‘Even so…’ Danny put in.

  ‘Even so, even so,’ Shay mocked. ‘Don’t be so mealymouthed, Danny. Now, with England’s forces and energies directed at Germany and the rest of Europe, now is the time to take up arms and fight for independence.’

  No-one noticed Rosie in the doorway, the men were sideways on to her and before them were Phelan and Niall – Shay’s young brother. The two lads were looking into Sam’s and Shay’s faces, hanging on their every word.

  ‘What we want to know, Danny, is are you for us, or against us?’ Shay demanded. ‘There is no middle way here. When the call comes for Ireland’s freedom, will you answer that call?’

  Rosie pushed the door to before she heard Danny’s reply, but not before she saw the patriotic zeal burning in both of the young boys’ eyes. She returned to the bed a worried woman.

  Everything settled down after the christening and Rosie told herself, whatever Sarah said, it had been the beer talking with the men that night. Shay had always been a hothead, but it was just talk, surely to God. She mentioned the reactions of Phelan and Niall to Danny, but he told her not to fret. ‘They’re but boys,’ he said, ‘not long out of the schoolroom altogether and boys that age love looking up to someone, having someone to admire.’

  ‘So you don’t think it’s anything to worry about?’

  ‘No,’ Danny said. ‘But best not say a word to Mammy anyway.’

  It wasn’t long after this that Phelan began arguing with his parents. It was mainly because he wanted to go out at night and didn’t always want to say where he went or what time he would be back. Danny told his parents to go easy on him. ‘He works hard enough through the day and this is his leisure time,’ he told them. ‘It’s a stab at independence, I mind I was the same at his age.’

  ‘You never went far,’ Connie said.

  ‘Well, how far can Phelan get in the two or three hours he’s out? He’s probably at a neighbour’s house. He can’t go much further away, I mean, no harm will come to him.’

  Danny saw no cause for concern and Rosie, who did, told herself she was making a mountain out of a molehill. The nights were still light enough through August and what could be nicer than walking the hills and dales of Wicklow on a balmy summer’s evening?

  By the end of August it was the harvest, and that meant all hands to the pump. There was little time to blow one’s nose, never mind go out for a wee stroll, and Phelan was as tired as the rest at the day’s end and just as anxious to lie in his bed as his elder brother and father.

  With the harvest safely in, there was the bog turf to cut and stockpile for the winter. Matt kept his youngest son hard at it beside him, mending fences, whitewashing the cottage and barn, repairing thin areas of the thatch, and any other jobs he could think of.

  If Matt was hoping to tire Phelan out by his actions, he was mistaken, for Phelan was toughened by his work on the farm and as the nights drew in he began once more to spend many of his evenings away from the cottage. Connie often wondered where he found to go – if it was just to a neighbour’s house, as Danny thought, then why couldn’t he say so?

  Rosie felt sorry for the lad in many ways. The two had got on well from the first and he was enchanted with Bernadette. It was Rosie he often sought out to talk to. She didn’t talk to him about the disagreements he had with his parents, she had no need to, and so he opened up to her. ‘They want to own me body and soul,’ he complained.

  ‘They’re concerned, Phelan.’

  ‘They think I’m a wean.’

  ‘No,’ Rosie said. ‘They know the age of you. It’s a habit you get into as a parent. See, wee Bernadette is just a baby, and I do everything for her, change her, feed her. Later I’ll hold her hand as she walks, pick her up if she falls and wipe the tears from her eyes. I’ll get her ready for school, buy her copy books and a school bag and fix her dinner.

  ‘And through it all, I’ll be there, caring for her, loving her, being the person to lean on. All that care and love cannot be turned off, like water from a tap. As you grow up, parents must adjust and sometimes it’s not so easy. Maybe if you talked more about what you’re doing, and who you’re meeting, it would make it better for them.’

  Phelan’s reply lent an icy chill to Rosie’s spine. ‘If Mammy knew the half of what I do some nights, she’d worry herself into an early grave,’ he said.

  ‘Phelan, for God’s sake, don’t do anything silly.’

  ‘A man has to do what he believes in, even our Danny said that,’ Phelan told her with a hint of pride.

  ‘But you’re just…’ Rosie stopped herself in time from calling him a child. He would have really turned against her if she had. But to her he was, the lad was barely shaving yet. ‘You’re so young yet,’ she went on. ‘Things often look different as you grow up.’

  ‘I’ll never feel any different,’ Phelan promised, ‘not about this.’

  Rosie felt helpless then and Phelan said, ‘No-one in the house knows of this but you. Promise me you’ll not tell on me?’

  ‘Not even Danny?’

  ‘Especially not Danny.’

  That made Rosie uncomfortable, and she wondered later if she should have made that promise. But what had Phelan really told her? Nothing concrete, nothing she could go running to Danny about. What he’d said could mean anything or nothing. Maybe it was just a boy’s bravado.

  In the end, she sought out Sarah – she thought Sam might know something and maybe talked to Sarah about it. ‘I wonder what those two rapscallions Phelan and Niall get up to going out in the black night,’ Rosie said casually to her one day. ‘Up to mischief, no doubt. Does Sam ever talk about it?’

  ‘No, never,’ Sarah said. ‘Sam can be as tight as a clam about some things. He reminds me of a wee boy at times. I mind Danny and his friends had secret societies when they were young and sent coded letters to each other and had passwords to go into what they called the clubhouse. It was nothing more than a dilapidated old shepherd’s hut, just off the track up the hillside. It’s probably dropped to bits entirely now. The times I crept up there with Elizabeth and tried to listen in. I didn’t think it was so grand looking even then, and Danny was furious with us of course.’

  ‘So, Sam is in a secret society then?’ Rosie joked. Maybe there was some truth in that – she knew the Irish Republican Brotherhood was a secret organisation. Even the name of it was spoken in whispers and no-one knew exactly who was in it, but its objective was to obtain Home Rule for all of Ireland, Ulster included. It was said in homes about the place, for it was never discussed abroad, that it had grown out of the organisation called the Irish Volunteer Group and they had guns and ammunition.

  ‘I don’t know what Sam is involved in, probably nothing,’ Sarah said. ‘And what’s more, I’m not going to worry about it. I think he is just concerned about the injured men from the war and feels England were wrong to drag Irish men into a struggle that isn’t theirs. To an extent, he has a point, and I can feel as incensed as he can over the loss of life. But sure, Sam’s all talk,’ Sarah went on. ‘Wind and water, Mammy calls him, and she’s not far wrong.’

  It was hardly reassuring, but Rosie told herself whatever Sam was into, it couldn’t affect Phelan and Niall. Dear God, they were barely fourteen. No society, organisation or whatever would use boys, surely to God?

  She resolved to put it from her mind. She had plenty to occupy herself and plenty in her life to be happy about, especially Danny and their darling baby.

  On Saturdays, Chrissie would come over, and sometimes even Geraldine was allowed to come with her. They usually brought Dermot too, for his temper if Minnie tried to stop him was tremendous, Chrissie told Rosie. ‘Course he’s never been told no all the days of his life, so it’s hard for him to take.’

  Rosie knew that, yet Dermot couldn’t be faulted in his love for Bernadette and she remembered on her weekly visit home how he galloped from school in an effort to reach the farmhouse before Rosie left. He seldom made it as the nights began to draw in and Geraldine told her he would cry broken-heartedly if she’d left before he arrived.

  As the baby grew, so that Rosie wasn’t feeding her every few minutes, Connie would insist that Rosie take a trip to town with her sisters as she had before. Someone had to go in once a week anyway to sell their surplus and collect supplies for the house, but after Rosie had the baby, Sarah or Elizabeth would usually do this. Connie seldom left the farm, often saying her gallivanting days were over.

  Rosie and her sisters enjoyed the jaunts in on the cart. Even if they bought little, they met friends and exchanged news and gossip. And, as Christmas approached, Rosie was glad of the opportunity to buy some wee presents for the family.

  This Christmas would be the first with a baby in the house, and Rosie couldn’t help feeling excited about it. Bernadette was a happy and contented child, now struggling to sit up. She had a smile for everyone and would lie for some time in her cradle, babbling to herself rather than crying. Rosie told herself she was truly well blessed.

  SIX

  By March 1916 it was obvious, and not only to the people in the Walsh household, that something strange was afoot in the country. Women standing around the church doors after Mass talked of their sons and husbands and brothers in whispers. Eventually, Father McNally condemned all secret societies planning subversive activities. He said from the pulpit they were evil and against God. He even read out a letter from the Bishop in the same vein, but personally Rosie felt that it would make little difference.

  She was tired. God, they were all tired. The lambing had been difficult that year and a few of the ewes, especially those who’d begun to lamb too early before the snow had cleared in February, had died giving birth. More than once, Rosie had found an orphaned lamb in a box before the fire that she’d have to feed with a bottle.

  Bernadette, now crawling, loved the baby lambs and took more interest in them than the rag doll Connie had bought her for Christmas, or the rocking horse Danny had made for her.

  Once the lambing was over, the spring planting began, and Danny, Phelan and Matt were out most of the daylight hours and Phelan’s evening jaunts were severely curtailed. Yet, Rosie sensed a tension in the air she’d never felt before.

  She’d tried a few times to talk to Phelan again, but he’d always managed to avoid being alone with her. Maybe, she thought, he regretted saying so much to her in the first place. It could have been that, but just as easily it could be the reticence of a boy on the verge of manhood, unsure and a bit nervous of the changes he would be starting to notice in his body. His voice had definitely changed. He’d gone through the embarrassing squeaks and gruffness and the times he’d begun to speak in a high voice and it had dropped an octave, or vice versa, but now it had settled down to a level that marked his childhood as being almost over.

  Then, one beautiful mid-April day, there came a pounding on Connie’s door. Few people knocked on the door and Rosie, coming from the room where she’d just laid the baby down for a nap, glanced quickly at Connie who was stirring a pot above the fire. She left off and crossed the room.

  Dermot almost fell in the door as she opened it. His face was scarlet, his breath coming in short gasps as he struggled for air. It was obvious he’d been running for some time and fear clutched at Rosie. ‘What is it? What’s happened? Is it Mammy?’

  ‘No. No,’ Dermot spluttered between gulps of air. ‘It’s nobody. Nothing like that.’

  ‘Then what…?’

  ‘You must come, Rosie,’ he said, pulling at her skirts. ‘You must come and see.’ He was jumping from one foot to the other in agitation.

  ‘See what?’

  His eyes slithered over to Connie and he muttered, ‘I can’t tell you. You must come.’

  Connie was amused. ‘Go on with the child. See what is so important,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry about the baby, I’ll see to her if she should wake.’

  Rosie only waited to grab her shawl from the room before taking Dermot’s hand. She was grateful for the shawl Connie had given her for Christmas in these chilly spring months. It was of the softest wool, not thick but warm despite that, and it was a deep russet colour. ‘Coats are all very well,’ Connie had told her on the quiet, ‘for Mass and all, and it sets you apart, but a shawl is much easier for carrying a baby or a small wean.’

  And how right she was, Rosie thought. Her arms were nearly pulled from their sockets carrying her child to her mother’s and she’d thought she would have to leave her behind soon and make her visits briefer until Bernadette was able to walk the distance. But with a shawl she could have her on her back, the shawl around the both of them and tied securely at the front to keep Bernadette safe.

  Now she wrapped her shawl around her as she followed Dermot. She had no idea where she was being taken. ‘Why aren’t you at school, anyway?’ she asked her little brother as he led her around the edge of the fields.

  ‘It’s holidays,’ Dermot told her indignantly. ‘For Easter. We broke up yesterday.’

  ‘Oh, right. Well, where are you taking me then?’

  ‘I’m not saying. You have to see it for yourself.’

  Phelan, digging over one of the fields, watched the progress of the two with narrowed eyes. He wondered what had brought Dermot pell-mell to the cottage door and where he was taking Rosie, for it was obvious from the direction they were going in he was not making for his own place. Dermot had never come to the farm before without at least acknowledging Phelan and usually tagged along beside him. That morning Dermot had seemed preoccupied with something else and hadn’t even seen Phelan’s hand lifted in greeting. Something was up and prickles of alarm ran down Phelan’s spine.

  He lifted his head. His father and Danny were over planting in another field behind the tall hedge and Phelan threw his spade down with such force it sliced into the moist earth, and he set off to follow Rosie and Dermot.

  They toiled up the hillside, too breathless to speak much, and suddenly Rosie guessed where they were heading. Somehow, Dermot had found Danny’s secret hideaway, the one Danny had told her about, the one Sarah had recently mentioned. She wondered if he’d left treasures behind, things a young boy would value, and that was what had excited Dermot.

  And yet, she recalled it hadn’t been delight on Dermot’s face when he’d hammered on the door. There had been something else there…Trepidation. Even fear.

  She turned to ask him but he’d already stopped. ‘It’s in there,’ he said, pointing. Rosie looked at him. Where Dermot was pointing was an impregnable wall of brambles and bushes. ‘We can’t go through that,’ she protested.

  ‘Aye we can,’ Dermot assured her. ‘Look.’

  He held back a bush expertly and exposed a hole that had been hacked between the greenery with the bushes left at the front of hide it, which they did effectively. ‘I found this when I was bringing the sheep down with Daddy a few days ago,’ Dermot said. ‘One of them got stuck in there, its horns caught around the bramble bushes, and Daddy was miles away. Took me ages to free the sheep and pulling at it like that, I saw the hole. I didn’t tell Daddy or anyone, but I thought as soon as school finished I would come up here and explore.’

  ‘And what did you find?’

  ‘You’ll soon see.’

  Rosie looked at the uninviting hole, dim because little light penetrated through the canopy that would be above her head and so low that she would be bent nearly double. She had no desire to go in there. Hadn’t this gone far enough? Dermot was too used to grown-ups giving in to him. She’d left in the middle of a busy morning to come traversing the hillside on the mere whim of a child.

  ‘Look, Dermot,’ she said. ‘I can’t do this. I must go back.’

  ‘Oh no!’ Dermot cried and Rosie saw actual tears in his eyes. ‘You must come. You must see…I can’t tell anyone else.’

  ‘Oh, Dermot.’

  ‘Please?’ he pleaded. ‘I’ll hold the bushes for you.’

  Rosie gave a sigh and decided she really must find out what had affected her young brother. Bending low, she entered the tunnel. Dermot slipped in behind her and the bushes fell into place with a rustle.

  Now it was darker than ever, for the canopy above them successfully hid them from the sun. Unseen branches tugged at Rosie’s hair, scratched at her face and snagged at her shawl. Time and again she had to stop to disentangle herself and Dermot would often cannon into the back of her. She was glad of her stout everyday boots that protected her feet from what was underfoot, though she stumbled many a time.

  It was impossible to talk and so even when Rosie saw the undergrowth thinning and the dappled light shining between the trees, she made no comment.

  Then, suddenly, they were in a clearing. Someone had taken the trouble to cut down the bushes surrounding the cottage. Danny had told her the place had originally been used by shepherds years before, and had been nearly falling down when Danny had used it.

  Because of that, Rosie had expected to see a ruin, but this cottage was no ruin. It had new walls built up and was recently whitewashed, the rotting thatch that had obviously been on the roof was lying in a heap to the side of it and had been replaced by new. Even the door seemed new.

  ‘Is this what you had to show me?’ Rosie asked.

  Dermot shook his head. ‘Not the cottage alone,’ he said. ‘Come on.’

  As they approached the place, Rosie noticed the solitary window was so begrimed with dirt that she doubted much light reached the cottage through it, but the door opened without even a creak. Rosie stood in the doorway and surveyed the place. Someone had been here and not long ago either, for peat embers lay in the grate and the place didn’t smell of dust or decay or damp, it smelled of cigarettes and paraffin. She saw two lamps either side of the mantelshelf, a box of matches between them.

  The floor was packed-down mud, covered over by a large hessian rug. She crossed the room, leaving the door ajar, and lit one of the lamps for extra light. Dermot’s eyes were dancing with excitement.