The Heather Blazing (21 page)

“And now,” he said, “it is an honour for me, as chairman of this Enniscorthy
cumann
of Fianna Fail, to introduce a young man who hails from one of the Republican families of this town, whose grandfather was at the forefront of the struggle for national freedom and sovereignty and whose father fought in the War of Independence alongside many of the great figures of modern Irish history. He's going to address you now, so could I have silence, please, and your full attention, and there's room at the front here for anyone who can't see, and could I have a welcome please for young Eamon Redmond.”

He walked up the steps to the platform and looked around at the faces in the dark square. Most people were still talking among themselves. He stood at the microphone and took his time. He held the script in his hands.

“In Fianna Fail,” be began, “we're looking for your Number One vote. We're not, like other parties, looking for your transfers: left-over votes for left-over parties. This is not the party of transfers. We'll leave it to other people to transfer.”

“Ah, fuck off, Redmond, you little squirt,” a voice shouted from near the Father Murphy monument.

The crowd laughed.

“This is not the party that took a shilling off the old-age
pension. We'll leave that to others, the others we are now going to drive from power, because Fianna Fail is the part of this country, rich and poor, young and old.”

A cheer came up, but there was still murmuring and laughter from around the monument.

“We know, our history tells us, about the persecution of religion in this country. We know of the time when the priests had to flee from house to house. We respect our priests for that, and we don't fly in their faces now, like some others do. We don't start telling the bishops what to do, because we know our history. We know how much this country suffered under foreign rule, and there are others, and we'll put names on them, there are others like Noel Browne and Sean MacBride, who want to bring us back under foreign domination. They want to bring Communism into this country and hunt the priests from house to house, like the English before them.”

A loud cheer came up from the edges of the square and from the party loyals in front of the platform.

“Ireland, under Fianna Fail,” he went on, “will respect the clergy of this country. But we will do more than that.” He stopped and looked around the square. “We were the first to build hospitals in this country, and we were criticized for doing that. But we will build more hospitals and we will stop the curse of emigration which has brought this country to ruin under the coalition government—”

“Fuck off, Redmond, you're only a squirt,” a voice shouted from the monument.

“It's people like you,” Eamon pointed at the area around the monument, “with your foul word brought here by the English, who don't appreciate that we kept this country out of the war. And you wouldn't understand that this country is in danger from outside influences, but most people in this square and in this town and in this country know that, the decent people of Ireland can make up their own minds
whether they want you and your likes running this country or whether Ireland will be led by a figure as internationally renowned as Eamon de Valera.”

He stood back now and looked at the crowd. Most people were staring up at the platform, some were applauding and a few were cheering. Lemass stood up from his seat and shook his hand.

“You're a great speaker,” he said.

He took a seat on the platform while the candidate and Lemass spoke, but he was too excited to listen to them. He noticed the tension building up as each slogan was shouted out, he heard the cheers and whistling and applause. A heckler shouted over and over at Lemass about TB. “What are you going to do about TB? What did you ever do to rid the country of TB?” No one listened to the heckler; people were waiting for de Valera to appear. It was now a quarter past eight, and the Minister's voice was growing louder and more passionate. He had been alerted to the news that de Valera was in Murphy Flood's hotel.

“He's coming now,” a party worker at the front shouted.

Lemass began to speak about the party leader and his stature in the world. Eamon watched the way being cleared at the side of the platform and de Valera being led along and helped up the steps. Suddenly, Lemass brought his speech to an abrupt end and the band began to play “A Nation Once Again.”

“People of Enniscorthy,” Lemass shouted into the microphone, “I present Eamon de Valera.” Lemass shook de Valera's hand and gently brought him towards the microphone. Eamon wondered how much he could see; one of the men in the hotel had said that he would soon have to undergo another eye operation.

De Valera stood on the platform without speaking. There was still cheering coming from the crowd and he raised his hand for silence. As he did so, a man shouted, “Up Dev!” and the crowd burst into further cheering. He stopped and
waited until there was complete silence in the square. He held the silence, still saying nothing, and then he started.

“I stand in one of the sacred towns of this island. I am proud to be in one of those places which has ever kept the flame of nationhood alight, even in darkest times. Throughout our history, we have asserted our right as a people to be free, and nowhere more so than on Vinegar Hill overlooking this town in Seventeen and ninety eight. In this great square, steeped in history and lore, stands the great monument by Oliver Shepherd to the bravery of the Croppy Boy and the great leadership of Father Murphy in those far-off years. But they are not forgotten, and we are still inspired by those great deeds and those great heroes. We, too, have known difficult times, and in recent days this country has been ruled by unnecessary controversy while our best young people emigrate, take the boat to England and America. We are the national party and we will tackle the real problems facing this country; we will not make controversy where there is no need. Our party is stable and we will not break into factions and go against the will of the people and the will of God . . . so vote Fianna Fail next week for stable government and the good of Ireland.”

When he had finished the band started again, this time with “The Boys of Wexford.” Eamon stood back as de Valera was helped from the platform. The crowd had already begun to disperse. One of the men with Lemass asked him if he wanted to be introduced to de Valera. He nodded and was brought down to where de Valera was surrounded by well wishers and supporters. When he was introduced, de Valera spoke to him in Irish about the importance of the language in the life of the country. Soon, de Valera was brought back to Murphy Flood's where there was a car waiting for him to be taken to Wexford. Eamon noticed Lemass's friend, the man who had introduced him to de Valera, talking to his father. Before he left for Wexford in the car with Lemass he came over to Eamon and shook his hand again.

“I was talking to your father. He says you're going to University College Dublin if you get the results. He says that you're a great scholar. I was saying to him that you should do the bar. There's a great need now for Fianna Fail barristers. We could do with fellows of your calibre. But I said I'd call up to your father on the way back so I have your address.” He shook Eamon's hand again and walked briskly towards the waiting car.

Eamon went with his father to his grandmother's house. They sat in the front room with his Uncle Tom. Both men had bottles of stout to celebrate de Valera's visit, Eamon had a glass of lemonade. His Aunt Margaret came and put a plate of fancy biscuits on the table.

“Did you hear the man introducing me?” Eamon asked them. “He said that you fought in the War of Independence.” He looked at his father.

“I didn't do much,” his father said.

“Your Uncle Patrick and your grandfather were more involved,” his Uncle Tom said.

“What did you do?” Eamon asked his father.

“I caught the train to Dublin a few times,” his father said and shrugged as though he wanted to say no more.

“You couldn't just burn a house, you see,” Uncle Tom said. “You'd have to get permission from Cathal Brugha in Dublin. You'd have to present him with all the facts; any of the houses that entertained the Black and Tans had the officers for dinners and parties, they'd be on the list. Your father'd go up, he was young enough and he pretended to spend the day in the National Library, but he'd slip out to see Brugha, or one of Brugha's men, and then permission would come back and then we'd do the job.”

“Burn the house?” Eamon asked.

“We gutted a good few of them all right,” his uncle sipped his drink. “Wilton, old Captain Skrine, the Proctors on the Bunclody Road, Castleboro. I have a book upstairs I took
from Castleboro the night we went out there. They had a great library. It's a pity I didn't have more time. I still have it upstairs. It has a note inside saying ‘
Ex Libris Lord Crew.
' What's it called?
Cranford
by Mrs. Gaskell. I must look for it. I'm sure it's up there somewhere.”

“Were they all Protestants?” Eamon asked.

“They were,” his uncle said. “And they were all up to their neck in the British army who were on the rampage here, and the British Legion and the King and the Queen. It's all gone now. At least we got rid of that, whatever else we did.”

*  *  *

The following Sunday afternoon Lemass's friend drove up to the house in a Morris Oxford. He left another man waiting in the passenger seat. Eamon answered the door and ushered him into the front room before going into the back room to whisper to his father and tell him who had come. The man said that he didn't want tea or a drink. He had to make calls before he went back to Dublin, do official party business for the election.

He explained that Eamon could go to UCD and do an Arts degree as his father had done, but in his second year he could study to be a barrister as well.

“There'd be help available if you needed it,” he said.

“We'll be able to take care of that,” his father said.

“There would be a lot of work for him once he was qualified. But let me know anyway. Mr. de Valera, incidentally, heard the speech. He thought it was very good.”

When the man had gone Eamon tried to imagine de Valera listening to his speech, but he could not. He wondered if it were true. De Valera had seemed so remote.

“What age is de Valera?” he asked his father later that evening.

His father thought for a while. “He'll be seventy next year,” he said.

*  *  *

Eamon returned to school on Monday, but he still went down to party headquarters every evening. He tried to talk to Carmel O'Brien as much as he could.

“That was a great speech,” she said. “It's a pity you didn't talk like that when we went canvassing.”

“You knew all of the people,” he said.

“But I can't talk in public as well as you.”

On the night before the vote they went canvassing again. This time he spoke on the doorsteps as well. It was easier and he felt happy with her. He liked the way she seemed to sympathize with people and talk to them naturally. At the end of the evening they walked back to the headquarters.

“Do you know something?” she said to him. “You're the most careful person I've ever come across. I've met you every day for three weeks and I know nothing about you. You could only talk about the election. Do you never think about anything else?”

He looked at her, much taken aback.

“I thought that we got on very well?” he said.

“I don't know what you're thinking. You're miles away,” she replied.

He tried to laugh but he felt uneasy at being spoken to like that. No one had ever used that tone with him before. When he met her at the count, where she was helping her father with the tally, he kept away from her at first, but it was hard not to notice her.

“We've increased our vote in Ballyhogue, isn't that a good one?” She squeezed his waist and laughed. “It was your speech that did it. But we're down in Monageer.”

He sat in the back seat of the car with her on the way home. He was nervous and excited beside her. Eventually, he took her hand and held it. Her skin was soft: he thought about her body, her breasts, her legs and her long neck. He edged her close to him and kissed her on the side of the face and then she turned towards him and let him kiss her on the mouth.

Eamon Redmond stood at the window looking down at the river which was deep brown after days of rain. He watched the colour, the mixture of muds and water, and the small currents and pockets of movement within the flow. It was the last day of term; later, he was due to sit in the Special Criminal Court. He brought a chair over to the window so that he could read the morning newspaper by clear daylight. He listened through the open window to the sound of gulls over the hum of traffic, and looked out again at the muddy water.

In the evening he planned to drive alone to Cush, unless, for some reason, the court needed to sit another day. Maybe he was wrong to go down alone so soon; it would be hard. He would try to cook for himself, keep the place tidy. He closed his eyes.

He was tired because he had drunk some wine and a few brandies in the Stephen's Green Club the previous evening, at the invitation of an historian whom he had known for some years, who was doing research now on the response of the Irish government to the violence in Northern Ireland. The historian was looking for leads, and he wanted certain things confirmed: that meetings had taken place, that individuals had been involved, that differences of opinion had occurred.

Eamon had told the historian very little. He had written a report for the government, which he presented early in 1972, on the ways in which the government should respond to a concerted campaign by the IRA. He had written a number
of interim reports over the previous two years, one of which recommended non-jury courts for IRA cases.