1972 Read online

  The horses and cattle were Ursula’s enterprise, but the butter-and-egg money was Eileen’s.

  She was tucking the last greasy egg into its straw nest when Ursula entered the kitchen. She was still wearing her riding boots. Eileen began to scold her for tracking mud on the flagstone floor. Then she saw Ursula’s face. “What’s wrong?” she asked in alarm.

  “There’s a telegram. I met the boy in the lane.”

  Eileen put her hand to her heart. “Mother of God.” No one ever received telegrams unless there was dreadful news. “Who is it?” she whispered. “Has something happened to Barry?”

  Wordlessly, Ursula extended her hand.

  Eileen took the crumpled yellow paper from her and read, “Captain dead. Cancer. Funeral yesterday. My life is over. Henry.” She looked up. “What captain? What can this mean?”

  “It’s Ella Mooney. Henry always called his wife Cap’n, but I suppose the telegrapher couldn’t use a contraction.”

  “Oh, Ursula, I am sorry! I know you were fond of both of them.”

  “Henry was Papa’s best friend. And mine. When I was a child he called me Little Business, did you know that? And it was Ella’s money that sent me to school in Europe and opened the world to me. Now …”

  “Now you can’t even go to the funeral.”

  Ursula clenched her thumbs in her fists, an old habit when under stress. “I could have taken an aeroplane if only I’d known in time.”

  “You mean fly to America?” Eileen was astonished. Flying was as exotic as an electric refrigerator.

  Without pausing to take off her boots, Ursula went upstairs to her room and began composing a letter.

  My dearest Henry,

  Words are no good at a time like this, yet they are all I have to offer. My heart aches for you. From having been Ella’s bridesmaid, I know that October marked your thirty-fourth wedding anniversary. I hope you celebrated, Henry. I pray that wretched disease allowed you some final, happy time together.

  Please do not say your life is over. You may feel like that now, but remember how much Papa accomplished after Síle died. Remember also how much you are loved by

  Your devoted

  Little Business

  Ursula put down her pen and turned toward the window. With unseeing eyes she gazed across a succession of paddocks. When the broodmares were turned out with their foals in the spring the paddocks would fill with new life. But she was thinking about death. Henry was seventy-three. Realistically, how long could he be expected to survive the woman he had adored? His feelings ran very deep. When Ned lay dying, Henry had made the long journey from America to be with him and put an end to their ancient quarrel.

  Ned. How surprising that a man like Ned Halloran had died peacefully in his bed! Ursula, who knew his soul, had wished a warrior’s death for him.

  Barry.

  She did not want a warrior’s death for Barry. The only child she would ever have. Had the republican movement asked for her last drop of blood she would have given it without hesitation, but she did not want them to take so much as a hair from Barry’s head. She knew she was being hypocritical—Ursula never lied to herself—but she yearned to have her son home this very minute, safe beneath her roof.

  When he came striding down the lane the next morning it was as if the power of her thoughts had summoned him.

  “I’ve come home for a new book of poetry,” he jauntily announced. “My copy of Ledwidge has gone to pieces.”

  Ursula longed to hug him. Instead she cried, “How dare you give me such a fright! You put the heart crossways in me, going off without a word. I didn’t know where you were, or how you were, or if you were lying dead in a ditch someplace. I should take a horsewhip to you!”

  Barry waited until the tirade ended, then observed mildly, “A simple Dia dhuitn would have been enough.”

  THE prodigal was welcomed home with a prodigious meal. The big table in the kitchen groaned beneath roast chicken and ham, brown bread and soda bread and fruit scones, roasted potatoes and mashed potatoes, runner beans, carrots with parsnips, bowls of crisp breadcrumb stuffing, a jug of glossy brown gravy. When Barry protested he could eat no more, Eileen produced an apple tart hot from the oven and smothered it with thick yellow cream.

  At last Barry pushed his chair back with a satisfied sigh. “I haven’t eaten like that since I joined the Army.”

  “I should think not,” his mother said with asperity. “You’ve just devoured the ingredients for our Christmas dinner.”

  Eileen said, “Och, don’t begrudge it to him. It does my heart good to have a man’s appetite at table again.”

  “He’s not a man, he’s a boy.”

  “I’m a man, Ursula,” Barry contradicted. He pitched his voice as low as he could and was pleased with the way it resonated in his chest.

  “A man wouldn’t sneak out of here in the dead of night without telling anyone. That was a boy’s prank.”

  “If I told you I was going to join the Army, would you have let me go?”

  “Of course not. You’re too young.”

  “There’s younger than me in the IRA. Lads of only fourteen fought in the Rising.”

  “That’s different,” said Ursula.

  “How is it different? You and I listened to the radio while boys of fifteen and sixteen fought the Red Army in the streets of Budapest. You thought they were heroic, you said so.”

  Eileen’s eyes twinkled. “He has you there, Ursula.”

  AN anomaly amongst the women of her era, when Ursula became pregnant with Barry she had defied priest-ridden, patriarchal Ireland to keep her child. Other women gave up their babies at birth, or even committed secret, desperate infanticides to keep from being disowned by their families, but Ursula Halloran had raised her son with her head held high. For years he was all she had.

  With the passage of time, however, the relationship between mother and son had changed. Since inheriting the old Halloran farm Ursula had ruled it well and wisely; ruled the farm and everyone on it. But now Barry had escaped her benevolent dictatorship without her knowledge and she was upset.

  Yet she loved him more than ever.

  Centuries of harsh colonial rule that denigrated everything Irish had stripped the people of self-esteem. Ursula Halloran had rebelled against this tendency from earliest childhood, breaking the shackles that limited so many others. Perhaps this was what had given her the strength to keep Barry.

  Throughout her son’s childhood she had told him that he was intelligent and worthwhile. She had praised his achievements and encouraged him to be his own man.

  Now he was. And more than that: He had embraced the republicanism that was her heart and soul.

  THE morning after Barry’s return he went on a tour of the farm. Familiar buildings, familiar fields; tangible reality that made his recent experiences seem a dream. Did it really happen? Was I shooting at the RUC from behind a lorry? Were they shooting at me?

  Back in his room, he sniffed the muzzle of his rifle and caught the faint, lingering smell of gunpowder.

  THAT night at table he remarked, “Did you know there’s a donkey in the upper pasture? A little piebald jack. I thought that field was set aside for next season’s yearlings.”

  “Donkeys have a right to eat too,” said Eileen. “Have another roast potato.”

  “But where did he come from?”

  “I met a tinker family in the road a few weeks ago,” Ursula told him. “Their horse had died and all they had left was a donkey. He was too small to pull a caravan but it didn’t matter because their caravan was rotten clear through and falling apart. The family was living in appalling conditions even for tinkers. The adults were wretched enough, but the children were practically starving.

  “I collected our old pots and pans for the tinker to mend and I offered to buy the donkey from him. I gave him more money than the creature was worth, it was almost as starved as the rest of them. But at least they will be able to eat for a while. And besides, Chris
tmas is coming.”

  Barry said, “I didn’t know you had such a soft heart.”

  “There’s a lot about me you don’t know.”

  This, Barry mentally agreed, was true. Sometimes he thought his mother was like an onion. If you peeled away one layer there was another one underneath. On the farm she habitually dressed in shabby clothing and wore an old pair of men’s trousers belted around her narrow waist. She walked with a long, unladylike stride. With her cropped hair and boyish figure she could have been mistaken for a farm labourer.

  Yet she insisted on elegant table manners. By the time he was four the rules had been deeply ingrained in Barry. If soup or a bit of fish was served before the meat, it was called the first course and not “starters.” The knife must not be held like a writing pen. Elbows were not allowed on the table. One did not speak with food in one’s mouth. When one finished eating, the cutlery must be arranged on the plate at “half past six,” to indicate that the plate could be carried away. A small portion of food must be left on the plate, however, to show that one was not greedy.

  Born into an Ireland where memories of the Famine were still vivid, Eileen disapproved of the latter precept. Wasting food was a mortal sin. Before she washed the dishes she surreptitiously ate everything Ursula and Barry had left on their plates.

  TWO days after Christmas found Barry on his way back to the north. His mother had said, “Leave Papa’s rifle behind this time, the Army will give you another rifle. And please, take care of yourself.”

  “Oh, I intend to,” Barry had assured her.

  But the rifle was already disassembled and stowed in his pack.

  He did not know that she was watching from an upstairs window as he went whistling away down the lane. Whistling “The Old Fenian Gun.”

  WHEN Barry rejoined the column in Tyrone, Feargal gave him the now-familiar punch on the shoulder. Phil O’Donoghue offered a drink of Christmas brandy brought from home. The Volunteers melded together as smoothly as if they had never been apart. They no longer called themselves the Lynch column. They were Seán Garland’s men.

  DURING Christmas there had been little peace in the north. Attacks on Catholics continued through the holy season. Instead of making any effort to prevent them, the RUC banned the Sinn Féin political party and raided their headquarters in Belfast. The office soon was quietly reopened, however.

  Sinn Féin offices in the north tended to be located in dark, unfrequented laneways or over derelict shops where they attracted no attention. But northern Catholics always knew how to find them. Sinn Féin was all they had in times of need—when there was no work, no food for the children, no shelter for the family.

  If a man’s life was threatened, Sinn Féin knew how to get in touch with the IRA.

  ALERTED by the start of the border campaign, unionists were beefing up their forces. The RUC now numbered three thousand men and was actively recruiting. The B-Specials claimed a thousand men full-time and more than ten thousand part-time. They were eager and untrained. When an excited B-Special patrol fired in error on an RUC jeep, which it somehow mistook for “the enemy,” a constable was seriously wounded.

  In late December, Noel Kavanagh decided on a second raid of the Derrylin Barracks to make up for the failure of the first. This time the raid came as a complete surprise, catching the RUC unprepared. In the bloody attack that followed, several men died. The barracks was reduced to a smoking ruin. The column made a desperate getaway through a snowstorm, but Kavanagh himself was captured. There were claims that he was being tortured.

  Garland’s column was in South Fermanagh, laying one ambush after another for RUC patrols that never showed up. The rumours of Kavanagh’s torture upset Seán Garland. “We’re freezing our arses off with nothing to show for it,” he told his second in command. “The nearest RUC barracks is at Brookeborough. Let’s strike a blow for Noel!”

  Dave O’Connell urged caution. “The town’s solidly Orange, Seán. I have a planner’s map of Brookeborough but we don’t have anyone in place to provide us with reliable intelligence. We’d be going in blind.”

  “We’ll rely on the element of surprise,” Garland told him. “Until now the IRA’s been attacking late at night. We’ll attack at dusk, at tea time on New Year’s Day, when they’re inside having their meal. I only want sixteen on the assault team. There won’t be many men in the barracks anyway because of the holiday, and we can’t afford another mob scene with Volunteers falling over each other and wasting ammunition.

  “When we reach the town we’ll drop off a couple of lookouts at the top of the main street. The barracks will be somewhere on that street; the constables like to be in the heart of town. We’ll park well beyond the building, run back and set a mine against the door. Have Murphy make two; we can keep the second one in reserve.

  “And incidentally, this time we won’t wear those military uniforms. They’ve brought us nothing but bad luck. We’ll wear our own clothes.”

  Amongst the men Garland selected for the raid were Halloran and O’Hanlon. “We’re back in the war!” Feargal enthused. “I’ve been bored to bits, how about you?”

  “Bored to bits,” Barry agreed.

  Chapter Seven

  THE big red lorry drove slowly along the main street of Brookeborough. The roads were icy again and it was past seven by the time they arrived. Darkness had long since fallen, but powerful streetlamps cast wide pools of light on the pavement.

  “We’re not what ye’d call sneaking in,” Vince Conlon commented. He wiped the inside of the fogged-up windscreen with his forearm. “Where’s the damned barracks?”

  “I think that’s it,” said Garland beside him, pointing. “See that low two-storey house?”

  “There’s a whole row of them. Which one?”

  “Right th—”

  Conlon slammed on the brakes, halting the lorry at a forty-five-degree angle to the barracks and much closer than Garland wanted. They were no more than forty feet away. The Volunteers shrugged off their packs to be ready for action. Dragging the wire that led back to the detonator, two men ran to place a mine against the front door of the barracks. As soon as they were in the clear Murphy hit the plunger.

  Nothing happened.

  “Damn wire must be kinked,” Murphy said with disgust. “Or the battery’s dead. Give me a minute and I’ll—”

  The door opened and an RUC sergeant stepped out for a breath of air after his meal. The startled Volunteers greeted him with a hail of bullets. Shouting a warning, he leapt back inside and slammed the door.

  “The second mine, hurry!” cried Garland. “Put it against the wall!”

  From the back of the truck Seán South provided covering fire with the Bren. Paddy O’Regan knelt beside him, feeding the gun ammunition. The first burst from the Bren shattered windows across the front of the barracks. Within seconds the constables inside were shooting back.

  WHEN they reached Brookeborough, Garland had surveyed the layout of the town from the top of the main street, then decided that three lookouts would be necessary. To Barry’s disappointment, he was assigned to keep watch with Mick O’Brien and Mick Kelly. “Deploy in a wide arc at the upper end of town,” Garland ordered them, “and stay in shouting distance of one another. If you see any more RUC men headed toward the barracks, or anything else that might interfere with our plan, give the loudest whistle you can.”

  Barry had fully intended to obey orders. But when he heard the voice of the Bren he found himself running toward the action.

  “Where are you going?” shouted Mick Kelly. Mick O’Brien added, “We’re supposed to stay here,” but they both began to follow Barry.

  “You stay here!” Barry cried in a commanding voice that stopped the other two in their tracks.

  He ran on alone. I’ll never let anyone see me afraid again.

  THE second mine also failed to detonate. In desperation Dave O’Connell began shooting it with his Thompson. The others crowded around Garland, straining to hear his o
rders. “O’Hanlon, you have the Molotov cocktails. Lob some through the—”

  From an upstairs window an RUC machine gun opened fire. Garland pivoted and looked up. He and O’Connell returned fire simultaneously.

  The Volunteers had been told to make every bullet count, but, feverish with pent-up tension, they shot wildly. Bullets ricocheted off the cast-iron casements of the windows. While the raiders were clearly visible in the light of the streetlamps, the constables inside the barracks were no more than shadowy figures behind broken glass panes. Theirs was the superior strategic position. They took time, took aim, and placed their shots well.

  The gunfire rose to a crescendo. Seán South tried to take out the RUC machine gun but could not get enough elevation with the Bren.

  Garland heard one of his men scream.

  He made a split-second decision. “Back to the lorry, now!” As he herded them toward cover, the machine gunner in the upstairs window squeezed off a long burst of fire. A full twenty-five rounds were pumped into the assault team.

  As Barry pelted down the main street of Brookeborough the sound of gunfire dwindled away. Stopped.

  The world stopped.

  Streetlamps bathed the scene with overlapping pools of light, creating a series of vignettes. Alarmed townspeople peering out of windows. A terrier sitting on the kerb with its head cocked, one ear up, one ear down. An overturned ash can spilling refuse onto the footpath like a mouth vomiting filth.

  Frozen in time. Like the horses in the snapshots Ursula sends to prospective buyers.