What the Wind Knows(80)
Emotion swelled in my chest. “Oh no,” I mourned.
“No?” she scoffed, but I could hear the emotion in her throat.
“Brigid, please don’t. I don’t want you to go.”
“Why?” Her voice sounded like a child’s, like Eoin’s, plaintive and disbelieving. “There is nothing for me here. My children are scattered. I am getting older. I am . . . alone. And I am not”—she stopped, searching for the right words—“needed anymore.”
I thought of the grave in Ballinagar, the one that bore her name in the years to come, and I pled with her gently. “Someday . . . someday your great-great-grandchildren will come here, to Dromahair, and they will walk up the hill behind the church where your children were baptized, where your children were married and laid to rest, and they will sit by the stones in Ballinagar that bear the Gallagher name, and they will know that this was your home, and because it was your home, it is theirs as well. That is what Ireland does. It calls her children home. If you don’t stay in Ireland, who will they come home to?”
Her lips had begun to tremble, and she raised her hand toward me. I took it. She didn’t pull me closer or seek my embrace, but the distance between us had been bridged. Her hand felt small and frail in my own, and I held it carefully, grief sitting heavy on my shoulders. Brigid was not an old woman, but her hand felt old, and I inwardly raged at time for taking her away—taking us all away—layer by layer.
“Thank you, Anne,” she whispered, and after a moment she released my hand. She walked to her room and softly shut the door behind her.
22 December 1921
The debates continued in the Dáil for hours on end, day after day. The press seems to be firmly on the side of the Treaty, but the early debates were closed to the public, against Mick’s wishes. He wants the people to know what the disagreements are, to know what is at stake and what is being argued. But he was overruled, at least in the beginning.
Public debates began on the afternoon of the nineteenth and recessed today for Christmas. Last year on Christmas Eve, Mick came within a hair’s breadth of being arrested. He got drunk and loud and careless, drawing too much attention, and we ended up crawling out a second-story window at Vaughan’s Hotel only seconds before the Auxies arrived. That’s what happens when you carry the weight of the world on your shoulders; sometimes you lose your head. And Mick lost his last year.
This year, getting arrested won’t be a problem, though I think he’d gladly exchange the troubles of the past for the troubles he’s now facing. He’s a man being torn in two, stretched between allegiance and responsibility, between practicality and patriotism, by people he would rather die for than fight with. His stomach is bothering him again. I rattled off the same instructions, the remedies and restrictions, but he brushed me off.
“I gave my official remarks today, Tommy. I didn’t say half the things I should have said, and what I did say wasn’t delivered well. Arthur (Griffith) said it was convincing, but he’s generous that way. He referred to me as the ‘man who won the war,’ but I might be the man who lost the country after today.”
Mick wanted me to ask Anne how she thought the vote would go in the end. I tucked her beneath my arm so she could share the receiver with me and speak into the transmitter on the upright, which I held clutched in my hand. I found myself immediately distracted by the smell of her hair and the feel of her pressed against me.
“Careful, Anne,” I whispered in her ear. I didn’t like that others could be listening, wondering at Mick’s interest in her opinions. Anne wisely told Mick she “believed” the pro-Treaty faction of the Dáil would prevail.
“The margin will be slim, Michael, but I’m confident it will pass,” she said.
He sighed so loudly that it rattled through the wires, and Anne and I both withdrew from the receiver to avoid the whistling static.
“If you’re confident, then I will try to be confident too,” Mick said. “Tell me this, Annie, if I come for Christmas, will you tell me another one of your stories? Perhaps Niamh and Oisín? I’d like to hear that one again. I’ll recite something too, something that’ll burn your ears and make you laugh, and we’ll make Tommy dance. Did you know Tommy can dance, Annie? If he loves like he dances, you’re a lucky lady.”
“Mick,” I chided, but Anne laughed. The sound was warm and rolling, and I kissed the side of her neck, unable to help myself, grateful that Mick was laughing too, his tension falling away for a moment.
Anne promised Mick if he came there would indeed be stories, food, rest, and dancing. She pinched me as she said dancing. I’d shown her my dancing skills one day in the rain. And then I kissed her senseless in the barn.
“Can I bring Joe O’Reilly?” Mick asked. “And maybe a man to watch my back so poor Joe can relax a bit?”
Anne assured him that he could bring anyone he liked, even Princess Mary. He laughed again, but he hesitated before signing off.
“Tommy, I appreciate this,” he murmured. “I would go home, but . . . you know Woodfield is gone. And I need to leave Dublin for a while.”
“I know, Mick. And how long have I been begging you to come?”
Last year, Mick didn’t dare go to Cork for Christmas. It would have been too easy for the Tans to watch his family and swoop in and arrest him. This year, he no longer had a home to go home to.