Danny Boy. Anne Bennett

       SEVEN

      Rosie was very troubled after the discovery of the arms in the disused cottage and Phelan’s reaction to it. She didn’t know how to treat Phelan after it either, but she was anxious for him and for how his activities would affect the family.

      The constant worry gnawing at her made her jumpy and it was noticed by both Connie and Danny. ‘What is it, pet?’ Danny would ask. ‘What are you fretting over?’

      How Rosie longed to tell her young husband, who was looking at her in such a concerned way, two deep furrows in his brow. She wanted to tell him everything, but mindful of Phelan’s warnings of secrecy, she knew everyone would be safer if she said nothing. She wouldn’t be able to bear it if she brought danger to the family that had welcomed her so warmly, and especially to Danny and wee Bernadette. And so she’d try to smile at Danny and say reassuringly, ‘Nothing’s the matter with me, Danny. I’m grand, so I am.’

      But Danny knew she wasn’t. ‘Has she spoken to you at all?’ he demanded of his mother one day as Rosie disappeared with a basket of damp washing to hang in the orchard.

      ‘Not at all,’ Connie told him. ‘She’s not been the same since the day wee Dermot came flying up to the place in a state of great excitement, to show them a badgers’ sett of all things. ‘Maybe,’ she went on, ‘she’s worried for the child, for he’s not been near the place since. Geraldine told her he’s nearly a prisoner on the farm and he’s been forbidden to come here as a punishment, because that day he set off without telling anyone where he was going, or asking if he might. Maybe that bothers Rosie, because for all Dermot is a spoiled wee scut, she’s powerfully fond of him.’

      ‘I don’t know,’ Danny said, running his hands through his hair. ‘She’s different somehow, though.’

      Connie knew she was but she’d not been able to get to the bottom of it either. ‘Could be just the weather, son. Dear God it could put years on you, the constant rain and the leaden skies. I know it’s stopped for now, but not for long by the look of it. Those clothes Rosie is putting out will gain nothing, for the very air is damp and she’ll be fetching them in again shortly.’

      Danny grimaced and shook his head. He knew it was more than that. Rosie never laughed any more, and the rare smiles she gave never touched her eyes. Then there was the way she behaved with Phelan. She never seemed to have anything to say to him now, yet once the pair of them had been as thick as thieves. It bothered him that she’d tell him nothing and claim everything was fine, when it so obviously wasn’t. He was her friend, surely, as well as her husband? There shouldn’t be secrets between them.

      

      ‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned, it is a fortnight since my last confession,’ Rosie mumbled in the small box in the dimly lit, cold church. It was the evening of Good Friday and all the family, indeed most of the church, would, after attending the ‘Stations of the Cross’, make a good confession that day.

      And Rosie had more to confess than most, for she’d decided to unburden herself to the priest about the weapons, safe in the knowledge he could repeat none of it.

      So, after the litany of usual sins, Father McNally enquired, ‘Is there anything else, my child?’

      He knew there was. Years of hearing confessions had sharpened his awareness in listening to people and he knew there was more Rosie Walsh, whose voice he so clearly recognised, wanted to tell him. Rosie, although aware of the rows of people waiting outside the confessional box, knew that if she didn’t tell another person about this whole business she’d burst, and so she replied, ‘Yes, Father. It’s not something I’ve done wrong, you understand.’

      ‘Go on.’

      ‘I found something, Father. In fact it was my young brother who found it and brought me to see it. It was a cottage, an old disused place. Only it had been done up, made watertight. I wondered at that, for no-one owns it. It’s been derelict for years.’ Rosie stopped and the priest urged her on.

      Rosie swallowed. ‘The floor is covered with a rush mat. There is a hidey-hole under it, cut into the floor and covered with a sod of turf that can be lifted out.’

      The priest’s blood ran suddenly as cold as ice. He knew what kind of thing might be hidden in such a way in an empty, disused house. Hadn’t he had mothers weeping in the confessional before today about the menfolk in their lives, who they feared had got mixed up in subversive activities? Indeed, he’d had young men too, who asked for his blessing in their quest to free Ireland from British tyranny. He’d not been able to do that, of course, but he wasn’t surprised when Rosie went on in a whisper to tell him what she had found that day and Phelan’s reaction to it.

      ‘I think my brother-in-law is mixed up in this Irish Republican Brotherhood, Father,’ Rosie told the priest, ‘and he said these are desperate times and the organization is run by desperate men and I wasn’t to tell a soul what I’d seen.’

      Father McNally didn’t know how to advise the girl. ‘Are you worried about your brother-in-law? What he might do?’

      ‘Aye, Father.’

      ‘Can you not discuss it with your husband?’

      ‘God, no, Father,’ Rosie cried. ‘The minute I mention a word of this to him, we’d all be in danger.’

      ‘What would you have me do, child?’

      ‘There’s nothing you can do, I don’t think,’ Rosie said. ‘I just had to tell someone.’

      ‘All I can do then is pray for you all.’

      ‘Aye, Father,’ Rosie said. ‘That never comes amiss, at any rate.’

      The priest sighed. Ireland seemed poised on the brink of something and in Europe soldiers were being massacred in their thousands, and all the prayers in the world seemed unable to stop any of it. But this was no way for a priest to think, he chided himself. Didn’t he preach that prayers could move mountains?

      ‘Try not to worry too much,’ the priest told Rosie. ‘I know you might think that’s easy for me to say but really there is nothing you can do, unless you can talk to your brother-in-law and make him see sense.’

      Rosie knew that wasn’t an option. Phelan now avoided speaking to her so obviously that even Danny had noticed and had asked if they’d had a fall-out. God, if only it had been just that. She doubted that even if she did manage to talk to him she could make him change course.

      ‘Say a decade of the rosary for your penance,’ the priest said, jerking Rosie back to the present. ‘And now make a good act of contrition.’

      Rosie said the familiar prayer and then, leaving the confessional box, she headed for the side altar where she prayed earnestly for Phelan. She said not one decade of the rosary but three, playing the beads through her fingers. She lit a candle for good measure and left the church feeling she’d done all she could, yet somehow knowing it wasn’t going to be enough.

      

      Much later that same night, Dermot heard footsteps outside his bedroom window. Since his talk with Phelan he’d slept lighter than usual and now the sound of boots on the cobbles woke him with a jolt and he was out of bed and across the room in a flash.

      Phelan was outside the window, which had been left slightly open just as Dermot had promised it would be. Dermot pushed it wide and Phelan put a warning finger to his lips. He had the letter ready. ‘The Brotherhood are off tomorrow evening,’ he said.

      ‘Ooh, Phelan,’ Dermot said in an awed whisper. ‘Where are you making for?’

      ‘Dublin,’ Phelan said and bit his lip in annoyance. He hadn’t intended to tell anyone. ‘I can’t tell you any more and it’s really best that you don’t know, then you can’t tell, whatever pressure is applied.’