Pat was exhausted from shoving that wheelbarrow around the barracks yard, the barrow that held the body of young Malachy Quinn, a recent victim of the Black and Tans. Pat’s arms ached, and his shoulders were in agony; he longed for rest, but he knew he couldn’t stop, he was terrified. He thought of his wife and small children and hoped that Bridget would keep them safe and that he would survive the night.
The constables had taken Pat’s shoes, and the gravel under his feet was torture. The full moon was slanting its ghostly light over the yard, and a voice shouted in his ear, “keep moving there Paddy and have a good look at your mate in the barrow, that will be you tomorrow night if you don’t start talking soon!” The sight of young Malachy Quinn was enough to strike terror in anyone’s heart. His face was a pulpy mass with all distinguishing features lost, and, blood from his head had dripped down his shirt to meet the bullet hole in his chest. As the body lay crumpled in the wheelbarrow, Pat could clearly see where the soles of his feet had been cut to ribbons. The poor soul must have died in agony.
The terror Pat felt was mingled with sorrow for the poor young man, whom he had known as a strong and cheerful worker on McGinty’s farm and a fullback for the local hurling team. Then rage battled with the fear when he saw how this decent lad, his fellow countryman had been so abused and tortured by these ignorant yobs, whom he knew as the scum of the earth, the “Tans”.
Pat was a teacher in the village for several years now. He had read and written many a letter or message for people over that time, so he knew a lot of secrets and had a reputation as a man who “knew about things and people”. The Tans came for Pat at about seven that evening. He was in the kitchen with his sister Bridget. He was helping her prepare supper for the children, as his wife Alicia had taken to her bed as soon as she heard that the Black and Tans were in the village, and possibly headed their way.
They broke the little wooden gate on the way in, and Bridget could hear them shouting “Open up, or we’ll break down the door!” as they hammered with their rifle butts on the door. Everyone in the kitchen shook with fear, and then the youngest started bawling. Pat got up quickly and went to the door just as the wood splintered and gave way. Bridget picked up the crying child and tried to comfort him, muttering “God between us and all harm”, her usual aspiration in times of trouble. As soon as Pat opened the door, the soldiers grabbed him by the shoulders and hauled him through the doorway. He stumbled and almost fell, but the soldiers kept their grip on him and dragged him away through the broken gateway. He looked back over his shoulder and shouted to Bridget “get back inside Bridget and mind the children”. As he said it, he got a rifle butt on the forehead almost knocking him sideways.
Bridget was following close carrying the crying baby. She was plucking at the sleeve of one of the soldiers and crying in an increasingly desperate voice “let him go, let him go, he knows nothing!”
The soldier swatted her off as he would a fly, jeering “republican bitch, get off me!” Regaining his balance, Pat was pushed and shoved along the road towards the barracks, being prodded in the back intermittently by a rifle butt. He shouted again “Please, Bridget, just get back inside and mind the children”.
“Mind the children”, that was the endless refrain she heard night and day. She had come to help out when her brother Pat’s wife Alicia had her third child and just couldn’t cope. She felt reduced to unpaid servant status in the household, and all the healing and herb lore she had picked up from her mother was just wasted. Still, she loved her brother and was beside herself with fear as she watched him being marched away. To see Pat being so abused tore her heart. She took a deep breath to steady her nerves and slowly walked back inside, closing the damaged hall door behind her. With an air of calm authority, she was far from feeling, she persuaded the children to stop crying and to sit down and finish their supper.
She went upstairs to answer her sister-in-law Alicia’s summoning bell, muttering to herself, “that bloody bell will be the death of me yet!”
But when Bridget got upstairs, she found Alicia surprisingly calm on hearing the story. Now, Alicia had a funny way of dealing with crises, she took to her bed, and from there, she felt empowered to take control of situations and issue orders! She instructed Bridget to bring the children upstairs so that she could mind them and told her to see if she could get help from the neighbours to free Pat. Bridget looked at her gobsmacked, as she knew there wasn’t a ghost of a chance of persuading any neighbour to take on the Black and Tans! Still, she found herself agreeing to try!
Bridget sighed as she came downstairs after bringing the children to their mother’s bedroom. She could hear Alicia start the rosary, fingering the beads with manicured hands, and she thought to herself as she sat at the kitchen table that it would take more than a few decades of the rosary to sort this one out! But as she sat there, she slowly formulated her plan. She knew that the Tans got their beer from John Maloney’s pub and she knew that John Maloney had a few secrets of his own that he would like to stay secret, making John the most likely neighbour to lend a hand! She went to the pantry and found those henbane seeds she had lovingly harvested that summer for emergency use.
She carefully ground them and put them in a jar and grabbing a couple of sheets that had been drying on the hedge, headed down to Maloney’s pub, where she instructed John to fill the jar with the brew the soldiers normally ordered each evening. “What are you up to, Bridget, you know I’ll have nothing to do with any mischief”, he said. “Ask no questions, and you’ll be told no lies, right?” Bridget replied, “I’d hate if anyone were to ask me where you got your poteen, John”. He quickly filled the jar and offered to get one of his workers to carry it for her.
Little Padraig, who usually cleaned up at night, was volunteered for the job, and Bridget went along with him, advising him to do exactly as he would any other evening. “Right so, I just bring it into the office, put it on the counter, and collect a shilling for Mister Maloney”. “Grand, you do that, young Padraig, I’ll just leave you to get on with it”, as she turned and hid behind an old elder tree just outside the barrack wall. She remembered to touch and honour the elder tree, as her mother had taught her. From there, she watched as Padraig delivered the jug, and came out. The young lad kept his head down and avoided looking at Pat or the dead man in the wheelbarrow, and then ran off back to the pub as fast as his legs could carry him.
Bridget waited patiently until the soldiers started drinking, hoping that the henbane would soon take effect. The moon rose high in the sky and the constable guarding her brother changed places with one of the ones who had been drinking, and went inside to get himself a drink, the second constable poked Pat in the back with the butt of his rifle, and said: “you could join us, Paddy, if you talk!” She noticed he was quite unsteady on his feet.
Pat, with the wheelbarrow and his guard, slowly approached the wall where Bridget was hiding. She knew this was her chance. She covered herself with one of the sheets and started keening. With the help of the elder tree, she hauled herself up on the wall and was silhouetted against the full moon. When he saw her, the terrified constable dropped his gun and staggered back toward the barracks door, shouting “Help! Ghost!” He tripped, fell and lay on the ground.
Pat caught the second sheet which Bridget had thrown in his direction. He had recognized Bridget’s voice, so he wrapped it around himself , and was over the wall in a flash. The two of them raced back to the teacher’s house, shedding the sheets as they went. Inside the gate, they draped them over the hedge in the garden, where they had been earlier that day.
They sat in the kitchen to catch their breath and Bridget, still very much in charge, said: “You’ll have to clear out for a few days, Pat, go back to Father’s farm in Tubber for a while, I’ll send you word when things have settled down here”.
“I have to see Alicia before I go”.
“The children are in her room, if they see you we won’t be able to keep things quiet, I’ll go get your old boots, and you should be off as soon as possible, there is light to see the road and those soldiers won’t wake for hours”.
Pat agreed, and he set off. Bridget went back upstairs as Alicia was finishing up the prayers. She got the children ready for bed, assuring them that their father was alright and would be home soon. When they were settled, she went back to Alicia’s room and told her the story. “Thanks be to God and His Blessed Mother, I knew St. Joseph wouldn’t let me down!”
“Was that him in the sheet then?”
“Don’t be so impertinent, go boil a kettle and bring me up some tea”.
Bridget went down the stairs with a laugh, somehow her sister-in-law’s demands never wore her out so much as they had in the past. Bridget had become herself, and she never doubted her worth again. P.S. when Pat came home again, he brought with him a crocus bulb from his mother for Bridget, and said: “Mama told me to tell you to be sure and plant this, Bridget, she didn’t say why”.
Bridget just smiled to herself, knowing that she was the one to carry on an old family tradition.