Danny Boy

‘Phelan,’ Matt said, wakened by the boy’s name and leaping to his feet. He took the letter from Dermot and tore it open hastily. All eyes were on him as he scanned the words and then he burst out, ‘The bloody little fool. He’s joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood and he’s off to Dublin to answer Ireland’s call.’

Danny passed Bernadette to Sarah and came across to his father and took the letter from him, aware that his mother had begun to cry. He too read the letter and then turned to Dermot. ‘How did you know this was from Phelan?’

Dermot had been through this many times. He knew not to say he’d had the letter from late on Friday night, and had chosen not to deliver it till now. It would not be a wise thing to do, and to say he’d spoken to Phelan and knew of his plans wouldn’t help his case one bit. ‘There was a note to me tied around the letter,’ he told Danny. And he went on, ‘The letter must have been pushed in the window. It was on the floor of my bedroom.’

‘When was this?’

Dermot shrugged. ‘Don’t know, I found it just now and I thought you should see the letter before anyone else.’

‘You did right,’ Danny said. ‘Good boy.’ His eyes raked the room. His mother was wiping her eyes with her apron, his father’s face set like stone.

‘What of Sam?’ Sarah asked suddenly.

Dermot shrugged. He knew Sam was involved, but to say so would bring more questions and he might trip himself up and so he said, ‘I don’t know about Sam.’

Sarah did, though. She knew her man would be fully embroiled in this nonsense, and she too felt tears seep from her eyes and trickle down her cheeks. She held Bernadette tight against her for comfort. The child, unused to being held so firmly, began to wriggle and Danny took her from Sarah and laid her in the cot in the bedroom, where she curled herself into a ball and put her thumb in her mouth and slumbered on, unaware of the turmoil in the next cottage.

Rosie was standing stock-still, the feelings of alarm and fear coursing through her body so that she tingled with it. She felt raw, as if every nerve-ending was exposed.

‘Find him, Danny!’ Connie cried suddenly as Danny came back from the bedroom. ‘You must go and find him and bring him home.’

Danny encircled his mother’s trembling frame. ‘I will, Mammy,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll not come home without him.’ And he kissed his mother’s cheek in reassurance.

Then Danny went to Rosie who was standing twisting her hands together agitatedly and he looked into her eyes and saw the fear in them. Oh God, he thought, how I love this woman and our child, and yet he knew what he had to do, and he saw by Rosie’s face that she knew too. ‘I must go, Rosie.’

Rosie wanted to plead with him, remind him he had a wife, a child, responsibilities. He wasn’t to do this. She wouldn’t let him. By Christ, what was he thinking of, even suggesting it? But she said none of this. She heard the gulping sobs of Connie and the keening of Sarah, who’d sunk to her knees before the mat as if her legs could no longer hold her up.

Her mouth went very dry as Danny pulled her close. ‘The boy’s not fifteen until July,’ he said. ‘I’ll look for Sam and Shay too and try and make them see sense, but Phelan will come home if I have to drag him every step of the way. By Christ, when I get hold of him I’ll knock the bloody head from his shoulders.’

Rosie laid her head against Danny, too distressed to even cry. ‘When will you go?’ she asked him brokenly.

‘As soon as possible. If Dermot has only just found the letter, they might not have gone far and I might catch up with him before he even gets to Dublin.’

Dermot felt guilty at Danny’s words. Danny was hoping to find Phelan on the road somewhere. The reality was he’d probably marched with the Brotherhood all the night long, armed with all the rifles and pistols from the cottage, and they were now positioned in Dublin town and up to any manner of things.

He could say none of this. He’d made a promise to Phelan and yet he was sad to see how upset everyone was. They didn’t see the glory in the fight that Phelan had seen and Suddenly Dermot didn’t know who was right. ‘I’m sorry,’ he spluttered.

‘God, child, sure it’s not your fault,’ Connie said, wiping her eyes again. ‘Come up to the table and have a cup of buttermilk and a wee slab of barnbrack. You’re a good boy, so you are.’

Dermot felt anything but good, but he did as he was bid.

Struggling to control her voice, willing it not to break, Rosie said to Danny, ‘I’ll put some of your clothes in a bundle.’

‘I’ll not need…’

‘It might take longer than you think,’ Rosie insisted.

She almost stumbled away from him and when she reached the relative privacy of her own room, she leaned her head against the door and let the tears fall at last. She and Dermot knew what no-one else was aware of: the cache of arms. She would bet that hole in the cottage was empty now. This would never do. She wiped the tears from her eyes impatiently and began to sort out fresh clothes for Danny to take with him. She had no illusions about her young brother-in-law, though she knew Danny thought Phelan had just taken off on some half-brained idea of joining some revolutionary group while in actual fact she knew he’d been involved for some time and she had little doubt that whenever he’d left he’d had a rifle in his hands and bullets in his pocket. They intended to kill and maim. She wanted her Danny nowhere near that. But Phelan was just a boy and she knew Danny, as his elder brother, had to try and save him from himself.

EIGHT (#ulink_0815438c-dc85-5ee2-b46d-4b35a8aa6ce6)

‘How long d’you think he’ll be?’ Connie asked Matt.

‘How should I know,’ Matt answered shortly, anxiety for his younger son’s disappearance and his elder son’s mission to find him making him tetchy and his voice sharp. ‘It’s a tidy walk to Dublin, you know, if he doesn’t catch up with him on the road somewhere. And that’s not the whole of it. Dublin’s not like Blessington, a wee small place where everyone knows everyone else’s business. Sure, I would say there are numerous places there where a young man not wishing to be found could hide out.’

So that’s it, Rosie thought. Could take any time at all. It was like asking how long was a piece of string. She sighed, the burden of what she knew about the hidden arms weighing heavily on her, and she wondered for the umpteenth time if she should tell them. But for what? She doubted that knowledge would make them feel better and she remembered Phelan’s warnings well enough. There was no way she would risk bringing further danger or sorrow on this family.

The following day she wrapped Bernadette in her shawl, picked up the chocolates and sweets she had bought as presents, and went across the fields to her parents’ house. Bernadette was becoming more beautiful every day. Now her fair hair was beginning to curl as she grew, just like Dermot’s, much to his delight. Her eyes, though, were a deep lilac-blue, ringed with dark lashes, while her nose was a cute button. Her mouth was wide and when she smiled you could see her four little teeth at the front. She was going on for ten months old now and could say some words and pull herself up on the furniture. Rosie loved the very bones of her, as did all the Walshes and Rosie’s sisters, while Dermot continued to be enchanted by her every word or action.

Rosie’s parents took little notice of their only grandchild and Rosie tried not to mind, telling herself it was only what she’d come to expect, but she’d have loved to discuss the baby’s progress with her mother, or laugh together at something she did.

But all Minnie was interested in now was Dermot having sneaked away to their house the previous day. ‘And with not so much as a by-your-leave,’ she cried, indicating the boy standing before her, his face flushed and shuffling his feet on the stone floor of the cottage.

Rosie knew he’d told his parents nothing about the letter, either before he delivered it or after, and she was pleased. Connie had advised Rosie to say nothing of Phelan’s disappearing and Danny in pursuit if Dermot hadn’t already. ‘Sure, we don’t want half the county alerted,’ she’d said. ‘They might be back before we realise they’ve gone and least said, you know…’

So Rosie didn’t enlighten her parents to the reason for Dermot’s visit the previous day, but stung by their indifference to her child and by the discoloured bruise on Geraldine’s cheek, she cried out, ‘Why shouldn’t he come and see me, his own sister, and the wee baby he’s uncle to? As for not asking permission, if you’d let him come when he wants, he’d not have to sneak away.’

‘When I want advice on how to bring up my own son, I’ll ask you,’ Minnie snapped back.

‘Aye,’ Rosie commented wryly. ‘That’ll be the day, but I’m warning you now, tying the boy to your apron strings is not the way to go on. No wonder he deceives you.’

Never had Rosie spoken in such a way to her mother and she looked at Minnie’s outraged face after her outburst and wondered if she’d order her from the house. ‘Look,’ she continued in a conciliatory way. ‘Let’s not quarrel. Never mind what Dermot did yesterday. Today is a new day. Let’s sit down to the fine meal Chrissie and Geraldine have got ready, and after it I’ll share the sweets and chocolates I have with me.’

‘Well,’ Minnie said at last. ‘I’ve never been spoken to in such a way before. I hope you don’t think, Rosie, because you’re a married woman you can show such lack of respect for your parents. We’ll say nothing about it this time, but I’d like you to remember it for the future.’

Rosie bit her lip and took the rebuke without any retort. She heard her sisters’ small sighs of relief and saw the look of gratitude Dermot flashed her.

The next day, the Walsh girls, returning to work after the Bank Holiday, came home in a state of great agitation. ‘There’s been a rebel uprising in Dublin,’ Sarah said. ‘I hope to God Sam and Phelan aren’t mixed up in it.’

‘What did you say?’ Matt asked, shocked.

‘An uprising, Daddy. It’s the talk of the place. We brought you the Dublin Express to see for yourself,’ Sarah told him, handing her father the paper. The main picture showed Dublin’s General Post Office with British soldiers littering the ground before it. From the roof there fluttered two flags and the reporter described them. One was the tricolour flag of Ireland and the other a green flag emblazoned with a harp and the words ‘Ireland’s Republic’.

‘They have taken areas on both sides of the Liffey,’ Matt read out to Connie and Rosie, who had stopped their preparations for the meal at the girls’ news. ‘They also hold the South Dublin Union, The Four Courts and Boland’s Mill,’ Matt went on, pointing at the pictures in the paper.

‘By Christ,’ he declared. ‘What in God’s name are they thinking of?’

‘You don’t think they have a hope then, Daddy?’ Sarah said.

Matt answered gently. He knew she was thinking of Sam, and he was thinking of his sons, one possibly embroiled in the mayhem and the other walking straight into danger because of him. ‘How could it succeed, cutie dear? It’s like tipping a bucket of water into the Liffey and hoping to make a difference, even ten buckets, a hundred buckets.’

Rosie’s mouth was so dry she could barely speak. Fear clutched at her heart. Her Danny, her darling husband, was marching straight into that hell-hole, and all because of bloody Phelan! Surely to God Danny was too sensible to get involved? He was totally against any rebel activity. It wasn’t his way. He was a farmer, a pacifist, and although he wanted Home Rule and a united Ireland as well as the next man, he wouldn’t think it would be achieved by taking on the might of the British Army.

Connie listened horror-struck to Matt’s words and her heart seemed to stop. Phelan wouldn’t be involved in any of this. He was but a boy, only fourteen years old. But if he was and she’d charged Danny to bring him home…Oh God, it didn’t bear thinking about. Her two boys…

With her heart hammering against her ribs and fear showing in every vestige of her face, she said, ‘Phelan wouldn’t get mixed up in this, sure he wouldn’t?’

It was a plea to Matt, a plea for him to tell her of course Phelan wouldn’t. But Matt had worked alongside the boy day after day and knew more of his views than Connie. The look he cast her spoke volumes and she moaned, ‘Oh dear Christ, no.’