What the Wind Knows(98)

16 April 1922

I’ve a head full of thoughts and little room to write them. This journal is full, and I have so much more to say and too much time till dawn. Anne bought me a new journal for my birthday, but it waits to be filled on my bedside table back at home.

I awoke in a cold sweat, alone in my bed. I hate Dublin without Anne. I hate Cork without Anne, Kerry without Anne, Galway without Anne, Wexford without Anne. I’ve discovered I’m not especially happy anywhere without Anne.

It was the rain that woke me. Dublin is caught in a deluge. It’s as though God is trying to douse the flames of our discontent. If there is to be a battle for the Four Courts, it won’t be right away. Mick says they will do their best to avoid it. I fear that his reluctance to engage the anti-Treaty wing will only embolden them. But he doesn’t need to know what I think. I wish I’d stayed at Garvagh Glebe. I would head back now, but the rain is insistent, the roads will be mud, and I’m better off to wait it out.

The sound of rushing water infiltrated my sleep, making me dream of the lough. I was pulling Anne from the water all over again. Like most dreams, it turned strange and disjointed, and Anne was suddenly gone, leaving me wet, my arms empty, her blood staining the bottom of my boat. Then I was crying and screaming, and my screaming became a wail. The wail came from an infant in my arms that was swaddled in Anne’s bloody blouse. The infant morphed into Eoin, clinging to me, cold and terrified, and I held him, singing to him the way I sometimes do.

“They can’t forget, they never will, the wind and waves remember Him still.”

Now I can’t get that song out of my head. Bloody rain. Fecking lough. I never thought I’d hate the lough, but I do. Tonight, I do. And I hate Dublin without Anne.

“Don’t go near the water, love,” I always whisper when we part. And Anne nods, her eyes knowing. This time I forgot to remind her. My head was filled with other things. With her. With thoughts of a child. Our child, growing inside her.

I wish the rain would stop. I need to go home.

T. S.





I pulled you from the water And kept you in my bed

A lost, forsaken daughter

Of a past that isn’t dead.

Somehow love from sweet obsession Branched and broke a heart of stone Distrust became confession

Solemn vows of blood and bone.

But in the wind, I hear the strain, Pilgrim soul that time has found, It moans to whisk you back again Bid me follow, sweetly drown.

Don’t go near the water, love.

Stay away from strand or sea.

You cannot walk on water, love;

The lough will take you far from me.





23





TILL TIME CATCH


Dear shadows, now you know it all,

All the folly of a fight

With a common wrong or right.

The innocent and the beautiful

Have no enemy but time;

Arise and bid me strike a match

And strike another till time catch.

—W. B. Yeats

I spent Sunday morning feeling peaked and tired, as though admitting my pregnancy to Thomas had freed me to act on my condition. Eoin woke with a chest cold, and I remained at home with him while Brigid and the O’Tooles attended Mass. The skies were overcast—a storm was brewing in the east—and Eoin and I climbed into Thomas’s big bed and read all the Eoin adventures, one by one, leaving Michael Collins’s tale for last. Eoin was very aware that he’d been appointed caretaker of Michael’s book, and he hardly breathed as we read, turning the pages gingerly so we wouldn’t crease or sully them with our use.

“We should write a story about us,” he suggested as I closed the last page.

“You, me, and Thomas?”

“Yes,” he murmured, yawning widely. He’d coughed through the night and clearly needed a nap. I pulled the blankets around his shoulders, and he snuggled down and closed his eyes.

“And what should we do? Where should we go?”

“I don’t care. Just as long as we’re together.” His sweetness brought a lump to my throat.

“I love you, Eoin.”

“I love you too,” he mumbled.

I watched as he drifted off, overcome with the need to gather him up and hold him close, to press kisses all over his little face, to tell him how happy he made me. But he was already snoring softly, his breath slightly labored by his cold. I settled for kissing his freckled forehead and brushing my cheek over his crimson hair.

I slipped from the room, pulling the door closed behind me, and made my way down the stairs. Brigid and the O’Tooles were back from Mass, and a light lunch was being prepared. I needed to get dressed and fix my hair; Robbie wanted to go to Sligo to see Arthur Griffith at Town Hall. Thomas had ordered him to be my shadow while he was gone, sleeping at Garvagh Glebe at night and leaving any duties that took him too far from the house to his brothers. We hadn’t seen or heard from Liam or Ben since Thomas had made his wishes known in December. It had been months without the slightest threat or incident, but Thomas had not relaxed his instructions. I knew Robbie wouldn’t go to the election meeting if I didn’t go with him. I wasn’t in the mood for people or politics, but I wouldn’t mind hearing Arthur Griffith speak again and hated for Robbie to miss the opportunity to hear a truly great man.