A Winter of Spies (3 page)

THE TROUBLED STATE OF THE COUNTRY
brought Da no joy at all.

‘It's just our luck,' he used to say. ‘As soon as things start to go good for us, there's another war.'

And it was true that things had improved greatly for the Conways in the past few years. By the standards they'd been used to, they were living in luxury. Da had never been anything like wealthy, but after taking part in the great strike of 1913 he'd been blacklisted by the
employers
and couldn't find any kind of job. The family had spent years in complete poverty. They'd lived in squalor and hunger. In the end, in 1915, Da had been forced to join the British army and go to war simply to feed them.

But with the move to the large house in the latter part of 1916 their luck had changed. At last they had a family home, and it was a home where there was always food on the table. Ella's dead husband had had life insurance and, in spite of his drinking, he'd somehow managed to keep up the payments on it. The insurance money came to Ella, as well as a very small pension from the brewery
where he'd worked. What with that and the separation money Ma got from the army, the family was suddenly solvent for the first time.

It was a frugal kind of comfort, maybe, but not when you compared it with what they were used to. It had taken the Conway children as long to get used to eating regularly as it did to having lots of room, but there was no hardship in the effort.

In 1917 the remaining prisoners from the Rising were released. Among them was Ma's brother, the children's uncle Mick. He'd fought with the Citizen Army during the Rising. After his release Mick too had come to live with them in Northumberland Road – for a little while, he
insisted
, until he got organised.

‘I don't want to be a burden on anyone,' he'd said.

Originally Dubliners had despised the Easter rebels, whom they'd seen as bringing ruin to their city. But
attitudes
started to change when the British executed the leaders. The rebels released by the British in 1917 returned to a hero's welcome. Mick got several offers of jobs within weeks of getting out of prison. He seemed to be staying clear of politics, and swore he'd never fire a gun again; but he still sometimes met some of the people he'd been in jail with. It was through one of these that he got a porter's job on the railways, where he'd worked since. It was a good, solid job. Mick enjoyed it, and got on well.

Mick stayed with the Conways for several months
before
finding a decent room in Drumcondra, in the north of the city. His experiences in the Rising and afterwards had changed him. He was quieter and sadder, and
sometimes
he seemed haunted by the things he'd seen. Now and then he drank too much, but he was still Mick, whom they all loved. He remained a frequent visitor.

When James Conway got out of the British army in 1919, having survived three years of war and even picked up a medal for bravery, the little household in
Northumberland
Road was waiting. With Da's return, the family's happiness had seemed complete. Mick had even been able to organise a railway job for him, which he'd started a couple of weeks after getting home. He too got on well, and was still working there.

But within months of Da's return the first shots of the new war in Ireland had been fired, in Tipperary.

‘I suppose,' Da said, ‘you can't get away from history.' That was called philosophy, Jimmy told Sarah, but Sarah just thought it was silly. Why would you want to get away from history?

At first Da had been fascinated by the Rising. Sarah had heard Jimmy say to Ma that he thought Da felt nearly guilty about missing it. There he'd been in France, dressed in the uniform of the British Crown, while at home in Dublin his friends and relations were fighting
against people wearing the same uniform.

But Da's interest in politics had suddenly vanished
almost
as soon as the struggle broke into the open again. It had happened almost overnight. He wanted no truck with politics or violence, he said. He'd had enough of both. He said little at home on the subject, but outside the house he was forever giving out about the fighting. He told anyone who'd listen how shameful the murders and ambushes were. Sometimes he sounded almost like a Loyalist, devoted to the Crown, and that made Sarah
angry
as well as ashamed.

Mick wasn't much better. He didn't give out like Da did, but still Sarah had never heard him say anything in support of the struggle. She felt, though, that he must have sympathy for the Volunteers. He'd been in jail with Simon Hughes, who'd fought in the Post Office, and still saw him often. Sometimes Mick brought Simon to the house, along with the Wexfordman Byrne and their friend Martin Ford. And it was obvious to anyone that though all three were supposed to have respectable jobs, they were all up to their necks in the struggle.

Da never went so far as to tell Mick not to bring his friends to the house, but he obviously didn't like their
being
there. Still, he didn't make this dislike obvious. He didn't mind them drinking cups of tea there sometimes, and would even sit and talk with them – though not
about politics. That was a banned subject.

Da was very quick to hush any support for the rebels that he heard from his children. Jimmy had no time for violence – the things that he'd seen in the Rising had put him off it forever. Josie, though she obeyed Da's wishes, was more or less openly in favour of the Volunteers. She took no real interest in politics, but the idea of all those poor young men fighting a mighty empire appealed to her. It was very romantic. And then there was Sarah, and Sarah was a mad rebel altogether. Sometimes she'd even sing rebel songs in the house. Da would explode if he heard her.

‘One wrong word is enough to drag trouble down on us all,' he'd say. ‘These are poison times.'

‘Da wants to pretend that none of this is happening,' Sarah would complain to Jimmy. ‘But it is – it's
happening
, and it's glorious, and we should all be a part of it.'

‘Da is trying to protect us,' Jimmy always said. ‘He's
trying
to protect all we have now. You don't remember what we lived like before – you were only a child.'

Sarah did understand, really, but sometimes it was hard to be patient with Da. Anyway it was impossible to stay away from politics in Dublin. You could hardly go for a walk without finding yourself stopped and searched, or risking being in the middle of an ambush that flared up out of nowhere. There had even been
trouble on the docks and the railways, with the dockers refusing to handle army munitions and the train drivers refusing to carry armed police or soldiers.

‘Not that it does much good betimes,' Da had said. ‘When a Tan sticks a gun under a fellow's nose and tells him to drive, then he drives. What else is he to do?'

Neither Da nor Mick had supported the railway
workers
' campaign, and that was the thing that shocked Sarah most of all. It was true that hundreds of workers had been dismissed for their actions, but still, she thought, there was such a thing as suffering for your country. And Da had always been such a strong trade-union man, too. Big Jim Larkin and James Connolly, the union men, had been his idols. Da never even mentioned James Connolly now. Sarah did love her father, but it seemed like a shocking betrayal.

‘All you can do at a time like this,' Da would say, ‘is keep your head down and hope for the best.'

Sarah's bloodthirsty talk didn't go down well with the rest of her family either. When she heard of some new
murder
or looting she'd yearn aloud to be facing the Tans with a gun in her hand.

‘Lord save us!' Ella would say if she heard her. ‘Don't talk like that, child!'

‘Pay her no mind, Ella,' Ma would say. ‘You're only
encouraging
her.' Ma refused to be shocked, which
sometimes
only made Sarah try harder. It never really worked. If she went too far Ma would fix her with a beady eye that promised trouble, and Sarah would find herself falling
silent
. Ma never made threats; she didn't have to. One day, Sarah promised herself, she'd stand up to Ma – even stand up to Da. But she was in no hurry.

Jimmy would sometimes act like Ma when he heard Sarah spouting off about shooting and fighting: he'd
ignore
her until she shut up. At other times though he'd lose patience with her, and give out. Sometimes it was a sort of a game that she played with him, seeing how far she had to go to make him lose his temper. He tended to
react best if you talked about guns a lot. Jimmy hated guns.

‘There's a badness in guns,' he'd say. ‘A sickness. And the fellow who does the shooting can get sicker than the fellow he shoots at. Ah, what's the use? You don't even understand what I'm saying to you.'

That much was true. Sarah had no time for such daft talk. It came, she thought, of reading too many books. She'd call Jimmy a dry old stick, and cowardly.

‘There you go again letting on to be an ould fella,' she'd say. ‘It's a lot that you know about anything, I'm sure!'

That always made him angry. ‘What do you know?' he asked her one time. ‘You're only a kid. I seen people
being
shot.'

‘So did I!' Sarah boasted. ‘Well, nearly! I would have, only Ma stopped me from going to look. That time in Camden Street, when we were going to the shop. That policeman got shot in Aungier Street, and after it we saw Martin Ford hurrying off and later you said, probably …'

But Jimmy clapped his hand over her mouth and looked around wildly. ‘For God's sake,' he hissed
furiously
in her ear, ‘will you watch your foolish mouth! Don't ever, ever say things like that out loud! No names, damn it!'

Even Sarah had to admit that he'd been right to hush
her up that time. But that was months ago, when she really had been a kid. And even now she sort of resented the fact that Ma hadn't let her go look at the shot policeman.

Shooting seemed to bother all of them – except for Sarah, that is. She thought it was exciting. ‘How many men did you kill in the Rising?' she used to ask Mick now and again. It always annoyed him, and she knew that; but it was some way of getting a reaction out of him. Not that he'd ever actually answered her, barring the one time. That was in September, just after the Black and Tans had burned Balbriggan. Mick had seemed terribly angry about that, though he tried to hide it. Sarah had more or less jeered him about his attitude to violence then.

‘What answer is there to that class of thing,' she'd
demanded
one night when Mick had had a few drinks, ‘only to pick up a gun? You did it yourself, Mick, in the Rising – or did you shoot it at all?'

She knew she was being cruel, but she couldn't help herself. Balbriggan wasn't far from Dublin. It was just
beyond
Skerries, where she'd been with Da on summer
outings
. Mick had friends out that way. Twenty-five houses had been burned in Balbriggan, and several people
bayoneted
to death. The people of the town had slept out in hedges and ditches in the open country, fearful of the Tans' return. Worse things had happened down the
country
, of course, but this was right outside the city itself.

‘How many did you kill in the Rising, Mick?' she'd taunted him again. But this time Mick had reacted in a strange way. He'd turned white, his face hardening until it was an ugly mask.

‘I killed one that I know of for sure,' he'd hissed in a strange voice, not like his own at all. ‘It was enough for me.'

Then he'd stormed out, and hadn't come around for the rest of the week. Sarah had been frightened of the change she'd made in him. The hard, white face staring at her hadn't looked like her uncle Mick at all. The hissing voice had sounded like something from a ghost story. Sarah hadn't teased Mick since. But it was soon after that she'd found the prospect of a new game – because in a way all of this was really only a game for Sarah. She knew that herself. It was a game, and at the same time it wasn't a game. She didn't know what the right word for it was.

The idea had struck her when she heard the young men, Mick's friends, talking one night. They'd thought she was paying no attention. Da wasn't there, and they were discussing their business, a thing they very rarely did under the Conways' roof. If Da had heard them he'd have thrown them out straight away.

Someone they knew had been found with a gun and arrested. He'd only been moving the gun from one place to another, but he'd been caught by a random search.
Martin Ford and Simon Hughes were discussing the best way to move guns. Women were less likely to be searched by soldiers, they reckoned, and children –
especially
girls – were the best of all. Even the Tans hardly looked twice at a young girl. Sarah, listening, had smiled to herself in a superior way. It was like she'd heard Da say: the military mind had no imagination.

Afterwards she'd offered her help to Martin Ford.

‘If you ever need a gun moved,' she said, ‘then I'm your woman.'

Martin Ford looked horrified. ‘You're what?' he said.

‘I'm your woman. If you want a gun moved.'

‘Your father,' Martin Ford pointed out, ‘would skin me alive.'

‘My father,' Sarah said, ‘needn't know.'

Sarah hadn't actually considered what might happen to her if she was caught carrying a gun. But she didn't like to think about her father finding out. If that happened she'd be in real trouble. She'd rather face a lorryload of Tans than face Da in a temper.

Anyway, Martin Ford had resisted her offer, though she'd repeated it several times. He wouldn't even let her talk about it. Until this morning, when he'd been
desperate
. He'd met Sarah in the street and told her Simon was trapped in the lanes. The three of them had spent the night in Phelans', and had been caught out by a surprise
raid. Byrne and Martin had got out through the lanes, but Simon hadn't made it in time. Now they expected the lanes would have Tans in them, and Simon might have to choose between surrendering and shooting it out. It wasn't much of a choice.

Without a gun, though, there was a chance that Simon might walk away even if he was stopped. He'd done it before. His English accent was a great help. But if the Tans caught him with a weapon he was finished – ‘shot while trying to escape' was what they called it now. With that accent, they'd take Simon for a traitor pure and
simple
. He'd probably be dead before he even got to
Beggars
' Bush barracks, down the road.

It had suited Sarah very well to brave the Tans. It felt good to be finally helping in the struggle, and it would show Martin Ford that she was capable. It had all gone very well. Now, she thought, he'd let her help again. At last her family was playing its part: she'd save the honour of the Conways, even if she had to do it in spite of them. All she had to do now was to make absolutely certain that none of the family found out what she'd done. Saving the honour of the Conways didn't seem to count for much with Da any more. Sarah wondered whether the native government would give out war medals after the English were gone; it would be nice to have a medal of her own.