1949 (20 page)

“Make love to me here.”

Blood pounded in his temples. “Someone might come in.”

“I know. Do it. Do it here and now or not at all.”

Finbar's body was in revolt against his conscience. He had imagined making love to Ursula—imagined it too many times, resulting in too many sleepless nights and too many embarrassing sessions in the confessional—but he had never envisioned the act taking place with the pair of them fully clothed in a dark stairwell.

A shudder ran the length of his body. “You don't want to do this,” he whispered hoarsely.

“Don't tell me what I want!” She was illogically angry with him for not understanding something she did not understand herself. Her hands began moving on him, sliding under his clothes. Exploring.

Wherever she touched, he felt fire.

Jesus Mary and Joseph help me. Help me protect her.

He tried to back away but there was very little room at the bottom of the stairs. “Listen to me, Ursula,” he panted. “This is all wrong and you will regret it surely.”

“You don't want me,” she said in a strange, flat tone.

Finbar moaned. “More than anything else in this world I want you. But not like this,
a stór
,
^*
not like this! When I…make you mine…we will be properly married and…”

She stiffened. “I never said I would marry you. I don't intend to marry anyone.”

As if someone had pulled a plug, Finbar felt passion draining out of him. “And I don't intend to treat the girl I love like a whore.”

Her hands dropped to her sides. “Is that what you think I am?”

“Is that what you want to be?” he shot back.

In the darkness he could not see her face. “You had best go,” she said tightly.

“I…I'm sorry, Ursula, I didn't mean that, I…”

“Please, just go!”

The door opened, closed, and she was alone.

She leaned back against the wall.
Sin é. That's it
.

No one heard the sobs that shook her body.

 

On the corner of Ursula's desk at 2RN was a jam jar filled with pencils. Her first task every morning, as soon as she had taken off her hat, was to sharpen her pencils with an old penknife of Ned's. No one else was allowed to touch them and she did nothing until they were sharp.

The overnight reports waited in a stack beside the pencil jar. On the second of July Ursula finished her ritual with the pencils, then glanced at the first sheet on the stack. She drew a sharp breath and picked it up. The report was taken from a German radio broadcast by Joseph Goebbels.

Ursula read with increasing horror.

According to Goebbels, the leader of the storm troopers had been plotting to overthrow Hitler. The man was seized by the SS while he was allegedly engaged in homosexual activities in a Munich hotel. Although he had been one of Hitler's closest comrades since the early days of the Nazi party, he was dragged from bed and shot. On the same night hundreds of his followers in Munich and Berlin were executed without trial. The incident was already being called the Night of the Long Knives.

Ursula shuddered.
The State committing murder with impunity. Someone has to do something about this!

 

On the twenty-fifth of July, 1934, Nazis burst into the office of the Austrian chancellor in Vienna and shot him to death. No official sanction was imposed by the League of Nations.

 

Within the Blueshirts was an intellectual elite composed of men such as Ernest Blythe and Desmond FitzGerald who admired Mussolini's ideal of the corporate state. But it was the military aspect that came to the fore. Under O'Duffy's direction the organization was reconstituted as the National Guard, a title the government did not sanction.

Eamon de Valera promptly revoked all civilian firearm certificates, including those for legally held weapons that members of government had been carrying since the O'Higgins assassination. When his action was challenged in the Dáil, de Valera accused O'Duffy of trying to set himself up as a dictator. With no apparent sense of irony, de Valera said the Irish government would not tolerate any man having a private army.

O'Duffy claimed membership in the Blueshirts was 62,000 and rising. Fianna Fáil hotly disputed that figure. But there was no doubt the Blueshirts were expanding. They viewed themselves as patriots dedicated to maintaining free speech and resisting a one-party state. Their new constitution included a women's section and stressed physical fitness. It also limited membership exclusively to Irish citizens who professed the Christian faith.
²

“Although I approve of their enlightened attitude toward women,” Ursula wrote to Fliss, “and I am not really happy with Fianna Fáil, I could never support the Blueshirts. Not only are they anti-Republican, but anti-Semitic as well. I despise any form of bigotry! In Northern Ireland we have proof of its terrible consequences.

“I think bigots secretly feel inferior, Fliss, which is why they claim a superiority effortlessly conferred upon them by race or religion. That is as bad as an inherited monarchy in which the laziest villain can become king.”

“With tongue firmly fixed in cheek,” Fliss replied, “I take umbrage at your remarks. I certainly am not inferior. How could I be? I am English. Yet I do admit to being anti-Semitic, which is a perfectly acceptable prejudice. Fashionable, even. The Jews are intellectuals and bankers and one always hates
them
.

“Adolf Hitler's animosity toward the Jews does seem excessive, though. He blames them entirely for Germany's defeat in the Great War. The Gestapo—that's the secret state police—are confiscating Jewish property. Often the owners simply disappear. German Jews are beginning to arrive in Britain, telling rather frightening stories that no one really believes, but one has to feel sorry for them. In some cases they have lost everything. I cannot imagine how awful it must be to arrive in a strange land with nothing but the clothes you stand up in.”

That's because you're not Irish
, thought Ursula.

Fliss's letter continued: “Sir Oswald says Hitler is doing wonderful things for the German economy, however, and continues to champion him. The younger members of our set use Munich as a sort of finishing school cum social springboard,
³
and Sir Oswald's wife and sister-in-law, Unity Mitford, often visit Germany. In fact Unity has become quite passionately devoted to dear Adolf, it's something of an open scandal. She has taken to whizzing around London in an MG with a swastika painted on it.”

19 August 1934
HINDENBERG, GERMAN PRESIDENT, DEAD
ADOLF HITLER DECLARES HIMSELF HEAD OF STATE
Title of President Abolished. Hitler to Be Known as Fuehrer and Reich Chancellor

In September the Blueshirts merged with Cumann na nGaedheal to form a new party called United Ireland/Fine Gael. Like its predecessor,
Fine Gael
^*
drew its primary support from large rural landowners and the prosperous middle class.

When Eoin O'Duffy was elected president of the party, Fine Gael acquired an overtly fascist element.

As soon as 2RN received the announcement of his election, Ursula placed an urgent telephone call to the Department of External Affairs.

De Valera's removal of political opponents had not extended to the lower echelons of civil service. Finbar Cassidy was assured of retaining his job if he kept his head down and the department running smoothly.

When Ursula heard Finbar's voice on the telephone she said briskly, “Can you have lunch with me?”

“What? Today?”

“If possible.”

“Why…certainly, I can meet you for lunch. Where?”

“Flynn's? In an hour?”

Finbar was already there when Ursula arrived. When she approached his table he stood up and pulled out a chair for her. A smile set his freckled face aglow. “I'm glad you rang me,” he said as she sat down. “I hope this means—”

“I'm not picking up where we left off,” Ursula interrupted before the conversation could become embarrassing. “I came to urge you to think again about your political affiliations. When we Irish dig ourselves into a hole we tend to stay there, but…”

Finbar's smile congealed on his face. “You wanted to meet me just to launch into a political harangue?”

“I'm not haranguing you, I'm concerned about you. As a friend,” she hastened to add. He looked so crestfallen she reached across the table to touch his hand. “You once warned me about the fascists, remember? Now you're consorting with them.”

“Hardly consorting, Ursula. I don't believe I've spoken ten words to any of the Blueshirts. But surely a political party should be flexible enough to embrace more than one point of view.”

“You think the fascist point of view is worth embracing? Hitler is a fascist. Do you realize what's happening in Germany?”

“External Affairs follows international developments closely, it's our business,” he said huffily.

She must make him understand. “Somewhere along the line the legal German chancellor has become the legal German dictator, Finbar—and no one's made a move to stop him. Now he's persecuting the Jews just as the English persecuted us. It's monstrous! All fascists should be locked away where they can't do any damage. Or better yet, shot.”

“That's a bit extreme, isn't it?” said Finbar. “People are either saints or sinners, wonderful or rotten to the core; there's no middle ground with you.”

Ursula recognized the truth in his words but did not consider it a character flaw. She was Ned Halloran's daughter, passionate and committed when others were apathetic. She leaned earnestly toward Finbar. “Please disassociate yourself from the Fine Gael party. For my sake, if no other reason.”

“Why don't you disassociate yourself from Fianna Fáil for my sake?” he countered. “De Valera insists that only he knows what's right for Ireland, but what he really wants is to do all our thinking for us. And that's dangerous.”

The remark was too close to the bone. “Not as dangerous as Eoin O'Duffy,” Ursula said defensively. She would never admit that she was beginning to question her own loyalty to Dev.

“Listen to me, Ursula. I work in government, and I can tell you there's no perfect party and no perfect leader either.”

She gave a sniff. “You're just jealous because you backed the wrong horse.”

He realized there was no point in continuing the discussion; they would only quarrel again. She was, he told himself, incapable of compromise.

“We both have to go back to work soon,” he reminded her. “May I buy you a sandwich first?”

Ursula cocked her head to one side, surveying the menu chalked on a slate on the wall. “A bowl of soup, I think.”

“Whatever you say.” His mind began to drift away. Back to his desk with its piles of folders; back to the afternoon's appointments; back to what was mundane and certain.

When they left Flynn's he went one way and she the other. After a few paces Finbar looked back, only to see Ursula striding away from him with her lovely free-swinging walk.

At the corner she stopped. Turned around. But Finbar was gone.

 

Ursula had too much energy and not enough outlets for it. She visited every livery stable in Dublin, hoping at least one of them would quote a price cheap enough to allow her to bring Saoirse up from the country. None did. She hired horses to ride by the hour or took long walks through the streets of the city. Nothing tired her sufficiently to turn off her mind and allow a peaceful sleep.

She worked all the hours she could, then went home to write endless letters late into the night. And read. Because she knew most of her own books by heart, she began borrowing others from the library. One evening she hurled a popular “woman's novel” across the room after reading only a few pages.
Do women really want to read this saccharine rubbish? Or is it foisted off on them to discourage them from using their minds?

 

Adolf Hitler refused to take any further part in the Geneva Disarmament Conference. He also withdrew Germany from the League of Nations, claiming the country could no longer tolerate the humiliating and dishonoring demands of the other Powers.

Meanwhile the Gestapo were encouraging Germans to denounce one another as traitors. Anyone considered a threat to the New Order was dealt with summarily. Thousands of Communists and socialists, denounced by neighbors and workmates, were sent to concentration camps.

In November the Irish Gardaí raided Blueshirt headquarters in Parnell Square. Some weapons were found, but nothing sufficient to allow the government to bring criminal charges against Cumann na nGaedheal. However de Valera did bring charges against individual members of the party. Eoin O'Duffy and two colleagues were arrested at Westport. The arrest was declared illegal by the High Court a few days later.

That same month, Séamus Clandillon left 2RN on indefinite sick leave.
¹
He was clearly exhausted, but promised to return as soon as he had a little rest.

When Ursula went to Clare for Christmas, as a present for the family she bought a gramophone record of John McCormack singing “Friend of Mine.”

Shortly after the New Year a man from Posts and Telegraphs was brought in to serve as acting director at 2RN.