Chapter Fifty Six
Causing Disaffection
"All of you remain just exactly where you are. Do as you have been told and no-one will be hurt" Miles ordered curtly. Devoid of emotion, his eyes roved slowly round the barn over a sea of ashen, frightened, scared faces; then watched dispassionately as, at his order, a detachment of the soldiers moved quickly forward towards where Branson was now standing.
Mindful of what had happened out at the farm on the Howth road, Miles did not want a blood bath, but if any one of those present here tonight in this barn caused the slightest trouble, make no mistake, he would not have the slightest compunction in giving the order to his men to open fire.
While it galled Stathum to admit it, despite some limited recent reorganisation whereby sharing of intelligence between the Royal Irish Constabulary and the British Army on matters related to security here in Ireland had improved somewhat, the damned rebels were proving much better at the game now afoot than anyone could have expected ever possibly to be the case; in fact were actually beginning to start running proverbial rings around the forces of the Crown.
Of course, both the army and the police continued to have their successes, largely thanks to information gleaned from intercepting the mails, from tapping both the telegraph and telephone systems, as well as from making use of intelligence received from paid informers, to which tonight's little operation here, out at this benighted farm, in the middle of nowhere, bore ample witness.
If the information received at Dublin Castle several days ago, well before the incident on the road to Howth was correct, then tonight, thanks to tapping the telephone in an office belonging to the Great Southern and Western Railway Company, there was every prospect of nailing the little bastard responsible recently for leaking details of military train movements on the railways to the rebels, as well as the possibility also of recovering at least some of the firearms stolen from the police barracks outside Dublin which had first been looted and thereafter burned to the ground.
Even so, gratifying as all this was, it was an indication of the mounting opposition and the serious difficulties which the British administration here in Ireland was beginning to encounter and have to deal with on a daily basis. Another different aspect, albeit very much a part of the same problem, was now standing before Miles, and staring him insolently in the face.
Just what was it with some of these ruddy aristocrats, wondered Miles, who like Countess Constance bloody Markievicz and evidently Lady bloody Sybil Crawley - or whatever it was she now chose to call herself. What was it that made them want to espouse the cause of so-called Irish freedom and to take up arms on the side of the damned rebels? He supposed it to be probably based in all likelihood on some misguided, romantic ideal, a rose tinted view of a past that had never even existed. In Miles's own private opinion, women such as Markievicz and Crawley were traitors to their class and to their country, every last one of them.
As for that Markievicz bitch, she'd been born into an Anglo-Irish landed family, just like himself. As far as Miles recollected, she came originally from somewhere over in the north-west – County Sligo was it? Possibly. And yet, despite her privileged upbringing, in that so-called scouting movement which it was claimed she'd founded, she'd been the brains behind teaching Irish children how to use bloody firearms; not just the boys, but the girls too – when they should have been at home learning something useful – like how to knit or sew. Markievicz had also burnt the large Union Jack stolen from Leinster House back in 1911 as a protest against Their Majesties' visit here to Ireland. Well, if all of that didn't amount to treasonable activity, then Miles didn't know what did.
She'd been involved in the Rising too; even shot an army sniper during the fighting over on St. Stephen's Green, if Miles remembered it right. Of course, she'd found herself shut up in prison afterwards, hadn't she, and moaned constantly about the conditions. Miles smiled at the remembrance. Having pleaded guilty to "causing disaffection among the civil population of His Majesty", it was then a very great pity that Major General Sir John Maxwell then Commander in Chief of the British forces here in Ireland hadn't had her shot.
"Causing disaffection..." Miles sniffed derisorily. Causing a bloody nuisance more like. Markievicz had even asked the court to shoot her, said she'd done what she thought was right. Well, it was a pity that Maxwell hadn't obliged her and had the bitch stood in front of a wall in Kilmainham Gaol and shot - instead of commuting her sentence to one of imprisonment. After all, nearly one hundred of those thought to have been involved in organising and planning the Rising had been shot by firing squad, so why not her?
Of course, Miles had to admit that in the eyes of the rebels her execution would have made the bitch a martyr. So, on balance, perhaps old Maxwell had been right to do what he did. And now, ever since December of last year she'd been an Irish MP. No better than a damned Bolshevik! That was not surprising – her husband came from that part of the world didn't he? A Polish count? He should have had her horsewhipped; better still done the job himself. And wasn't she now a minister or something in the rebels' ruddy alternative parliament; what was it they were calling it? Ah, yes. The Dáil.
Miles could just see the Branson bitch, Lady Sybil bloody Crawley, Mrs. bloody "I married the family chauffeur to make a political statement" Branson following the same path; doing something similar. That was if she hadn't done so already, which, of course, was a distinct possibility, married as she undoubtedly was now - Miles saw her fingering the slim gold band on her finger – to the jumped up, arrogant little bastard of an-ex chauffeur insolently standing his ground here before him. He had no doubt either that Mrs. bloody Branson was another of these damned suffragettes too.
Out of the corner of his eye, Miles cast a surreptitious glance at Branson. God, what did she see in him? A chauffeur? A gutless coward who'd shirked his responsibilities in the war. Perhaps she'd pulled strings to keep him out of the show; that would fit. What on earth was the possible attraction? Perhaps she liked a bit of rough. Well, Lady Sybil Crawley wouldn't be the first toff to have gaily waltzed down that particular path, but then to have gone ahead and marry the bloody little sod, God Almighty! What a bloody waste. Miles supposed there could be but one explanation for that. His eyes flicked across to Sybil. Though he didn't like admitting it, she made a pretty picture standing there in her wedding gown. He let his eyes linger, and then rove insolently over the young woman's undeniably attractive figure.
Well, there would come a time of reckoning with him and with her too, Miles had no doubt of it; none whatsoever. But, regrettably not just yet, although judging from the terrified expression on the face of the ex-chauffeur's little trollop, which gave Miles some slight sense of satisfaction, she seemed to think it had already. Pity I can't oblige her thought Miles.
Of course, if he cared to reflect on it, which he didn't, much of Miles's own present animosity towards Tom Branson had to do not so much with what Miles had found out recently from his own great aunt regarding Branson's antecedents and past employment, shocking though that had been. Instead, it had infinitely more to do with what had passed between the two men but a couple of nights ago on Henry Street not far from the burnt out ruins of the General Post Office.
After all, when they had first met, out at the farm on the Howth road, with their shared interest in motors, Miles had got on famously with the chap, but that of course was before Miles had found out that Branson wasn't at all what he seemed to be.
And then had come the business down on Henry Street; a chance encounter, damned bad luck that Branson of all people should have been witness to that foolishness. Put simply, after the raid was over, during a private conversation in a darkened doorway, Miles had asked that Branson be circumspect in his reporting of the abortive raid on the house opposite. Did he in fact have to say anything about it at all had asked Miles affably? Branson had demurred, said that he was a journalist, that it was his responsibility to report what he saw, not what others wanted him to say or to refrain from saying.
"You're asking me to lie" Tom said.
"No, I'm merely asking that you refrain from volunteering too much information" replied Miles curtly.
"It amounts to the same thing" said Tom.
"You are fastidious, aren't you?" said Miles.
Tom shook his head.
"No, not exactly, but when I decided to become a journalist I set myself to always hold fast to something my mother taught me".
"And what was that?" asked Miles softly intrigued nonetheless in spite of himself.
"To thine own self be true. Of always reporting things as they are, not how I, or indeed others would wish them to be. It's got me into a few scrapes I'll admit, made me unpopular with some, and I've had a couple of run-ins with my editor too, but by and large sticking to that principle has served me well. Unfortunately, you see, the truth isn't always on the side of the British. In fact, in this present business, it rarely is. You would do well to remember that".
Miles hadn't taken kindly to that at all; any of it. He did not need to be told, as he saw it, how to do his own job, and certainly not by a jumped up little ex-chauffeur turned crusading journalist. He wondered what, if anything, Branson had told his ... wife about their little chat that evening, how he'd managed to explain away his long absence to both her and her sisters.
Had Miles but known it, seeing him standing there before her in the barn out at Ciaran's farm, Sybil's thoughts had returned instinctively to the last time she and her sisters had seen Stathum, when with Tom, he had appeared so suddenly and unexpectedly out of the darkness on the corner of Henry Street by the ruins of the General Post Office.
"Tom! Darling! Wherever have you been?" asked Sybil, the relief in her voice was evident. Instantly she had moved towards him. But for once, Tom didn't answer her. Instead, he had simply smiled, then walked forward, blushing furiously, his hair falling forward across his forehead. Shyly, he had held out his right hand to Mary and to Edith.
"Here, I know it's not much, but these are for the two of you". In his outstretched hand he held two small nosegays of blue and mauve cornflowers, each brightly wrapped in a swirl of coloured paper.
"Why Tom, darling! How very kind of you!" said Mary, instinctively recognizing the flowers for what they were - a gift from the heart. Her dark brown eyes sparkled with delight and obvious pleasure. And then, she had done something which before then she would never have considered doing; something which granny would have described as both vulgar and so middle class. There on the corner of Sackville Street Mary gave in to a rare public display of emotion. Impulsively ducking her head, under Tom's thatch of falling hair, Mary kissed him gently on his cheek.
"Oh, Tom! How very thoughtful of you" exclaimed Edith, doing likewise.
At that moment, if it were at all possible, Tom had then flushed an even deeper shade of red. And, in that very same instant, Sybil had thought everything was going to be all right. True, her parents had not been prepared to come over to Ireland to witness her marriage to Tom, but so be it. That they would come round eventually, and in due course accept dearest, darling Tom, just as he had said they would, of that she no longer had the slightest doubt; not now that both her sisters, first Edith, and now Mary, had fully and unequivocally accepted her choice of Tom as her husband and as their future brother-in-law.
But then afterwards, on the tram home, after Tom had fallen asleep, Sybil had begun to have doubts as to Tom's explanation as to where exactly he had been, and what it was that had happened; to wonder also, why it was he had not purchased the flowers for Mary and Edith from one of the raggedly dressed women who, in search of earning a few extra pennies, daily hawked their pitiful floral wares close to the heavy, ornate cast iron railings which surrounded the base of the Pillar.
At the time, Stathum had tried to explain, had said something about darling Tom having been caught up in some incident or other. But so far Tom had made no mention of it to her and Sybil now wondered if he had told her everything which had happened that evening and what exactly it was that had passed between her husband and Captain Miles Stathum.
Equally, thought Miles, Branson's article in the Independent reporting on the shooting out at Howth hadn't exactly painted the British Army in a favourable light either. After all, not that it said so, but it was the bloody Shinners who had planned the ambush, and it was two of their own men who had shot that young boy. Miles thought Branson - and her – ungrateful too, especially after all the help he had given them in the aftermath of the incident out at the farm on the Howth road; when having recognised Branson on Henry Street, Miles had prevented his men from setting about him. A pity he'd bothered to intervene; should have let his men have their fun.
And it was now, as they both stood here facing each other in the barn, that an idea began to take root in Miles's fertile mind, which he thought, if he played his cards right, could easily turn his chance meeting with Branson in Henry Street to Stathum's own advantage and also neatly call into question, and in public too, Branson's credibility as a journalist.
After all, given the present difficult situation, one could not afford to dissemble too much, if at all. If Branson chose to live his professional life by a maxim, so too could he, in fact from a very early age, albeit in Miles's case the principle was perhaps less high minded, certainly infinitely less laudable: "the end justifies the means".
That being the case, thought Miles with an inward smile, in order to help forestall a revolution over here in Ireland, the British Army could, after all, make use of an Irish Bolshevik journalist.
The smile faded as quickly as it had arisen. Now why the devil...
Aged twelve years old, Miles had been staying down near Cork, at the home of his godfather, a cantankerous, miserable old devil, whose own two sons and daughter went in fear of the old man's irascible and unpredictable temper. On the very last day Miles was there, shortly before some guests of his godfather's had arrived for tea, he'd helped the two boys administer a sound thrashing to their orphaned, much younger cousin in the hayloft over the stables.
Of course, with hindsight, looking back, Miles was not proud of what he had done that day, but at the time it could so easily have been himself on the receiving end of the thrashing, if he'd refused to join in. And, after all, self preservation is the first law of nature.
From what he recalled of the incident, the young cousin had been about the same age as himself. His uncle, Miles's godfather, hated the sight of him. But why, after all this time, wondered Miles, should I have thought of that now?