Ashes In the Wind Read online

  ‘You’ll be on show, boys,’ says O’Connor. ‘It’s a bit of a detour, but we’re going through Cork City and on down through Fivemilebridge. So make sure your boots and brasses are shining bright.’

  They set off after an early breakfast the next day. North of the city they give a smart eyes right to the flag of the Free State flying above the Victoria barracks; through Cork City the cheers and clapping put a spring in their step. There are no British soldiers, no Tans, no Auxiliaries, a few policemen in the new uniforms of the Garda.

  They reach Charles Fort in the middle of the afternoon. Tomas finds the British captain, salutes him and gets a reluctant salute in return.

  ‘There’s accommodation for you and your men in C Block,’ he tells Tomas, pointing across the central square. ‘Food in the cookhouse next door. Best if you eat tonight and tomorrow after my men have finished. We’ll be gone by noon.’

  Tomas is taken aback by the size and strength of Charles Fort. It sits on the top of the bluff a mile outside Kinsale, an enormous star-shaped stronghold with two bastions facing the sea, three more on the landward side, containing buildings enough for a small village within its walls, a powerful reminder of the strength and bloody-minded will behind the British domination of Ireland over seven hundred years.

  He walks around the grassy ramparts in the evening with Sergeant O’Connor.

  ‘You could house a brigade in this place,’ says O’Connor.

  ‘And most of Drimnamore. The twenty of us will rattle around like three peas in a tin bucket. It makes you realize just what we’ve pulled off. The Brits built this place two hundred and fifty years ago, and now they’re off without a shot being fired.’

  ‘We never sent for them in the first place. They’ll be little enough missed.’

  The next morning Tomas walks around the main rooms with the British captain, who is carrying a lengthy checklist. After three hours of ‘Twenty beds, men’s, single. Forks, two hundred. Blankets, grey, fifty. Mugs, enamel, seventy-five,’ Tomas stops the captain. ‘Look, I’ll sign and trust you for the rest. The Free State will survive if we’re short a few forks. There’s more than we could ever use, and any road we haven’t paid for the stuff.’

  The captain looks shocked for a moment, then laughs. ‘It’s up to you. Sign at the bottom of each page, you keep a copy, and we’ll be off. And the best of luck.’

  They shake hands. Tomas brings his platoon out onto the parade ground, the Irish flag is hoisted, and the British soldiers climb into their truck and drive away. There are no cheers, no jeers, the British soldiers silenced by their defeat, the Irishmen by their immense victory. Tomas stoops down and picks a clover leaf from the parade ground grass, puts it in the lining of his cap for luck, then walks back with Sergeant O’Connor to C Block.

  12

  BACK AT BURKE’S Fort a few weeks after his visit to Kilmainham, the hunting season over, John is sitting at breakfast in the morning room when Charles says in a worried tone, ‘Sean was badly kicked by The Elector yesterday – got between him and the back wall of the stable, the damn fool. Leg’s broken in three places, he won’t be out of Navan Hospital for a month, and then he’ll be in plaster for heaven knows how long. Doubt he’ll want to be our stallion man any more.’

  ‘You’re not young enough to hold him,’ says Cis. ‘John’s good with the horses, and he’s strong. It’ll give him something useful to do.’

  ‘I’ve never dealt with stallions, only geldings and mares,’ says John. ‘But I’ve helped with the foaling at home.’

  ‘There’s no one else. I’d be grateful if you’d take it on,’ says Charles. ‘You’ll learn soon enough.’

  Sean never comes back to the stallion yard, and John does learn soon enough. His new life revolves around The Elector, the mares and their foals, and the visiting mares who come to be covered.

  The stallion looks like his ancestor The Archduke, lacking only the star on his forehead to be a living replica of the painting in the drawing room. He is a five-year-old, with the powerful muscled neck of a mature entire horse, and although not vicious – he never bites his handler or his mares – he needs care, particularly in the stable. John loves the horse, treating him with affectionate caution, taking him out to the paddock every day in the winter for an hour’s exercise, watching him canter off once released from his head-collar, neck curved, tail raised, bucking a couple of times for the joy of being free from his stable.

  He spends an hour every afternoon rubbing the stallion down with a thick wisp of hay, hissing in imitation of the bedridden Sean, who has told him it soothes the horse. He enjoys the warm smell of the bright chestnut coat, and when the grooming is finished runs his hand along the powerful neck to stroke each ear until The Elector, wanting his evening feed, turns and pushes him away.

  ‘He loves his work,’ says Charles. ‘Eighty-five per cent fertility, and not many needing a second cover. He could handle eighty mares a year easily if we could get them.’

  Charles talks John through his first half-dozen covers – the teaser stallion to excite the visiting mare, the twitch on the upper lip of the mare to help the groom to hold her steady, tail bandaged at the top and tied forward out of the way, vulva swabbed clean, a heavy leather blanket across the mare’s quarters to prevent any damage from The Elector’s forelegs as, whinnying in excitement, he mounts the mare, the massive penis – ‘You’re lucky, some horses need to be helped in. He knows what to do’ – the brief, shuddering moment as the stallion does his work.

  Eleven months later the foals arrive. John brings the mares into the foaling box as soon as they wax up, and spends many nights in the cubbyhole next door waiting for the waters to break. He helps the foal out, feet first if he’s lucky, watches the foal dive into the world. John is moved by the moment when the mare turns around to lick the foal clean, the afterbirth hanging down behind her until he ties it off and cleans her up. And within the hour the foal is up on long unstable legs, nuzzling the mare to find the milk.

  A new range of seasons frames John’s life. Hunting between October and March, foaling and covering in the first three months of the year, point-to-points between February and May, racing all the year round. The mares come into their stables in the autumn and are turned out in the spring onto the rich grassland, so rich that it has to be grazed by sheep before the horses can be allowed on it. The big sales are in October on The Curragh and at Ballsbridge during the Dublin Shows, the spring show in April, the main show in August.

  After a probationary month looking after The Elector, John has become the stallion man. The stables are a mile from the house, three sides of a square with boxes on each side, a cobbled yard, red-painted stable doors, two large water troughs with a handpump each, a mounting block that Charles now has to use. The plain wall on the fourth side of the square is broken by a curved archway

  The tack room to the left of the archway smells of leather, saddle soap and neat’s-foot oil. Down one wall hang the saddles, halters and bridles, on the opposite wall in a glass case are the yellow, blue and red rosettes from twenty years of horse shows up and down the country. There are photographs of winners being led in or jumping the last fence – a dozen horseshoes are nailed up, each marking a Classic success.

  ‘That’s Dublin,’ says Charles, pointing to a large red, white and blue rosette. ‘Champion Heavyweight Hunter in 1902. Long time since we had a horse as good. But we might enter The Elector once we see how you both get on.’

  Behind the main stable block is the smaller stallion yard – a generous box for The Elector, smaller boxes for the visiting mares and the teaser, and a derelict two-up, two-down cottage in the corner. John asks if he can move in to be closer to the horses.

  ‘Fine by me, but you’ll need to make it habitable first. I’ll get the builder in from the village to help you out. It’s got electricity on the ground floor and water, but you’ll need a bathroom. The last man to live there used the pump in the big yard.’

  Once he has mov
ed in, he realizes that John Burke Esquire, formerly of Derriquin Castle, has become John, the stallion man at Burke’s Fort. He is happy about the no-man’s-land he inhabits; he still lunches with his cousins in the Big House every Sunday but drinks with the other grooms in the village snug most Saturday nights. He wears strong boots, dark brown corduroy trousers and a broad leather belt, a striped shirt with a collar stud and no collar or tie, a rough tweed jacket and a peaked cap, all bought from the haberdasher’s shop in Maryborough. He has two voices, one for Sunday lunch, one for the rest of the week.

  Young Charlie Burke, his own age, is friendly enough when he comes back for the holidays from agricultural college, but has difficulty placing John in his ordered, hierarchical view of the world. The three Burkes go out hunting together, but on their return Charles and Charlie hand their horses over to the grooms, while John waters and feeds his mare, makes sure she’s dry and sound, and cleans the saddles and bridles with Michael and Sean in the tack room before going back to his cottage.

  He goes to the occasional hunt ball with Charlie, almost always because a spare man is needed. The mothers of the girls he meets are cautious in their welcome. John understands this; in a universe of young men who are either at Trinity or in the army, he enjoys the look of surprise when he says, ‘I’m the stallion man at Burke’s Fort.’ The mothers don’t enquire further.

  Most of the daughters are curious enough to ask for a detailed explanation of what he does; several find it exciting that John has carried the stable-yard into the ballroom. John sounds the same as the other young men, but looks different. He is tall, lean, with his mother’s fair hair and his father’s strong features, and his hands and face are tanned. He has a strength and independence that is attractive and, to ambitious mothers, dangerous.

  Hunting, racing, dancing and tennis appear to be a subordinate but important part of the campaign to keep Ireland within the Empire. At a tennis party at Kilkee Castle, John, who is an erratic but occasionally brilliant player, is paired with the daughter of the house. He’d met Nesta Fitzmaurice, a small, energetic, fair-haired girl, at a dance a month before, where she had shown a healthy interest in John’s explanation of how the covering of the mares was organized.

  ‘You mean the teaser stallion never gets the mare? What kind of a life is that?’

  ‘It’s the only one they know.’

  ‘I’d not settle for it.’

  After their narrow defeat in the final of the tennis, Nesta takes John down to the lake to look at the black swans. The swans are gone; she makes up for their absence by showing John the summer house, where she advances John’s sexual education by several important and enjoyable steps. A few weeks later they meet again at a garden party at Ballybrittas. When John sees Nesta take an older ex-soldier to look at the orchid house, he realizes she is not going to advance his education any further.

  It is not only John’s occupation that marks him out. The story of the kidnapping and killing of Eileen is widely known but never discussed. When John first arrived at Burke’s Fort, Charles and Cis had offered a few sympathetic words but never referred to Eileen again. He no longer relives the kidnapping. His visit to Kilmainham Jail and the brushing of the sleeve across Tomas’s eyes have convinced John that his worst fears about his mother’s end – torture, rape – are unfounded. What remains is bad enough, but easier to escape through his long working days with the horses.

  In the stallion yard he is insulated from the outside world. He has stopped reading the Irish Times and begins his day with the Sporting Life. He hears about the Truce in the middle of 1921 from Sean, recently returned from hospital with a pronounced limp and no desire to look after The Elector again, happy to be working with the hunters alongside Michael. Many months later he learns of the general amnesty, but he never attempts to find out whether Tomas was either pardoned or hanged.

  Over lunch early in 1923, Charles asks John to get The Elector ready for the Dublin Show at Ballsbridge.

  ‘We need another big rosette. We need to show him off, bring in more mares. Only thirty-five last year, and a lot of them wouldn’t pay the full thirty pounds.’

  ‘We’ll need to build him up, change his feed, give him more exercise.’

  The stallion can’t be ridden, but takes kindly to trotting and cantering around the large paddock on the end of a lunging rein. He gets an extra ration of oats, linseed and a secret preparation from Michael guaranteed ‘to put a shine on the coat of an undertaker’.

  There is a preliminary outing to the show at Abbeyleix, where The Elector wins his class, from, it is true, only four other stallions. By the time of the show he looks magnificent. There is a slow journey up to Dublin in the horsebox, a converted army truck. The Elector takes an hour to be convinced to walk up the ramp; John has renewed the padding inside and barred off a space at the front where he can stand and steady the stallion.

  It is John’s first visit to Dublin since he went to see Tomas in Kilmainham Jail. The city is still full of soldiers, but ones who wear the unfamiliar uniforms of the newly formed Irish Army. The Royal Irish Constabulary have been disbanded and replaced by the Garda Síochána. Both are full of former rebels who are now on the side of law and order.

  There are three elements of the Dublin Show; the showjumping, which attracts teams from all over Europe; the serious judging of horseflesh, from Connemara ponies to heavyweight hunters; and the riotous dances in the big hotels every evening. The stallion competition is on the Thursday and has twenty-seven entries.

  ‘They’re judged on conformation, and that means looks,’ says Charles. ‘How he behaves in the ring will count. And some of the others will already have won at bigger shows than our fellow.’

  John is uncertain how his horse will react to the crowds, the noise and the other stallions – the mares are kept well away from the stallion ring. The day brings out the showman in The Elector, who arches his neck and strides out around the ring, coat gleaming, hooves oiled and polished, mane plaited and tail combed. He is one of five called in from the original twenty-seven. The judges – sombre men in bowler hats, breeches, boots and hacking jackets, notebooks in hand – take an age to winnow two from the last five. The Elector is one; both horses are asked to stand while a judge runs a careful hand down each foreleg. The Elector takes this well, but his rival, a beautiful four-year-old grey from the Mount Juliet stud, backs away. The judges consult their notebooks, talk in low voices in the middle of the ring, ask for a further trot towards them and away, and after an age announce The Elector as the winner of the stallion Supreme Championship.

  John trots his stallion around the ring in a lap of honour, the large rosette flapping against The Elector’s head-collar, while the small crowd clap respectfully. Charles comes up to John afterwards, beaming, and presses fifty pounds into his pocket.

  ‘Best day of my life, best day of my life. We’ll have a queue of mares after this.’

  ‘He’s come on a lot since Abbeyleix,’ says John. ‘And he made the most of himself, liked showing off to the crowd. Michael’s mixture did the business.’

  Several complete strangers insist on shaking John’s hand. One of them, a small, sharp-featured man with a weathered face, says, ‘It’s good to see Burke’s Fort in the prize-money again. And you showed him off well in the ring. You’ve been feeding him right, I’d say.’

  Later Charles tells John that this is Desmond Curran, the Master of the Limerick, ‘Best eye for a horse in Ireland’. John travels home in the back of the horsebox, smiling with pleasure all the way. He stops stroking The Elector only to look at the red, white and blue rosette and the Champion’s silver salver.

  13

  RAISING THE GREEN, white and gold flag over Charles Fort is the high point of the War of Independence for Tomas; it is also the moment that Ireland begins to break apart. Tomas is recalled to Ballincollig, leaving Sergeant O’Connor in charge.

  ‘There’s little enough for the men to do here,’ says O’Connor, ‘except talk
about the Treaty and the Republic. Some of the boys might run, especially the hard ones who liked the fighting. Jimsy Malone and Con O’Donnell, for two. I could be left with the johnny-come-latelys, the ones who’ve never fired a shot.’

  ‘Keep them as busy as you can, and let them go down into Kinsale only on a Saturday,’ says Tomas. ‘I expect I’ll be back soon enough.’

  Passing through Cork, he avoids Station Road but calls in on Victoria barracks, where he receives a frosty welcome from the guard at the barracks gate.

  ‘All of us here are for the Republic. We owe our allegiance to the Executive in the Four Courts. If you’re one of Collins’s men there’s no place for you here.’

  Tomas doesn’t argue. Back at Ballincollig he tells Donal.

  ‘We’ve known that for a while now,’ says Donal. ‘It’s a stand-off at the moment; no one wants to bring it to a fight, though that’s the way we’re heading. People change sides and back again every week. The Commander-in-Chief wants you in Dublin as his ADC. You’re a captain from today. Congratulations.’

  ‘What does an ADC do?’

  ‘It’s French for dogsbody. You go wherever Michael Collins goes and you do whatever he tells you.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘That’s it. But you’ll know what’s going on, that is if anyone does, and you’ll be at the centre of things. It’s not a soft job. There are plenty of hardline Republicans who’d like to kill Michael Collins and not mind about taking you with him.’

  ‘They’d never kill Michael Collins, surely to God?’

  ‘He’s our commander-in-chief, not theirs. The way they see it, he’s the man who gave away the Republic, who agreed to the oath, who lost the Six Counties. It’s all changed. Changed utterly, as your man Yeats wrote.’