What the Wind Knows(78)
“Jaysus,” he groaned. “As if I had the time. Thanks for the warning.”
We pulled up in front of the Dublin Mansion House, the headquarters for the Irish parliament. It was a handsome, rectangular edifice with stately windows marching across the pale exterior and lining either side of a canopied entrance. A crowd had formed. Men lined the wall to the left of the building and shimmied up the lampposts to get a better view. The place was teeming with the curious and the well connected.
Michael Collins put his hat firmly on his head and stepped out of the car. We watched the press swarm and the crowds cry out when he was spotted, but he didn’t slow and he didn’t smile as he crossed the cobbled courtyard toward the steps, several of his men falling in behind him, acting as bodyguards. I recognized Tom Cullen and Gearóid O’Sullivan from the wedding at the Gresham. They’d also been waiting at Dún Laoghaire and had followed closely behind us as we’d driven to the Mansion House. Joe O’Reilly waved at us before they were all swallowed up in the throng.
Michael Collins went back to London, and Thomas and I stayed in Dublin, knowing the delegation would be back soon. Mick returned on December 7; the poor man had been on a boat and a train more hours than he’d been off in the last week. He and the others were greeted by a press release in all the papers stating that President de Valera had called an emergency meeting of the full cabinet in “view of the nature of the proposed Treaty with Great Britain,” signaling to the people that peace was uncertain and the agreement they’d all just signed didn’t have his support. Like he had only days before, Mick arrived at Dún Laoghaire and stepped into another series of meetings—this time with a divided Irish government—no rest, no respite, no break.
After long arguments in closed session, and after the cabinet had voted four to three in support of uniting behind the Treaty, de Valera issued another statement to the press stating the terms of the Treaty conflicted with the wishes of the nation—a nation that hadn’t yet been consulted—and he could not recommend its acceptance. And that was only the beginning.
On December 8, Mick showed up on Thomas’s doorstep in Mountjoy Square looking lost and shell-shocked. Thomas urged him to come in, but he just stood there. He could hardly lift his head, as though he thought the recriminations made by de Valera and other members of the cabinet had spilled over and contaminated his reputation, even among his friends.
“I had a woman spit on me, Tommy, outside of Devlin’s Pub. She told me I’d betrayed my country. She said because of me, they died for nothing. Seán Mac Diarmada, Tom Clarke, James Connolly, and all the rest died for nothing. She said I betrayed them and everyone else when I signed the Treaty.”
I joined Thomas at the door and tried to get Michael to come inside, reassuring him that he’d done all he could, but he turned and collapsed on the top step instead. Darkness had already fallen, and the streetlamps were lit, but the night was cold. I brought a blanket and laid it across his shoulders, and Thomas and I sat on the steps beside him, holding a silent vigil over his broken heart. When he suddenly crumpled in exhaustion and distress, laying his head in his arms like a defeated child, we stayed with him. He didn’t ask me for answers or predictions. He didn’t want to know what came next or what he should do. He simply cried, his shoulders shaking and his back bowed. After a while, he wiped his eyes, rose wearily, and climbed on his bicycle.
Thomas followed him, begging him to come to Garvagh Glebe for Christmas if he couldn’t go home to Cork or to Garland to see Kitty. Michael thanked him quietly and nodded at me, making no promises. Then he rode off into the night, saying only that there was work to be done.
I awoke to screaming, and for a moment I was back in Manhattan, hearing the wail of police vehicles and ambulances, sounds commonplace to city life. The shadowy shapes in the room and the sounds of Garvagh Glebe brought me out of sleep’s haze and into awareness, and I jerked upright, heart pounding, limbs shaking. We’d arrived home from Dublin after supper, and Thomas had been immediately summoned to a sick patient. Eoin had been irritable, Brigid had been weary, and I’d put the boy to bed with a story and some bribery. Then I’d fallen into bed myself, worrying as I drifted off about Thomas and his never-ending schedule.
I stumbled out of my room and up the stairs to Eoin, identifying him as the source of the shrieking. Brigid met me in the hallway, and she hesitated, letting me take the lead.
Eoin was thrashing in his bed, his arms flailing, his face wet with tears.
“Eoin!” I said, sitting beside him. “Wake up! You’re having a bad dream.” He was stiff and hard to hold, his small body pressed and stretched between sleep and reality, and I shook him, saying his name, patting his icy cheeks. His whole body was cold. I began rubbing my hands briskly up his shivering limbs, trying to warm and wake him.
“He used to do this when he was very small,” Brigid fretted. “Most of the time, we couldn’t wake him. He would toss about, and Dr. Smith would just hold him until he settled.”
Eoin let out another blood-curdling cry, and Brigid stepped back, her hands over her ears.
“Eoin,” I urged. “Eoin, where are you? Can you hear me?”
His eyes fluttered open. “It’s dark,” he wailed.
“Turn on the lamp, Brigid. Please.”
She rushed to do as I asked.