Women of Courage (126 page)

Just one more step and I’ll have hold of that gun, Andrew thought. The man’s confused, he’ll do what he’s told. Pray God his gun works, and doesn’t jam like the other. ‘Put down the gun and give me a hand here, will you?’

From the top of the stairs Daly yelled: ‘Shoot the bugger, Brendan!’

O’Reardan backed away up the steps into the shop, waving the gun from side to side. ‘Don’t worry,’ Andrew said. ‘It’s all right now.’

O’Reardan shot him in the face.

In the telephone box on Dominick Street Sean had been speaking to the secretary at Clancy’s Joiners and Decorators. He told her he wanted to speak to Michael Collins, but she said he was in a meeting. ‘I don’t care!’ Sean said. ‘It’s urgent. Someone’s coming there to try to kill him! Get him, will you!’

The secretary said: ‘All right,’ and then she screamed. Sean yelled: ‘Hello? Hello? What’s happening there?’ But there was no answer. Only a confused clattering over the crackle of the phone. And before that there had been a bang, like a gunshot.

Sean put down the phone and said: ‘He’s there now. There’s a fight going on.’

Catherine stared at him, aghast, her face still smudged with the black smoke of the fire. His face was frozen, distant. She knew what he was going to say. She gripped him tightly by the shoulders and said: ‘Stay here, Sean. You can’t go. It’ll be all over by the time you get there. You’ve done what you can.’

He pushed her aside and opened the door. ‘It’s only in Mary Street. It’s just a few minutes.’ He was halfway out of the door.

‘Sean, please. Stay here with me!’

He paused, looked in her eyes. ‘Wait for me outside. Or if not, meet me in Parnell Square tonight.’ There was a tension, a fear in his eyes, but a trace of that wide, boyish grin flickered for a second across his face, and he said: ‘I love you.’ He kissed her smudged nose and was away, sprinting down the street, his boots sparking on the cobbles as he ran.

After a few seconds’ pause Catherine ran too, after him. Her bare feet hurt sometimes on the loose stones but she ignored the pain. Usually she could run fast but her breath came short and she had to stop and cough because of the smoke that was still in her lungs. But I have to go on, I can’t lose him now, she thought. She had tried to exorcize him and she had failed; he had come back from nowhere to save her life. For better or worse this was the only boy she loved and she couldn’t let him out of her sight now.

Sean turned left into Parnell Street, dodging between trams, making a grocer’s delivery boy on a bicycle wobble wildly. Catherine followed. A group of soldiers passing in a lorry laughed and whistled. Catherine thought they must look like a pair of students on some prank, she madly chasing her boyfriend who had covered her with soot. If the soldiers thought it was all a game, so much the better.

As they came down Jervis Street she realized it had started to rain. Thin cold rain that blurred her vision and bit at her face. Most of the people here were well-dressed, prosperous, struggling with umbrellas. Several of them turned to look at her and then glance ahead at Sean, and she thought: If I draw attention to him, that might be the worst of all.

So she slowed to a walk, letting him get ahead. When he came to the end of Jervis Street he turned left. When she reached the corner half a minute later she saw the sign for Clancy’s twenty yards away on the opposite side of the road.

Oh, God, don’t let Andrew be there, she thought. I don’t want Sean to murder anyone else now, not even him.

Ever since Brendan Road, Kee had been determined that there would be no more failures with Sinn Feiners slipping out of the back entrance while he was raiding the front. This time, he took young Foster round to the back with him, to survey the scene. It was not easy, from Upper Abbey Street, to determine which were the most likely rear exits from buildings in Mary Street, but they located them at last. Kee left Foster there, and promised to direct a section of the troops round to him as soon as they arrived. The raid was not to begin until Foster had sent a messenger back to Kee, to confirm that they were in position.

When they had discussed this, Kee walked back to Mary Street to watch the front door, and wait for the army lorries to arrive.

Three minutes before he reached the front of the building, a woman came out of the front door. She glanced up and down the street, as though expecting someone to be waiting for her. When no one appeared, she went back inside, and came out almost immediately with four men, two of whom were pushing bicycles.

One of the men was limping, and another had the beginnings of a black eye. The third was very small, with a briefcase and enormous pebble glasses. He and the man with the limp got on a tram with the woman. The other two mounted their bicycles and pedalled away swiftly into the crowds, pulling down their hats and turning up their collars to shield themselves against the rain.

Catherine saw Sean open the door of Clancy’s and walk in. She sheltered in the doorway of a shop on the opposite side of the road, shivering, and waited for him to come out. She wondered if she should go in after him. But she didn’t want any part of it, not even revenge against Andrew, not any more. Sean had told her to wait outside and that was what she wanted to do.

She was not in the habit of praying but she prayed now, swiftly and urgently and repetitively, that Sean would not meet Andrew in there and that he would come out alive and give up killing and still love her. Oh, please, God, I’ll even start going to church again and go to confession and light a hundred candles if only you’ll grant me that.

She saw Kee before he saw her. He crossed the road, a sturdy determined figure with his thick neck and feet planted heavily on the ground, and stood for a moment staring at the door of Clancy’s. The rain dripped off his hat and he had his collar turned up against it, hiding half his face, but it was Kee all right, there was no doubt of that. And so Catherine knew God had not listened, and it was all going to go wrong.

Kee glanced up and down the street impatiently as though he were waiting for something. She wondered if she could sneak across the road behind his back and go into Clancy’s and warn Sean, but there was no way Kee could fail to see her go in because he was watching the other side of the road all the time.

Perhaps he would go away. Perhaps she could ring the number that Sean had rung and warn the people inside. But she could see no phone and she didn’t know the number. Perhaps she should wait until the moment Sean came out of the door and then spring on Kee and tear his eyes out.

She was still dithering when the soldiers arrived. Two army lorries and an armoured car pulled up with a grinding of brakes about twenty yards down the road. Kee hurried across to meet them, and a moment later one of the army lorries drove away up the road and turned left. Kee came up the road with about a dozen soldiers, wearing tin hats and armed with rifles. It’s worse than an execution, Catherine thought. Sean’s in there and I’ve got to stop them somehow but there’s only me and all those men and I don’t know what to do.

The soldiers stood on the pavement about five yards from the door as though they were thinking of checking passers-by but Catherine was sure they had not come for that. Kee stood looking at his watch and Catherine saw a single soldier running down the road towards them from the right, where the lorry had gone.

It was at that moment that Sean came out. He stood in the doorway of Clancy’s, glancing up and down the street, and Kee saw him immediately. Catherine started to run. She sprinted straight out into the street between two bicycles and dodged behind a tram but it was always, always going to be too late. She saw Kee shout something to Sean and Sean hesitate and then put his hand in his pocket and start to pull out his gun
no don’t do that please Sean!
and long before the gun was even half out of his pocket Kee had raised a revolver and three of the soldiers had raised their rifles and before she even heard the bangs she saw Sean jerk and twitch like a marionette and then slump down head lolling on the pavement with his back against the door.

She reached him and had his head in her arms but it was far, far too late. He opened his eyes once so perhaps he saw her but then all the life was gone from them and blood dribbled out of his mouth and down his chest where it soaked into his shirt with the rain.

Kee gave an order and the soldiers surged past, stepping over his body with their big boots, hurrying into the building.

Catherine could never remember much of the sequence of events after that but after a time she saw two bodies being carried out on a stretcher into the drumming rain. One of them was Andrew’s. She didn’t know if the body was dead or not, but it meant nothing to her, it wasn’t Sean.

A while later her father was there, she didn’t know how. He put his coat around her shoulders and led her away and she didn’t resist. She didn’t think she would resist anything ever again, not any more.

35. On O’Connell Bridge

D
ALY PACED up and down the drawing room of the big Georgian house. He was furious. For once not even Michael Collins could overawe him.

‘If you’d just told me, Mick!’ he was saying. ‘I could have had the knife off him and handcuffed him before he ever came upstairs. Why didn’t you say?’

Collins looked up wearily from where he sat on the edge of a chair, his head in his hands. The room was a wreck. He had already smashed a chair and a row of ornaments against the wall in his rage and grief. His friends were used to these outbursts, but today it seemed childish, futile, even to himself.

He said: ‘I asked you to search him, now, Paddy, didn’t I?’

‘Yes, but not for a bloody knife! And you knew he was an assassin all along!’

‘Oh yes, I knew.’ Collins drummed his fists on his knees as though he would break them. Then he stood up suddenly and put his hand on Daly’s shoulder. ‘It’s not your fault, Paddy, it’s all mine. I underestimated the man, and I wanted to see him and surprise him for myself. That’s why Frank Davitt died.’

‘But what was the point of it all anyway?’

‘The point?’ Collins sighed. ‘There were two points, really. The first was to get justice for those three boys who died down in County Waterford. You knew about that, surely?’ Collins explained briefly what had happened. ‘The other papers that Harrison brought me - they were copies of the RIC investigation into the murders. I asked Frank Davitt to be there just to provide the final proof that Butler was the man they spoke to, and to give him the satisfaction of knowing that justice was to be done. I won’t have our boys being murdered by the bloody British, damn them! That’s what it’s all about. And now all I do is get Frank killed as well. I wish it had been me.’

‘It damn near was you,’ Daly said softly. ‘That’s my job, Mick, remember? To keep you alive.’

‘I’m sorry, Paddy. I’ll tell you next time.’

‘If you don’t, I’ll go back to Connaught and spend my time fishing. What was the the second point?’

‘The second point? To prove beyond any doubt that the government is employing murderers against us. We had the evidence which the RIC had collected about the killings near Ardmore, we had Frank Davitt as a witness, and we had that document offering a reward for me dead or alive. So we would have had a brief trial, executed him, and passed on the lot to the newspapers. Can you imagine what they would have made of all that?’

‘What do you mean, would have? Can’t you still do it?’

‘I don’t think so, Paddy. The whole key to it was that contract he threw in the fire. We would have said we’d found it on him, you see. Without that, they can deny the whole thing, and we’d just blow Harrison’s cover to no purpose. And before you say anything, Paddy Daly, no, you were not supposed to know about Harrison.’

‘So who is he then?’

Collins flopped down on a sofa, exhausted, his arms sprawled along the back, his boots up on the cushions. ‘Harrison, Mr Daly, is a top-level British civil servant who, since 1916, has been convinced of the justice of our cause and is devoted to furthering it in any way he can. Post-imperial guilt, they call it.’

‘So what does he do? Pass you minutes of Cabinet meetings, that sort of thing?’

Collins grinned faintly. ‘Sometimes. More often, as in this case, he helps by persuading French and his top brass to take the worst possible course of action. Such as employing assassins to murder me, for instance.’

Daly scowled. ‘Sounds like a very good course of action from their point of view.’

‘Only if it works, Paddy. Not if we can expose it.’

Daly’s frown deepened. ‘But what about the first time, Mick - in Brendan Road? Did you know about Butler then?’

‘Well, now. I did that, but G Division got to him first. You remember I was late for the meeting? I’d been with Harrison that morning. He’d only just found out that Butler was impersonating a German - we hadn’t expected that. I rang to ask you to keep Hessel waiting upstairs, remember, so that you and I could have a word first. I was going to tell you then.’

‘I wish you had, Mick.’

‘So do I, now. But when he was arrested I wanted you to keep up the contact with him in case he came back. You did well the other day at the Joy, Paddy, but they’d never take you on as an actor at the Abbey Theatre, would they now? If you’d known who he was you’d have shot the man before he opened his mouth.’

The front door slammed, and there were loud, excited voices in the hall. Seamus Kelly came in, his face red with the cold and the rain, his eyes wide, staring, distraught.

‘What is it now?’ Collins asked.

‘Sean!’ Seamus’s voice was high, wild, unsteady with emotion. ‘They shot Sean Brennan! Half an hour ago outside Clancy’s!’

‘But … what in the world was he doing there? I ordered him to stay inside with you, blast you!’

‘Yes, I know, but …’ Seamus told the story of the morning, the way Sean had suddenly disappeared. When Seamus had realized Sean had gone, he had begun his own fruitless search of the city. He had been coming to Clancy’s to tell Collins he couldn’t find him when the police and soldiers arrived. ‘It was that other Ulsterman who did it. I saw him. I forget the name.’