The 13th Apostle: A Novel of a Dublin Family, Michael Collins, and the Irish Uprising (51 page)

 134

B
y April, Collins was in his full “bad cop” mode.

Eoin thought part of the reason was that the Big Fellow didn’t like being number four on the Irish political totem pole, behind de Valera, Stack, and Brugha. Eoin knew Collins was smarter than the three of them put together, and that it was eating away at his boss. Any deference he may have had for de Valera was dropped. If Dev sounded conciliatory to Britain in the papers—playing his own version of the “good cop”—you could be sure that Collins would have a bloodthirsty retort in the same papers only days later.

Of course, this only served to further confuse the Prime Minister and his Minister for War. “We are getting an odious reputation,” Churchill told Lloyd George.

“The question is whether I can see Michael Collins,” the Prime Minister said, his olfactory system shut down years before. “No doubt he is the head and front of the movement. If I could see him, a settlement might be possible. The question is whether the British people would be willing for us to negotiate with the head of a band of murderers.”

Lloyd George was clearly obsessed with Collins, and Collins couldn’t resist teasing the Prime Minister. “Lloyd George,” Collins said in a newspaper interview, “has a chance of showing himself to be a great statesman by recognizing the Irish Republic.”

De Valera, with the help of Brugha, kept chipping away at Collins’s power, casting doubt on his competence, even as Minister for Finance. Probably the ultimate insult was Brugha accusing him of misappropriating funds for buying ammunition in Scotland by redirecting it to his own family.

“That lying sonofabitch,” Collins spat.

“Everyone knows,” Eoin comforted, “that Cathal isn’t the brightest bulb on the Bovril sign across from Trinity College.” Collins grunted. “Don’t dwell on it. You know the source. Or should I say,
sources
.”

“I don’t know why the three of them are ganging up on me,” Collins grumbled, showing how depressed he was over the whole thing.

“They are ganging up on you because you are dangerous to them,” replied Eoin.

“To
them
?”

“Exactly.”

“That’s an interesting way to put it.”

“It’s the only way to put it,” said Eoin, trying to put a little cheer into the downtrodden Big Fellow. “Besides,” he added, “Dev found Brugha’s charges to be ‘groundless.’”

Collins laughed. “No one can pronounce charges ‘groundless’ like President de Valera,” he observed, “and make them sound like a capital offense.”

In all the years they had been together, Eoin had never seen this side of Collins before. It was obvious to Eoin that Collins had been hurt by the way he was treated by de Valera and his inner circle. And when he was hurt, Michael became either blustery or depressed. Years later, Eoin would realize that this was the bipolar side of Michael Collins. He would note that all great men—and women—had a little of the crazy in them, which separated them from the conforming majority and put them into the
sui generis
genius class.

Now Eoin sat looking across the room at Ireland’s revolutionary genius, quietly doing his correspondence without enthusiasm or caustic comment, and wondered what it would take to get Michael Collins back where he belonged—leading, not following.

 135

E
oin and Collins were back at the Bachelors Walk office, working on Loan business, when Eoin suddenly said, “Have you read Yeats’s poem about Easter 1916 yet? It just came out.”

“No, I haven’t,” replied the Minister for Finance, tersely, without looking up from his ledger books. Collins wondered what was banging around in Eoin’s young brain. Ireland was at the end of her rope, and all he wanted to do was talk about poetry.

“Pearse, Connolly, MacDonagh, and MacBride are mentioned in it,” said Eoin earnestly, before pausing. “You’re not.” Collins leapt across the room and took Eoin to the floor in one fell swoop, his Webley flying out of his shoulder holster. “Jaysus, Mick, me gun!”

“Ya little bastard, ya!” Collins roared, as he pinned the lad to the floor with little effort. Eoin was too small to wrestle with. “You’ll need a gun!” Collins was sitting on Eoin’s chest, completely incapacitating him. “Do you know why I’m not in that poem?”

“No!”

“Because I’m still fookin’ alive! Are ya ticklish?” Within seconds, he had Eoin howling.

“Uncle, uncle, uncle!” Eoin gasped, and Collins let him go, laughing himself as he tried to get his breath back.

“Speaking of uncles, how’s your Uncle Charlie? Have you seen him lately? Is he still working at Guinness?” asked Collins, straightening his waistcoat.

“I had a drink with him a few weeks ago,” answered Eoin, cautiously, reholstering his weapon.

“Does he have any more guns for me?”

“He’s looking.”

“He lives in Stoneybatter, right?”

“You know that,” replied Eoin. “On Ben Edair Road.”

“Near Aughrim Street?”

“You’re in the right neighborhood.”

“We could always use another safe house. Perfect cover, former British army. He married?”

“A widower. Auntie Margaret died of the influenza a few years ago.”

“Perfect,” said Collins, without emotion.

“That’s cold.”

“Do the right thing, Eoin, and
ask
.”

“I will.”

“As for Yeats, good God,” said Collins. “Who put you up to that?”

“Róisín.”

“I should have known.”

“The Countess Markievicz is in it. And Róisín loves the Countess Markievicz!”

“Ah, Commandant Connie.”

“‘She rode to harriers,’ Yeats wrote.”

Collins laughed. “Harriers, my arse. Do you know why women ride horses?” Eoin shook his head. “Because it’s the next best thing to ridin’ a man!”

“You’ve a filthy mind.”

“And I bet you can’t wait to tell Róisín.”

“Well,” Eoin smiled. “I never did understand the attraction between women and horses—until now!”

“I’m gonna tell Róisín,” the Commandant-General threatened.

“Don’t you dare!”

“Did you know Yeats joined the IRB in London back in the last century?”

“Maybe you should call him to active duty!”

Collins roared at the inane thought. “Fookin’ poets. I’m still cleaning up their mess.”

“You shouldn’t speak that way about Pearse and MacDonagh,” said Eoin, earnestly.

“You forgot Joe Plunkett,” replied Collins. “He liked to scribble, too.”

“Yeah, poor Joe. I saw his widow, Grace Gifford, in Grafton Street the other day.”

“How did she look?”

“Mournful. It’s obvious she’ll never recover.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” continued Collins. “They were all good men, but they were not military men. The only men with a clue that week were Clarke, MacDiarmada, and Connolly. I’d march through hell for those three.”

“Ah,” said Eoin, “but the touch of the poet does add the romantic to the equation.”

“You were there. There wasn’t any romance in the GPO at all.”

“Except me and Róisín.”

“Ah, so it’s finally ‘me and Róisín’ now, is it?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Poets,” mused Collins. “All poets are interested in only one thing—getting shagged!”

“Even Patrick Pearse?”

“Oh,” said Collins, “for fook’s sake, cut our first President some slack.”

“But you said . . .”

“I say a lot of things. I don’t know about poor Paddy and all that other stuff, but he was a good man, a brave man. A man who truly loved Ireland.”

“But you said . . .” tried Eoin again.

“You know,” replied Collins, “I bet that wall-eye of his must have had something to do with it. He was very self-conscious about it. Maybe that’s why he was so shy with the girls. He didn’t have many friends, maybe only MacDonagh and his brother Willie. He liked to give speeches, I’ll say that. But there’s a time to give speeches, and there’s a time to make war. Sometimes I think Paddy confused the two. He was an odd duck. But he did his best. I feel sorry for him in a way. May God protect him.” Eoin couldn’t get a word in edgewise. “But you said . . .”

Collins gave a low laugh. “My cynicism is having an adverse effect on you. You shouldn’t believe everything I say.”

“I don’t—anymore.”

Collins smiled—and, giving away his secret—replied, “I guess I’ve given birth to another ‘terrible beauty.’”

 136

“
W
hat we need,” said President de Valera, “is some sort of big action in Dublin.”

The President had gathered Collins, the phlegmatic Austin Stack, Cathal Brugha, and Oscar Traynor—another Dev man who had taken over the command of the Dublin Brigade from Dick McKee—at a safe house in Herbert Park. He was obsessed with his “big action,” and he wanted it soon.

“We must bring worldwide public opinion to our side,” the President said.

“It already is on our side,” replied Collins. “We are David. The British are Goliath.”

De Valera cleared his throat. “Exactly.” He paused, as only Eamon de Valera could pause. “We must show the flag. We have to take on the Crown forces and show the world that we are capable of battling the British on equal ground.”

“I don’t think that is wise,” said Collins.

De Valera remained silent. Brugha would do the President’s lifting. “And why isn’t it wise?” Brugha demanded.

“We are a small army,” replied Collins. “We cannot afford big battles. If we have two big battles, we won’t have an Irish Republican Army anymore.”

“Nonsense,” offered Stack. A wary Traynor remained silent.

Silence filled the room until the president spoke again. “We disagree.”

“What do you have in mind?” Collins finally asked.

De Valera nodded at Brugha, and the blustery Minister for Defence took the floor. “I have planned out two areas of conflict. One, an attack on Beggar’s Bush Barracks. And, alternately, the destruction of the Customs House.”

“What do you mean ‘destruction’?” asked Collins.

“Burn it to the ground.”

Collins looked intently at Brugha. “Why?” he finally asked.

“Because it is the center of British administration in Ireland.”

“But,” challenged Collins, “how does that help us in this war?”

“It disrupts,” replied Brugha.

“This country is so disrupted,” shot back Collins, “that another disruption like this hardly makes any sense.”

“Nevertheless,” interrupted the president, “in the next fortnight, we shall settle on one of these two targets.”

“We expect your help,” added Brugha.

“Help?”

“The Squad could be of major help here,” offered Brugha.

“There are other active service units,” replied Collins.

“But yours . . .”

Collins cut Brugha off. “ . . . Is the best?”

“They are efficient,” said the president.

“They are the reason we’re so close,” snapped Collins.

“To what?” asked Stack.

“A fookin’ truce,” said Collins, rising from the table, his patience ebbing. “Let’s stop fookin’ around and get a truce done. It’s going to come sooner or later. Let’s make it sooner.”

“Michael,” said de Valera, drawing the name out. For a moment, Collins thought de Valera was going to criticize his language, but he didn’t. “This big action will accelerate the truce negotiations.”

Collins leaned forward and put his ten fingertips down on the table, his massive shoulders blocking out the light as he directed his words at the sitting president. “I hope you realize that we are almost done.”

“Done?” asked the president, looking up. “What do you mean ‘done’?”

“Done, as in finished,” snapped Collins. “Our meager weapons have no ammunition. Our men are imprisoned. I am . . .” Collins stopped to correct himself, “ . . .
we
are running this revolution on fumes. There’s almost nothing left. Get the truce done—before we are done.”

“You are expected to follow orders,” shot Brugha.

Collins ignored Brugha and spoke directly to the president. “I know I am not the most popular man right now, but you’re still my Chief. I may not like your orders, but I’ll follow your commands to the letter.” And, with that, the Minister for Finance turned and walked out of the room.