The Rebels of Ireland (127 page)

 

It was only when young Ian Law had confronted him in his office on a January day in 1912, that Sheridan Smith began to realise that he, and many others, had made one, horrible mistake.

When the young man had turned up at the offices, the man at the door had wanted to throw him out.

“You can't just come in here and speak to Mr. Smith, you know,” he told him. “Does he know you? Have you an appointment?” If Sheridan hadn't happened to be passing down the hall at that moment and, witnessing the scene, been struck by the look of moral outrage upon the young man's face, no doubt Mr. Ian Law would have been summarily ejected. As it was, he brought him into his office and asked him courteously what was the matter.

The young man appeared to belong to the superior artisan class. He was a shipyard worker in Belfast. He had been visiting Dublin, where he had never been before, and had read the latest issue of the newspaper. In it he had read an editorial, a measured and reasonable piece in Sheridan's opinion, on the prospects for Home Rule. And he was outraged. He did not mean to be discourteous to Sheridan,
evidently. But he seemed astounded that Sheridan and his newspaper could even consider that Home Rule was a possibility.

“How can your newspaper suggest,” he demanded, “that we should give up every loyalty that we have? Am I to turn my face away from my King and from my God?” He said the words with such certainty and such pride that Sheridan was quite taken aback. “We remember the Battle of the Boyne,” the young man continued. “We remember Derry. Our ancestors fought and died for freedom. Yet your newspaper tells me to submit myself to popery? Never. I will never do such a thing. I don't know anyone who would.”

He was an honest young man. Sheridan could see that at once. No doubt he came from a hard-working Presbyterian family. His outrage was certainly real.

“I don't think that Irish Home Rule would affect the practice of your religion,” Sheridan pointed out. But young Mr. Law only looked at him with disgust.

“Home Rule is Rome rule,” he said bluntly. “We'll fight, I can promise you.” Having received no satisfaction, he left soon afterwards.

And as he pondered the conversation afterwards, it occurred to Sheridan that, though he couldn't of course agree with the young man's view of the world, Law had nonetheless administered a corrective to a long-held view of matters in Dublin.

The truth was, it seemed to Sheridan, that none of those who had wanted independence for Ireland had thought about Ulster very much. Daniel O'Connell had always cheerfully admitted that he scarcely knew the province. Even Parnell, Protestant though he was, had never had much interest in the northern province. After that, it was so fixed in everyone's minds that the Protestants were the oppressors in Ireland, and that once the English were gone, the island would be free, and nobody had troubled much about the fact that up in Ulster, the situation was entirely different.

After all, he thought, what was the Protestant Church in most of Ireland? The Ascendancy's Church of Ireland. Poorly attended,
with little enthusiasm, its churches slowly crumbling for lack of funds and interest, the Church of Ireland was a social institution, for the most part, serving a small, slowly degenerating minority of Cromwellian settlers and ancient landowners. Take away the Ascendancy, and the Protestants become a tiny, toothless minority which can safely be left alone.

But up in Ulster, you had a whole country where, though Catholics were numerous, Protestants were in a majority. And they were not just the gentry. Small farmers, shopkeepers, the large and skilled workforce, were mostly Protestant. Not only that, the Presbyterians who constituted the largest element were passionate about their faith. If, in Ireland's other three provinces, the Protestant ruling class had some secret fears or moral qualms about their legitimacy, nowadays, the Ulster Presbyterians had no such doubts at all. God had placed them there to build His kingdom. They were sure of it.

Yet even then, Sheridan had been shocked by the strength of the response. For when they saw that the independence legislation might actually go through the parliamentary system now, it was not only the Protestants of Ulster who were up in arms. Like their Scottish ancestors from three centuries before, they came together to pledge a Solemn League and Covenant. Led by Carson, an eloquent Unionist lawyer, and Craig, a Belfast millionaire, by the next year, they had formed a huge force of volunteers. The Ulster Volunteer Force had only wooden rifles, but they mounted impressive parades. Equally alarming, the leader of the British Tory party, himself of Ulster Protestant descent, not only supported them, but even hinted at the necessity of armed resistance. At the great military encampment of the Curragh, out in County Kildare, the officers of the British army let it be known that, if asked to enforce Irish independence upon the loyal Ulstermen, they would refuse to obey orders.

“To be frank with you,” an English journalist visiting the paper told him, “the British people feel a strong sympathy with the Ulster
Protestants for two reasons. Firstly, we in England have never lost our deep-rooted fear of Catholicism. Few Englishmen would tolerate the thought of being dominated by Catholics, and we can't see why the Protestants of Ulster should have to go that way either. But we also think that the Ulster Scots are people like us. They have industry and commerce, they have shipyards now, and linen manufacture. They're hard-working and industrial. Whereas the Irish are seen as another sort of people entirely—rural, lazy, disorganised. We actually believe them to be of a different race from the men in the north.”

“Did you know that originally, it was men from Ireland who went over and settled Scotland? The very name, ‘Scot,' in ancient times meant a person from Ireland. The Scots are actually Irish, you might say.”

“The English, I can assure you, are not aware of that. And you can't deny that the Protestants up in Ulster are very different.”

That he could not deny. By the spring of 1914, the Ulster Volunteers were shipping in quantities of arms.

Meanwhile, it seemed that the Protestants in the north were to be met with an equal response. An Irish Volunteer Force was being formed in answer. Soon, news came that they were getting arms shipped in as well. Was the country drifting towards some sort of Civil War? Sheridan did not know what might have happened had it not been for the intervention, just then, of a wider conflict that overshadowed everything else.

Down in Sarajevo, an Austrian archduke was assassinated, and suddenly the whole of Europe found itself at war.

It was a curious feature of the Great War that for many of those who loved Ireland, it came as a relief. The British government, anxious that nothing should distract from the war effort, promised that there should be independence for the island, to be deferred until the war was over. “Since nobody thinks the war can last more than a few months, nobody minds waiting,” Sheridan pointed out. As for Ulster, it was agreed that some special arrangement would have to be
made. What form that might take remained to be seen. But at least the threat of internal conflict had been shelved. Indeed, Redmond encouraged all those who had flocked to join the Irish Volunteers: “The British have promised us our freedom. Let us help them with their war effort, that our freedom may come all the sooner.” Tens of thousands of Irishmen, Protestants and Catholics alike, were joining the volunteer British army. “I find it heart-warming to see such friendship,” Sheridan Smith declared. The great conflict, therefore, brought him a certain lightening of the heart.

And in his own life, also, he entered a period of unexpected happiness. The cause was Caitlin.

Her interest in the stage, fortunately, had not developed into an obsession. If anything, it had aided in her schoolwork. Certainly the Dominican nuns in Eccles Street, where she went to school, were delighted with her. By the time she was sixteen, she had announced that when she finished school, she wanted to go to St. Mary's University to study modern languages. At the same time, she was developing not only into a beautiful young woman but into a thoughtful one as well. Late in 1914, after a short illness, old Maureen Smith had peacefully died, and Caitlin had helped to nurse her at the end. By the time she was seventeen, when her mother made a visit to England for a month, she had felt quite confident that she could leave Caitlin in charge of the house in Fitzwilliam Square. The servants were there to take care of her, of course, and Sheridan had looked in every day. “But the truth is,” her mother said, “she could do perfectly well without us.”

She had also joined the Daughters of Erin. Sheridan was not sure what he felt about this. When he questioned her about it, however, she had just laughed. “I teach Irish to illiterate children—which really means that I tell them stories,” she told him. No doubt this was true. But Sheridan had heard that some of the women in the organisation were involved in other activities that were more disturbing.

The labour movement had been growing rapidly in the last few years. The union had a big headquarters called Liberty Hall down on
the quays nowadays; a women's union had been started as well. And the movement had a new leader, too—a socialist firebrand called James Connolly. In 1913 Connolly had led a huge strike for improved conditions that had closed all sorts of businesses for weeks. Even staid old Jacobs Biscuits had been hit. Some of the Daughters of Erin had taken part in the strikes. They were getting involved with Sinn Fein and some other dubious organisations. “You take care who you become friendly with,” he had advised her. But she was a sensible girl; so he wasn't seriously worried. Meanwhile, he had had the joy of watching a marvellous child blossom, before his eyes, into a talented young woman. Even when her mother was there, he saw her every week. He delighted in her company.

It was in the summer of 1915 that he had taken Caitlin and her mother up into the Wicklow Mountains. Their purpose had been twofold: to visit the lovely old site of Glendalough and to see Rathconan. Rather surprisingly, the Count had never cared to go up to look at his ancestral estate when he was alive, and as a result, neither Caitlin nor her mother had ever been there. Caitlin, especially, had been eager to go. The visit to the old monastery and its two lakes had been a great success. But when they had come to Rathconan, Caitlin had been enraptured. Its eccentric owner had been in residence at the time, turban and all. Sheridan hadn't been too sure what sort of reception they'd get; but learning who they were, old Mrs. Budge had been quite happy to show them the place, without even giving them a lecture on the transmigration of souls. But when, at the end, Caitlin had exclaimed: “Oh, how I should like to live here,” the old lady had responded rather sharply: “The Budges will be staying at Rathconan long after I've gone; so there'll be no place for you. None at all.” And then, rather disconcertingly: “I shall be staying here, too,” she'd added. “I'm going to be a hawk, you know. I shall fly over the hills and eat mice.”

Sheridan had always heard that Rose Budge was the last of the family. But meeting his brother a few weeks later, he had asked about it, and Quinlan had informed him: “I had supposed so, too.
But it turns out that the grandfather had a younger brother who went to England many years ago. The old lady has a second cousin, a Budge, who has a son. They've never met, and the son doesn't even know it, but she's left him Rathconan.” He'd shaken his head. “She's full of surprises.”

“Did you know that she is going to return in her next life as a hawk?”

“Ah, now that,” said his brother, “doesn't surprise me in the least.”

The rest of that year had passed quietly. The war had dragged on—into what, to Sheridan, seemed like a terrible, bloody stalemate. But in Ireland, things seemed quiet enough. There were rumours of trouble, from time to time. Personally he tended to discount them. Caitlin's mother developed a bronchial condition over the New Year. Her doctor told her that she should go to a warmer climate for some weeks. The south of France was suggested. In March, therefore, she had departed, leaving Caitlin once again in the house in Fitzwilliam Square, under the general eye of Sheridan.

It was in the third week of April that Sheridan discovered Caitlin had been deceiving him.

He had been with her in the house at tea time. She had finished her schooling just before Christmas, and she was intending to begin at the university the following autumn. It had been suggested to her that she should travel, in the meantime, but she had insisted that she wished to remain in Dublin, and since she had involved herself with the theatre, this was understandable. At six o'clock in the evening, he had left her to walk home to Wellington Road. He had crossed the canal, and gone a little way when he realised that he had left his umbrella at the house, and so retraced his steps to Fitzwilliam Square. He had seen her from a hundred yards off, just as she was getting onto a bicycle in front of her house. She seemed to be in a hurry. He might have supposed that she was going to the theatre; but even in the dusk, he could see that she was not dressed for the theatre at all. She was wearing a green tweed uniform.

The uniform of Cumann na mBan.

The Irishwomen's Council: that was what the words meant. But what did they signify? The thing hadn't existed two years yet. It was another of the creations of Maud Gonne and her friends; but whatever you thought of Maud Gonne, you couldn't deny her genius for organisation. Cumann na mBan were certainly nationalist. But what did they actually do? Some people said that they practised nursing. Others that they were mixed in with far more sinister groups. She certainly should have told him about any such activity. He knew very well that her mother wouldn't approve. He would have to take steps. He almost hailed her on the spot, but then thought better of it. Whatever she was up to, she couldn't come to great harm at the moment. Why risk a confrontation with her now? He thought quickly. It was Easter week. There was to be a family gathering at his house on Easter Monday. Either then, of soon after, he would sit down with her and have a quiet talk. Moments later, he was retracing his steps home.