The English Daughter by Maggie Wadey

Author:Maggie Wadey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sandstone Press Ltd
Published: 2016-07-20T04:00:00+00:00

2

Tucked in out of sight of the road, a pair of bicycles were leaning up against the white wall of the Cleary farmhouse. They belonged to two young men who had cycled out from Nenagh to ‘Devotions’ at Puckaun, then on here, hoping to sleep the night at Knigh. They were twenty-four-year-old Thomas O’Brien from Nenagh, and his cousin, John O’Brien, aged twenty-one, an American citizen – it was John’s smart haircut Tom had noticed in the chapel earlier. They came to the Clearys’ because Thomas O’Brien was sweet on a young woman living there named Josie McGrath.

It is also true that both boys were members of the IRA. They had taken the oath of secrecy but had not yet seen action. However, from the usual pattern of events they knew the military could be expected to exact reprisals for the killing of the British intelligence officer in Nenagh, and the O’Briens were among a number of people who had quietly left town for the safety of the countryside. But the safety of the Cleary house was questionable. Rody, himself a known target for the Crown forces, had already slipped away to spend the night elsewhere.

Shortly after midnight, watched by Tom from the shadows, a touring car, a Garford car, and a heavy lorry draw up outside the Clearys’ farmhouse. With the metallic drumbeat of hobnails on tarmac, twenty or so men jump down into the road. Inside the house, Mrs Cleary – surprised to find she’d fallen asleep at all – immediately awakes, fearing the worst; the worst being that these men come looking for her husband are Black and Tans. Going to her bedroom window, at first she can make out only that a band of armed men stands at her door, but she quickly recognises them as men of the regular British Army (they were, in fact, men of the North Hants Regiment).

‘We liked the army lads,’ Joan remembers her mother-in-law telling her. ‘But not the Black and Tans.’

With the army lads tonight was a man in civvies whose identity was disguised by a home-made mask. When the two women – Mrs Cleary and Josie McGrath – went down and opened the door, the young officer’s face was expressionless. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you,’ he said, perfectly at ease. ‘We’re looking for Mr Rody Cleary.’

He pronounced both names in the English way – ‘Roddy’ and ‘Cleery’. Mrs Cleary told him that her husband was away in Dublin, on business. Rody was in fact sleeping soundly a few fields away at Loughourna. Josie McGrath meanwhile had kept her eyes fixed on the man in civvies. Now she sprang forward and tore the mask off his face. With an exclamation of disgust she recognised him as a local policeman. The man flinched, but he said nothing.

A quick search of the farmhouse uncovered the O’Briens, in bed asleep. The English officer suggested it was strange that they, not part of the Cleary family, should be here on this of all

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