The Fox's Walk (11 page)

My father had now caught up with Mother. Their movements seemed part of an informal dance; although I was slowly getting closer, a new wave of mist drifted over the beach. My father in silhouette turned toward my mother, both of them still walking. Then they stopped, Father gesticulating, as though he were trying to get her attention—I knew what that felt like—Mother motionless as if she had not quite noticed his presence. He laid a hand on her arm; she seemed for a moment as though she were going to continue her pacing. I was now close enough to see her shoulders suddenly slump, and my father put his arm around her and lead her slowly, as though she were immensely frail, toward the opening where the car was waiting. It seemed to me the spell had been broken and that I could now claim my father's attention and be looked after myself. No longer frightened, I felt the full extent of my cold, hunger, and exhaustion. I looked forward to being petted, cosseted, admired, congratulated, lifted up into the motorcar onto my mother's knee, and driven back to Ballydavid, where I would be made a fuss of by the maids. Tea and a bath in front of the nursery fire and then an adult member of my family, perhaps even my newly restored mother, would read to me before I climbed into bed.

I followed as fast as my tired legs could carry me over the loose sand; ahead of me my parents disappeared into the dark opening that led to the Sunbeam. The early summer foliage had formed walls and a roof of leaves that reduced the now faint light of early evening. O'Neill had disappeared and I could now hear him cranking up the engine of the Sunbeam.

Clambering, although the slope at the top of the beach was not in fact steep, I was now really tired, and, despite my intention of presenting myself as brave and uncomplaining, qualities given great value in my family, a wail escaped my lips. It was not quite loud enough; I reached the scrub that separated the strand from the road just in time to watch the car turn the corner and drive away toward Ballydavid.

 

FOR A LONG TIME
I harbored an unjust yet understandable belief that it was during those hours that I had been abandoned on the beach that my family hatched the plot for a greater abandonment. Since, as usual, I was neither consulted nor informed of the plan as it developed, I don't feel any remorse for my suspicions. It was a time when the convenience of children was not taken into account and their wishes rarely solicited. In my family and, I imagine, most others of that time and place, this cavalier attitude—one that I sometimes consider when I wonder how one small island nation managed, without any apparent moment of self-questioning or loss of confidence, to rule half the world—was accompanied by the assumption that those without power had little need for information. I look back now and see, without much surprise, that my parents, whose boat was in low emotional and financial waters, decided to lighten their load by throwing me overboard. Especially since there was a comfortable lifeboat alongside—or, at least, in a nearby country, one not at war.

It was Bridie who noticed that I was missing and I was lucky it was not longer before she did so. The Sunbeam came up the avenue more quickly than did a pony drawing a laden trap, and, by the time she came out on the porch, the motorcar door was open, and she had assumed that I'd already been let out and had gone about my business elsewhere. It was not until she carried the tin bath into the nursery that she realized it was some time since she had last seen me. Instinct rather than logic—there were many places I could easily have been—told her that I was missing.

My father came to look for me. He came by himself, driving the Sunbeam. Later, when I understood how much he enjoyed being at the wheel (he was a beginner and it is just possible this was his maiden voyage), I thought it likely that he experienced neither anxiety about my loss nor imagination about what I must be feeling. It was an unexamined belief that, since children hadn't the information that caused fear in adults, they neither understood nor feared those dangers. At the same time, they were supposed to be able to apply adult logic and not indulge in childhood terror of the dark, of ghosts, of abandonment. I wonder if my father would have been worried if, when he arrived at the beach, he had found it deserted and dark. As he would have, had he not seen me sitting on the back of a cart about to turn in at a farmhouse gate.

He stopped the car, briefly and casually thanked the farmer who had found me wailing on the sea road, and cheerfully told me to hop in. I had never ridden in the front of the Sunbeam before, and I hesitated, unsure whether to get in beside him or to climb into my accustomed place in the back. My hesitation was long enough for me to catch a flicker of impatience cross his face and to see the queer look the farmer gave this unnatural English parent.

Nothing was said during the first few moments of our reunion. I was silent because I felt I was due either praise or an apology; my father was silent because he had overestimated his driving skills and underestimated the width of the country road on which he was now attempting to turn the Sunbeam. The farmer, who had stopped to open the gate, now stood watching while his horse pulled the cart far enough along the stony track to allow his master to close the gate behind it.

An already disapproving audience did nothing for my father's performance. He had misjudged the width of the road, not understanding that the lushest, darkest green part of the grassy verge grew out of a drain from the marshy field behind the hedge. Father turned the wheel sharply and drove the Sunbeam onto the verge; he had intended, I suppose, to back up to the farm gate, turn sharply again to the right, and return to Ballydavid. Instead there was the strange sensation of the car in motion without a corresponding forward progress as the wheels failed to engage in the wet earth of the ditch.

My father became red in the face and I sat very still; whatever moral advantage I had earned by my ordeal at this moment counted for nothing. Father ground the gears into reverse and put his foot on the accelerator. The wheels spun, digging themselves deeper into the boggy soil. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the farmer who had rescued me leisurely close the gate, bolt it, and take a clay pipe from the pocket of his jacket. He, at least, was enjoying himself. Father had, in a dramatically short period of time, shown himself as unmannerly, neglectful, and arrogant; the farmer would have seen him, not in any way accurately, as rich, upper-class, and Protestant.

After a moment, my father turned off the engine and got out of the car. Standing in the stagnant mud of the ditch, he cursed as he heaved his weight against the bonnet of the Sunbeam. It did not move. After a moment, he returned to the car and disengaged the gear. Now the motorcar responded to his pressure, but only for as long as he strained against it. Each time he let go to return to the drivers seat, it sank back into the soft mud. He knew, I knew, and the farmer knew that sooner or later he would have to ask for help. I flicked a glance at the farmer. His face was utterly expressionless as he struck a match and lit his pipe. Drawing on the tobacco, he leaned on the gate and seemed to give the evening sky the same amount of attention as he did my straining parent.

In the end, of course, help was requested and given. But the comedy was not quite over. The combined strength of the two men easily pushed the Sunbeam back onto the road. The farmer reopened the gate to give my father more room to turn; Father backed up, ground the gears, and stalled. Now he had to get out again, reach under the drivers seat for the handle, return to the front of the car, and crank the engine until it again started. I sank down in the seat and tried to disappear; the farmer, still holding the gate, still expressionless, permitted himself a couple of slow, thoughtful nods.

Nothing was said as we drove back to Ballydavid. As soon as we were out of sight of the farmer, my father pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and mopped his face. When he had replaced it he glanced at me and looked mildly surprised. I felt as though I had changed since he had last seen me and not for the better, but he said nothing.

When we had turned into the avenue at Ballydavid, Father stopped the motorcar and opened the door. Fortunately, he had not got out completely before we began to roll slowly backward, and he angrily wrenched the brake into place. For a moment, I considered asking if I could walk the rest of the way, but, seeing his scowl, I thought better of it. He walked around the Sunbeam, inspecting it. The rear did not engage his attention for long, but when he got to the front he crouched by the engine grill. I stretched myself to my full height and saw that he was wiping the muddy evidence of his adventure off the chrome and mudguards with his pocket handkerchief. When he got back in the motorcar his face was again crimson; this time he wiped his brow with the sleeve of his jacket. I remained completely still and silent, although I was uncomfortable. Since my legs were not long enough to reach the floor, I had to brace myself with my hands in order not to slip about on the seat. And for some time I had needed to urinate.

Father sat for a moment before he set off again, and we drove up the remainder of the avenue at a dignified speed that did not require the changing of gears. An anxious group of women stood on the veranda—Aunt Katie, Grandmother, and Bridie—and, to one side, a stern-faced O'Neill. Mother was, I think, lying down and unaware that her elder child had been misplaced. A dark cloud heavy with rain had formed over most of the sky, although the horizon was pale and light; the dark sky and a low strong wind announced a gale coming in from the Adantic. I imagined, and I think the distraught women on the veranda did also, myself alone on the darkened strand, battered by the storm wind, and drenched by the rain. Father and O'Neill, I am fairly sure, were preoccupied with the welfare of the Sunbeam.

The women and O'Neill were presumably reassured: the women by the top of my head visible over the dashboard through the windscreen, O'Neill by the lack of immediately visible dents on the Sunbeam. As a collective sigh of relief was emitted, Father drew up in front of the house and braked too abruptly, spraying a shower of gravel at the feet of his audience and throwing me from my insecure perch on the front seat against the polished wood of the dashboard.

 

UNCLE SAINT WAS DEAD
but the war went on. In trenches stretching from the English Channel to the Swiss border, Allied and German soldiers faced each other; behind four hundred miles of barbed wire troops dug into mud.

During the Boer War, Major John McBride had raised an Irish Brigade to fight on the Boer side against the British; Sir Roger Casement now attempted to raise another Irish Brigade from the prisoner-of-war camps in Germany. At the beginning of December 1914, the German authorities began to separate Irish prisoners of war from their English comrades. The Irish prisoners were taken from their various camps and assembled in one large group at Limburg. Many of them had come from the Sennelager camp, where for some time they had been softened up by the Germans with speeches and promises of improved conditions: fewer rules, better food, Mass every morning. Suspicious and possibly mystified by the historical and political references made by their now curiously placatory captors, the Irish prisoners responded in a memorandum that they did not wish to avail themselves of these concessions unless their fellow prisoners also benefited, “as, in addition to being Irish Catholics, we have the honour to be British soldiers.” Nothing subsequent appears to have altered this position, and their suspicion of German motives extended to Casement and to his attempts to recruit them to fight for Irish independence.

From the beginning, Casement faced a disillusioning task. The Irish prisoners of war were at first bewildered by and then antagonistic to his proposals. He himself was discouraged by a report in the
Times
in which Germany, while making peaceful overtures to the United States, omitted Ireland from its list of small nations who should be free to decide their destinies when the war was over.

The reluctance of the prisoners to change sides was not a reflection on Casements powers of persuasion or a result of his Protestant origins and former career in the British diplomatic service. Two Irish priests brought from the Irish College in Rome had no better luck; and when an Irish-speaking priest sent from America took a more aggressive approach, there were complaints from the prisoners and talk of a boycott of his services. Casements initial speech to a group of NCOs produced only two volunteers, and it was obvious even to the idealistic and self-deluding Casement that neither was of sterling character. His second visit in January 1915 was even more discouraging: he was jeered and booed by the Irish prisoners. Never short of courage, Casement returned to the camp every day of his stay at Limburg, but contented himself in following around Father Crotty, the more sympathetic of the two priests who had come from Rome.

In the spring, Casement sent Adler Christensen back to the United States. Some time before, Christensen had been involved in a scandal, referred to but never specified—almost certainly of a homosexual nature. It had been forgiven by the generous and pliable Casement, although the scandal must have made even more awkward his life in Berlin. One imagines that whatever sadness Casement felt at parting with Christensen, it was diluted by exhausted relief.

The formation of the Irish Brigade brought no consolation. Eventually fifty-two men were recruited and given privileges and smart uniforms designed by Casement. Their fellow prisoners resented the rewards of their treachery, well aware that most of the recruits had signed on for the comforts and benefits that went with belonging to the Brigade. The soldiers of his new brigade did not rise to Casement's imagined ideal; they drank, and they got into fights with their fellow prisoners, particularly the French and Russians, and eventually—since they were free to go to beer gardens—with German soldiers who also despised them. By August, the discouraged and increasingly ill Casement was considering returning to the United States. Instead he was joined in Germany by Robert Monteith.