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.
Eight months ago, the Tans burned Woodfield, Mick’s childhood home, to the ground and threw his brother Johnny in jail. The Collins farm is now a burned-out husk, Johnny’s health has deteriorated, and the rest of the family is scattered across Clonakilty in County Cork. Mick carries that burden too.
Anne became very still at the mention of Cork and Mick’s home. When I hung up the receiver, her smile was bent and misshapen, though she tried her best to keep it in place. Her green eyes were shimmering like she wanted to cry but didn’t want me to see. She hurried from the room, muttering an excuse about bedtime and Eoin, and I let her go, but I see through her. I see through her now the way I saw through her on the lake, the day everything became clear.
There are things she isn’t telling me. She’s shielding me from the things she knows. I should insist that she tell me everything, just so I can help her carry the weight of what’s to come. But God help me, I don’t want to know.
T. S.
19
A NEEDLE’S EYE
All the stream that’s roaring by
Came out of a needle’s eye;
Things unborn, things that are gone,
From needle’s eye still goad it on.
—W. B. Yeats
Michael Collins and Joe O’Reilly arrived early on Christmas Eve with a bodyguard named Fergus in tow, and they took the three empty rooms in the west wing of the house. Thomas