A Winter of Spies (13 page)

SARAH AND DA SAT IN SILENCE
. Da had his elbows on the
table
and his head in his hands. Sarah looked around the ruined room. Her eyes kept going back to the
mantelpiece
, to the smashed clock. Ma would be devastated. The clock had been in her family for generations. Sarah doubted that it would ever work again.

She looked at her Da. She wanted to say something to comfort him, but she could think of no words for how she felt. He'd led a man to his death. To do it he'd lied to her, although that didn't seem important any more. And what would have happened if he'd let her in on his secret? She thought of her time in Herbert Park with Moore. If she'd known the truth, could she have kept it from him? She couldn't, she was sure of that. He'd have suspected her in some way.

Sarah knew that Moore had left her house to die. She thought of his grin as he drove in the car to Herbert Park, his smooth hands and waxed moustache. She realised that she could find in her heart no personal regret for Rory Moore. He had made this situation, and he'd made it
to betray Da. He'd been behind Mick's arrest and beating. No doubt he'd been behind the raid on Keane's. He would kill any of them, and kill in the certainty that he was right. There were people like that on the Irish side too, but her Da wasn't one of them. It was Da she felt sympathy for.

Somebody came slowly into the hall. It was her uncle Mick, and Jimmy was with him. Da looked up. Mick came over and sat down. The swelling on his face was slowly going down and he could talk almost normally now. ‘Is it done?' he asked.

‘It will be by now.'

‘I'm going to check my books,' Jimmy said. He ran
upstairs
. Mick sat looking at Da.

‘How do you feel?' he asked.

‘Crocked,' Da said. ‘Broke up inside.'

‘Did they beat you?'

‘Just a few taps.' He held up his bleeding hand. ‘I done this meself.'

‘Ah sure,' Mick said, ‘everyone else was belting us
anyhow
. Why should we miss all the fun?'

Da gave a little laugh. ‘How are you doing, Mick?' he asked.

Mick too gave a laugh, then he winced. ‘Well,' he said, ‘I feel broke up inside too, but then my ribs is cracked.'

‘Moore was in on that beating today, you know,' Da
said. ‘Fowles told me – Fowles or Murray, or whatever his name is. This whole thing is so full of lies I'm not even sure what my own name is anymore. I don't know
anything
for sure.'

Mick heard the bitterness in his voice. ‘Your name,' Mick said, ‘is James Conway. You're the husband of my sister, and the father of three fine kids. You're a soldier risking everything for your country, so that them kids can grow up in freedom. What more do you need to know?'

Jimmy came back downstairs. He looked relieved. ‘There's books all over the floor,' he said, ‘but none
damaged
.'

Then he saw Ma's clock and stood staring at it –
remembering
, Sarah supposed, other times.

‘The poor clock,' Jimmy said. ‘Ma will never get over it.'

‘Jimmy,' Sarah said quietly, ‘I think Da is as broke up as the clock.'

Jimmy looked at Da.

‘I put a man on the spot tonight, Jim,' Da said. ‘It had to be done, but it was me that done it. I set him up, and I sent him out to die.'

Jimmy thought about that. ‘Da,' he said, ‘if you did that with a million men then you'd be acting like a general in the war.'

For the first time all evening Da gave a real smile. ‘You
have a point,' he said. Then the smile went. He shook his head. ‘I just don't know.'

Mick had been watching him closely. ‘James,' he said, ‘I want to tell you something. I don't know if it will help, but I want to tell you anyway. You too, Jimmy.' He looked at Sarah. ‘And it's time you heard it too, Sal. Jimmy, sit down here.'

Jimmy upended another chair and brought it to the
table
.

‘I was in the College of Surgeons in the Rising,' Mick said. ‘Youse know that much already. I was firing across Stephen's Green at the soldiers in the Shelbourne Hotel, but I never saw any soldiers all the time I was shooting. Maybe I shot some, maybe I didn't – I'll never know.'

Da nodded. ‘That's the way of it most of the time,' he said.

‘I had one of them big Mauser rifles,' Mick said. ‘They'd a kick like a mule in them when you fired them. They'd make this huge bang and a big cloud of filthy black smoke would come out of them. It was like shooting through a smoke screen.'

‘I saw that,' Jimmy said. ‘The clouds of black smoke from the German rifles hanging in front of the college.'

‘Aye,' Mick said. ‘I know you saw it.' He picked up the bottle of whiskey and seemed to consider pouring a drink. Then he put the bottle down.

‘What you don't know, Jimmy,' he said, ‘is that I saw you too. And I saw Charlie Fox grabbing you.'

Jimmy stared at him. So did Da. They seemed to hear something in Mick's words that Sarah missed.

‘I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw you,' Mick
continued
. ‘Then Charlie grabbed you and shook you like a rag. You got free of him, but he caught you again. I saw him drawing back his fist to hit you. I could see he was mad with drink.'

He paused. Nobody said anything. Mick licked his swollen lips. Sarah remembered how Moore had licked his lips too, sitting in that same chair less than half an hour ago.

‘I could see,' Mick said slowly, ‘that he was going to hit you with his full strength. I thought he was going to kill you.'

He stopped again. Everyone was still staring at him, but Mick didn't meet their eyes. He looked instead at the dead clock on the mantelpiece.

‘I'd a gun in me hands,' he said. ‘I knew I had only one chance. Charlie held you away from him so as to hit you. I shot him.'

He looked at Jimmy. ‘I killed Charlie Fox,' he said. ‘I hated the man, and he was going to hurt you, and he'd
already
made Ella's life a misery. But when all is said and done he was only a man, only a drunken eejit. He was
more to be pitied nor anything else. And I killed him, Jimmy. I killed him stone dead.'

‘You probably saved my life,' Jimmy said.

‘Oh aye, I think I did. It's the one shot I fired in the
Rising
that I'm certain did some good. But I killed my own brother-in-law, Jimmy.'

He turned to look at Da. ‘I've lived with that for five years, James,' he said. ‘It was wrong, what I done. But it was right, too. It was the two things at the same time. Real life is a lot of things, but simple isn't one of them.'

Mick sat back in his chair. ‘Moore threatened more than one of the family,' he said. ‘He threatened all of us and everything we believe in. And he wouldn't have let up till somebody stopped him.'

Da looked in Mick's eyes. Then he reached out and laid his bleeding hand on Mick's where it lay on the table. Both of them looked at each other, saying nothing.

‘I'd be grateful,' Mick said, ‘if none of youse says this to my sisters. I don't know what they'd think of me.'

‘They'd think you were a good man,' said a low voice from the doorway. Ella and Ma stood there, their shawls around them, their arms linked. Mick's still-swollen face grew red.

‘Lily,' he said. ‘Ella …'

‘Hush, Mick,' Ella said. ‘I think we've all had enough excitement for the one night.'

‘We came up to get youse,' Ma said. ‘There's tea ready downstairs. Mrs Breen have a cake and a few
sandwiches
. It's supper time.'

‘A family supper,' Ella said. ‘Family and friends.'

Mick looked back at Da. Da looked at his wife.

‘We'll stay downstairs tonight,' Ma said. ‘And
tomorrow
we'll come up and fix this place up. Come on now, the lot of you.'

‘Lil,' Da said. ‘Your clock.'

Ma looked at the dead clock. For a moment she paled, but then she made a face.

‘Sure it's only an ould clock,' she said, ‘when all is said and done. The world is full of clocks. Besides, look at your hand. Come down and I'll wash it. Human hands is harder to replace.'

Slowly they all stood up. Ma and Ella led the way down the front steps. Behind them all Sarah lingered, looking at the ruins of her home. Her toy baby-carriage lay upended in the hall. She pulled it up and found Eileen, the doll, buried under her torn blanket. Sarah picked Eileen up and hugged her tight. The adult world was a complicated place. She'd join it soon enough. For the moment she'd stick to Eileen, who was only as complicated as you wanted her to be.

The adults had reached the bottom of the steps. Jimmy looked back to see if Sarah was coming. He smiled when
he saw her holding the doll. ‘The little rebel mammy,' he said.

‘Shut your face, you,' Sarah said. But she smiled as she said it.

She took one last look in at the mess in the hall. Then she closed the front door behind her, and followed her family down. Tomorrow they'd clear up the house and start living again. A family clearing up a mess and starting over – that was history for you.

At nine o’clock on the mild morning of the following
Sunday
, as church bells around the city rang the hour, eight groups of Collins’s men struck at a number of addresses in Dublin. Fourteen men were assassinated, and British Intelligence operations in Dublin came to a sudden halt. The name of the man known as Rory Moore had
originally
been on the list of targets, but he had advanced the date of his own death by several days.

That same afternoon a company of Black and Tans opened fire on a crowd watching a football match in Croke Park in Dublin. Between the shooting and the
panicked
stampede of spectators, twelve people died. More than sixty were injured. It was not, the authorities said, a reprisal – the Tans had come under fire from the crowd.

That night three prisoners – Dick McKee, Peadar Clancy and Conor Clune – died in the guardroom of
Dublin
Castle. They were desperate gunmen, it was
explained
, killed while trying to escape.

Dick McKee and Peadar Clancy were important
officers
in the Dublin Brigade of the Volunteers. Conor
Clune was a young man from Clare on a visit to Dublin. He had no Volunteer connections. Since the authorities could not explain away his sudden love of violence, they announced that he was a lieutenant in the Clare
Volunteers
. This solved everything.

Because of the number of dead, that Sunday – 21
November
1920 – became known as Bloody Sunday. But the dead of that day were no more dead than those who had died individually, in streets and fields and alleyways, on any other day. That much at least is certain.

That particular war in Ireland went on until the
following
summer. Then there was a truce, and negotiations in London which led to freedom for the greater part of the country. One of the chief negotiators on the Irish side was Michael Collins. The form of freedom he brought back did not satisfy some people. They disputed it, and the democratic election which supported it, in the way that they were now used to – with guns. The Civil War which followed crippled Ireland for many, many years. Its echoes still linger. Apart from anything else, it
swallowed
the lives of many honourable men. One of them was Collins.

And the people in our story? The Conway family had many things happen to them, good and bad. Families do. Yours does and mine does. The man known as Fowles was an agent for Michael Collins throughout the war.
Afterwards he joined the new Irish police force, the Garda Síochána. When he retired he got pensions from both the Irish and British police forces, and from the
British
Secret Service as well. He died in his bed in the early 1980s.

Simon Hughes fought on the government side in the Civil War. Later he served in the army of the new Irish state, but met with prejudice because he was English. In the mid-1920s he left the army and went into business. He was very successful.

Martin Ford fought on the opposing side in the Civil War. He died fighting in 1922, lying in a ditch in a place whose name he never even knew. His side lost that war.

Hugh Byrne, the killer, also fought on the losing side in the Civil War. Near the end of it he committed a notorious crime, and then escaped to America. There he became a gangster and later, as he grew rich, a respectable citizen. So it often goes. He lived to a ripe old age, retiring to
Ireland
in the 1970s. He met Jimmy Conway once and they spent the day together, two old men discussing the dead days they’d lived. They found a good deal to mourn, and even a few things to laugh about.

A family cleans up a mess and starts living again.
Countries
learn to do that too.

That’s history for you.