Heart of War (12 page)

Cate thought, we are obviously hoping that stressing these outrages will force America into the war on our side. But Mr Wilson was not a warmonger or sabre rattler, and every day that passed gave a sensible man more cause to take very serious thought before committing his country to the war. He wasn't going to be cajoled or led in; he was going to be
forced
in, by sheer German stupidity, or overriding American necessity, if it was to happen at all.

He glanced at the opened letter from his son, that lay beside his plate. Laurence was ecstatic because Guy Rowland had flown an aeroplane up from Shoreham, and
landed it on the Charterhouse football pitch a week ago. Guy said the plane was an Armstrong Whitworth F.K.3, and was easy to fly and good for instruction, but didn't have enough power. Guy had given the school a brief demonstration of simple aerobatics over Godalming, and then flown back to Shoreham. He was in a bad temper, Laurence reported, because he was being kept on at the Shoreham Flying School as an instructor, instead of being sent to an operational squadron of the Royal Flying Corps in France. A pair of robins were nesting in a hollow tree at the edge of the town, and …

Garrod came in and lifted the domed silver lid over the serving table. ‘Anything more, sir?'

‘No, thank you … well, some more coffee.'

The parlour maid poured the coffee for him. Cate said, ‘Mr Rowland's going to Ireland in April, with a parliamentary committee, you know. I mean Mr Harry, of course.'

Garrod waited, standing beside his chair; a strand of grey hair escaped from under her starched black cap and ribbon.

Cate said, ‘The Prime Minister wants them to find out what the Irish really think, about Home Rule … about conscription … what can be done to work out a compromise acceptable to all but the most rabid Catholics and Orangemen.'

‘Quite so, sir,' Garrod said. She waited, the silver coffee pot in hand.

Cate said, ‘Mr Rowland is going to try to establish contact with Mrs Cate. I don't know whether he'll have any success.'

‘I hope so, sir,' Garrod answered. ‘Mr Rowland would want to tell Madam about the wedding, wouldn't he? And Madam would want to hear it. And have news of Master Laurence.'

‘I'm sure,' Cate said, ‘but she's wanted for murder. I expect that the most Mr Rowland will be able to get from her is some message that she is well, or of affection for the children.'

Garrod said, ‘Quite so, sir. Thank you, sir,' and went out. Cate knew she was thanking him for telling her about the new attempt to contact his wife. It was none of her business, of course; but she had served them a long time; she had a right to know. Now, as head of the staff, she had other rights in this family and house; and she would never abuse them.

Harry Rowland M.P. stood by the fire in the huge main drawing room of Dublin Castle, port glass in hand. Beside him stood Morgan ap Morgan M.P., holding a glass of water. Morgan represented a non-Conformist constituency in the Welsh mountains, where teetotalism and observance of the Sabbath ranked far above faith or works as the road to salvation. Facing them, his back to the fire, port glass in hand, stood Brigadier General Lowe, commanding the cavalry brigade at the Curragh.

Morgan said, ‘Is it true that the man captured on Friday near Tralee is Sir Roger Casement, then?'

Lowe nodded – ‘It is. And the steamer that scuttled itself while the Navy was escorting it into Queens town was the
Aud
, carrying arms from Germany for the Citizen Army and the Volunteers.'

‘So what will they do now?' Harry asked.

‘Do what they've been doing all along – what they're best at doing,' Lowe said contemptuously, ‘make speeches. March up and down in their uniforms and swords.'

‘You think they'll not take any action, then?' Morgan's voice rose in the classical Welsh singsong.

Lowe shook his head, ‘They'd be mad to do so – that's what I meant, just now. They had a big day of manoeuvres and parades arranged for today, and some of us thought that might have been cover for a real rising … but Eon MacNeill cancelled it and forbade any of his people to attend any parade or manoeuvres. And as you have seen – nothing happened. If we hadn't got Casement and the
Aud
, they might have acted differently, and that
would
have been unpleasant … not dangerous … just that a great many Irishmen – and Irishwomen – would have been killed – which would have done us no good in the eyes of the world –
particularly to the west.' He waved a free hand in the general direction of America.

Harry said, ‘The Viceroy's private secretary told me at dinner that Pearse and Connolly and Plunkett are meeting now. They're all extremists, aren't they?'

Lowe nodded again – ‘Yes – and they have to decide what to do. What can they do, in the face of MacNeill's cancellation? They'll do nothing.'

Morgan said tartly, ‘They're good for nothing, these Irish. Except begging. Begging's the only industry that they work hard at.'

Lowe said, ‘Oh, don't be quite so hard on the Irish, Mr Morgan. Since the beginning of the year the disaffected of every hue have been conducting vigorous recruiting campaigns for their private armies here. They've increased their strength by about ten percent. In the same period we've had a thirty percent increase in Irish enlistment in our army, in the face of everything the Sinn Feiners have done to stop men enlisting … The great majority of the country's loyal, sir.'

Harry wandered away by himself, glass in hand, his face troubled. He and Morgan and the third member of the commission had been in Dublin a week now; and they'd learned only that there was no possible common ground between Carson the Ulsterman and Redmond the moderate Irish leader. One absolutely refused to be part of any Ireland governed by a Popish majority; the other insisted on a single Ireland, free of Britain in all respects, and ruled by the majority, which would be Catholic. The Home Rule Bill, giving the Catholics something of what they wanted, had been passed just before the war began; but, in the face of violent and organized protests, amounting to rebellion, from Carson and his followers in the North, implementation of it had been postponed till the end of the war. That was only putting off the evil day, Harry thought unhappily.

He had received one message from his daughter, Margaret Cate. Written in another hand, it had arrived yesterday in the post at his hotel, the Metropole on Sackville Street. It read, without greeting:

I am well. Tell Christopher to give Stella the diamond tiara that is in the bank safe, as a wedding present. And
Laurence the portrait of Grandfather McCormack, that is hanging in the hall – or was. As to your mission, about which we have read in the papers, follow Mother's advice, which I heard her give many times: persuade the British Government to act generously toward Ireland, that is, grant total independence, now; and get out. They will be repaid. The alternative is civil war. We do not serve king or kaiser, only Ireland, whatever you hear to the contrary.

It was unsigned.

Near noon next day, Easter Monday, Margaret Cate waited on Sackville Street, nearly opposite the massive General Post Office. Her father, packing his bags to leave the Metropole Hotel, a few yards down the street, to return to London, would not have recognized her even by close examination, for she had been transformed into a typical Dublin shawlie, only more ragged and dirtier than most. She was sitting on the step of a clothing shop, her head down, watching; an observer, such as the police who passed now and then on their beat, would have thought she was suffering from a bad hangover.

The ragged column came up the street, forty or so men followed by two small lorries, a van, two motor bicycles and a touring car. A few of the men were in grey-green uniform, but most in their Sunday best, all weighed down with rifles, shotguns, pikes, shovels, crowbars, grenades, ropes and various indeterminate packages. All wore bandoliers of ammunition crisscrossed on their chests, and yellow armbands on their left arms.

Harry Rowland, coming out of the hotel with a porter carrying his bag behind, stood and stared. A young lieutenant of Connaught Rangers, standing beside him, said in a marked Irish accent, ‘Will the ijjuts never tire of marching up and down the street?' The head porter waved majestically; a taxi cab appeared, Harry got in, and drove away.

The column came on. The man in front was short, bandylegged, square-faced, with a shaggy moustache – James Connolly, Commandant General of the Dublin forces of the Army of the Irish Republic, which latter did not exist. With
him were two other Commandants General of the same nebulous force – Joseph Mary Plunkett and Patrick Pearse. They were both poets – Plunkett, no more than skin and bones, dying of consumption before their eyes; Pearse, of medium height with a serious, almost lugubrious manner and a cast in his right eye, a good lawyer, and a good leader – Commander-in-Chief of the whole Army of the Republic, and its first President. Margaret watched with tense excitement, mixed with disdain. She had thought they were mad to continue their plans for the Rising, merely postponing it by twenty-four hours, when MacNeill's cancellation would cut the forces available from nine thousand to a few hundred, in all Ireland. But they had insisted – and insisted on keeping MacNeill, their nominal leader, in ignorance; and they had insisted that she, Margaret McCormack, known to all of them as The Lady (to distinguish her from Constance Gore-Booth, Countess Markievicz, always called The Madame) should keep out of the fight until they had seized their first and main objective, the Post Office – just because she was a woman. But, right or wrong, heroic or idiotic – or both – they were coming on now, acting, at last, instead of talking.

‘Halt!' Connolly's command rang out clear in the street. It was emptier than usual at this time, Margaret thought – Easter Monday, and racing at Fairyhouse, including the Irish Grand National. The British would find it easier to get a battalion together at the race course than in the barracks, today.

Connolly, standing almost in front of her, in the middle of the wide street, bellowed, ‘Leftturn! The G.P.O. – charge!'

‘Take the Post Office!' another voice yelled from inside the column. Slowly, the men gathered their wits, ran up the steps under the great Ionic columns, shouting, and burst through the doors. Shots rang out at once and Margaret, abandoning her post on the step, jumped up and ran across the street. She arrived inside the Post Office just as Pearse was untangling the mass of men jammed beyond the doors, bayonets interlocking, bandoliers caught in someone else's rifle muzzle, grenades rolling out of haversacks and across the floor. Two young Volunteers were gazing crestfallen at the ceiling, where flaking plaster showed that they had let off their rifles by mistake.

Gradually the Post Office clerks struggled out of their places behind the counter, and ran out of the building. People who had been buying stamps and posting parcels followed, one by one, looking more annoyed than alarmed. Pearse shouted an order and the Volunteers began to smash out the ornate windows with their rifle butts. Plunkett leaned on the counter, recovering his strength. Soon Margaret heard him call ‘Whitmore!' and his assistant brought him maps. Together they spread the maps on a big table at the back of the main room.

Pearse, passing by, stared at Margaret, stopped, and snapped, ‘You were supposed to come when we sent for the Auxiliaries, Lady … Well, go and help Joseph Mary.'

Margaret moved through the crowd to Plunkett's side at the big table. He was looking sicker and gaunter than ever, but his eyes were flashing as he expounded the position to his assistant. He was wearing two large ancient Irish turquoise and silver rings, one on each hand, and a silver filigree bangle on his left wrist.

Plunkett was saying, ‘We have the Post Office. We'll assume that the other detachments have taken their objectives, too. It was easy enough here, heaven knows … De Valera at Boland's Mill … St Stephen's Green here.' He put a finger on the map, ‘Jacob's Biscuit Factory, to the south-east here … The Four Courts, the Mendicity Institution … the South Dublin Union, Gilbey's Distillery …'

A Volunteer, festooned with ammunition, ran up, ‘General Plunkett, sir, there's women at the doors …'

Plunkett waved the beringed hand irritably, ‘Go and tell General Pearse or Connolly. I'm making plans.'

The man looked baffled and Margaret said, ‘What is it?'

The man looked even more doubtful, told to give his message to this lank, grey-haired shawlie; but Margaret's voice had an edge of command to it and he said, ‘There's twenty women outside, screaming at the guards that they've come for separation money. They get it every Monday. It's Monday.'

Separation money was an allowance paid by the British Government to the dependants of Irishmen serving in the British forces, who drew it through local post offices. Margaret walked toward the doors, and faced the yelling,
fist-shaking women, mostly shawlies. Volunteers with rifles raised and bayonets fixed barred their entrance.

Margaret lifted a hand – ‘You've come for separation money?'

‘Yes … yes … 'tis our right … at the Post Office.'

Margaret said curtly, ‘There is no longer any British Government here. You are citizens of the Republic of Ireland. There will be no more separation money.'

She turned her back, hearing the gasps behind her, then the angry cries, the hurled insults. A woman screamed, ‘Wait till my man comes home! He's a corpril in the Irish Guards and he'll show yez what a real soldier …' Gradually the noise died away.

The O'Rahilly came to the table with Connolly, and gave orders to clear the upper floors. Men went out to hoist the new flags of Ireland on poles on the roof and in the street: one flag bore an uncrowned harp of gold on a field of green, with Gaelic lettering; the other was a tricolour – green, white and orange.