Mortal Friends, page 14
Once Peter Gavin, who was one of them, went home for a visit. He was an officer, a captain, and that alone, in the opinion of his neighbors, was reason enough to think the Republicans would lose.
He’d been drinking in Morrissey’s all afternoon when Colman Brady arrived for his pint before dinner.
“You,” Gavin said drunkenly, staring at Brady.
“Hello, Peter,” Colman said, and then to Dick Morrissey behind the bar, “half, Richard, if you please.” Brady reached past Gavin to get his glass of stout.
The others gave them room, drawing back the way leaves turn over before thunder.
“You heard this one, Colman Brady?” And with that Gavin threw his head back and began to sing. He had a good voice, and he sang with a drunk’s energy, eyeing Brady all the while.
“England blew the bugle/And threw the gauntlet down/And Michael sent the boys in green/to level Dublin town.”
“Don’t sing that song in here, Peter,” Brady said quietly.
“Why not?”
“Because I said not to, Peter.”
“Do I detect an implication of condescension in your voice, Brady?”
“It’s not an implication, Peter.”
“Your problem, Brady, is your cowardly indifference to your country.”
Brady drank his glass off and then faced Gavin. “That’s not my problem, Peter. It’s my solution.” Brady winked and smiled.
Gavin drunkenly took a swing at him, but Colman easily seized his forearm before the blow landed. He held it firmly.
“Peter, you get out of here.”
“You’re hurting my arm.”
“Don’t darken these roads with your shadow until this shit is ended!”
Gavin left Four Mile Water then, but with an oath to himself and to God that he would return.
9
Nellie clenched her teeth, dug her fists half through the straw mattress, slammed her left knee up against the wall repeatedly and, at an angle, pressed her right leg against the bureau. The bedclothes were soaked through with her sweat and bunched behind her head. She was panting, groaning, grunting, pressing, pressing, pressing. The child would not come.
Marie McClusky went into the other room, wiping her hands on her huge apron. Bea stayed with Nellie, mopping her face.
“How is it?” Colman asked, frantic.
“To tell you the truth, it’s a difficult one.”
“What’s wrong?” Oh, God, what was wrong?
“Not a matter of ‘wrong,’ Colman. A large child. A slim woman. She could do with a bit more hip.”
“Should I go to Clonmel? Perhaps the doctor . . .”
“It’ll be done by then. Get out of my way.”
She pushed by him into the bedroom again, carrying a fresh load of clean towels.
“Oh, Christ,” Colman repeated to himself. He and Conor looked at each other helplessly, miserably.
And Nellie stiffened her knees and pushed one more time, groaning with the effort and then screaming with the new pain, the ultimate pain, as the child’s head slipped closer home.
The scream brought Colman into the forbidden room. He pushed his sister aside and slipped behind the bed, caressing Nellie’s face. It was twisted in agony and effort. She looked awful. The sockets of her eyes were deep and full of water. She looked as if she were dying. She grabbed him with her arms over her head, pressed into him until he felt the pain too, a hint of it. She pressed and pressed and pressed, screaming, until the head of a child dropped from her womb.
“Push, darling!” Marie yelled. “Push! Push!”
Colman had his cheek on hers. “Nellie, Nellie, Nellie,” he repeated. She was dying. The certainty of that is what unleashed in him an overwhelming love. For once he was not more conscious of his reaction to her than he was of Nellie herself. He held her from behind, his hands a vise locked on her ribs, pressing, pressing, pressing, trying to hold the life in her, to keep it. He wanted to forbid that life to leave. He did not close his eyes to see her face the way it was when they met, all loveliness, asparkle with youth. He kept his eyes open, seeing from an inch away her fear and pain, and seeing the iron set that was so familiar, so mean. It was not the soft, pink, youthful face he loved. He loved her fixed determination, that iron, that effort to survive. She had turned that grim face to him often, having determined often that he was what she must survive. Now it was turned against death. What he had thought he hated in her, he loved. He was free suddenly of every desire save one; he wanted his wife to live. “Please, Jesus, let her live!” he prayed. He prayed it over and over again, not realizing he was saying it aloud and into her ear.
“A boy!” Marie McClusky proclaimed. “You’ve a fine son!”
Colman didn’t hear her and remained unaware that the child had been born. He was pressing his face against his wife’s. It was she who knew, who released the tension in her arms as the tension had been released in her body. She softened her hold on Colman, ran a hand around his neck, lifted his face from her shoulders.
“Look,” she said.
“Are you alright?” he asked.
“Sure.”
“I thought you were dying.”
“I am. So are you. But another time, not now.”
“Oh, Nell . . .”
“Why, man, look at your son!”
Later they sat together motionless until she took the little form away from her breast, asleep. The dearest possession life could give. They listened to its breath, a curious whispering. Colman could feel the shudder passing through Nellie, running from her shoulder into his arm and down his back. A shudder of awe and gratefulness.
“Thank God for you, Nellie Brady.”
“And for this boy.”
They sat in silence, praying.
Finally, she said, “Have you a name yet?”
“No. Not a suspicion of one. You?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“Colman Brady, Junior.”
“No.”
“What then?”
“I don’t know, Nellie. Maybe Jim?” He thought of his father, of his brother, the Irish Guards, the grave, the British seal on the stone.
After a long time during which they both watched the baby sleeping, Nellie said, “Did you think I’d not notice the torment in your eye?”
“It was for you. I was scared, girl.”
“No, I mean the torment of these months.”
“I’m sorry I’ve been so . . .”
“I’m not indifferent to your pain, Colman, anymore than you were just now to mine.”
“I know it.”
“You’ve never spoken of it to me.”
“I’ve a . . .”—he thought of what Collins had said—“. . . stone inside me.”
“I’ve touched it, when I thought I was touching you.”
“Perhaps you were touching me.”
“Hard-hearted Brady.”
“That hurt,” he mocked, holding his side.
“Because I hit you in your self-pity.”
“Listen to her! Such recovery!”
“I am recovered, Colman. I felt a birth and a rebirth.”
“I love you, Nellie.”
“It was thick of me to be so long in knowing it.”
“I didn’t know how to tell you.”
“Well, you found a way.”
“While you were giving birth to the kiddo, I was giving birth to something too.” Brady paused. He was not a man to accuse himself, but he was chastened, changed. He had withheld himself from the Irish war because he felt it unworthy of him. He had abandoned Collins because he felt himself too large for another man’s shadow. He had been restless about the farm because the mowing of hay was too menial. He had the habit of thinking he was born for something special, but now he knew the one talent he lacked was the only one he wanted. He wanted to say he was giving birth to love, but he couldn’t bring himself to it. He leaned over her and kissed her and said again, “I love you.”
She joined her arms behind his neck and held him. Their son slept on by her side.
He was nearly overcome with relief. All that time he had longed for a way of living that was worthy of him. He had wanted action on a grand scale, significance, power, nobility. He had wanted to move the earth. Well, he was doing it. Not by adventures of war or politics, but by loving this woman. Colman Brady had given birth to the knowledge that the most value-laden human act is the simple, faithful act of commitment to one person.
“And do you know something, Mr. Brady?”
“Tell me.”
“I love you.”
“Oh, Nell,” he crushed his face into the hollow of her neck. She knew about him what she knew, and still she loved him. For the first time in his life, Colman Brady felt unworthy.
They lay together like that for a long time, his heart on hers, one beating.
Finally she said, “Colman?”
He did not reply. He did not want to end the moment. He did not want to disturb its peace. He felt calm and whole.
“Colman?”
“Yes?” he said, but her flesh muffled it.
“What about Michael?”
“Who?” He didn’t budge. He wasn’t sure he’d heard her.
“Michael Collins.”
After a moment Colman said, “What about him?”
“He’d want to know about your son.”
Colman adjusted his face in her neck to speak clearly. “No, he wouldn’t. He thinks I’ve forgotten him.”
“But you haven’t.”
“No.”
“He’d want to know because . . .” Nell inhaled deeply. “. . . he loves you too.”
Colman did not reply.
“He came here, didn’t he?” Nell pressed.
“And I refused him.”
“No. You refused his war, not him. Colman, speaking as an expert on the matter, you must find a way to tell the man you love him. He needs that—like we all do.”
Colman raised himself and looked at their son sleeping in the well her left side made. Brady was filled with joy, a rush of it, as the realization hit him: their son! “Yes, Nell,” he said. “I will tell him.”
On the night of August twenty-first Brady found Michael Collins in the second-floor lounge of the Imperial Hotel in Cork.
“Hello, Commandant.”
Collins looked up from his paper. He was holding a glass of sherry. He did not speak.
“I went to Dublin first,” Brady explained, “then came down here after you.”
Collins still wasn’t speaking. A mask, indifferent, bored, covered his face. Brady longed for the familiar grin.
He went on awkwardly. “I’m surprised to find you in Cork, out in the open.”
“Why?” Collins asked. Was there scorn in his voice?
“Because Cork is Republican through and through.” Brady felt like an officer briefing his senior.
“Cork is my home county. These people . . . worship me.”
“They fight you.”
“Well, at least . . .” Collins shrugged.
They were silent. Colman remained standing. He ignored Collins’s gesture toward a chair.
“What brings you here?” Collins asked.
“I came to tell you something.”
“What?”
Brady felt a surge of panic. How could he tell him everything? How could he tell him anything? Afraid of his own silence he said, “I’ve had a child.”
“Colman, when?” There was a hint of warmth.
“Two days ago. I came to tell you.”
“Good, Colman. Good for you! How’s Nell?”
“Fine. Strong.”
“And the kid?”
“A boy.”
“Great! An inch of lad beats a foot of girl!”
“I’d have taken anything, Mick!” Colman laughed. “It didn’t have to be a boy.”
“A soldier. Like his pa.”
Brady was wounded by that until he realized from Collins’s face that he wasn’t thrusting at him. “Like you, Mick.” Colman blushed, dropping his eyes. He felt like a schoolboy.
After a long silence, Collins stood and with easy grace draped his arm over Colman’s shoulder and turned him toward the bar, surreptitiously hugging him firmly.
“Champagne, waiter! Champagne!” he cried grandly.
“Mick,” Colman hissed, “don’t attract attention to yourself.”
“What do you mean? I’ve a godson, don’t I? Well, don’t I?”
“Yes, of course. But, Mick, your . . .”
“Brady, you’re my friend. You’re not my exec. Right? Right?”
“Yes.”
“Then leave the army shit to me. Alright? Alright?”
“Alright, Mick.”
“Let’s toast your son. Let’s toast him good.”
It was four in the morning before they went to bed. They were both pleasantly and morosely drunk by then.
But at ten past six the cars of the commandant’s convoy were brought around to the front of the hotel.
Collins appeared, wearing his green uniform, tunic, and broad leather gloves and peaked hat. All for show. He was making a tour of captured outposts and his purpose was to boost the morale of his own men and shake the rebels by defying them in their own country. He barked orders to the soldiers as they were loading the cars. The convoy consisted of a motorcyclist scout, a Crossley Tender with a complement of two officers, eight riflemen, and two machine-gunners, Collins’s car, a Leyland Thomas, and, bringing up the rear, a Rolls Royce armored car with two drivers.
Just as Collins was climbing into his touring car, Brady appeared in the canopied hotel entrance.
“So! You do want a lift!” Collins greeted.
“As far as Clonakilty, yes. You said you’d wake me.”
“I figured you’d get up if you wanted it.”
“I can get a train.”
“Come on! Get in! We stop in Bandon first. Then Clonakilty.”
Brady sat beside Collins in the rear of the Leyland. The driver and Major General Dalton were in front.
“Still think I’m careless, Colman?” Collins asked, jerking his thumb at the machine guns ahead.
“Your car’s open.”
“Of course it’s open, amico! My entire purpose is to be seen!”
“But not shot.”
“You’re full of common sense, aren’t you? Some of us must expose ourselves to something if Ireland . . .”
“Touché! Touché! I’ll keep my martial opinions to myself.”
“Like a good farmer. Would you prefer to ride inside the Rolls?” Collins slapped Brady on the shoulder in almost total jest.
“No, Mick,” Brady said quietly. He refused the bait.
“Alright!” Collins shouted to the cyclist. “Let’s move!”
At Bandon, Collins admonished a large contingent of troops to hold onto what they had captured. He spent an hour in discussion with the garrison commander. From Bandon the convoy proceeded toward Clonakilty.
“What do you think?” Collins asked Brady on the way out of Bandon.
“They do worship you.”
“That’s because they don’t know me.”
“True.”
“And the other side of their worship is the rebel hate.”
“I’m glad you recognize it,” Brady said.
“Righto.”
The first hint of the trouble occurred a mile from Clonakilty. The road was blocked by newly felled trees. The men in the convoy would either have to clear them away or detour over the mountainous roads to Sam’s Cross and then back around.
The road was deserted and Collins did not want his men dismounting there. For all his bravado and show, he relied absolutely on his inbuilt caution. Newly felled trees, the cover of brush and hedges, the isolation of the place all pointed to ambush. He ordered the detour.
But Brady had an opposite and equally urgent instinct. He said so. “Let’s clear the trees away, Mick. It’ll only take an hour.”
“No. We don’t dismount here.”
“But maybe they want you to take the other way.”
“Ah, yes. You made your reputation on the tactic of ambush, didn’t you? And now you’re back from retirement.”
“Mick, come on.” Brady hopped out of the car and made for the trees. He desperately wanted to remove the blockade.
“Come about!” Collins ordered the driver. “Move!”
The cars were completing their turns.
Collins glared down at Brady. His look said simply, I don’t need you anymore.
Colman felt that terrible blast of guilt and regret. He had failed this man, and he was not forgiven.
The Leyland left Colman behind, so he leaped aboard the Rolls and rode on the left rear fender, exposed.
The summer day’s noon light beat down mercilessly as the convoy wound east along the deserted road toward Sam’s Cross, where it would bear north again. The road ran down into a bleak valley. It was a deadly looking place, and Brady hated it. It offered no cover and the road was too narrow to turn around and flee. The place seemed all too familiar. He had looked for just such terrain when he had prepared to take on Purcival. The bottom of Brady’s stomach shifted constantly in the tide of the rocking car.
At a blind curve in the road, a spot noted on the map as Béal na Bláth, the motorcyclist nearly crashed into an old four-wheeled brewer’s dray, which lay lopsided across the road with one front and one rear wheel removed. The cart was loaded with cases and bottles, and immediately in front of it the road was strewn with broken glass.
Everyone knew instantly what was happening. Collins lifted his rifle from its customary place by his feet. Before he could give an order, machine-gun fire commenced, coming from behind the single clump of shrubs and alder.
