The 13th Apostle: A Novel of a Dublin Family, Michael Collins, and the Irish Uprising (26 page)

70

E
OIN’S
D
IARY

I
was on me way to meet the boss at the Stag’s Head. I had his daily intelligence brief for him. I knew I was in trouble as soon as I stepped out of 3 Crow Street and walked into Dame Street
.

The British had dropped the net.

Since we’ve been pushing back, I think they are getting a little frightened. They are expert at this, but I was surprised they did it this close to Dublin Castle. Usually they do it away from the Castle, in hopes of snatching a big fish off the street. What they do is cordon off four to six blocks with Crossley tenders and send in the troops. They stop one and all and check IDs.

I thought of turning back to the office, but thought better of it when I saw a Tommy advancing towards me up Crow Street. I turned towards Trinity College, but it was chaos that way, with the army stopping and boarding trams. Thinking quickly, I turned into Temple Lane and headed to Turner & Kelly, Watchmakers & Jewellers. I went by their window, and everything looked normal as a man sat concentrating his eye-loupe on the guts of a sick watch. I banged on the door next to the shop. It was the home of the Gallaghers.

“Who’s there?” my Aunt Nellie asked.

“Eoin,” says I. “Let me in.” I barged in and slammed the door behind me.

“Eoin, what’s the matter?”

“Aunt Nellie,” says I, “the Brits just dropped the net on Dame Street.”

“God bless us, save us,” replied my mother’s older sister.

“Don’t worry—you’ll be safe enough,” I reassured her.

“Who’s that, Nell?” called my Uncle Todd from the next room. He was getting ready for work. When he came in and saw me, he turned white. “What’s the matter?”

Didn’t even ask how I was. “The Brits dropped the net on Dame Street.” Todd nodded, hitching up his suspenders in the process. He looked very uncomfortable. “I’ll only be staying a few minutes.” He mutely nodded again.

“Would you like a cup of tay?” asked me auntie.

“I would, indeed.” Both Todd and I sat down as my young cousins, Mary, Richard, and Dan, came bounding out of the back room. It seems a lot of the cousins share the same family names. Mary Anne and Richard Conway were my mother’s parents, and my grandmother lived in this very flat until the day she died. I thought of the happy Sunday afternoons I had spent with me Granny Conway and me Mammy here in Granny’s “Durty Lane,” and suddenly the British army didn’t seem as fearsome anymore.

Auntie Nellie poured the tea. “What are you doing now?”

“I work for a loan society,” I said, not really lying.

“I see you going into that building on Exchequer Street,” said Uncle Todd, letting me know he knew my business. He never says anything, but he knows I’m in the movement. Todd and I do not see eye-to-eye. He was born in England of Irish parents, and he proudly admits that his father was a warder in a prison back in England. This is one occupation that Dubliners loathe, and I’m surprised that Todd would admit to such a degenerate ancestry. “Leave it to Nellie,” me Daddy always used to say, “to end up living with a screw’s son.” For some reason, this always upset me Mammy, who would say “Hush!” and slash at Da with a dish rag.

Todd, of course, doesn’t think much of the rebels. He has forbidden my cousins from getting involved in any way with the movement. I quietly tried to feel Todd out for Collins because of his occupation. He’s a lamplighter and works both ends of the night. I don’t see much of a future in that job, but he’s allowed to wander the Dublin streets after curfew and would be the perfect agent to be moving papers around town. But he wanted nothing to do with the Shiners, as he called us. I was lucky he allowed me to stay in the house for a few minutes.

I’m not trying to get anyone in trouble, but if I know someone in the family could be of help to the movement, it is my duty to ask. And sometimes they come to me. I was coming out of the Bachelors Walk office with the intelligence post, on my way to Vaughan’s to deliver it to Collins, when I ran into my Uncle Charlie Conway, my mother’s older brother, in front of Knapp and Peterson’s Tobacconists at Kelly’s Fort. Charlie works as a brewery policeman down at the Guinness factory in James Street. He’s been there since just about the time I was born. Charlie is a kind soul, and I think he was my Mammy’s favorite sibling, because she named my brother after him. I haven’t seen him since my Da’s funeral last Christmas.

“I saw the film” were the first words out of his mouth to me. I could see he was concerned. “I went by the house in Aungier Street, and it was abandoned. What happened to Frank?” I decided to take him up to the office so we could talk.

Once inside I said, “Frank’s on the run in the mountains. Would you like some tea?”

“I don’t know what’s going to happen to this poor family,” he said, downhearted.

“Whatever happens, happens,” I replied coldly. “I will fight to the end.”

Charlie suffered his own tragedy in 1918 when his wife, Margaret, died of influenza while he was away with the Royal Field Artillery during the Great War. I could never figure Uncle Charlie out. He had fought in the Boer War, and as soon as the war in Europe broke out, he re-enlisted, despite his advancing age.

“He’s gone daft,” my Da had said to Mammy, and, this time, she offered no disagreement. I have to be careful with Charlie because of his loyalist leanings, but I don’t think he would ever do me any harm.

“How are you coming along without yer Da?” he asked.

“I’ll survive,” I replied, before adding, “How are things in Stoneybatter without Aunt Margaret?”

Charlie was quiet, thinking. “I should have been there for her.”

“Yes, you should have,” I added quickly, with maybe a little with a little too much vigor. “You should have been there when my Mammy died, too. She was asking for you at the end.”

“I had my priorities.”

“They were wrong.”

“I love my country.”

“England is not your country. Ireland is. When will you realize that?”

Charlie was quiet again. Then he smiled. “You are young.”

“But that doesn’t make me stupid.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

I was about to pour the tay when he held his hand up. “Do you have a strainer?”

He wanted to block the tea leaves. I smiled. “Sorry,” says I. My Mammy used to love to “read” the tea leaves—she could see the future in them, she swore—in the bottom of an empty cup, but I think Charlie is a little superstitious about the whole thing. I don’t care one way or the other. “So,” says I, “what did you think of the movie?”

“That was you with Michael Collins,” he said. I nodded my head. “I’m worried for you if the authorities find out.”

“No one will find out, Uncle Charlie, if everyone keeps their big, fat gobs shut.”

Charlie nodded. “You don’t have to worry about me, son.” He paused and looked me directly in the eye. “I’ll ask you no questions, so you won’t have to tell me any lies.”

“I appreciate that,” I said honestly.

“I’ve been thinking about this, and I have something for you or Mr. Collins.” He paused, then added, “I have a few guns I took back with me from France.” Charlie, being a Catholic, probably got his job at Guinness because of his military service to the Crown. As Mick often tells me, it doesn’t hurt to have police friends in any organization. Mick is quite proud of his brother Paddy, who is a policeman on the force in Chicago.

“We’re desperate for guns, you know,” I said. “If you can rouse up any more, we’d appreciate it. The heavier the caliber, the better.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” said Charlie, standing up.

“Why?” I asked.

“Things are not right in this country,” Charlie began. “I fought in the war to protect small nations. Charity begins at home, here in Ireland.” He paused, maybe disturbed at what he had just said. “How can I reach you?”

“Ask for me at Vaughan’s Hotel in Parnell Square,” I replied. “They can get a message to me.” I looked him directly in the eye. “Forget about this place.”

He nodded. Uncle Charlie put his empty cup on my desk and stood up to leave. I picked up the cup and stared into the leaves. “What do you see?” he asked, with some apprehension.

“I think I see a gun,” says I, with a small smile.

“You are your mother’s son,” returned Charlie, with his own quirk of the lips.

Charlie was on my side, but Uncle Todd remained adamant against the rebels. In Aunt Nellie’s kitchen, my ears were pricked for outside gunfire, but everything was quiet. His tay finished, Uncle Todd went to get his coat, and I took Collins’s papers out of my coat pocket and slid them under Aunt Nellie’s apron. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. Please. Do this for me.” Nellie nodded, and I realized how much she looked like my mother.

“Ready?” asked Todd, letting me know he wanted me out.

We both walked out the door together and turned left into Dame Street. The dragnet was over; it was business as usual. I said goodbye to Todd and watched him head down South Great Georges Street with his lighting pole, which he used to turn on the gas lamps in the neighborhood.

When he was out of sight, I returned to my auntie’s flat. When she saw me, she gave me a sweet smile and handed me Collins’s daily intelligence package. “I didn’t peek,” she said impishly.

“I’ll tell that to Mick Collins,” I said.

“Mick Collins!” she said, flushing like a young girl.

“I’ll give him your regards,” I said, and her blush brightened.

“God bless him,” Aunt Nellie said as she closed the door, showing that Fenian blood could flow in the most unlikely households in Ireland.

71

“
I
should have done better by the boy.”

Collins, feeling guilty, was sitting in the back room of Kirwan’s Pub on Parnell Street—now known as Joint Number Two—with Mick McDonnell and Paddy Daly, the leaders of the Squad, along with McKee and Mulcahy. Since Eoin had barged his way into the Squad, Collins wondered what had gone wrong in the Dardanelles. His instincts told him Sebastian Blood was not that dangerous, but the corpse of Joseph Kavanagh on that slab at the Mater told him he was wrong.

“What’s the latest with the hostage situation in Camden Street?” asked Collins, wearily.

“Kavanagh has been replaced by the local butcher,” replied McDonnell.

“When they’re not using the local baker,” added Daly.

“I just hope there’s no fookin’ candlestick-maker in the neighborhood,” said Collins. “Do these fellows work for us?”

“Not at ‘tal,” replied McKee. “They’re just local merchantmen.”

Collins turned to McDonnell. “How’s Eoin coming along with the gun?”

“I asked that very question of Vinny yesterday,” replied the balding McDonnell, cracking a rare smile. “He says, ‘there are no bad shots at one-foot range’!”

“So he’s ready?” asked Collins, and McDonnell nodded that he was.

He paused. “What do you men think about Blood?”

“He’s gotta go,” said Daly without hesitation, and McDonnell nodded in agreement.

“So be it,” said Collins. “Let’s start tagging him. I can’t allow this to go on. No more hostages. We will take Blood out, and then we’ll take out the convoys, no matter what hostage they stick up there. Is that understood?” Collins stood up and walked around the small room. “I want to send a message to the G-men that this sort of harassment is out of bounds. I want to take Blood out in spectacular fashion. I want Dublin Castle to know that this is not just another assassination. This is personal.”

“Right you are, Mick,” said Daly.

“The Squad will do Blood. Then McKee’s lads will take out the convoys.”

“Grenades again?” asked Mulcahy.

“Drivers,” replied Collins. “If their drivers are dead, who will drive the lorries?”

“What do you mean?” asked McKee.

“I want a lad from the country, a marksman, who can kill a racing jackrabbit at two hundred yards,” said Collins. “I don’t want some Dublin city boy. Half the men in Dublin couldn’t hit their mate’s arse at point-blank range.”

“A culchie sniper?” asked Dublin native McKee.

“The best you can find, you bloody Jackeen!” said Collins, giving a great laugh. “Find him and get him into Dublin as quick as you can.” Collins rubbed his cold hands together and smiled at the four men. “It’s going to be grand.” He slapped his hands together hard. “Bloody grand.”

Eoin was working in Crow Street when he got a call telling him to report to the Dump over in Abbey Street. When he arrived, the only men in the office were McDonnell, Daly, and Vinny Byrne. “Collins has signed Sebastian Blood’s death warrant,” said O’Donnell. “He wants you in on the job. We’re tagging him now. We’ll hit him in another couple of days. The four of us will be the primary team, and, of course, we’ll have another four in the backup.” McDonnell paused for a minute. “Are you ready?”

“Yes,” said Eoin. “Just tell me what I have to do,” he added, quietly terrified at what was about to happen.