Chapter 2
The guard returned with a stale piece of bread for me, but I didn’t dare complain.
I simply ate it and was grateful. Though once my stomach had stopped rumbling, in spite of my terror, I found myself struggling to stay awake.
It would have helped if I could get up and move about, but the guards only allowed us exercise of any kind at prescribed hours.
Such was my fatigue that I thought I might have even been willing to take Forced March if it had been given to me, even though the pills of powdered kola nuts and cocaine, which were supplied to soldiers to keep them awake and sharp, made me keyed up.
Not that the guards were offering. They would have kept such substances for themselves.
Hour after monotonous hour slipped by, broken only by the occasional patrol moving through, pulling on or taking off their ammunition slings and strapping their holsters low just above their knees, rifles clutched in hand.
Most were Auxiliaries, or Auxies as they were called by the populace, dressed in their police uniforms with their distinctive tam-o’-shanter hats, but a few were dressed in mufti, marking them as intelligence agents.
Nearly all of them took their time looking at me, though none approached.
Perhaps they’d been warned not to. I kept my eyes peeled for a friendly face, in particular Sidney’s acquaintance, Captain Maxwell, but it seemed as if anyone who might be acquainted with me was being kept away.
Each time the door opened, I felt a surge of hope that someone was there to straighten this muddle out, to tell me it had all been a mistake and I was free to go.
That they’d spoken to Bennett and Ames and Maxwell about the raid several nights past, or the officer in charge of the battery of Livens Projectors outside Mountjoy Jail who I’d saved from gassing hundreds if not thousands of Irish men, women, and children with phosgene.
That C had called to vouch for me and Sidney and demand our release. But each time my hopes were dashed.
As the afternoon wore on, the guards ventured to speak to me.
They were for the most part officers from the war, much like my husband and our friends.
I knew their type well. They’d been drawn here by the promise of good pay and a chance to recapture the comradery that many of them had missed since being demobilized from the army.
But they’d not known what they were getting themselves into.
They were good soldiers, battle-hardened, but rather than being seen as liberators as they had been in Belgium, France, and Gallipoli they found themselves surrounded by a hostile populace who for the large part didn’t want them here.
Rather than fighting a battle of organized warfare, they’d had to adapt to the IRA’s guerilla tactics and isolated skirmishes and had quickly gained terrifying reputations.
They’d been recruited to bulk up the Royal Irish Constabulary police force, but they were men who’d been baptized in the fire of four long years of bloody combat, not peacekeeping.
And our government had known it. Had known it and counted on the havoc and retaliation that would inevitably result.
I felt certain of that now. Our contacts within the government in London and here among the Castle administration had revealed enough to suggest their underlying motive.
So here I was, caught in the middle, feeling sympathy for the Irish and their cause and suffering, and yet also empathetic to these men our government were using as instruments of terror, twisting their war-weary bitterness into spears and battering rams.
“But what on God’s green earth are you doing here in Dublin?
” one of them exploded with, once they’d grown comfortable enough with me.
For this was the question that was clearly on all of their minds.
The question from which all other questions stemmed.
They simply couldn’t fathom why a social darling like me would willingly come to Ireland.
From that emanated their suspicions that I might genuinely have been up to no good.
I met his gaze evenly, knowing I had to answer something. “I’m here with my husband.”
It wasn’t truly an answer, but it was. Because these men knew who Sidney Kent was, knew of his reputation, and they would assume what most people had when we’d arrived in Dublin.
That Sidney had been sent here on some sort of clandestine assignment, possibly on behalf of the army or the War Office, possibly at the lord lieutenant’s behest, and I was merely here to support him.
It made clear my loyalty was to my husband, and that I would not speak out of turn without his permission.
This was something I knew these men would grasp and even respect without my having to spell it out.
It was something the other prisoners recognized as well. If they were Volunteers—members of the IRA—and they suspected I was sympathetic to their cause, they might even have perceived it as the ploy it was. Though they did not give me away.
As evening closed in, the guards were served their dinner and then rose to allow us prisoners to eat at the table where we were served the same food.
We were to share knives and forks, but none of the men would hear of me eating after them, instead insisting their hands or a piece of bread would do to shovel the grub into their mouths.
I accepted the courtesy with gratitude, not wanting to offend their kindness.
Eventually we were ordered to turn in, a command I received with mixed emotions.
I was exhausted and wanted nothing more than to lay my head down, but as tears stung the back of my eyes, I also realized I’d been counting on rescue.
Accepting that it had not come, that I would have to pass the night here, was a bitter pill to swallow.
I forced myself to focus on the procedure as another prisoner showed me how to make our beds lest I give way to a spate of tears.
Two thin boards were balanced on top of two wooden trestles and then layered with three mustard-brown firmly padded squares called army biscuits.
I still had my blanket from earlier, and I lay down, pulling it over me.
Most of the men knelt beside their beds to pray, but I stayed where I was, winging a desperate plea toward heaven.
Many of them shared their makeshift bunks, but no one tried to crawl in with me.
I also noticed somewhat belatedly that they’d ranged their beds around me almost as if forming a ring of protection, and I felt tears once more bite at the back of my eyes.
The lights were kept on and would remain so throughout the night.
The better to see us, I supposed, and ensure we weren’t up to mischief.
Most closed their eyes, at least feigning sleep, but I found it difficult to settle despite my fatigue.
Gingerly turning over to my other side, I met the kind gaze of one of the older gentlemen.
“Don’t worry, lass. We’ll see ye don’t come to harm,” he whispered.
“Thank you,” I choked out on a sliver of sound, appreciating the sentiment even if I didn’t see how they could interfere with the guards if they took it into their heads to harass me.
After all, they had all the power and the weapons, and essentially the government’s sanction to shoot first and worry about explanations later.
But perhaps he was speaking of protecting me from any new prisoners.
“Naw. We should be the ones thankin’ you.” He nodded toward the guards clustered once more around the hearth. “They’re on their best behavior with ye present. Mark me, there won’t be any drunken rants tonight or guns pointed at our heads.”
My eyes widened in alarm.
His voice gentled. “They’re only threats. They never shoot. Usually.”
The last was a muttered afterthought, but it gripped me fast and wouldn’t let go.
I didn’t dare look at the guards for fear they would know we’d been talking about them.
Time ticked by slowly as I told myself to listen to the sounds in the room.
The snores of the man at my feet. The tick of the clock on the wall.
The scrape of one of the guards’ chair legs against the floor.
I discovered the Auxies were more talkative at night.
I didn’t know whether they’d been waiting for us to fall asleep, or the darkness outside the windows invited confidences, or more likely, the bottle they passed around lubricated their vocal cords, but I heard a pair of them commiserating over how they missed their wives.
This was in stark contrast to the younger guard, who tried to convince the others to lend him money for an assignation in one of the back lanes, promising to share the details later.
I tried to find the humor the other guards seemed to take in the younger man’s plight, but all I could summon was pity for the women forced to resort to such work and anger at a system that had driven them into it.
They reminded me of the women in occupied Belgium and France who had been denounced as horizontal collaborators after the war because they’d been obliged to sleep with German soldiers or else go without food and watch their children starve.
Their neighbors who should have known better had shown them no mercy, and it was doubtful the Irish were any more compassionate.
At some point, I must have drifted off to sleep, because some hours later I woke with a start, disoriented and afraid.
I lay rigid as my sluggish brain readjusted to my reality.
I couldn’t see the clock without moving my head, but I could see that it was still dark outside the windows.
More importantly, something had awakened me, though I wasn’t sure what.