Katie's War (3 page)

‘Welcome to Tipperary, Dafydd.' Mother was smiling up at the boy. ‘Come down now, you must be starved.'

The men climbed down, Katie next, while Marty stood holding the tiny door of the trap as if he were handing gentry out of a coach-and-four. Dafydd followed. He did not see the little iron step at the back of the trap and jumped on to the cobbles with a crash of hobnailed boots. Immediately there was a yip from Marty, who leapt back, holding one foot.

‘Dafydd! Did you jump on the lad?' cried Mr Parry in dismay. ‘Be careful!'

‘Nonsense, he was miles away from him.
Marty
!' yelled Father, ‘come here and show some manners. Can you never stop fooling?' Marty, held by the scruff of the neck, but still grinning, was introduced. All at once everyone was talking, and Katie
looked at her father laughing and smiling. At least he wasn't going to have a fit now. Marty's clowning had seen to that. It had also cleared her bad temper. She wanted to give Marty a hug, but he didn't look very clean.

‘Katie,' said her mother that evening. ‘Will you take Marty and Dafydd and show Dafydd where he's to sleep? The boy must be dropping. We have to look after him, you know.'

Humph, thought Katie. She had helped her mother make up the settle bed on the landing while the men walked up to the quarry and Marty showed Dafydd the farm.

‘I'd have put Seamus on the landing, but he's too long for the bed,' Mother explained to Dafydd, ‘but he and Marty are close beside you in the bedroom, and Katie's room is across the landing, so you won't be lonely.' The settle bed folded away into a chest when not in use, but now it was opened out, the head beside the door leading into the boys' bedroom where the landing was widest. The stairs came up outside Katie's door at the opposite end of the landing. A soap box made a bedside table for a candle, as well as serving for a cupboard for clothes.

Marty was expanding on the probability of Dafydd having to share his bed with a ghost ‘the night pusher who …'

‘Will you shut up, Marty,' Katie said. ‘The only ghost you'll see about here is Marty creeping around like a blind elephant twice in the night.'

‘It's not twice,' he declared indignantly. ‘I can't stand using a pot,' he explained, ‘the yard's better.'

‘You're just not civilised!' said Katie.

‘Well, it was you brought the subject up,' he said with some justification. ‘I'd like to know …' he began, but Katie was away down the stairs; she seldom won an argument with Marty and this one was getting out of hand.

It seemed a shame to go to bed when it was so bright. She decided to walk up towards the quarry and meet Father and Mr Parry on their way down.

Oh Megan
, Dafydd wrote to his sister.
I'm in love (again! you say). She's like the rising sun, hair of spun gold. Driving her chariot through this war-torn land. But I, who would be her slave, am in the dog-house. It all started at dinner. Don't ask me how I put my foot in it, but I did, boots and all, and now she's slipped away. They were talking about the fighting in Dublin
…

M
other had sniffed the meat anxiously when Katie brought it in from the meat-safe in the dairy, the coolest place on the farm. It had held despite the warm weather. Now the house was filled with the delicious smell of roast lamb, cooked with a sprig of rosemary. This was to be the special welcoming dinner for the two guests, postponed from
yesterday
when the train was late. Father and Mr Parry had been turned out of the kitchen and were sitting uncomfortably in the parlour with glasses of bottled stout.

‘Take care, Katie!' warned her mother, as Katie drew a tray of roast potatoes from the top oven of the range. They spat and pinged in the hot dripping. She loved roast potatoes almost as much as she liked the tiny little new ones which Mother had
just shaken out of the pot in a cloud of steam. A knob of yellow butter was turning on them as it melted.

‘Where
is
Seamus?' worried her mother. ‘I wish he was here.' What was Mother worried about, wondered Katie, Seamus was seldom anywhere when he was wanted; he came and went.

‘Look, Katie, would you ever ask Father to sharpen the knife – and don't let Marty near it.'

Seamus had still not appeared when they all sat down and Mother said the few words of Grace. Marty and Dafydd were sitting side-by-side, opposite Katie. She noticed that Dafydd didn't bless himself. Of course, he'd be a Protestant, she remembered, and looked at him with new interest. Then she saw that Marty had noticed too. She could just see some joke or comment working itself out in his mind. Quickly she lashed out at him under the table. To her mortification it was Dafydd who gave a jump.

‘Marty,' said Mother severely, ‘will you behave yourself there!'

Marty opened his mouth to protest, saw his mother's look, and closed it. Katie kept her eyes down but she could feel both boys' eyes boring into her. A tell-tale blush began to spread from her neck. When she looked up, Dafydd was suppressing a grin, and he and Marty were both ready to explode. She could not trust herself to look again – another moment and they would all three be giggling like children. She mustn't giggle! Not with him. She turned to look up the table, held her breath and forced herself to listen to the adult conversation. Father was stabbing at a piece of meat on his plate.

‘Of course you're right, Griff, we should accept the Treaty with the English! It's a step in the right direction, and a step taken without further use of guns. We have Home Rule, let's build on that.'

‘What do the Republicans want then?' asked Mr Parry.

‘Seamus is the Republican in the family, we should ask him.' Father looked down the table to where Seamus's place stood empty. It was Mother who answered.

‘They feel we should throw off the yoke of England completely. Not let the country be divided up into North and South. They think that we stopped just when the war was about to be won. They feel that Mr Collins has betrayed them.'

‘That's nonsense, dear. I don't like Mr Collins myself, he's a man of war and I'm sick of men of war, but if I were still a soldier, it is Collins I would follow. Collins knows that he can be beaten. He knows the weaknesses of the English, but he knows our own weaknesses too. That's what separates him from the dreamers. He will do anything, including shooting people in their beds, to make sure he wins.' Father shuddered. ‘If he's not fighting now it's because he knows he can't win.'

‘But we can win, surely, Eamonn,' said Mother. ‘It seemed, only this time last year, that we had the English on the run or holed up in their barracks.' Katie cocked her head. She had never heard Mother speak out like this.

‘Arms, my dear, the Irish lack guns and ammunition. One rifle to fifty men, they tell me, that's the first thing. And I say thank God because it means less slaughter, less lives at risk. If we could only get guns out of Ireland …'

Katie found she'd mashed her new potatoes without thinking and was cross at having spoiled them. Bother him and his guns, she thought. She wanted to hear what Seamus had to say; it wasn't fair to talk like this without him. He's involved in something and I'm being left out of it again, she thought to herself.

‘Secondly,' Father went on, ‘there is the voice of the people – democracy. We've had elections, you see, Griff. People have
voted, and the message is clear. They want the agreement with England, they want the end of the war.'

A shadow darkened the open door.

‘
They are traitors!
' The strangled words caught them all by surprise. Chairs scraped on the stone floor as they turned towards the door. Seamus stood there, taut as a bent bow, thin against the light. No-one moved. It was Mother who recovered first.

‘Come in, love,' she said, ‘we went ahead without you.'

‘They are traitors to their oath,' he said without moving. ‘They are destroying the most beautiful thing we ever had.'

Katie glanced at her father, but he had managed a smile.

‘Come in,' he said, ‘tell us, who is destroying what?'

Seamus came forward and took his place stiffly at the end of the table next to Katie. He put his hands on the table and then hurriedly hid them on his lap. She noticed that they were
blistered
and raw. His plate was passed down and she put it in front of him, but he didn't even look at it.

‘The Republic, of course,' he said, glaring up the table.

‘But how can they betray something that never existed, Seamus? When did we have a Republic?' protested Father quietly.

‘We have it, we have it now – of course it exists!' said Seamus indignantly. ‘What about the declaration of 1916? Didn't we declare a Republic then? What about our Dáil, and our army, and our courts? The Republic is ours – we took it from the English.'

‘That's the point, son, we haven't taken it from the English. The war isn't over. The trench taken today may be taken back tomorrow. I've seen it. Without a treaty we could lose all we've gained.'

‘We'll gain nothing from the English unless we fight for it. The treaty is a betrayal.' Katie sensed that Seamus was very close to tears.

‘But the people don't want to go on fighting, Seamie,' Father continued. ‘We've had elections. The message from the people is clear; they want the treaty.'

‘People!' said Seamus scornfully. ‘Where would we be now if we always did what the people wanted? Were the people behind the Fenians? Behind Pearse and Connolly in 1916? Were the people behind us until they saw us beating the Black and Tans? If the people had their way the whole nation would have taken the king's shilling – like
you
– and gone off with Redmond to fight in England's war, and Ireland would have been left to rot!'

A horrified silence filled the room, the insult hanging in the air. Katie was stunned, but at the same time a devil inside her wanted to cheer. Here was her old Seamus, her magnetic, exciting Seamus. She ought to stop him, she knew it, but she had been good for long enough, her whole body was egging him on. She didn't mind if he hurt Father, it was about time Father stopped being frail – and anyway she resented being landed with that plucked chicken of a companion opposite for the summer. She glanced across the table and found herself gazing into the startled eyes of the Welsh boy and she nearly put her tongue out.

Seamus pushed his plate away. ‘I heard you; I was outside. But you're wrong – Collins is wrong. We'll find the arms, we'll take the arms from the army and we'll drive the English from Ireland once and for all – from all of Ireland. I'm sick of all this namby-pamby talk. Give me a gun. I'm ready to die for my country. You are all … all …
cowards
! ‘He stood up and his chair fell with a crash as he stumbled towards the door. He turned then, as if to throw one last word at Father, but he faltered. ‘Oh God!' he muttered and fled.

Katie listened to his running feet. Then she looked at Father. Sweat beaded his forehead and she could actually see the muscle-chords in his neck as they tightened, pulling at his lower jaw. To her horror she realised she was seeing all the symptoms of one of his madness attacks. But this was in front of the whole family, in front of strangers! His madness was back and God knows what was going to pour out. If she could just reach his hand she'd squeeze the life out of it. When he did begin to speak his voice was high and unnatural.

‘My boy wants a gun. Do you remember the machine-guns that night, Griff, the night we blew the mine? They had a menace I'd never heard before. They were … what is the word, Griff? So … so …' The pauses got longer. ‘So …'

Katie held her breath. Quiet, everybody, quiet, she willed, please, not a word and it may pass. She heard the blood hissing in her ears. A word, a cough even, and it would all come spilling out. Did anyone else know he had run away? ‘God how I ran!' he had said. Please, Mary Mother of God, let no one speak, she prayed. I've kept his secret, don't let him give himself away now.

‘The guns were so …'

Then it came, one word, sing-song, rising and falling, completely Welsh.

‘Angry?' said Dafydd.

Katie stared at the boy across the table, wishing him dead and waiting for Father's crazed reaction. She wanted to cover her head. But the atmosphere in the room was changing. There were small movements – a knife was scraped on a plate, a cup rattled, someone coughed. She raised her head. The chords on her father's neck were disappearing; he was smiling to himself, massaging his neck. Had the attack passed?

‘Thank you, Dafydd. That is the word,
angry
. You never
forget the anger of war, do you, Griff?' He turned to Mr Parry. ‘I still find myself back there at times, you know.'

‘We all do,' said Mr Parry. ‘Touch of shell-shock. Not surprising is it?'

Katie sat rigid. What had happened? Everyone was talking normally. It wasn't fair. She stared at Father but he was reaching for another potato. He looked pleased with himself. Now her anxiety was turning to anger. All those years of torture, of listening, keeping his secrets, and now, because there were visitors, he could suddenly pull himself together, just like that, and help himself to another potato!

He straightened up. ‘Now, what am I to do about my son? Griff, you and I must make a future for him. He could do more for Ireland by learning to split slates than by finding a gun.' No one seemed to notice when Katie left the room and climbed the stairs. She closed the door of her bedroom and lay face down on her bed. For a long time she was too angry to cry. She lay dry-eyed while resentment throbbed inside her like a lump of hot lead. Tears, when they came, hurt too much to bring relief.