Ashes In the Wind Read online

  ‘What’s your name, boy?’ said the unseen owner of the hand.

  ‘Frank – it’s Frank,’ said Francis Xavier O’Gowan, rechristening himself in an instant.

  ‘I’ve no Frank on my list. What’s your last name?’

  ‘O’Gowan.’

  ‘No, it isn’t. It’s O’Gowan, Brother Malachy. Hold out your hand.’

  Frank turned around, held out his hand, was grabbed by the wrist and given three heavy welts from Brother Malachy’s leather tawse.

  ‘That will teach you your name. And mine.’

  This was his introduction to the Christian Brothers. His contemporaries soon found out about his name change, teased him for his rudimentary Gaelic, and called him ‘The English’; Frank tolerated this until he became big enough to clout anyone who used the nickname. He developed a talent for the kick, gouge and butt of playground fighting; he began to enjoy the fierce scuffles and seek them out. The frequent and sanctioned violence from the Brothers and among the boys made Frank a convinced atheist.

  The Connaught Rangers made him a soldier, taught him to strip, clean and assemble a rifle, familiarized him with the idiosyncrasies of the Mills bomb and promoted him to sergeant. A gas attack took him out of the trenches just before the Somme; he was convalescing in a Dublin hospital during the Easter Rising, and was still in bed when he heard the news of the execution of fifteen of the Rising’s leaders at the beginning of May. One of the fifteen, Michael O’Hanrahan, was his cousin. On his discharge from hospital he went home to Cork, overstayed his leave, was posted as a deserter and joined the Cork Brigade of the IRA.

  Frank takes a particular pleasure in using his British Army skills against his former teachers.

  ‘Easy with the bombs, boys,’ he says as he hands them out. ‘They’re each to knock over three Black and Tans. And you, Patrick, stop fiddling with that ring or you’ll blow us all to kingdom come.’

  They clean their rifles, British Army Lee-Enfields and long-barrelled single-shot Mausers, share out the ammunition, eat their bread and cheese. It is a long night. They wake, stiff and cold, to a wild spring morning, low grey clouds, violent rain squalls, almost no sun.

  The road convoy never arrives. Instead, a column of the Manchester Regiment comes over the mountain from Kenmare and down on the fort from behind. A sentry spots the column, but the Volunteers have no time to withdraw. The soldiers have brought a Lewis gun and ammunition on the back of a mule. They lay down a heavy covering fire on the fort as Frank moves his men to the northern ramparts.

  The machine-gunner is accurate; Seamus O’Connell, a forty-year-old farmer from Derrynane, tries to return the fire and is caught by a burst that tears his face apart and throws him down, spread-eagled, on the grass. A pool of blood makes a red halo around his head. Patrick and Tomas look down with horror, then Patrick starts to cry.

  ‘Get a hold of yourself, man,’ says Frank. ‘You’ll have a chance at a wake later. If you’re lucky.’

  Terrified by the firing, the soldiers’ mule breaks loose and bolts, braying, towards the fort. It is shot by one of the Volunteers.

  ‘Any road, he’ll not carry the gun back to Kenmare,’ says Frank. ‘But we’re banjaxed, we’re all dead men unless we can stop the machine gun.’

  ‘We could get at them through the souterrain,’ says Tomas and, seeing the blank looks, says, ‘The souterrain, the tunnel. It starts from the north corner, goes up the hill on the slant.’

  ‘Show me the way,’ says Frank, and they crawl through the tunnel, dry in spite of the rain. They emerge in a small copse a hundred yards up the hill, move in a crouching run under the lee of a stone wall towards the machine gun and stop when they are twenty feet away. Frank and Tomas stand up and hurl four bombs. Two fail to explode, but the other two are enough to do the job. Three soldiers are killed outright and the gun destroyed. Frank shoots the fourth as he crawls away.

  This makes the odds better, although the Volunteers are still outnumbered three to one. The British soldiers are experienced, but exhausted after the long climb, and demoralized by the loss of the Lewis gun. The Kerrymen know the fort, the irregular small fields and their stone walls very well. The fighting is intermittent; early on the British soldiers try an assault across the field in front of the fort. Without the machine gun their covering fire is inadequate, and they lose three men before retreating.

  ‘You’d have thought they’d have learned better in France,’ says Frank.

  The Volunteers keep down below the ramparts; a couple of men are posted to watch out for a second attack. During a heavy squall Frank leads out a small group round the right flank of the British.

  ‘You joined up for excitement; now’s your chance,’ says Frank to Patrick O’Mahony.

  Using the banks and walls as cover, they succeed in picking off four soldiers before they withdraw. As they re-enter the fort Patrick O’Mahony is hit by a bullet that shatters his knee; Tomas piggy-backs him, groaning, into the safety of the walls. Frank O’Gowan tosses a dressing to Tomas, who does his best to plug the gaping hole and stem the flow of blood. Patrick, half conscious, is muttering, ‘O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended you. I detest all my sins...’

  Patrick grips Tomas’s hand tightly as they say the Act of Contrition together. Tomas is frightened at what is happening, shocked at seeing dead men for the first time and by the smashed white bones and blood of Patrick’s knee. And at the same time he is excited and determined to survive.

  By three o’clock Frank realizes the fort will be taken once the Manchesters organize their covering fire. Five of his men are dead and their ammunition is down to eight rounds a man. The three wounded men, Patrick by now unconscious, are left in the guardroom; the bodies of the dead Volunteers are laid out on the grass. Frank breaks the survivors up into two groups.

  ‘You’ve done well, boys, as well as could be. Now make your way home.’

  The first group head down towards the road. There a section of the Black and Tans is waiting. Only three Volunteers make it across to the coast, escaping to the Derrynane caves. The first soldier who follows them down the narrow track to the caves is killed; the rest retreat to the cliff-top and wait till morning. At dawn they smoke the Volunteers out, dropping lighted barrels of tar down to the mouth of the cave. Two Volunteers come out with their hands up, waving white handkerchiefs. Both men are shot. The third dives into the rough sea and gets away from the bullets. His body is washed up a week later.

  Back at Staigue Fort they wait until a strong squall driving in from the Atlantic blots out the sun for half an hour. Frank O’Gowan, Tomas Sullivan and the rest of the Volunteers escape up the mountain through the souterrain.

  Father Michael hears gunfire out to the west all through the morning; by the time he arrives below Staigue Fort the fighting is over. Thirty or more British soldiers from the Manchester Regiment and the Black and Tans are standing by three lorries, smoking or sitting on the bank beside the road. One of the Tans points his rifle at Father Michael, laughs when he flinches, then shoulders arms.

  The bodies of five Volunteers are piled in a heap on the road, all men that Father Michael knew well. He touches each cold forehead with a drop of holy oil. Seven more Volunteers are sitting in the back of one of the lorries, wrists and ankles bound, three of them badly wounded. He gives the wounded men the Last Rites, then seeks out the officer who appears in charge.

  ‘Where are you taking them?’ he asks. ‘Three of them need a doctor.’

  ‘They should have thought of that before they came out here,’ is the reply. ‘They’ll see a firing squad before a doctor.’

  The captured Volunteers are taken to Kenmare; tried a fortnight later, they refuse to recognize the court. Two are found not guilty and five are condemned to death.

  After the battle Frank, Tomas and the remaining survivors spend the night in a cattle-shed on the high ground well above Drimnamore.

  ‘Could we stay at Ardsheelan?’ asks Frank.

  �
�It’s the first place they’ll look,’ says Tomas.

  ‘Then we’re in for a few cold, wet nights.’

  They move on at first light; looking down at the village they see two lorry-loads of Black and Tans arriving, hear shots being fired, see two cottages burning.

  ‘Bastards,’ says Frank. ‘Too many to take on. But we’ll settle the score.’

  Posters offering a thousand pounds’ reward for Frank O’Gowan go up all over Kerry. They describe him as: ‘Age thirty-two, dark complexion, dark hair, grey eyes, short cocked nose, weight about twelve stone; looks like a blacksmith coming from work; wears cap pulled well down over face.’

  The posters are torn down almost as soon as they are put up.

  4

  ON SUNDAY, WILLIAM drives Eileen and John to St Peter’s in Drimnamore past the Roman Catholic church on the edge of the village. Father Michael’s congregation are standing outside in little knots, men and women separate, dark suits, dark dresses, dark shawls. No one waves. Josephine meets them in the porch.

  ‘There’s three boys from the parish killed at Staigue,’ she says. ‘Seven more taken and likely to be shot, two from Drimnamore. Seamus O’Connell from Derrynane is dead. Brought his heifers to the bull, paid in eggs. There’s only a daughter left to work the farm now.’

  ‘I heard two Volunteers were killed trying to surrender at the Derrynane caves and another drowned. Father Michael and I made it worse,’ says Eileen.

  They talk to the other members of the small congregation. Arthur Butler from Waterville is there without his wife.

  ‘Winifred was too frightened to come. You can still see blood on the road below Staigue. A sad business altogether.’

  Inside the church there are a dozen memorials in brass and stone, whose phrases, ‘generous and upright’, ‘sincerely lamented’, ‘devoted father and improving landlord’, stamp seals of approval on Henry, followed by John followed by James in a two-hundred-year-long procession. Most of the pews have a brass plate engraved with the names not of the families but the houses – Askive, Glashnacree, Drimina, Derriquin at the back with its own fireplace. Since John’s sixteenth birthday, at Eileen’s insistence, he has read the lesson in his father’s place. Standing at the brass eagle that holds the Bible, John feels the full weight of Derriquin.

  Eileen watches John with a nervous pride during the lesson. Just like his father, she thinks, recognizing with a pang that John is softer, less certain, still unformed. She goes over her conversations with Father Michael and General Strickland again and again during a sermon to which she pays no heed.

  They return to Derriquin after church, their mood quiet. On the road beyond Burke’s Bridge the Humber’s way is barred by a Crossley Tender and five Volunteers. William McKelvey brakes sixty yards from the roadblock and starts to reverse. The Volunteers shout; one of them drops on one knee, levels his rifle at the car and fires. The warning shot passes overhead. William stops the car.

  ‘Better drive on slowly towards them,’ says Eileen. ‘It’s only one of their routine searches for guns, and ours are long gone.’

  William does as he is told, stopping the car ten feet away from the Crossley Tender. John recognizes Tomas Sullivan among the Volunteers; their captain, a heavy-set man in his mid-thirties, speaks with a strong Cork accent. Josephine and John are shoved roughly out of the car.

  ‘You must be the Doyle bastard,’ says the captain to Josephine. ‘You and the young squireen can walk home for a change. We need the Orangeman to drive the car.’

  John hears his mother, who looks calm, say in Gaelic to Tomas Sullivan, ‘Shame on you, Tomas, taking orders from a foul-mouthed Cork corner-boy.’

  ‘Speak English,’ says the captain. ‘Speak English, you bitch.’

  One Volunteer gets in the back with Eileen and Tomas Sullivan sits in the front beside William. Each has a drawn revolver. As the car accelerates away, John’s mother turns and looks back at him until the car passes out of sight.

  John and Josephine walk back to Derriquin, trying to come to terms with what has happened. ‘They’ll not keep them long, surely,’ says Josephine. Once home, John tries to call Kenmare, but the telephone wires have been cut.

  The little convoy drives along the road for several miles, then heads up a rough boreen as far as the car can manage. The Volunteers abandon the car and walk their hostages at gunpoint across rough, boggy country, slanting up the mountain to a small farmhouse, which Eileen doesn’t recognize. They are many miles from Derriquin. Locked in a room with two small beds and a bentwood chair, they are escorted out to the privy each morning and evening by their guards. A frightened woman in a long black dress and grey shawl brings food; she does not speak and avoids catching their eye.

  After two days they move, walking further up and across the mountain. In the middle of their journey they hear the drone of a biplane flying from Kenmare. Eileen and William are manhandled into a ditch by their escorts while the plane quarters the mountain for half an hour, then turns and vanishes.

  Several hours later they arrive at a tumbledown cabin and are pushed into a bare, windowless room. The walls are rough stone covered with flaking whitewash; where the mortar has gone turf has been pushed into the gaps. The sharp smell of the farmyard stains the air. A disused fireplace at the end of the room still holds a small mound of ash. Above the fireplace is a calendar, the months long ago torn away, with a picture of Jesus, a crimson sacred heart on his left breast radiating golden beams. There is a single oil lamp, a blanket each and straw on a stone bench that runs the length of one wall.

  Eileen and William are held in an uncomfortable intimacy, squatting over a bucket while the other turns politely away, eating a meagre ration of bread, potatoes and soup from the same plate, washing in cold water and sharing a grimy towel. Next door their guards play cards, talking in low tones and now and again opening the top half of the connecting door to check on the hostages.

  ‘This place isn’t fit to wash a rat in,’ says Eileen.

  ‘Now you can see how your tenants live,’ says Frank O’Gowan.

  ‘There isn’t a cottage on the Derriquin estate that isn’t built of stone with a slate roof and a decent privy,’ replies Eileen.

  Eileen and William talk in hurried whispers; longer conversations are cut short by the guards. There are always two Volunteers on duty. When one of the younger men tries to look at Eileen on the bucket, Frank O’Gowan clouts him ferociously across the head.

  ‘Get away out of that, you dirty little devil,’ he shouts.

  John spends several futile and dangerous days searching for Eileen with only his dog for company. He finds the burned-out carcase of the Humber where the Volunteers have left it at the top of the boreen, and goes on up the mountain to Ardsheelan where Tomas Sullivan lives with his mother. The cottage and farmyard feel deserted; John knocks on the door, knocks again, and is turning away when the door opens. Annie Sullivan stands there, recognizes John, crosses herself.

  ‘Master John...’ she says, her voice trailing away.

  ‘Is Tomas here?’ says John. ‘Do you know where he is? Was he at Staigue?’

  ‘I don’t know, indeed I don’t. He’s been away these fifteen days since market day, and I’m sick with worry. And I know your mother is missing, God help her. But Tomas wouldn’t harm a hair on her head.’

  Annie Sullivan crosses herself again and stands there, her shaking hands hanging down by her apron. John, who has been in the cottage many times, is not invited in. Behind her on the far wall he can see the red glow of the little lamp in front of the blue, white and gold statue of the Virgin Mary. He looks at Annie for a long moment, whistles to his dog, then turns away down the mountain to Derriquin.

  ‘God keep you and save you,’ she says as John leaves.

  Several days later Eileen and William are told of the Kenmare trial. If the captured Volunteers are shot they will both be executed. Frank O’Gowan orders Eileen to write to the British commander.

  ‘I doubt it
will have much effect,’ says Eileen. ‘General Strickland will never believe the IRA would shoot a widow woman and an innocent man. I presume you’ll have to shoot Father Michael for good measure?’

  ‘This isn’t a religious war we’re fighting. Any road, madam, I’m already excommunicated by the bishop of Cork. I’d shoot Father Michael just as soon as I’d shoot you.’

  Eileen writes the letter.

  Dear General Strickland,

  I have been told that five of the prisoners taken at Staigue Fort are to be executed on Monday and I write to ask you to reprieve them. As you will know, I and William McKelvey, my chauffeur, are prisoners. If these men are executed, our lives will be forfeited, as my kidnappers believe that I was the direct cause of their comrades’ capture. I ask you to spare these men, for their sake and for ours.

  Yours very truly,

  Eileen Burke

  A covering letter is attached:

  To General Strickland,

  Third Battalion Headquarters,

  Victoria Barracks,

  Kenmare

  We are holding Mrs Eileen Burke and her chauffeur William McKelvey as hostages. They have been convicted of spying and are under sentence of death. If the five Volunteers taken at Staigue Fort are executed, the two hostages will be shot.

  Irish Republican Army

  On the following night William waits until the guards next door are asleep, and forces a hole through the rotten thatch in the corner of the room. Frank O’Gowan comes in to check at dawn, sees the hole, and shouts, ‘Where the devil’s he got to? Get after him, get down to the Kenmare road.’

  ‘You should let him go,’ says Eileen. ‘He wasn’t involved at all.’

  ‘That’s as may be, but he knows our faces and our names. The world won’t hurt for one less Orangeman.’