Ashes In the Wind Read online

  After his first month at the farm he starts to go into the village in the evening. The Lissagroom bar doubles as the Post Office and general store, and he is often the only man drinking in the back room. There is a wooden bench along one wall, a table with four bentwood chairs, sawdust on the floor and Guinness and Beamish posters on the walls. A small turf fire throws out little heat; this is a place not for conversation but for drinking. Soon Tomas is drinking six or seven pints of stout every evening, and after a month of scrutiny by the landlord he is offered a glass from the bottle of poteen that is kept hidden underneath the counter. This does the work of several pints. By eleven each night Tomas is only just able to make the journey back up the road to the farm, where he slumps onto his bed fully clothed. The drink banishes the dreams, at least during the night-time.

  The news of the Truce in the middle of 1921 is followed by Dáil Éireann’s approval of the Treaty. Early in the following year Tomas gets a message telling him he can become Tomas Sullivan again, and that he is to go to the Queen Victoria in Cork. Michael Kelly drives him into the city, Cora pulling the trap, the journey this time uninterrupted by broken bridges and trenched roads. Outside the Queen Victoria Michael Kelly shakes his hand and says, ‘You’re a real worker. Cora will miss you.’

  ‘Goodbye,’ says Tomas, ‘I’m sorry we didn’t finish the last drain,’ and goes into the pub. He is given a room for the night and told to report to the Imperial Hotel the next day.

  The Imperial Hotel is the temporary headquarters of the Free State Army’s Southern Command. There are two sentries outside the grand entrance; Tomas is shown upstairs by a young woman wearing the badge of Cumann na mBan.

  ‘We don’t take over Victoria barracks for a few months,’ she says. ‘You’ll find the commander-in-chief and his people in here.’

  In the room Michael Collins is sitting at a table drinking a cup of tea, almost unrecognizable in the uniform of the Irish Army. Tomas can’t take his eyes off the gleaming brown boots, the Sam Browne belt, the peaked cap, the holstered revolver. Collins sees the look and laughs.

  ‘You’d better get used to it. We need to show the world we can be as smart as the British, that we’re not just a bunch of hobbledehoys. Now the Tan War is won, we’re a real army and you need to join it.’

  He pauses, takes a mouthful of tea and continues, ‘It’s not clear the fighting is over. There are enough Volunteers who hate the Treaty, hate the oath, to cause trouble.’

  Tomas nods – his relief at the Truce and the Treaty has left no room for worrying about the fine print of documents he has never seen.

  ‘Good man. You’ll be part of the Cork No. 1 Brigade, a lieutenant in the second battalion. We’ll teach you what that means; go to the barracks at Ballincollig in the morning. Donal here, you’ll remember him from Dublin, is the adjutant. He’ll sort you out and find you a uniform. Don’t worry, this is strange country for all of us.’

  Strange country indeed. The same evening Tomas goes round to the O’Hanrahan house with a bunch of flowers and knocks on the door. Kitty opens it. ‘Tomas,’ she says, putting her hand over her mouth; she steps back as Tomas tries to embrace her and starts to cry.

  ‘We thought you were dead. Frank told us you were taken and going to be hanged.’

  ‘Two of us escaped from Kilmainham. I’ve been out at Lissagroom ever since. Now I’m covered by the amnesty. It wouldn’t have been safe to come here before.’

  Tomas follows Kitty into the front room where they sit facing each other on two stiff-backed, velvet-upholstered chairs. The fire is unlit. Kitty reaches for a box of matches, changes her mind. In the corner of the room Tomas notices a shrine to Kitty’s father. Michael O’Hanrahan is looking out of a silver frame, the picture an enlarged version of the postcard Kitty had shown him on the hill above Cork City. In front there is a statue of the Virgin Mary, a votive lamp, two books and an unfamiliar half-furled flag.

  ‘Those are his two stories, and that’s the Plough and the Stars that flew over Jacob’s Factory during the Rising. He was there with MacDonagh and MacBride.’

  Tomas looks at her directly; she is prettier than he had remembered, still serious, but a young woman now, not a girl.

  ‘It was terrible for your mother and you to lose him,’ he says. ‘I’ve thought about you often. Even at the worst times. And now the Tan War is over, it’s won.’

  ‘Is it, so? I’m not sure. We’ve not got our Republic.’

  ‘We’ve got our freedom, and that’s enough to be getting on with. The rest will come soon enough.’

  There is a long, awkward silence. Kitty has stopped crying, but is twisting and untwisting her fingers. She finds it hard to look at Tomas, then suddenly says, ‘There’s something I must tell you. I’ve been seeing Frank O’Gowan. He’s asked me to marry him and I’ve said yes.’

  ‘Marry Frank O’Gowan? Jesus, Kitty, he’s fifteen years older than you. And he’s...’ Tomas stops, then continues, ‘He’s not the man for you.’

  ‘You don’t have to swear. I’ve not seen you nor heard a word from you for three years. It’s not for you to tell me who to marry.’ Kitty stands up and holds out her hand. ‘We can still be friends.’

  ‘That’s not enough for me,’ says Tomas. ‘When we kissed it felt like there was something good between us, something that I’ve been holding onto. I see I was mistaken.’ He puts the bunch of flowers on the table and stands up, keeping his hands by his side. ‘Good luck with Frank O’Gowan.’

  Kitty takes a step towards Tomas, stops, then sits back down in her chair and starts to cry quietly. Tomas walks out of the house and down the Quays along the north channel of the River Lee. The river is high, brown and roiling, trying to escape its confining banks. Back at the Queen Victoria he starts drinking, sitting alone in the corner of the saloon bar. Denis comes in; Tomas hasn’t seen him since the shooting of Colonel Smyth in the Constitution Club.

  ‘How the devil are you?’ says Denis, pumping Tomas’s reluctant hand. ‘I hear you did the business in Dublin all right. I’ve joined the Free State Army; they’ll be wanting you, surely.’

  Tomas grunts a reply, rebuffs the invitation to join Denis and his friends at the bar and continues to drink alone. His parting from Kitty two years before had been hard enough, and he’d been unsure of his reception, but the news that she is engaged to Frank O’Gowan is unbearable. Had she really thought he was dead? Hadn’t the news of the escape from Kilmainham been in the Cork newspapers? Frank must have known he was still alive. The questions come and go in his head, the answers blurred by the drink, until at midnight he has to be helped upstairs and put to bed by the landlord.

  The next morning he reports to the barracks at Ballincollig with a blinding headache, swears allegiance to the Irish Free State and is given a typewritten commission as a lieutenant. Donal congratulates him when the short, perfunctory ceremony is over, and takes him to the quartermaster’s stores, where a sergeant measures him for a uniform, makes him sign for a revolver, ammunition, boots, leggings, a Sam Browne, a greatcoat, two shirts and two ties, and tells him to come back the next day. Outside on the square two platoons are drilling; the sergeant major shouting at the men is plainly a former British Army soldier.

  ‘We’ll teach you the drill in the officers’ squad once you’re properly dressed. Done any drilling?’ says Donal.

  ‘I’ve fired a revolver, fired a Thompson gun and thrown a few grenades. Never saluted in my life.’

  ‘That’s true of most of us. It’s not so hard, although some of the men resent it. They think it’s aping the British. But the Big Fellow says we need to change from being fighters into soldiers. Discipline wasn’t strong among the Volunteers at the best of times, and drill and turnout are important. You’ve been allocated a room in the Officers’ Mess.’

  Tomas, who has difficulty thinking of himself as an officer, gets his uniform the following day and spends the next fortnight in a squad of a dozen lieutenants, drilling in the morning and learning
their duties in the afternoon. The instructors are ex-British Army and not all of them have impeccable War of Independence credentials.

  ‘There were thirty-six of us at the Kilmichael ambush, and I’ve met forty-eight of them in the past three months,’ says Donal.

  Tomas tolerates the drilling every morning, although some of his companions have two left feet. Nevertheless there are moments when The Squad halts or presents arms as one, and Tomas admits to himself, although not to the others, that these are curiously satisfying. He stops the heavy drinking when Donal takes him to one side in the Officers’ Mess.

  ‘Tomas, I don’t know the cause of your drinking and I don’t care. I do know you’ll be out on your ear if it goes on any longer.’

  He makes a half-hearted attempt to see Kitty, watching Station Road from a safe distance early one Sunday morning in the hope of intercepting her on the way to Mass. Instead he sees Frank O’Gowan leaving the house, and the violent jealousy that overwhelms him is followed by a return of the despair that had turned him to drink. He goes back to Ballincollig, realizing that he cannot see Kitty or Frank again. He asks Donal about Frank.

  ‘Frank O’Gowan’s got a company in the second battalion. They’re at Macroom,’ says Donal. ‘I’m not sure for how long – he’s an out-and-out Republican, doesn’t try to hide it. Weren’t you with him at Staigue?’

  ‘I was.’ Tomas does not elaborate further, thinks that the twenty miles between Ballincollig and Macroom is distance enough.

  In the second week they take it in turns to drill The Squad, and all but two are deemed competent to take on their new roles as platoon commanders. Tomas’s platoon, three sections of ten men each headed by a corporal, is slightly below full strength. His sergeant, James O’Connor, is a Connaught Rangers veteran who had fought in the Boer War and survived the German spring offensive in 1918. Tomas and he have a careful respect for each other. Tomas knows O’Connor has been a proper soldier, O’Connor knows Tomas has been one of The Squad.

  Most of Tomas’s platoon have seen, or claimed to have seen, some action in the many skirmishes and ambushes of the War of Independence. Once the novelty of their new uniforms, regular meals and a sound roof overhead wears off they are easily bored. Tomas’s and Sergeant O’Connor’s solution is ceaseless activity. Drilling, a ten-mile route march once a week, weapons training, firing practice, Gaelic football and hurling are the best possible substitute for war. There is no time for disaffection. The Ballincollig bar is off limits, and the prohibition is strictly observed after two members of No. 3 Platoon are caught there and sent home.

  Tomas finds the transition to lieutenant difficult, sustainable only by acting the role, a role largely improvised with few stage directions and a brief script. It is reassuring that his brother officers clearly feel the same. Only Donal seems entirely comfortable.

  ‘He’s one of nature’s adjutants,’ Tomas says to O’Connor. ‘He does it all without breaking sweat.’

  In the Officers’ Mess the play-acting is at its most pronounced. They are waited on by women from the village, they eat off plates bearing the crossed lances of a departed British cavalry regiment with the King’s broad arrow underneath, and they stand to drink the health of the Irish Free State at a formal dinner once a week. Unease is added to the unreality Tomas has felt ever since leaving Drimnamore for Staigue Fort.

  ‘You’re doing great,’ says Donal. ‘O’Connor’s a good man, and he doesn’t want your job. The men like you well enough, they do what you tell them, and they all know what you’ve done during the war.’

  ‘How do they know that?’

  ‘I told them.’

  After a month at Ballincollig, Tomas’s platoon wins the battalion hurling competition. Tomas feels this is a good moment to ask for a week’s leave and uses the time to go back to County Kerry.

  Returning to Drimnamore is an ordeal, made no easier by his mother’s joy at seeing him. Annie Sullivan cries, hugs him, cries again.

  ‘It’s thanks to the Blessed Virgin Mary you’re back,’ she says, crossing herself. ‘We thought you dead until Father Michael read that you had escaped. The Tans came looking for you here several times, but I told them I knew nothing. As indeed I did.’

  ‘I couldn’t send a message. I’m sorry for the worry I caused you,’ and Tomas wraps his arms around Annie, who is sobbing and smiling.

  ‘You’ll stay here now surely,’ she says anxiously.

  ‘Ah no, I’m in the army now, and there’s still work to be done. But I’ll be back to help with the harvest later on, and you’d better set me to work.’

  Tomas spends three days doing the jobs that were too heavy for Annie, planting out the seed potatoes, repairing the fences and re-laying half a dozen slates that had been dislodged by the winter gales. He strips and repairs the water pump in the yard, oils and sharpens the scythes and the axe, and puts a new shaft on the slane. He goes out to the old turf line above the house, digs out the drain and takes the thick four-inch layer of fibrous grass off the top to expose the rich chocolate brown. He has always enjoyed the work; with a sharpened slane it is surprisingly easy once the top is clear and in two afternoons he cuts and stacks enough to see Annie through the rest of the year.

  In the evenings they sit and talk over the fire in the kitchen. Tomas gives his mother an exact account of the battle at Staigue Fort, but is much vaguer about his life on the run in Cork and in Dublin.

  Late one evening she says, ‘John Burke came looking for his mother and asked me if I knew where she might be, and where you were. I said I didn’t know, that you wouldn’t harm a hair on her head.’

  On Saturday Tomas walks out to Staigue Fort, the sun gleaming on the Kenmare River, the hedges red with fuchsia in full bloom. He stands on top of the fort wall, looking up at the pass where the Manchester Regiment had first appeared, then goes to the souterrain and crawls along it until it surfaces in the little wood. He looks at the site of the Lewis gun where he and Frank had killed three men. There are still empty cartridge cases lying half hidden in the grass. He picks one up and puts it in his pocket, plucks a fuchsia flower from the hedge and slips it between the pages of his missal, the bright red of the petals the colour of the blood around Seamus O’Connell’s head. He walks back down to the fort, which looks impregnable.

  ‘They’d never have driven us out if we’d had a machine gun and a few more men,’ he says out loud.

  He ducks inside the low entrance and stops where Seamus O’Connell and Patrick O’Mahony had both lain on the grass, one dead, the other with a shattered knee. He tries to remember the Prayer for the Dead.

  ‘Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them.’ He has forgotten the final line, and ends, ‘Rest in peace, Seamus, Patrick, Michael...’

  He walks back into Drimnamore, where a much-reduced Fair Day is in progress on the green. Father Michael is there.

  ‘Welcome back,’ he says. ‘I’ll see you in church tomorrow. There’ll be plenty there glad to see you back.’

  ‘Thank you, Father,’ says Tomas, and walks on to the O’Mahony cottage, which looks out on the green. Mrs O’Mahony’s reaction to seeing Tomas is like his mother’s. He is taken into the front room; in the corner there is a shrine to Patrick almost identical to the one he had seen in the O’Hanrahan house. Only the flag is different; it is the new green, white and orange of the Free State.

  Tomas picks up the Mass card.

  IN THE MOST HOLY NAME OF JESUS

  Patrick O’Mahony

  Who gave his life for Ireland at Staigue Fort

  On 14 April 1920

  RIP

  O Immense Passion! O Profound Wounds! O Profusion of Blood! O Sweetness Above All Sweetness! O Most Bitter Death! Grant Him Eternal Rest.

  Amen – 400 days Indulgence.

  Tomas thinks the words strange, finds it hard to believe they offer any comfort. He puts the card back in its place.

  ‘God help us, we miss him,’ says Mrs O’Mah
ony. John O’Mahony, who has come in off the green, nods but cannot trust himself to speak.

  ‘He was a good boy, a good boy,’ says Mrs O’Mahony.

  ‘He was a brave soldier. And he fought in a war that we’ve won. I wish he’d been here to see the end of it.’

  Tomas puts on his uniform to go to church the next morning; this is the first time Drimnamore has seen the olive-green of the Free State Army. Tomas doesn’t go to confession and doesn’t take Communion. This is noticed by Father Michael, who takes Tomas to one side after the service.

  ‘You can’t stay away from God for ever,’ he says. ‘You carry a heavy burden. You should have the faith to share it.’

  Tomas nods, shakes Father Michael’s hand, moves away and is quickly surrounded by a small circle of admirers. Some are the parents of the men who fell at Staigue Fort or who were executed later. He enjoys this sudden celebrity, and the pleasure it gives his mother, but he no longer feels at home in Drimnamore. Too much has happened to him in and after Staigue Fort, in Cork and in Dublin – these are things he cannot share and cannot leave behind. He makes arrangements with one of the Doyles to help his mother with the heavy work on the farm, says goodbye to a tearful Annie, promises to return soon, and makes the long journey back to the barracks at Ballincollig.

  He sees Donal the next morning.

  ‘I’ve the great job for you,’ he says to Tomas. ‘You’re to march your platoon to Kinsale and take over Charles Fort from the British Army. They’re ready to leave as soon as you get there.’

  ‘It’s the best part of twenty miles,’ says Tomas.

  ‘It’ll be good for your men. There’s too much talk in the barracks about the IRA. We need to remind ourselves we’re the Free State Army now. There’s no need and no room for anything else.’

  During his week’s leave in Drimnamore, Tomas has lost two men from his platoon. One has gone back to his farm in Kilkenny, the other has joined the Republican group in Macroom. To Tomas’s surprise his men are happy to leave the barracks, even for a twenty-mile march. He and Sergeant O’Connor drill them hard for an hour the night before.