Tipperary (64 page)

I settled within myself that it was an error. This was the usual Irish official inefficiency that we all love to howl about. Presumably the age of the DNA had confused the test. I telephoned my former pupil and thanked him and then engaged him in conversation. My nerves were still jangling, and I asked him casually what was needed for such a test. Then I thanked him again.

My mother's hairbrush sat in the untouched suitcase on top of my bedroom bookshelves. I went to the library, and on the Internet I found a company in England that does DNA tests for paternity and other legal or commercial reasons.

I telephoned. Yes, a clerk said, the hairbrush and its strands were fine. So I sent it off. By now I had long known that Charles's “History” had no such answers for me.

I was out in the fields with Harney in the early summer of 1921 when Mr. Collins came to us for the last time, and this time I saw a maturer man—a less excitable individual. He seemed to have aged since I'd first met him, in late 1916; given what he had been doing, a little of which I knew from Harney, the wonder is that his hair had not turned white. When I was a boy and my father told me tales of the intrigue preceding the Land Act, and the rebellions plotted by the bearded men in greatcoats who came to our house at night, he inclined to say that when “Ireland has her final revolution, Tipperary will be there at the finish.” I told Michael Collins this, and he replied that he regarded Tipperary as “the intellectual breeding-ground of this war we're fighting.” This explained his many journeys to the county.

His last visit to us took place a few days after a failed Flying Column operation. Harney had been detailed to lead seven men on Dundrum railway station and capture a general from the Dublin-to-Cork train. The general tried to escape and was accidentally shot dead by his own men; Harney escaped uninjured—except for his heart, which ached, he said, with guilt that he lived while his seven comrades-in-arms died. The failure sat heavily upon him; he'd fallen for a ruse of the general's, and he condemned himself gravely for it.

I knew of the operation beforehand, and even though wisdom after the event is an offense to the intelligence, I felt that the attempt should never have been made. The planning seemed lax—though Harney bears no responsibility; he merely carried out incompetent orders. Other than such inefficiency, and the sad losses of Harney's comrades at Dundrum Station, the war went well in our county. Mr. Collins told me of other major operations in which the Flying Columns succeeded against great numerical odds. He also hinted at diplomatic exercises.

“It seems that our timing may be proven right after all,” he said. “I think they're war-weary.”

He knew that Mr. Lloyd George, the Prime Minister, feared the funds flowing from the United States to the Irish republicans. Already a stream, they might become a torrent—and England had indeed lost its appetite for war.

SUNDAY, THE 12TH OF JUNE 1921.

I was born for dilemmas. My poor son—where is he left standing in all this? I must stop thinking of him as “my poor son.” He will be sixty-one at midsummer and I will be eighty-five. Why is it I feel younger? Another dilemma.

It doesn't compare with what's happened. April, now my friend of six years, lost her baby. But she will marry the father, little Noonan. What can Charles be thinking? And still he soldiers on. He is garlanded with praise every day for the work at the castle. Maybe that is what keeps him going.

I hope he doesn't hear the things I said to April. She asked me if she should marry little Noonan. I'm too old now to mind my p's and q's. So I said straight out—No. Marry Charles, I said. His feelings will guard you forever. But she didn't listen to me.

Wednesday, June the 15th 1921.

My dear April,

My plan has changed—I shall come on an earlier train, and we shall spend tomorrow night preparing your clothes—how exciting! But I must ask—do you feel strong enough to go into it? My dear, leaving you on Sunday, you looked so pale, and I kick at myself, I do, for having let you walk so far, so long when we could have sat. But I'm the servant, remember, the bride's maid, to do your every wish.

Dan understands the need for the minor key we're playing in, and he doesn't mind not being invited; he mislikes weddings anyway. But he sends you, he said, every good wish and he hopes for your happiness.

Until Thursday noon.

With affection,

Kitty.

It took four weeks for the results, and they charged me heftily—because I paid for three tests: the ancient lock of hair, my mother's hairbrush, and my own hair. The lab technicians must have puzzled over this one. They found no connection whatsoever between the two females. But they also connected me to the tresses found in the theater at Tipperary. If I had already been engaged with Charles O'Brien and his uneven (to say the least) April, now I was obsessed. I went back to my inspection of that teeming drama.

It was a beautiful day. The middle Friday in June. I drove the car. She asked me to, the night before, so I got the blood cleaned out of the seats. And as she walked toward me, she said, “Harney, d'you think—” And that was all.

She never finished the question. Mrs. Moore was standing at the other end of the Great Hall, not a lady I knew very well, but I knew enough about life to tell that she was very anxious. And that evening and next day she hovered over April, giving her all kinds of care and attention. Mind you, April had recovered well from the miscarriage—but she looked exhausted.

People have great natural tact—whether they know it or not. Nobody came out to look at us. We got April into the car out in front, and there was nobody on the terraces, and nobody in a doorway. I couldn't believe it.

You can guess what my fear was—that Charles would appear. If he did, there was no mistaking the fact that April was about to become a bride. No veil of course, being a widow—but she had a bouquet of flowers, and a hat.

Heavens above, did I look around! But—no Charles, no sign of him. I got them all into the car, and away we went. And then, just inside the gate, on a little hill from which you can peep through the trees, I saw him. He was standing there, watching us, just at the point where we had to slow up before going out on the road. He looked straight at me, and I at him. And when he turned his back, you never saw a man with a sadder pair of shoulders.

Well—if that was only the worst thing that happened that day. Because he was on the run, Dermot had arranged things very secretively. He got a priest in Cashel to perform the ceremony and to get over the problems of April not being a Catholic—he told the priest that she was taking instruction in order to convert. The priest was one of his men, anyway.

And then Dermot pulled his masterstroke. No church—too dangerous; anyone might see him going in there. And a bride would attract attention. At that time the Rock of Cashel was all but closed. You had to go up a dirty old lane to it, and nobody would see you, and Dermot knew—the legal brain—that the church on the Rock was still a consecrated church, and that people could legally marry there.

He hid nearby the night before, and we had arranged that I'd come in and tell him everything was clear. In the meantime, the two ladies would wear big coats to hide their finery, and they'd clamber up the lane and into the Rock area. The priest was to wait down the road until he saw us turn up the lane—it was all arranged like a guerrilla operation.

And it all went well. Dermot was there—he came out from his hiding-place and we headed for King Cormac's Chapel, one of the oldest holy places in the country. Now, he hadn't been in touch, and nobody had seen him since these arrangements were made weeks earlier. He asked me about the Dundrum fiasco—and then I told him about April, and her health, and what had happened to her.

He looked shocked and asked how she was. I told him everything about that terrible night in the castle. And I left him there, leaning against the wall, and went to get the two ladies. I was excited at being able to tell April that he was here, ready and waiting.

“Oh, Harney,” said she, “you've answered the question I was afraid to ask.”