Rebel Sisters (25 page)

‘Let's enjoy the next few days,' she said as the pianist began to play ‘The Song That Stole My Heart Away' and Norman pulled her into his arms to dance.

When the time came for him to return to London, he promised to write and told her he fully intended to persuade her to join him in the next few months. But Grace was unsure. She could no longer imagine spending the rest of her life in London so far from her family and friends and Ireland …

His letters came regularly, some filled with cartoons and drawings, and she wrote back immediately, adding her own squiggles and sketches. But as the weeks passed she realized that, while she cared deeply for Norman and treasured the time she spent with him, she did not love him enough to move to London to live with him. He in turn did not actually love her enough to make the move to live and work in Dublin.

She wrote to him less and less.

‘Are you sad about Norman?' asked Nellie.

‘A little – I do miss him sometimes,' she confessed, trying not to dwell too much on their failed romance.

A few months later Norman wrote to tell her that he was going overseas to work as a war artist for one of the newspapers.

MACDONAGH WAS APPROACHED
about a professorship in English at a university in Switzerland. Eoin MacNeill had recommended him for the position at Fribourg University, which not only offered a good salary but included accommodation for his family.

The idea was certainly tempting, thought Muriel as she read the correspondence on the matter. Switzerland was a neutral country, and they would have a home near the university and perhaps be in a better financial position.

‘I would probably have far more time to devote to my writing,' he said, excited by the prospect.

Their baby would be born in only a few weeks, however, and Muriel found it hard to imagine raising their children in Switzerland so far from her family and friends. What would happen if she fell ill again? She knew that he was torn about the offer, but was hugely relieved when he declined it.

‘It is far better for the baby and Don to be here in Dublin close to their families,' he explained. ‘Besides, I have far too many commitments with the Volunteers to consider moving.'

In March their daughter Barbara was born, petite and quite beautiful. Muriel felt well and strong again almost immediately. MacDonagh had composed a poem for their new, golden-haired baby. He called it simply ‘Barbara' and as he read it to her Muriel felt as if her life could and would never be happier.

Minding the baby and Don was often tiring as MacDonagh was so busy and away so much.

‘How did Mother do it with twelve of us?' Muriel sighed.

‘Your mother had staff – a nanny, a cook and maids,' he reminded her, laughing. ‘I'm sure that Isabella rarely bathed, dressed, fed or changed any of you.'

Muriel blushed, realizing the truth of it. Bridget, their nanny, was the one who had raised them and tended to them when they were younger and were practically banished to the upstairs nursery. She remembered that Mother and Father would only dine with one of the children once a week. They had all considered it quite an ordeal sitting at the table with their parents and trying to make conversation. She would never permit such a thing to happen under her roof.

MacDonagh employed a girl from north Dublin to come to help with the children for a few hours three times a week. Mary was friendly, kind and capable, and not only loved the children but helped Muriel with the housekeeping and laundry.

‘How can we possibly afford to pay her?' Muriel fretted. ‘We will be in debt.'

‘Muriel, I don't want you to get ill again,' he insisted. ‘I work hard and what I earn is sufficient to provide for Mary's wage.'

Muriel hugged him. He was the kindest, most generous-hearted man and they cared deeply for each other and their children, she thought as she watched him leaning over his desk writing, working on revisions to his new play which was rehearsing the next day and due to open soon.

He passed her a few pages to read. She curled up on the couch, surprised by his ability to capture a woman's thoughts and feelings so well on paper. She began to read the script aloud: two women meeting in a drawing room, a wife and former lover discussing the man they both had loved.

‘
Pagans
is a very different play from your others. It is modern and feels real, but it is controversial.'

‘Joe felt the same when I gave him the script to read before he went abroad,' he said, lifting his head. ‘But that is what our theatre is about, taking risks and putting new work on our stage. Jack thinks it is a grand piece of drama and he makes a great husband.'

‘I do wish that I could attend the opening, but I cannot leave the baby yet.'

‘Of course not,' he sympathized. ‘There will be more plays, and you will be at my side then.'

On the play's first night Muriel waited up at home for MacDonagh's return, anxious to hear of the reaction to
Pagans
. She could tell he was excited and he said his cast had served him well: Una O'Connor was wonderful in the lead role; Elta MacMurrough had played the artist with relish, while his brother was the perfect returning husband. There had been warm applause from the audience, with many of the women telling him that they had been taken aback by the honesty of his writing.

‘Countess Plunkett and Grace and Nellie all liked it. Helena teased me about how I learned to think like a woman. I told them I have a wife, a daughter now, and a rake of sisters and sisters-in-law, which helps!'

MacDonagh was invited to speak at a women's anti-war meeting and was surprised when his friend the pacifist Frank Sheehy-Skeffington wrote an open letter to him afterwards urging him to remember his humanity and to stop training the Volunteers to kill.

‘Would Frank prefer that they die defending Ireland?' he sighed, showing Muriel the letter.

‘You know that he and Hanna will not tolerate violence of any kind,' she reminded him. ‘They are both peacemakers opposed to the war and guns, that is all it is.'

In her own mind she agreed with the Sheehy-Skeffingtons, for peace and an end to this terrible war were desperately needed.

At night their back room was becoming a regular meeting place for MacDonagh and the other leaders of the Volunteers. He was closer than ever to Padraig Pearse, Sean Mac Diarmada and Tom Clarke, the inner group that was at the organization's secret heart. Muriel worried about her husband, for he seemed even more caught up in things than before and lately had taken to wearing a gun.

‘Why do you need to wear it?' she had questioned him.

‘I am not a violent man, but Tom Clarke says the DMP and the army may well be watching us and could take us or shoot us whenever they want. This pistol is my protection,' he said firmly, hiding it inside his jacket.

Muriel could not help but be afraid, not just for MacDonagh but for herself and the children too.

NELLIE AND FATHER
were enjoying breakfast together when he put down the morning paper.

‘I was in the club last night and I met Arthur Johnson. He was in a bad way, poor chap. Found out only a few days ago that his boy was killed in Flanders – terrible thing.'

Nellie felt a chill run through her.

‘Which of the Johnson boys is it?' she demanded of him.

‘I'm not sure.' He looked puzzled. ‘They've three or four sons.'

‘Robert and Harry are the ones serving in the army. Which one is it, Father?'

‘He was upset about his boy. He'd had a few whiskeys.' Father looked stricken. ‘The awful thing is that he cannot even bring him home to bury him with his poor mother.'

Nellie's mind was in turmoil, gripped by a cold, strange dread.

Father slowly resumed eating breakfast, while she sat feeling sick to her stomach. She sipped her cup of tea and pushed her plate away.

‘It's the boy with the stammer,' Father said suddenly, putting down his knife and fork. ‘Apparently his regiment of the Dublin Fusiliers had only arrived in Belgium a few days before and came under heavy attack at Ypres. Arthur heard that the British and allied lines were decimated by the Germans using some new sort of poison chlorine gas they have invented. The soldiers had no chance of escape – none at all …'

‘That's Harry!' she cried.

‘I'm so sorry, my dear, to be the bearer of bad news. I remember you were all friends when you were younger and played together.'

‘I met him in the park only a few weeks ago. He told me that he had joined up with some friends from a rowing club.'

‘Poor chap! Lord rest him.'

Nellie got up from the table and pushed her chair away.

She escaped to the park and sat on a bench for hours. The crocuses and snowdrops were gone now and pink and white cherry blossom covered the trees. Golden daffodils grew in clumps along the pathways and a curious squirrel watched her before darting up the branch of a chestnut tree. Alone, she listened to the stillness.

Harry was gone.

She blamed the army generals, parliament and King George. They were the ones responsible for his death and the deaths of thousands of other young men just like him. She abhorred this war.

A week later the postman delivered Harry's only letter to her.

He wrote of the crowded train and transport ship. Of miles of trenches and battle-weary men and the order to move up the line … He told her that he was afraid. Nellie cried her eyes out, then carefully folded the letter and hid it away in the drawer of her bedside table.

DUBLIN WAS A
city in mourning as hundreds of young Irish soldiers in the Royal Dublin Fusiliers were killed at Ypres and Gallipoli. On the Western Front they were mown down by rapid-action German machine guns or by poisonous gas, dying in rows where they fell.

‘I cannot bear it, to hear of so many killed in such a cowardly fashion using gas,' Isabella cried angrily. ‘How can the Germans commit such atrocities against their fellow man?'

Frederick read the newspapers almost obsessively as details emerged of the slaughter of the Irish battalion as they landed on V beach in Gallipoli in late April, trying to make it to the shore under heavy Turkish machine-gun fire.

‘Those poor young lads stood no chance,' he said, shaking his head. ‘Why would Churchill and General Hamilton give such orders?'

The streets of the city and of many Irish towns were now filled with widows dressed in mourning and children wearing black armbands as more and more families were bereaved. They collected the supplementary allowance that the army paid weekly to all widows and their children. Isabella pitied those young wives and stoical mothers dressed in black as they tried to go through the day-to-day motions of their lives.

Isabella had written four letters of condolence over the past two weeks. She and Frederick attended memorial services for the sons of friends and for legal colleagues who would never be able to have their child's body returned to them for a decent burial.

Isabella had just left the haberdashery store in Rathmines one day when her eyes read the newspaper headline:

T
HE
L
USITANIA SUNK BY THE
G
ERMANS

She immediately purchased the paper from a cheeky young corner newsboy. ‘The Kaiser's gone and done it now, missus,' he said, ‘blowing a passenger ship out of the water.'

Appalled, she hurried home.

‘Mother, have you heard about the
Lusitania
?' Grace asked, her voice shaking as she joined her in the drawing room.

Isabella was so upset as she read that over a thousand passengers and crew had been killed. A German submarine had deliberately sunk the large passenger liner travelling from New York to Dublin as it neared Ireland. This was no accident like the
Titanic
but a deliberate act of violence by the German empire.

‘Ethel and Eric travelled on the
Lusitania
only last year coming from Canada,' she said, shocked.

‘How could a submarine sink a ship full of innocent people and leave them to drown?' raged Grace.

‘The Kaiser has no decency,' replied Isabella, thinking of Liebert away at sea, worried that the German navy might now plan on sinking ships crossing the Atlantic.

‘Hugh Lane was a passenger. He was bringing a valuable new collection of paintings home from New York.'

‘Poor man. Art was his life … Remember his big plans for that gallery on the River Liffey,' Isabella remarked, thinking of the controversy when Dublin Corporation had finally refused to contribute to the gallery and Sir Hugh Lane had removed his paintings to London. ‘I will write at once to his dear brothers, for they were so good when our Gerald died. It must be a huge shock to the family and to his aunt, Lady Gregory.'

The Germans have gone too far this time,' Frederick pronounced dourly over dinner. ‘The Americans will not take kindly to the killing of their innocent citizens sailing on board a ship across the Atlantic.'

Three weeks later Claude informed them he was doing his duty and had enlisted in the army. He was to be sent to France with the Canadian Expeditionary Force.

Although Isabella and Frederick were very proud of their son's decision and his strong sense of duty and loyalty to the British crown, Isabella felt an icy cold fear grip her heart and soul … All she could do was hope and pray that Claude and his company would somehow stay safe.

NELLIE FELT A
surge of pride every time she crossed the threshold of Liberty Hall, with its anti-war banner proclaiming, ‘We serve neither King nor Kaiser but Ireland.' She enjoyed the easy camaraderie and friendships she had made there. She continued to give her cookery classes and she was delighted that her dance classes were also proving popular with the union's members.