1949 (3 page)

Few options were open to rural spinsters. If she did not emigrate Lucy could either become a shop assistant in town, or serve as unpaid labor on the family farm. Lucy disliked farm life, but she had no taste for shopkeeping either and lacked the desperation to emigrate.

If—as seemed increasingly likely—Frank remained a bachelor, and the widowed Ned did not marry again, upon their deaths the farm would pass to Lucy. By that time she would be long past childbearing. Ironically, she would have plenty of suitors then—feckless men looking for a woman of property to support them.

Of all those in the Halloran household, only Ursula truly loved the land. She was the one who walked the fields in every season, examining the condition of soil and crops, checking on walls and fences, pausing often just to look. To gaze out across hills and fields, feeding her soul with their silent poetry.

Yet for reasons everyone understood and no one talked about, the farm would never be hers.

“There's a letter from America,” Norah said while Lucy poured a cup of strong tea for Frank.

“From Kathleen? Where is it?” The hands that reached for the cup had the soil of Clare ground into their creases. When Frank was younger those hands had been renowned for their skill with the fiddle. Local lads and lasses had thronged to the crossroads dances where he played, and there was a
seisiún
^*
in the Halloran house almost every week.

After Frank inherited the farm the music in him had died of neglect. He owned a wind-up gramophone but rarely played it. He never went to dances anymore, nor encouraged fellow musicians to come to the farmhouse for a seisiún. Aside from trips to the Ennis market or Clonroad Fair he only left the farm to go to Mass. A letter from his oldest sister was an event.

“Ned's after taking Kathleen's letter,” his aunt told him. “He's in one of his moods, so leave it with him for now. Ursula has a letter from Henry Mooney, though.”

“Is someone ill in Dublin? The babby?” Frank always expected bad news.

“They're all in good form,” Ursula assured him, “though Isabella's hardly a babby anymore. She'll be three this autumn and I have yet to see her. They're urging me to visit them in Dublin.”

“Ned won't let you go,” Frank said.

“I'm too old to need his permission.”

Lucy gave her a look. The two got along well enough, but a glimmer of jealousy was surfacing between them. “How old are you then?” Lucy asked maliciously.

Ursula responded as she always did to a challenge, with sparkling eyes and a rush of color to her cheeks. “Old enough to travel! Let me remind you that I went up to Dublin on my own for Henry and Ella's wedding. And I'll go now if I choose, with or without Papa's permission.”

Lucy exhaled sharply. “You wouldn't defy your own father!” But she knew otherwise. Lucy and Eileen Halloran were the products of a highly conservative rural society. Ned's daughter was made of different clay.

With an exasperated sigh, Norah Daly turned from the range. “Leave it be. I told you before; I want no rows in this house. Was the war not bad enough?”

“Which war?” Ursula asked. “The one we won or the one we lost?”

Next morning, the ticket agent at the Ennis railway station greeted the girl warmly. Everyone knew Ursula Halloran. Her father had fought the British from the General Post Office in 1916. In Clare there were no better credentials.

“So you sneaked off to Dublin without telling anyone.” Henry Mooney chuckled. “I did that myself, first time I came up to the Big Smoke.”

“You always said it's easier to apologize afterward than to ask permission beforehand.”

“That's a motto for newspaper reporters, Ursula,” Ella chided, “not an excuse for bad manners.”

They were sitting in the parlor of the Mooneys' semi-detached Georgian villa in Dublin's Sandymount Avenue. The couple were a study in contrasts. Henry, in his early forties, was well built in spite of rounded shoulders and a tendency to slouch. His eyes were enmeshed in laugh lines. His deep, calm voice with its west-of-Ireland accent elicited confidences. Even strangers trusted him.

Born into the upper levels of Dublin society, Ella Rutledge Mooney was a strawberry blond with dark amber eyes and a hand-span waist. Her anglicized enunciation identified her as a member of the Protestant Ascendancy, the propertied class in Ireland. Some mistook Ella's finishing-school manners for hauteur—until they saw her smile and fell in love, as Henry had done, with her dimples.

Earlier this evening they had taken Ursula upstairs to visit little Isabella in the nursery, under the watchful eye of Tilly Burgess, the Mooneys' housekeeper. Tilly was a necessary part of the household. Like other women of her class, Ella had been brought up to marry, not to cook and clean. Besides, Tilly was the only person who could control the headstrong Isabella. The child's parents were too doting for discipline.

Now as they sat in the parlor, Henry asked Ursula, “How do you like my beautiful daughter?”

“She really is beautiful. But why did you call her Isabella? Doesn't the Church want children to be given saints' names?”

Ella said, “Since we married we've drifted away from organized religion. Henry's Roman Catholic…”

“Backslid Roman Catholic,” Henry interjected.

“And I was raised Anglican,” Ella went on imperturbably, “but we've seen so many difficulties caused by…well, we both love the same God and that's good enough for us.

“When the baby was born with dark hair and eyes I thought she looked rather Spanish. Henry wanted to name her for me but I hated the idea. I didn't want to become ‘Big Ella,' or worse yet, ‘Old Ella.' So I suggested Isabella as a compromise. It's a lovely Spanish name and ends in Ella. Of course Henry's called her Bella ever since. You know how he is about nicknames.”

“There's not a drop of Spanish blood in my daughter,” Henry asserted. “One of my ancestors was a Welshman, that's where she got her coloring. Children carry the history of their forebears like chapters in a book, if one knew how to read them.”

Ursula stiffened. “What are you trying to tell me, Uncle Henry? Is there something I should know?”

Obfuscation and circumlocution were traits the Irish had developed to an art form over the centuries. Talking around something rather than addressing it directly was a survival mechanism, a way of avoiding confrontation. Ursula Halloran was the exception. She asked straight questions and wanted straight answers.

Her bluntness caught Henry off-guard. He had not meant anything in particular by the remark. “I…mmm…was just making conversation, Little Business.”

“But you had some urgent reason for wanting me to come to Dublin. What was it?”

Henry slumped in his seat. “I'm thoroughly browned off with this country, if you must know. Sick of living with a sword hanging over our heads. The Civil War hasn't really ended. Former comrades-in-arms are shouting at one another in Dáil Éireann,
^*
accusing old friends of being traitors and murderers. Government agents are scouring the countryside for illegal arms and decent men and women are being charged with treason. I can't bear to see what's happened to this country.”

Ursula said hotly, “It's the fault of this hateful Saorstát Éireann the Anglo-Irish Treaty lumbered us with. Irish Free State indeed! What's free about it? We're still within the Empire. We have a British governor-general who has to sign our legislation before it can become law, and the government is run for the benefit of big business and big farmers, just as it was under British rule.

“Remember Pádraic Pearse's vision of the Irish Republic, Uncle Henry? ‘A non-sectarian society where the poor and the old will be cherished and the hero and the poet alike will have honor.' That's what we fought for. If Pearse's Republic were restored everything would be all right.”

Henry was touched by the ardor of the young that admitted no obstacles. “Life isn't that simple, Little Business.” From his waistcoat he took a silver pocket watch. “This stopped the other day. You might say, wind the watch and everything will be all right.” He wound the stem. Nothing happened.

With his thumbnail Henry opened the back of the watch and held it out to show Ursula. “See those tiny cogs and gears? They're totally interdependent. One bent wheel and the entire mechanism can break down. Irish society is like these watchworks, which is why the simplistic approach has never worked here and never will. If we had the Republic tomorrow we would just have a new set of problems.”

“Our politicians could sort things out if they didn't have any British interference,” Ursula declared.

“Politicians.” Henry gave a snort. “Like most revolutions, ours devoured its most imaginative leaders. What's left to run the country is a different breed. Cautious to a fault, most of 'em. They've retained the British administrative machinery because that's all they know, so we're lumbered with the same old colonial policies we fought so hard to be rid of. The only real difference I can see is that Cosgrave's banned divorce in the Free State rather than continuing to allow it under the British model. But he's a devout Catholic anyway, so that's hardly surprising.”

An elbow in his ribs made him break off abruptly. “Stop editorializing,” Ella rebuked him. “This is supposed to be about Ursula.”

“You're right, Cap'n, as always.” With an effort, Henry redirected his thinking. “Little Business, there are some…mmm…some arrangements we'd like to make for you before we go.”

“Before you go! Go where?”

“America.”

“Why ever would you want to visit America?”

“We won't be visiting. We're emigrating.”

“You can't!” Ursula's eyes widened in alarm. Henry Mooney had been part of her life for as long as she could remember. Henry and the Hallorans had once lived in the same Dublin rooming house. He had been her papa's best friend and her mama's confidante: the person they turned to in times of trouble.

When the other adults were too busy, Henry had always found time for Ursula. He had read the newspapers with her and answered her ceaseless questions. When he bought a typewriting machine he had showed her how to use it. He had taken her to her first horse-riding lessons, and after she and Ned went to live on the farm in Clare, Henry had even given her Saoirse.

“You can't leave Ireland!” she repeated.

“I never expected to,” Henry said. “I thought I would spend my life as a Dublin journalist and that was fine with me. Oh, the pay wasn't great, and most newspapers had a pro-British policy because they knew which side of their bread was buttered. But I could accept that.

“Then came 1916. When the authorities insisted that public opinion was against the rebellion, Dublin newspapers dutifully reinforced that view. They printed near-hysterical editorials claiming the leaders of the Rising were hoodlums and psychopaths.

“After those same leaders were executed, the public learned who and what they really were. Poets, schoolteachers, a leading trade unionist—decent, highly principled men, every one. Men who thought the freedom of this country was worth dying for.”

Ursula's eyes blazed. “It is,” she whispered ardently. The memory of those days came pouring over her like a wave; the drama and terror and exhilaration she had only half understood at the time.

Henry continued, “As you may recall, the mood of the country changed almost overnight. I was one of the few reporters who chronicled the ground-swell for independence. It may be conceited, but I'd like to think the articles I wrote for the
Irish Bulletin
helped give Ireland the courage to fight on until the battle was won.”

He was referring to the outlawed Republican newsletter that had been the only paper during two years of government censorship to document, day by day, the full story of the Anglo-Irish war: Ireland's desperate War of Independence.

“For a moment we almost had it all,” Henry said. Pain cracked his deep voice like a fissure in oak. “With the people solidly behind them, Michael Collins and the IRA fought the almighty British Empire to a standstill. I was damned proud of them. Sorry about my language, Ella, but I
was
damned proud of them, damn it!”

“Yet when the army split afterward, over the Treaty, you supported Michael Collins against the Republicans like de Valera and Papa,” Ursula reproached him.

“Both sides wanted the same thing, an independent Ireland,” said Henry. “They just differed on how to get it. Mick Collins believed the twenty-six-county Free State was the best deal we could get at the time. The British government was willing to annihilate the Irish people to avoid giving us total independence.”

“Why?” Ursula demanded to know. “I've never been able to understand that.”

“You should pay closer attention to the international scene,” Henry told her. “Setting Ireland free would have had global implications for the empire at a time when Britain was engaged in a life-and-death struggle to hold onto India and Egypt. Those ancient lands wanted to regain their independence too, and they were a lot more valuable to the Crown than Ireland.

“Mick knew that partitioning this island would create a running sore. He only signed the Treaty because the British threatened to pour two-hundred thousand fresh troops into Ireland immediately if he didn't.”