She sighed as if she’d failed me but nodded her assent. “All right. I’ll have your purchases wrapped and boxed up while you finish dressing.”
26 October 1920
Black and Tans and Auxiliaries—forces pumped into Ireland from Great Britain—are everywhere, and they don’t seem to answer to anyone. Barbed wire and barricades, armoured vehicles, and soldiers with fixed bayonets patrolling the streets are all commonplace now. It’s quieter in Dromahair than in Dublin, but we still feel it here. All of Ireland is feeling it. In little Balbriggan, just last month, the Tans and the Auxies set half the town on fire. Homes, businesses, factories, and whole sections of town were burned to the ground. Crown forces said it was a reprisal for the death of two Tans, but the reprisals are always excessive and are always completely indiscriminate. They want to break us. So many of us are already broken.
This past April, the Mountjoy jail was full of Sinn Féin members whose only crime was political association. The political prisoners were mixed in among the regular criminals, and in protest of their incarceration, several of them began a hunger strike. In 1917, a political prisoner, a member of the IRB, went on strike and was force-fed. The brutal way in which he was “fed” cost him his life. As the crowds outside Mountjoy Prison grew, the national attention grew as well, until Prime Minister Lloyd George, still feeling the sting of worldwide outrage from the hunger strike of 1917, capitulated to their demands, gave the men prisoner-of-war status, and moved them to the hospital to recover. I was able to see them at the Mater Hospital in an official capacity, as a medical representative appointed by Lord French himself. I volunteered. The men were weak and thin, but it was a battle won, and they all knew it.
The Dáil, Ireland’s newly formed government made up of the elected leaders who refused to take their seats at Westminster, has been outlawed by the British administration. Mick and the other councilmembers—those who aren’t in jail—have continued to carry on in secret, establishing a working government and doing their best to create a system under which an independent Ireland can function. But local mayors, officials, and judges who work in a more public capacity can’t hide as easily as the Dáil officials can. One by one, they have been arrested or murdered. The lord mayor of Cork, Thomas MacCurtain, was shot in his house and his elected replacement, Terence MacSwiney, was arrested during a raid on Cork City Hall not too long after he took office. Mayor MacSwiney, along with the ten men he was arrested with, decided to go on a hunger strike to denounce the continued unlawful imprisonment of public officials. Their strike, just like the one in April, has attracted national attention. But not because it ended well. Terence MacSwiney died yesterday in England at a Brixton jail, seventy-four days after he began his hunger strike.
Every day it’s another terrible story, another unforgiveable event. The whole country is under immense strain, yet there is an odd hopefulness mixed with the fear. It’s as if all of Ireland is coming awake and our eyes are fixed on the same horizon.
T. S.
10
THE THREE BEGGARS
You that have wandered far and wide
Can ravel out what’s in my head.
Do men who least desire get most,
Or get the most who most desire?
—W. B. Yeats
Beatrice was waiting for me when I emerged from the dressing room, my hair a little disheveled. I was wearing one of the cotton dresses and a new hat that covered the worst of my hair. Beatrice left the brown kid pumps, as she called them, for me to wear out of the store as well, saving me from having to lace Anne’s boots by myself. Beatrice had taken Anne’s old brown suit, hat, and boots to be boxed with the rest of my purchases. I looked much better than I had when I arrived, but my side ached, and my head pounded from overexertion. I was glad the adventure was almost over.
Beatrice prattled on beside me, inquiring over my toilette. I told her I needed a shampoo for my hair and something to smooth the curl. She nodded as if shampoo was a known term. “I need products for my . . . menses?” It was the most old-fashioned word I knew to describe a woman’s period. But Beatrice nodded again, clearly understanding.