“That makes as much sense as anything else.” Thomas was silent, considering, and then he sat down wearily on the low rock wall that divided the grass from the trees, resting his head in his hands. When he spoke again, his voice was tentative, as if he feared my response.
“What happened to her, Anne? To Declan’s Anne? You know so many things. Did something happen that you’re afraid to tell me?”
I sat down beside him and reached for his hand. “I don’t know what happened, Thomas. I would tell you if I did. I didn’t even know Declan had older brothers and a sister. I suppose I’m like every other Irish man or woman. I have cousins in America too. I thought Eoin and I were the last of the Gallaghers. Your journal . . . the description of the Rising and their part in it, was the most complete picture I’ve ever had of my great-grandparents. Eoin never spoke of them. For him, they didn’t exist beyond a few facts and photographs. I grew up believing Anne died in the Rising, alongside Declan. It was never even a question. In 2001, their grave looks the same as it does now, minus the lichen. Their names are on the stone, side by side. The dates are unchanged.”
He was quiet for a long time, contemplating what it all meant.
“The sad truth is that when people leave Ireland, they rarely come back.” Thomas sighed. “And we never know what happens to them. Death or emigration. The result is the same. I’m beginning to think only the wind knows what happened to Anne.”
“Aithníonn an gaoithe. The wind knows everything,” I agreed softly. “That’s what Eoin told me when I was small. Maybe he learned it from you.”
“I learned it from Mick. But he says the wind is a gossipy wench, and if you don’t want anyone knowing your secrets, you’re better off telling a rock. He says that’s why we have so many rocks in Ireland. Rocks soak up every word, every sound, and they never tell a soul. It’s a good thing because the Irish love to blather.”
I laughed. It reminded me of the story Eoin had requested on my birthday about Donal and the king with the donkey ears. Donal told the king’s secret to a tree because he’d been desperate to tell someone, anyone. Sometime later, that tree was cut down and used to make a harp. When the harp was played, the king’s secret sang from the strings.
There were several morals to the old tale, but one of them was that secrets never stay hidden. Thomas didn’t blather. I doubted Michael Collins blathered either, but the truth had a way of revealing itself, and some truths got people killed.
27 November 1921
I received a letter from Mick today. He’s in London, along with Arthur Griffith and a handful of others who were handpicked to take part in the Treaty negotiations. Half of the Irish delegates resent the other half, and each thinks they have the right of it. The divisions in the group were built in by de Valera and are being exploited by Prime Minister Lloyd George, and Mick is acutely aware of it.
The prime minister has assembled a formidable British team to represent England’s interests; Winston Churchill is among them, and we Irish know what Churchill thinks of the lot of us. He was against home rule and free trade, but he supported the use of the Auxiliaries to keep us in line. It’s easy for a soldier like Churchill, with a history of military might behind him, to expect and tout a certain kind of warfare, and he has no respect for Mick’s methods. To him, the Irish question is little more than a peasant uprising; we are a rabid mob with pitchforks and flaming torches. Churchill also knows world opinion is a tool that can be used against the British, and he is incredibly shrewd in blunting its effectiveness. However, Mick says the one thing Churchill understands is love of country, and if he can recognize the same love in the Irish delegation, a narrow bridge might be forged.
Mick confirmed that peace talks had indeed commenced on 11 October, noting the date and asking me to bring Anne to London—or Dublin—when I could. He said, “I will be travelling to Dublin on the weekends as often as I can, trying to keep the leaders in the Dáil updated on the negotiations. I don’t want to be accused of keeping information from Dev or any of the others. I will do everything I can to make sure Anne’s prediction doesn’t come true. But she’s been right so far, Tommy. In a way, she’s prepared me. There’s a small measure of confidence and poise that comes when a man knows he is doomed. I have little expectation of a good outcome, and I think because of it, I am seeing things as they are and not as I wish they were. Bring her, Tommy. Maybe she’ll know what I should do next. God knows I’m in over my head. I don’t know what is best for my country. Men have died, men that I admired. They died for an idea, for a cause, and I believed in them. I believed in the dream of an independent Ireland. But ideas are easy. Dreams are even easier. They don’t require application.
“The British delegates are comfortable in their halls of power and confident in their position; Downing Street and the Houses of Parliament smell of authority and ages-old domination, neither of which the Irish have ever enjoyed. Lloyd George and his team go home at night and meet in their private studies, plotting how to divide and conquer the delegation here and the Irish leadership back home. Meeting after meeting, conference after subconference, we go round and round.
“It’s all a game, Tommy. To us, it is life and death; to the Brits, it is simply political maneuvering. They talk of diplomacy when we know diplomacy means dominion. Regardless, I know that my usefulness is expired. The way I’ve waged war over these last years won’t be possible after I return to Ireland. I am a known entity now. I’ve been undermined, and my methods of hide-and-seek, attack and retreat will no longer suffice. My picture has now been spread across the papers in England and in Ireland. If the talks break down, I will be lucky to make it safely out of London. Either this little ragtag Irish delegation comes to an agreement, or England and Ireland will descend into all-out war. We don’t have the men, the means, the weapons, or the will for that. Not among the regular folks. They want freedom. They’ve sacrificed a great deal for it. But they don’t want to be slaughtered. And I can’t, in good conscience, be the man that condemns them to that fate.”
The letter made me weep—crying for my friend, my country, and for a future that seems incredibly dim. I’ve gone to Sligo each day to read the Irish Times taped to the window of Lyons department store, but Anne has not pressed me or asked me about the proceedings. It’s as if she’s simply waiting, calm and resigned. She already knows what happens next, and her knowledge is a burden she has tried to bear silently.
When I told Anne that Mick asked for her, she readily agreed to help where she could, though I had to show her his letter before she believed it. She’s still half convinced he wants her dead. She shed tears when she read his melancholy summary, just as I did, and I had no words to console her. She stepped into my arms and comforted me instead.
I love her with an intensity I didn’t think myself capable of. Yeats writes about being changed utterly. I am changed utterly. Irrevocably. And though love is indeed a terrible beauty, especially given the circumstances, I can only revel in all its gory gloriousness.
When I’m not worrying over the fate of Ireland, I’m plotting a future that revolves around her. I’m thinking of her white breasts and the high arches in her small feet, of the way her hips flare and how her skin is like silk behind her ears and on the insides of her thighs. I’m thinking of the way she abandons the Irish inflections when we’re alone, and how her flattened vowels and softened Ts create an honesty between us that wasn’t there before.
Her American accent suits her. Then I begin thinking about how motherhood suits her as well and how her belly would look swollen with our child—someone for Eoin to love and look after. He needs a sibling. I imagine the stories she’ll tell the children, the stories she’s written and the stories she’ll write, and the people all over the world who will read them.
Then I start to think about changing her name. Soon.
T. S.
18
HIS CONFIDENCE
I broke my heart in two
So hard I struck.
What matter? For I know
That out of rock,
Out of desolate source,
Love leaps upon its course.
—W. B. Yeats
The boat Michael Collins was on was hours late docking at Dún Laoghaire; they’d hit a trawler in the Irish Sea and arrived a mere forty-five minutes before the eleven o’clock cabinet meeting with the Dáil. Michael had called Garvagh Glebe from London on December second and asked Thomas and me to meet him in Dublin. We’d driven through the night only to wait on the quay in the Model T for four hours, dozing and shivering while we watched for the boat’s arrival. Dublin was crawling with Black-and-Tan patrols and Auxiliaries again. It was as if Lloyd George had given them the signal to come out in force, a final visual reminder of what Ireland would be like indefinitely if an agreement wasn’t reached. We’d been stopped and searched twice, once as we arrived in Dublin and once when we’d parked on the wharf at Dún Laoghaire, waiting patiently as they shined their flashlights in our faces and down our bodies, inside the car, and through Thomas’s medical bag. I didn’t have papers, but I was a pretty female in the company of a doctor with a government stamp on his documents. They let us go without any trouble.
Michael made the journey back to Dublin with Erskine Childers, secretary to the delegation. He was a slim man with fine features and an erudite manner. I knew from my research that he had an American wife and wouldn’t, in the end, support the Treaty. But he was only a messenger, not a delegate, and his signature would not be required to forge an agreement with England. He greeted Thomas and me with a tired handshake, but he had his own car waiting, giving us a moment with Michael before he had to be delivered to the Mansion House, where the meeting would take place.
“We’ll talk as you drive, Thomas. There might not be another opportunity,” Michael instructed, and the three of us slid into the front seat of the car, with Thomas behind the wheel and me in the middle. Michael looked like he hadn’t slept in weeks. He shook out his coat and combed his hair while Thomas drove.
“Tell me, Annie,” Michael demanded. “What happens next? What possible good can come of this hellish trip?”
I’d spent the night trying to remember the intricate details of the timeline and could only remember the overall back-and-forth that occurred between the commencement of the talks on October 11 and the subsequent signing of the Treaty, or the Articles of Association as they were sometimes called, in the early days of December. This meeting today at the Mansion House didn’t ring in my memory as productive or pivotal. There’d been little information on it at all, except when it was referred to in subsequent debates. It was the beginning of the end, but the squabbling would only intensify in the weeks to come.
“Specifics are difficult,” I began, “but there will be anger over the oath of allegiance to the Crown that Lloyd George is demanding. De Valera will insist on external association instead of dominion status, as the articles now read—”