moore Street is the same. Moore Street was where one of the rebel leaders Michael O’Rahilly was shot and killed along with nineteen others early on
Saturday morning. Padraic Pearce, one of the leaders of the uprising, told that to a fellow brother of mine, Father Augustine, who’d been visiting the rebels in prison.

‘He said Michael was trying to draw fire away from them, Padraic and his brother Willie and the others. They knew they had to leave the General Post Office before being roasted alive, but they had James Connolly with them and he was badly injured. So Michael O’Rahilly led an assault on the street to cover their retreat, as they crept into houses in Moore Street carrying Connolly on a litter.

‘It was all to no avail, though, and they were forced to surrender eventually that same day. Later, two dead rebels were found in Moore Street, lying side by side and holding hands people say.’

Rosie sighed. ‘That is the tragedy. So many dead. Grieving families throughout Ireland. England too, of course, for even the soldiers belonged to someone and for all that we’re no further forward in our struggle for Home Rule. In fact, this might have put it back.’

Father Joe knew Rosie was right. She’d spoken the thoughts of his heart. Her whole body spoke of dejection and she stood staring all around her at the carnage and destruction, her eyes full of pain. ‘Come,’ he said gently. ‘We can do no good here. Let me take you back to the Sisters where you may eat a little something and rest yourself.’

Rosie had seen more than enough and so she allowed herself to be led away and they made their way back through the people thronging in the streets.

The nuns fussed over the state of Rosie when Father Joe delivered her back. ‘Come and eat something at least,’ Sister Amelia said to the monk. ‘It will help you so.’ But Father Joe wouldn’t stay. He said he had too much to do, but Rosie thought he probably wouldn’t stay for a meal because he knew the nuns had little enough to eat themselves.

When Rosie was led into the refectory and saw the meal
before them was just potatoes in their jackets and a dish of salt, she bitterly regretted handing over the basket with all the food in it to the governor at the prison. She knew it would fill his fat, smug face, while these good and holy women were reduced to eating scraps and nothing else. Well, at least they could share what Connie had given her, she thought.

‘Wait,’ she cried as they pressed her to sit, and she ran from the room for her bag, tipping its contents on the table before them. Ham, cheese, hard-boiled eggs, barnbrack and soda bread all spilled out. It didn’t go far amongst so many, but Rosie tried to divide it as equally as possible.

As they ate, Rosie told them about Danny, although she didn’t stress how badly he looked, or tell them about his battered face.

‘So, what do you intend to do now?’ Reverend Mother asked.

‘I must go home tomorrow,’ Rosie said. ‘I have a baby to see to and a family waiting for news. As for Danny…’ She gave a resigned shrug. ‘He doesn’t want me to see him in that place. Father Joe said to write to him and he’s right, I suppose – I can do no good hanging about Dublin.’

‘We must be out early tomorrow,’ Sister Cuthbert said. ‘To see if we can find any food for you, for you have shared every morsel you had with us.’

‘I was glad to do it,’ Rosie said. ‘I just wish it had been more.’

‘I know that, Rosie,’ Sister Cuthbert said. ‘But you cannot go back without a bite to eat. We need food ourselves too. We have a surfeit of vegetables and a few potatoes, but nothing else in the convent at all.’

Rosie guessed as much. ‘I’ll go out and help you find anything there is about and gladly,’ she said, ‘and don’t worry, the trams go back fairly regularly.’

So the next morning very early she set off for the city, a basket over her arm. Sister Cuthbert went with her.

‘Johnstone Morney Bakery are the only people still baking in the city as far as I know,’ the nun said. ‘We’ll get bread if we can, and if not bread then flour. Sister Amelia and Sister Miriam are going up to Findlaters, that’s where they got the pea flour she made the dumplings with yesterday, and maybe they’ll have some hard biscuits too.’

Pea flour, Rosie thought: it explained the strange colour and even stranger taste of the dumplings she’d tried.

The queue outside Morney’s, even at that early hour, was enormous. Everyone was rationed to two large loaves each and two pounds of bread flour, but Rosie and Sister Cuthbert came away well satisfied with their share. When the two other nuns came back with more pea flour and sweet biscuits, everyone was heartened.

Later, Rosie bade farewell to the nuns and left them with genuine regret, wishing she could help them in some way. She had immense respect for them, for despite their straitened circumstances they hadn’t hesitated to welcome her warmly and share everything they had with her.

When Rosie alighted from the Dublin tram at Blessington it was nearly two o’clock and she felt more wearied by the news she had to impart than the journey itself. She had not notified Connie and Matt of her return and so didn’t expect to be met, but she didn’t mind the walk out to the farmhouse. She’d done it often enough.

However, she had just left the depot when she was hailed, and she turned to see Willie Ferguson approaching her in his pony and trap. ‘Were you sent to meet me?’ she asked.

‘Not exactly,’ Willie said, helping her into the seat beside him. ‘But I knew where you’d gone. God, half the county knew and as I was going into Blessington anyway, I told Matt I’d wait on a bit to meet a few trams. They thought you might be back today.’ Seeing Rosie’s white, drawn face and fearing what she would tell him, he asked gently, ‘Did you find Danny?’

‘Aye,’ Rosie said with a sigh. ‘He’s in Kilmainham Jail. Shay’s with him too and Sarah’s Sam. I didn’t see them, I was just allowed to see Danny, but he told me.’

‘Thank God!’

‘Don’t be so quick to thank the Almighty,’ Rosie said sharply. ‘Some of the leaders are to be court-martialled today.
The rumour is they’ll be shot first and the ordinary men will follow after.’

‘Does Danny feel that?’

‘Aye, and he’s not the only one. I’m not telling Connie and Matt, and I’d be obliged if you’ll say nothing. They have enough to worry about as it is, without my telling them that too.’

Willie nodded. He understood that and then he asked, ‘Was he injured at all?’

‘Not in the uprising,’ Rosie said. ‘But now his face is black and blue, and he shambled into the room like a man three times his age, bent over and his manacled arms wrapped across his stomach.’

‘Beaten up?’

‘Could be nothing else. He could tell me little with the guard in the room the whole time.’

‘You do well not to tell Connie about any of this,’ Willie said. ‘I’ll say nothing, never fear, nor will I give the whole story to my own wife.’

Most people in the village now knew where Rosie had been heading the day before and shopkeepers and shoppers alike stood in the street to watch and wave. Some called out a greeting, but Willie didn’t stop and Rosie was grateful. She had too much on her mind to answer inquisitive villagers and anyway, apart from Willie Ferguson, she really thought Matt and Connie should hear first.

‘I don’t know how I’m going to tell them,’ she confided as the road stretched out before them. ‘Although essentially, of course, it isn’t the worst news. It’s the best we could hope for in the circumstances. It’s just with this court martial and all…’

‘Who told you they were to be executed?’ Willie asked.

‘There’s Franciscan monks that visit the prisoners,’ Rosie explained. ‘Good job they do with the Catholic Church speaking out against the uprising, even from the pulpit. The
prisoners would get scant help or sympathy from that source and God knows when you are set to meet your maker, then you need all the spiritual help you can get. Sister Cuthbert said these Capuchin monks are sort of an independent order and I say Thank God for them. But even Father Joe, who went with me to Kilmainham Jail, thought they would all be executed in time. He didn’t come straight out with it, I had to press him, but that’s what he thought.’

‘I’ll take myself up there and see my boy myself,’ Willie said after a moment’s reflection. ‘I’m ashamed that I let you go up and see first.’

‘I was the only person that could go. Daddy is already rushed off his feet as it is,’ Rosie said.

‘Well, I am rushed right enough and Niall is as good as useless at the moment. This business has hit him and Phelan harder than they’re letting on, I think.’

‘Don’t ask me to feel sorry for them,’ Rosie said through tight lips.

‘Aye, I know, lass, you don’t have to say it,’ Willie said. ‘And I’ve a debt to your man that it may take a lifetime to repay, for I know if it hadn’t been for him offering to take Niall’s place, I might have two sons in jail now, or one in jail and one blown to Kingdom Come.’

Rosie said nothing. Willie was right – her Danny had sacrificed freedom and maybe his life for Willie’s son and his own brother but suddenly she felt resentful at him doing that. Did she and Bernadette count for nothing? But then how could he have come home and left two mere boys to their fate? How could he have faced his mother, held his head up, if he’d saved his own skin while his brother was blown to pieces or was incarcerated in a jail, awaiting his turn to be shot? She knew he could never have done that. She knew the manner of man she married yet she knew she would suffer all the days of her life because of his values.

But she didn’t berate Willie, or blame him in any way. No-one
could have turned Phelan or Niall from a cause they believed in, however misguided, and no one could have talked Danny out of trying to save Phelan from himself. She imagined it would have been much the same way in the Ferguson household, the man, Shay, and the boy, Niall, would go their own way.

The sigh she gave, though, spoke volumes and made Willie feel immensely sorry for her. He had no words to express how he felt and so, when he dropped her at the head of the lane there had been an uneasy silence between them for some time, and Rosie was glad to reach the farmhouse gate, despite the news she had to impart.

She thanked Willie warmly and stood for a moment watching him pull away before turning to walk towards the cottage. Rosie spied Matt working in the field alongside Phelan, shading his eyes from the sun as he scanned the road. The minute he saw Rosie alighting from the cart he gave a cry to Phelan and both left their work and came scurrying to meet her.

Connie too had spotted Rosie through the window as she crossed to the fire, and catching Bernadette up in her arms she ran up the lane as Matt and Phelan raced across the fields.

Connie’s mind was awash with questions, but she saw the exhaustion Rosie tried so valiantly to hide and she told Matt to wait till Rosie was in and resting herself before pestering the life out of her.

Anyway, the moment belonged to Bernadette who was holding out her arms to the mammy she’d so surely missed. ‘Mammy, Mammy!’

Rosie took the child from Connie, passing Connie her bag, and she cuddled Bernadette close, burying her face for a moment in her soft, sweet smelling, golden curls. She took comfort in her small daughter, as yet unaware that she might have no father to take joy in her growing up, and she hugged her all the tighter.

And so Rosie was soon divested of her coat and sat before the fire, her child on her knee and a cup of tea beside her. And then she told them all straight what had happened to Danny, that he was alive but in jail.

‘Oh, thank God,’ Connie said. Rosie didn’t check her as she had done with Willie. She had a mental picture in her head of Danny, beaten and bruised and half-starved, and tears sprang to her eyes but she bent her head towards Bernadette to hide her face while she swallowed back the lump in her throat.

‘Did you see him just the once?’ Connie asked.

Rosie nodded. ‘He didn’t want me to visit further,’ she said. ‘It’s a godawful place, Kilmainham. Father Joe advised me to write.’

That, at least, was something Connie could do for him. ‘Well, if that’s what he wants, we’ll all send him a letter, so we will.’

‘I’m sure he’ll be grateful,’ Rosie said, and then she decided to change the subject because the sadness of remembering how Danny had been and what might yet happen to him, a sadness she was unable to share, was dragging her down.

Instead, she said, ‘Dublin was a sight, you’d never believe it, the damage was colossal when you think the insurrection was all over in six days.’

‘You told us none of this, Phelan,’ Connie said, almost accusingly.

Phelan shrugged. ‘I was more worried about Danny. But, Rosie’s right, the whole centre of Dublin seemed to be on fire at one point.’

‘Dear God,’ Connie said. ‘For this to happen, just a few miles from us.’

‘The food situation was worse,’ Rosie said. ‘Dublin was being starved to death.’

‘Aye,’ Phelan said. ‘Me and Niall could get barely anything at all to eat. A lot of roads you couldn’t go into either, even to search for food, for the army was taking potshots at anything, or anyone that moved.’

Rosie shot around to look at the boy and fixed him with a glare, her eyes sparking with anger. ‘You deserved all that and more,’ she snapped. ‘You chose to go and put your life in danger and take the lives of others. I’m talking here of innocent people, people who had no hand in any uprising of any kind and had no wish, other than to go about their daily business and feed their families.

‘Open my bag, Mam,’ she demanded swinging around to Connie. ‘See what the nuns gave me for the journey and what they will have to eat today as well.’

‘Dry bread?’ Connie said, opening the linen cloth bundles.

‘Aye,’ Rosie said. ‘Yesterday evening, they only had potatoes and salt until I shared with them the food you packed for me. Dinner was only better because some kind person had given them a sack of vegetables. That bread you have in your hands we had to travel nearly the length of Dublin and then queue for hours to get. Some people with families, small children and the like, must be worse off. The nuns are liked and respected and looked after by the Dublin people, but I tell you times are hard just now for everyone there. You would scarcely believe it. And for what?’

It was a challenge she threw open to Phelan and one he wasn’t able to answer. He’d been eaten up with shame since Danny had ordered him home and with some of the shame came the realisation once he was out of the house, away from the noise and the shooting and the killing, that he’d wanted to go. He was relieved there was a ‘get out’ clause for him. But he’d shared these thoughts with no-one, for he wasn’t stupid.

When he’d reached home and saw how distressed Rosie and his mother were, he felt guilt dragging him down. Now Rosie was back, had seen for herself the horror and had found Danny and the others alive, but for how long God alone knew. Sometimes, when he realised what he’d done, he could scarcely live with himself.

Rosie, who he’d once thought so much of, now looked at
him as if he were a slug, something she’d found under a stone. Well he deserved nothing more than her scorn and he lowered his head, hiding his face, which had flushed crimson with embarrassment at her scrutiny.

Connie felt sorry for Rosie, sorry for them all, but Phelan, she was sure, had just been caught up in the glory of it: he’d not thought deeply of the consequences. Why would he, he was just a boy, fourteen years old? But Rosie blamed him, and who could wonder at that either. She hated the feeling between them, when they had been so friendly in the past.

Matt, trying to be peacemaker, turned the attention from Phelan and the ruination of Dublin and remarked, ‘Dermot will be here as soon as dinner is over. He’ll be like a dog with two tails to have you back.’

‘How d’you know?’

‘How do I know what? That he’ll be up here, or that he’ll be happy to see you?’

‘Both,’ Rosie said with a thin smile.

‘Well, the child wasn’t far away from the house from dinnertime yesterday,’ Matt said. ‘We told him it would likely be at least today before you got back, but nothing would do him but wait until it got dark to see if you were coming home. Mark my words, he’ll be here.’

‘Maybe you should pop and see your mother when you’ve had a bite?’ Connie said.

‘She wouldn’t be a whit interested, Mam.’

‘Even so, she is your mother after all.’

Rosie would make no promises. ‘I’ll see how I feel when I’ve eaten. At the moment I’m jiggered, not just tired, bone-weary, but I might perk up if I eat. I’ll just pop Bernadette into the bedroom,’ she said, lifting the child who’d fallen fast asleep against her shoulder.

‘Aye, there’s another glad to have you back,’ Connie remarked, stroking the child’s curls gently. ‘Mind you, she’s
not been a bit of bother, but there’s no-one like their mammy at that age.’

Pity she may have no daddy soon, Rosie wanted to fling at Phelan, but she wouldn’t go down that road again. Some things were best left unsaid and she didn’t want to upset Connie further so she smiled at her and carried Bernadette across the room, saying, ‘I’ll help you get a meal together when I’ve settled her.’

‘You’ll do no such thing,’ Connie said. ‘There’s just the four of us, and I can knock up a bite for us in no time at all. You sit and rest yourself.’

But Rosie, though tired, was unused to sitting still, and she had no desire to do so now because she wanted no more time to sit and think. God knows she’d done enough of that when she’d been in the tram coming home.

She stood in the room for a moment looking at her child sleeping in the cradle, her thumb in her mouth, and felt her heart turn over with the fierce love she had for her. She was such a delight and joy to bring up, and one day, she promised herself, she’d tell her about her daddy and the great man he’d been. She bent and kissed Bernadette gently on the cheek and then went back into the kitchen, closing the door behind her gently.

Matt was right: Rosie had barely finished her dinner when she saw Dermot run past the window. He didn’t even make a cursory knock on the door, but opened the latch and walked straight in. He flew across the room when he caught sight of Rosie and threw himself against her. ‘Oh, Rosie, I’m so glad you’re back.’

Rosie couldn’t help but be deeply touched by the child’s arms tight around her and the relief in his voice. ‘I’m glad to be back too, Dermot.’

‘Did you find Danny?’

‘Aye, I found him,’ Rosie said.

‘Where was he?’

‘In jail, and Shay Ferguson and Sarah’s boyfriend Sam Flaherty with him.’

‘And…Is he all right?’

Rosie felt she could tell Dermot even less than Connie – he was only a young boy – and so she forced a light note into her voice and said, ‘He’s grand.’

‘Oh, I’m glad,’ Dermot said fervently. ‘Will he be in prison long?’

It was hard to remain positive so Rosie said, ‘I don’t know, Dermot. I imagine he’ll have to go to trial.’

‘Oh.’