PART  I

Clifden, 1922

It is very nice if you are poor and not humble... to bring your enemies down to utter destruction, while you yourself rise up to grandeur.

DH Lawrence

Chapter I

Beyond the Twelve Bens on the westernmost stretch of the Sky Road lay the Ballyconree Protestant Orphanage. It was a large property, wherein the elaborate hearths and cornices clung on like huge frozen tears mourned for the Hunger, blighted crops, sickened and starved bodies. Nobody remembered the former inhabitants because they had long fled, their dust untouched until this house had become a container for unwanted Protestant boys.

One June morning along a seaward track some bigger orphans chased after Thomas Regan, “Papist!” they roared on account of his name. His chest fit to burst, Thomas turned a bend and here was a ditch – for a flying second he was lighter than a bird before he smashed down in the mud, surely invisible if he held his breath.

The thumps of Hibbert’s and Murray’s boots pelting the track came closer, “Granddaddy Regan jumped for soup!” they bayed, but passed without seeing him.

The gulls in the air screamed scorn at Thomas for running away, they didn’t know that laughter was the fanfare for Hibbert’s fists – and this would not stop until the tormentor-in-chief turned eighteen and left, for King George’s army in all likelihood. Thomas flinched at the raindrop breaking on his chin and the grey sky loomed with plenty more. The pain in his lungs eased so he sat up, with a mind to go back before the clouds fell on him. An instant later, he heard footfalls, so pressed himself deeper into the ditch.

God make them go away, he had no idea why the older boys singled him out while the likes of O’Hanlon and McGrath were left in peace – simpler to understand was why boys with proper Protestant names wore them so smugly, their granddaddies true servants of the Empire dishing out the soup to fickle Papists – though how much any orphan truly knew about their Grandaddies, papists or otherwise, was another thing altogether. Burke now, hadn’t he an even worse papist name but then Burke was a senior patrol leader and the biggest boy of all. Funny, Thomas hadn’t known the spelling until the IRA or somebody pretending to be them – though definitely not Thomas – had chalked: “Michael Burke your time has come” on the orphanage door yesterday and –  

CLACK-K-k-k – the noise was sharper than thunder. The sky trembled then went still.

The sides of this ditch were studded with toffee or grey coloured pebbles, a worm wiggled out from the soil and burrowed back in as the silence strained then fractured with a toppling noise: heaviness falling on the track. Running feet again, a flash of mustardy-yellow socks leaping over Thomas’ head then a man fought through the gorse and vaulted over the wall.

“No wandering outside,” so the Orphanage Master had declared after that chalk on the door, what with the Four Courts invasion on the other side of the country and the hoards of raggedy men, irregular Sinn Féiners, it was said, piling into the Work House and the Barracks on Clifden Main Street. Well, if a boy was blamed for that chalk message and chased, what choice did he have?

There was a raspy cry like that trapped fox in the woods last month, yet this voice was human. Now it groaned.

Inch by inch Thomas raised himself. A pair of eyes, immobile, stared at him. A stranger, not long a man, lay on the track close by. Dark hair stuck damply on the forehead and the mouth gaped in mid-bite at the ground. Over the pale shirt a stealthy red patch grew.

The breath left Thomas as he sank into the ditch once more. He remembered how, aged eight, he’d held a breadknife to his throat and sawed… how the air had stung the deepening graze, how he’d stopped without knowing why, how the scar barely showed any more. This dead stranger up on the track was as human as himself and that pain – obviously from a bullet – could not be imagined. The mud creeling through Thomas’ shorts was suddenly watery and the stench of his own piddle laid into his nostrils. The man in yellow socks might have gone, and slipping back into the Orphanage unnoticed would take a miracle but Hibbert was still out there… Thomas climbed out of the ditch and ran through the drizzle. If he made it back in one piece, stinker piddle-pants would be added to the list of vile names and that’d be just the half of it. The story of the dead stranger wouldn’t need repeating to anyone, was it not fearful enough to skulk at the side door with piss-mud plastered over his shorts – and that newly killed gaze fixed on his back.

# 

Two evenings later, a battering hit the Orphanage front door and echoed along the white corridor walls to reach the refectory where among the lines of boys and bowls sat Thomas, sucking at the jagged hole in his back teeth. The noise stopped, he rubbed his damp hands on his shorts. Finally Matron would have to believe how bad his tooth was! There’d be a visit from the dentist, maybe a short spell in the sick bay where the beds were comfortable and the dreams of a dead man’s eyes should stop.

From outside rang a second burst of hammering, gruff voices drowned Matron’s cries then Miss Purkiss hurried in, her face flushed with urgency. She went first to Murray, then to the other big boys: Hibbert, Burke, Pargeter Senior and Morgan, then to Grey, who was fourteen but startlingly full-grown. They rose, prideful at being picked out, and she drew them into a corner. Hibbert managed to swagger even as he stood still.

The voices outside got louder. “We’ll do him in!” Thomas thought he heard, and then he noticed Pargeter Senior slipping out of the window into the garden. Perhaps the big boys were going to spring an ambush – with the punishing those fellows had given the door, they had to be Sinn Féiners. A far tougher fight for Hibbert, one he’d surely lose.

No grown-ups were left in the refectory. Six boys gone meant twenty-seven were left: not much of an army. McGrath poked a bit of bread around his soup-plate and the younger Pargeter wept noiselessly into the napkin tied round his neck.

The shouts stopped. A slam, the scuttle of a woman’s feet. Albany whispered that the Master would come. The boys began dropping underneath the table. Thomas opened his mouth but his throat muscles had wound themselves into a twist – those men ought to be murdering Hibbert now, doing him in – indeed! Thomas swallowed the surge of joy that wasn’t very Christian. The silence wore on until Pargeter Junior’s sobs became loud gurgles and everyone hissed at him to stop. Not a single gunshot ripped the air.

Though the pain surged in Thomas’s tooth, he hadn’t been killed like the stranger in the road. Help me God, save me… On the wall the bare cross gave no hint whether God’s ears were open today.

The Clifden Protestant Orphanage

Next morning the six eldest boys were still missing and Cook was tight-lipped as to their fate.

        “It was Sinn Féiners, they were going to do them in,” went the whispers at breakfast.

        “D’you think they got away in time?” asked McGrath.

        “Sure they did,” answered several boys at once, glancing at Pargeter Junior who’d kept half the dormitory awake as he’d cried for his brother; no one wanted him to start off again.

        “It’s for those houses our forces burned last year,” said Albany, chattering as usual.

        Thomas remembered. Fourteen houses in Clifden town, to be exact, Matron had scolded the maids for talking about it.

        “But that was for those two RIC officers getting shot,” said McGrath, “Fidelma said the Black and Tans – ”

        O’Hanlon cut in with a wave of his arm, “Ah, what does an old Papist biddy know?”

        “She’s no Papist, or she’d never have been employed here,” yelled Albany. “And there’s a flying column out to kill the Master and all the English!”

        “We should set up a trip wire,” urged Simmons, as Cook rang her bell.

 The boys rose with their dirty crockery. Filing along to the trolley, Thomas imagined Hibbert shot through the head, glassy-eyed, fists useless and the ground pooling red beneath him. He reached into the upturned hem of his shorts for the hidden crust of bread then rubbed his pulsating gums raw with it until the blood oozed. He would go to Matron and show her his bleeding gums because if Hibbert wasn’t killed, he’d return nastier than ever.

        Albany was in full spate. “Just shooting a few of us lads and giving out to Matron won’t be enough for those rebels, they’ll want a proper revenge, see – torture or something,” he crowed, as Pargeter Junior clutched his terrified face.

        “They won’t bother,” Thomas told the child. “There’s nothing for them here, nothing for anyone here – and even if they did find the others it’d only be kidnap, not murder,”

        “Who’d pay a ransom for us, Peasouper?” cried Simmons.        

        “It’s the Sinn Féiners’ turn, the brutes,” said Albany, as little Pargeter sniffled.

        “Turns?” Thomas said quietly. “It’s not like playing draughts.”

        “Well, that’s how it works,” Albany raised his chin. “And if the Sinn Féiners look at our records, they’d know who to target for ransoms.”

“What records?” asked Thomas.

“In the bureau in the Master’s office, all the papers for us and for the girls at Glen Owen.”

“Why would the Sinn Féiners be after the girls?”

“They’ll take the ones with rich families, buy more guns with the ransom money!”

“Albany, are you sure?”

The debate carried on as they went along the corridor.

Thomas had never seen his papers, had no idea such things existed. As they reached the door of the Master’s office, Thomas stopped. Papers in the bureau, papers for us all. It mightn’t be true. A bureau was like a press with shelves, but for books and papers… there was definitely one like that in the Master’s office. The whole room was full of papers and books, in fact – he waited for the other boys to be gone then he knocked.

 “Come in!” was the quavery response.

He entered the office and stepped up to the desk. “Please sir, could you check your papers and tell me what happened to my parents?” he asked.

The Master’s fuzzled eyebrows moved closer together. “Well now, Regan, yes, I know that your poor mother died young and your father couldn’t keep you.”

Beside the window stood the tall wooden bureau. The iron-edged lock in its centre seemed to pulsate, the key had to be among those bulging in the old man’s waistcoat pocket – “Sir, I – ”

        “He was an honest man, but without a penny to his name.”

Maybe the key was lost, which explained this stupid muddle with someone else whose mother had actually died. All those truths locked away now like fading butterflies, starved of daylight... “Please, Sir, could you – ”

“There is no shame in poverty, for blessed are the poor,” the Master said, then a rumble erupted in his throat. “Over a week since the newspapers stopped – all on account of the Anti-Treaty crowd, and now this affront.”  

“Sir, have you no letters about me, with an address?”

        “Destitute men have no addresses and even when they do, there’s no relying on Ireland’s postmen in these terrible times.”

“Sir, could I take a quick look? I won’t make a mess – ”

“I can tell you nothing more. I have serious matters to deal with. You may go,” the Master spoke in the wary tone that meant one of his rages was brewing.

If nobody knew a truth any more, it might die. “Please Sir, what are my parents called? Their Christian names?”

“Regan, grave dangers are all around us and you’re bothering me with these trifles – I told you what you wanted to know, so get along to the schoolhouse!”

Thomas shot a glance around at the big-beard King George picture, at the higgledy shelves and the long narrow window where the distant sea glimmered. Why couldn’t he remember his arrival nine years earlier, his first sight of this carpet with the brown speckled triangles? It wasn’t fair – but nothing in here ever was. Justice and truth were for boys with parents and real homes, boys without shameful names or noses knocked slightly off-kilter, not for so-called orphans like himself.

As he left the office he stole a glance back at the Master whose crippled legs did not stir. And if the old man were go to sleep, what then? Did men with such strangling eyes sleep, ever?

“Rotten old liar!” Thomas mouthed at the door as he closed it.

He would have to watch closely to get an idea of how those keys might be borrowed. If he were caught, it would mean the worst caning of his life though, unlike Hibbert’s fist, the Master’s cane only landed on your arse. If the key couldn’t be borrowed, tools – or a rock – would break open that bureau. It would be some feat for a lone boy, and Thomas hadn’t a single friend left here since O’Hanlon had accused him of stealing the new issue of Union Jack, which he’d only borrowed because he’d been desperate to read the next Sefton Blake instalment and O’Hanlon was an awful slow reader whereas Thomas was fast, but that Union Jack had disappeared in the night and despite Thomas’ peace offering of his best two Magnets – ouch, how it had hurt to give them up – O’Hanlon had been incensed. But he and McGrath were young and foolish; sure they were no help in any case.

# 

That night Thomas lay in the dormitory as the Connemara winds chased the great wide hem of sea… poor mother died, they whimpered and swished, father couldn’t keep you…

Thomas bared his teeth. One truth stood tall and precious: he had not been born in the Ballyconree Orphanage. He’d long chased the figments of a neat cottage in some unknown county, warmed by the smile of a pink-cheeked mother, the safe arms of a man with pallid brown hair and hazel eyes akin to his own. He shut his eyes tight, steeled his aching jaw and tried to summon them; Where is our child, our handsome son? the man and the woman, very much alive, would have asked since they’d lost the son who loved them more than he loved himself. Usually the stiff Orphanage blanket would form the pat of her hand on Thomas’s shoulder, melting into his skin as the other beds in the dormitory were obliterated along with the chilblains from his feet, the taunts at his Papist name and every other germ of misery… but on this night the little shards of all that was beautiful wisped away, leaving only the agony in his jaw.

Sleep never came. However tightly he closed his eyes he saw nothing beloved, just the dark-haired dead man who shouldn’t have been shot on that track a few hundred yards from this bed. There was no way of knowing his name or what sort of fellow he’d been, but someone would have come later to clean him up, change the bloody shirt and bury him. A real mother and father would cry over that coffin, no need for Thomas’ thoughts. Dead strangers were for other people to grieve…     

Further information: 

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/images-of-orphans-burned-out-during-civil-war-uncovered-1.484255