The Hawthorns Bloom in May (24 page)

‘Ma’am, I’m sorry,’ she said, her face pale and anxious. ‘I went up with tea for Mr McGinley a wee while ago. He’s not in his room an’ his bed’s not been slept in,’ she went on, close to tears. ‘I’ve searched the house before I wou’d come up to ye, but he’s not here.’

Rose woke long before the early alarm on Sunday morning and lay still, not wanting to deprive John of the last of his short night’s sleep. The previous evening they’d sat on by the fire with Sam after Alex had left to walk down the hill to his own bed, not saying very much, but reluctant to make a move. She turned gently on her side and comforted herself as she eyed the light filtering through the freshly-washed curtains. At least the morning was fine. Even before the sun was up, she was sure the sky was clear. It was going to be a fine day.

After breakfast, John walked down the hill with Sam and waited to see the pair of them off, leaving Rose to stand by the gate, the shadows long in the rising sun, sparkling beads of dew hanging from every blade of grass. Fingers of light pierced the hawthorn hedge across the
road. The birds were already active among its spiky twigs and their own blackbird sang from the chimney pot.

She took a deep breath as she heard the engines burst into life, the sound vibrating on the still air in the quiet of a Sunday morning. Moments later, first Sam and then Alex, drove out of Jackson’s yard and turned on to the main road. Tears poured down her face unbidden. She spoke sharply to herself, wiped them quickly with the back of her hand and composed herself as she saw John come out of the farmyard, take one last look at the departing vehicles and walk slowly back up the hill towards her.

It would be a long day and no one could be sure of its ending.

For several hours the journey went well. It was a familiar road to Sam, but quite new to Alex, a delight he had not expected, his first drive beyond the mountains that had bounded his horizon since his homecoming. For all his thoughts of what might await them, he drove along with a joy he’d rarely felt before, his mind totally enthralled by the changing perspectives of mountain and lowland, the sudden shock of delight as he saw the sea, incredibly blue, calm and glittering in the morning sun, as they moved steadily southwards.

They stopped every hour to check the radiators,
have a word, or a mouthful of tea from Rose’s flasks and a walk behind a nearby hedge. After Drogheda, they made a longer break to eat some sandwiches. Sitting on a stone wall by the roadside, the sun warm on their shoulders, the sound of bees visiting the bright faces of dandelions all about them, they agreed it was very hard to imagine what had been happening in Dublin.

Beyond those few words they said little. Alex was well-used to Sam’s silence and today his own mind was so full of the extraordinary beauty of the countryside he was happy to be silent himself.

It was another hour beyond Drogheda before they were brought to a halt. Near the brow of a long, slow incline, a military vehicle was halted in the middle of the road. Even if they’d not been waved down by a soldier, there was no possibility of getting past.

‘Where are you from? What’s your destination?’ a young soldier demanded as he marched up to them.

Sam climbed down from his father’s motor. The soldier’s tone was hostile, but his posture led Sam to think he was less sure of himself than his manner suggested.

‘We’re from Banbridge, going to collect my sister and her children from Dublin,’ said Sam equably. ‘Are you having trouble with your vehicle? We might be able to give you a hand,’ he
added quietly, as he watched the lad try to decide what he was supposed to do with the answer he’d been given.

‘I’ll speak to my officer,’ he replied, clearly relieved at not having to deal with a situation for which he’d not been briefed.

Some minutes later, the officer approached, ran a sharp eye over the two gleaming motors parked carefully by the roadside and addressed Sam who was eyeing the lads who stared uneasily at the open engine of their vehicle. Clearly, they hadn’t the slightest idea what to do about it.

‘You have some mechanical knowledge?’ he said shortly.

‘Yes, sir, we do. Would you like us to take a look?’

‘Thank you,’ the officer said abruptly, as he turned to the soldier who had waved them down. ‘Stop any traffic there might be 100 yards away and keep an eye on these vehicles. I’ll send someone to help you.’

Sam and Alex walked over to the War Department lorry and nodded to the group of young men, one of whom was applying oil generously, if indiscriminately, to the moving parts. He looked from one uneasy face to another.

‘Who was driving her?’

‘Me … sir.’

Alex smiled to himself. The pale-faced lad was
so young he wasn’t sure how to address a man in his thirties, so he’d plumped for ‘Sir’.

‘Tell me now just what happened?’ said Sam encouragingly, as he ran his eye over the engine.

Alex saw his friend wrinkle his nostrils slightly and guessed what was coming next.

‘I was driving up the hill, sir, an’ I saw a sheep, so I slowed down. An’ then there was a whole crowd of them goin’ across in front of me an’ I had to put the brakes on. An’ when the road was clear, she wouden start. I tried and tried. An’ then my mate tried, but she wouden shift.’

‘Right. Now my friend an’ I’ll show ye what to do if this happens again, but it’s better avoided in the first place,’ began Sam quietly. ‘You let your revs drop on the hill, so she probably stalled before you even touched the brakes. Then ye flooded her. D’ye smell that smell? That’s the petrol evaporatin’. Wait an hour or so an’ she might clear, but there’s a quick way. Watch what we do an’ ye’ll know for again,’ he said helpfully, as he climbed up into the cab and nodded to Alex as he applied himself to the starting handle.

A few minutes later, the vehicle was ticking over nicely and the soldiers sitting by the roadside began to climb up into the back. The officer who’d been keeping an eye on the road south came over to them.

‘I’m afraid these lads have little training and no
experience,’ he explained. ‘The battalion is well below strength since Ypres,’ he added shortly. ‘Are you aware what conditions are like in Dublin?’

‘We have some idea, Sir.’

‘And you’re still set on going?’

‘We are,’ replied Sam quietly.

‘Well, I’ve no powers to detain you and I owe you my thanks,’ he said with a sharp nod, his eye moving to the lorry now loaded with men and ready to move. ‘I’ve probably not got much more information than you, but my last orders were to report to barracks avoiding St Stephen’s Green and The Royal College of Surgeons, if you know where those places are. It seems the rebels are still holding out there. At least they were last night.’

Sam nodded slowly.

‘Thank you very much, Sir. I appreciate that,’ he said, as the officer walked away and climbed up beside the driver in the vibrating vehicle.

Alex smiled to himself. It didn’t surprise him that Sam hadn’t told the officer the area he mentioned was precisely where they were going.

There were three more stops on the way. At the first, an officious young officer from the Irish Rifles questioned them separately, ordered his men to search both vehicles and interrogated them about the boxes of food and cans of petrol they were
carrying. Eventually, he waved them on when another vehicle came in sight.

In the city itself, they had to stop at a barricade. An officer from an English regiment apologised for the delay. As they waited, his men finished dismantling a collection of furniture, carts and tangled wire. Some snipers had occupied the nearby houses the previous day, the officer explained. They’d only recently been cleared out so that work could begin.

‘Unpleasant job,’ said Alex sympathetically, as he watched two men dragging a dead horse to the side of the road.

In the heat of the day, the smell was unpleasant, but the trail of blood was an even sharper reminder of what had happened in the last week.

Beyond that point, the smell of burning lay on the warm air. There were houses with smashed windows, some still barricaded. Others where maids in neat white aprons were sweeping up the broken glass.

As they approached the river, burnt out buildings became more frequent, but there were plenty of people about in the streets, and although the sound of artillery reached them from the other side of the city, the only rifle fire they heard was from much further west.

Alex followed close behind Sam, which was easy enough as there were few other vehicles
around. Occasionally he glimpsed a name he’d heard mentioned as Sam and John pored over a street map of Dublin the previous evening. They drove past an imposing building which he was sure must be Trinity College.

Soon after, they swung across a major thoroughfare and into a smaller street leading south. Coming towards them was a procession which took up the whole road. They pulled over and stopped just as the first figures came level with them, only a soldier’s width away.

Led by a small dapper man with thick, dark hair and a long moustache and a haughty looking woman wearing trousers, a band of men in uniform, their heads held high, marched past them, escorted closely on both sides by soldiers, row upon row, and disappeared in the direction of the quays.

Studying the faces of the young men and boys and the handful of women, one of them carrying a Red Cross flag, as they passed so close to him, Alex realised what he was seeing. These were the defeated rebels from one of the more tenaciously held strong points. Disarmed, they were now being escorted by the Army to await sentence.

As Alex followed Sam down Grafton Street and they turned left into Duke Street he didn’t know that their long journey from Ballydown was almost at an end. What neither he, nor Sam, knew was that just behind Michael Mallin and the Countess
Markievicz, they had both seen Sam’s cousin, Brendan Doherty, marching proudly with the remainder of the Citizen Army from their post at the College of Surgeons.

By Sunday morning, a whole day since Maureen had brought her the news of Uncle Sam’s absence, Sarah felt the hours had been even longer than any of the previous days they’d endured. She’d gone up to his room immediately and searched for a note or any possible explanation of where he might have gone. She found nothing except the tangled heap of clothes on the surface of his undisturbed bed.

Maureen followed her up.

‘Look, ma’am,’ she began anxiously. ‘All his good stuff is in the wardrobe. This is what he wears every day,’ she added, pointing to the familiar items, ‘but the things he kept here for when he did bits of jobs roun’ the house, that’s all gone.’

Sarah had to admit she was right. Earlier in the week, when Sam raked the fire and took out the ash, he’d worn an old pair of trousers and a brightly-checked shirt her mother had once said made him look like a lumberjack. Both shirt and trousers were gone. So was his oldest tweed jacket.

‘He must have taken clothes to someone,’ Maureen insisted, as Sarah stood staring down at the bed, wondering if there was a perfectly
reasonable explanation that had not occurred to her. ‘Ma’am, two of our brothers got out the night o’ the surrender when me Ma brought them clothes hidden under her shawl. They’d hid their guns an’ got through holes from one house to another and were back safe home in no time,’ she said, tears forming in her eyes.

‘Mister McGinley has been awful good to Lady Lily and to the both of us,’ she said now weeping loudly, ‘Sure she’d ’ave been put out o’ this house if it wasn’t for him payin’ all the bills. But he’d niver stay out at night. Something’s wrong, I know it is. How am I goin’ to tell her, ma’am?’ she ended, subsiding on the bed in floods of tears.

‘He might have been arrested by the military, Maureen,’ Sarah said steadily, anxious to check Maureen’s noisy sobs before they reached Helen or Hugh in their nearby rooms. ‘There
is
a curfew, so he was breaking the law being out at all.’

Maureen sniffed and looked unconvinced, her tear-stained face the picture of misery.

Just at that moment, Bridget opened the door.

‘Breakfast is ready, ma’am,’ she said briskly, as the welcome smell of bacon and toast wafted into the bedroom. ‘I’ve told Lady Lily that Mister McGinley must have gone out for the paper. There’s no point upsettin’ her till she’s had her breakfast,’ she said briskly.

After the limited nature of breakfast for the last
week, the meal should have been memorable. Not only was it tasty and plentiful but it was served in the usual way on a spotless linen cloth, with pretty china and silver chafing dishes on the sideboard.

Sarah forced herself to eat normally, but she would willingly have exchanged her well-filled plate for a single slice of smoky toast and Sam’s familiar presence. She did her best to sustain Bridget’s fiction till everyone had eaten well and he still had not reappeared.

In the end, she told them all as simply as she could that Uncle Sam had gone out last night and had not yet arrived back. She admitted it was worrying, but he might have had to take shelter if firing had broken out. As she spoke, there was still rifle fire from the direction of St Stephen’s Green and the heavy thump of field guns vibrated on the morning air, though that was to the south of the city.

Lily seemed quite unperturbed by the news. When Bridget came to clear the table, she seemed more concerned that Helen would now be able to paint a magnolia bud from the garden. If Lily was happy, then Helen was happy, for the two of them had become great friends. They went out to the garden together to choose a bloom for their morning’s work.

Sarah could see that Hugh was more upset than Helen, but he said nothing. Several times
during the week, he’d asked to be allowed to go and help Nevil Norway carry stretchers for the Red Cross. Sarah hadn’t the heart to say he was too lightly built for the job. Instead, she’d insisted she might need his help if they had to evacuate the Dawson Street house. She’d observed how Hugh listened to all that was said in the sitting room of the Royal Hibernian and always talked to Nevil on his rare appearances at lunch. Back at home, he pored over Lily’s elderly street plan of Dublin. She suspected that Hugh was probably as aware of the danger to his great-uncle as she was herself.

They went for lunch as usual on Saturday, telling their friend Mary Norway what had happened. Sarah considered going to visit the nearby hospitals in case Sam had been injured, but several residents of the hotel convinced her it was still too dangerous with cross-fire likely to occur almost anywhere as the Army continued to move against entrenched snipers.