Gerald Seymour - The Journeyman Tailor

"Pick me up in the morning," she said, and the bedroom door closed behind-her.

It was the story that the small boy loved best, the story that had no ending."… When he had jumped the gorge, when he had escaped from the dragoons, Shane Bearnagh had to make the long way round the mountain of Altmore to avoid the troopers. They were furious at their failure to trap him, and they burned fodder barns and slashed the legs of the few cattle that the Catholic people had. More troops were sent for, from Armagh and from Omagh, and they searched all over the mountain. But the great mountain and the wild land behind, on either side of the road to Pomeroy, held its secret. It was no longer safe for a large group of men to be with him. Some deserted, some he asked to leave because he could not feed them."Hard times for Shane and his wife and his little boy. It was more difficult for him to bring them food, more dangerous for him to light fires to cook what little he had.

It was impossible now for him to stop the coaches that came up the mountain from Dungannon on the long road to Pomeroy and Omagh and then to Deny, because all the coaches were escorted by the dragoons. They lived mainly from eating wild berries, it was a great treat for him to find a stray sheep and kill it and cook. His beard grew, he was the wild man of the mountain. His wife and his little boy never complained of their life, and on the times when Shane would try to persuade her to go back down the mountain to her family, his wife would refuse. The poor people from the town would sometimes come up the mountain with food and fresh clothes for his wife and his boy, but they took great risk when they did so. If they were caught then their homes were burned and men would be thrown into the gaol in Armagh."The reward for information leading to Shane's capture was increased, but the people stayed loyal to him because they believed he was the last man in all Ireland to win the fight against the English who they hated. But the English were patient, they waited for a traitor.

There were some down below the summit who knew which caves were used by Shane Bearnagh, under which rock crags he sheltered with his wife and his little boy. The English waited…

"There were two journeymen tailors. They travelled the road from Dublin to Deny. They could repair the dresses of the fine ladi es in their mansions, they could make grand suits for the English gentlemen.

They were not from Altmore… It was winter, there was snow on the mountain. There were no berries to be eaten. There was no stray sheep to be killed because all had been taken down to the farms on the lower ground. Shane was starving. He had left his wife who was thin to the bone, and his little boy who cried at night from hunger. He took the great risk of coming to the road to find food for them. The journeymen tailors had horses and a donkey that they led behind them and that carried the cloths from which they made the suits and dresses, and their needles and their threads. They gave him food, but there was evil in their hearts. They gave him a small amount to eat and they fed him sweet words. They said they would be back in an hour with more, enough for him to take to his wife and to his boy. There was greed in their hearts. They thought nothing of the patriot. They thought only of the gold and silver pieces they would earn from the English.

"They came to a check point, where the dragoons searched all travel-lers. God rot them… They told the dragoons where they had seen Shane, and they said they had told him they would be back within the hour. Evil men, the lowest of the low, traitors… The dragoons found Shane and they rode their horses off the road to chase him and ride him down. At first he could hold them off. He had the long-barrelled musket with which he was a fine shot. He would stop and fire, and run, and load again, and fire, and run again. They were frightened, the English dragoons, they had no cause to die for, they were far from their own homes. But to keep them back he must shoot, and each time he fired on them so the small pouch where he kept his musket balls was lighter.

". All through the afternoon they chased him. The exhaustion grew in him. He was without food, without water, and running from men on horseback. He fired his last shot, and he ran. Each time he fired they came closer to him. He had no more shot for his musket… Shane tore the buttons from his coat. Now, he rammed the buttons down the barrel of the musket. They were just buttons that he fired at them, but still they feared him, they would not dare to approach him. He fired the last button from his coat. He stood on a high boulder. He was alone on his mountain. They circled him. The dragoons were all around him. He could see the road far off, and on the rood were the journeymen tailors who waited for their reward, he could no longer defend himself…"

"Did they kill him, Ma? Did the bastard English kill the patriot?"

"It's time for your light to be off if you're to be good for school in the morning."

Ronnie, just about to go in, heard the voices, checked, dropped his hand from the door, and listened.

Charles would do the watch duty the first night, and Bill would do the second, and then Archie would do the third, then Charles again.. .

Charles protesting: "We're throwing a thrash for the eldest, her birthday."

Bill complaining: "There's a college concert and Harry's on the cello."

Archie arguing: "Long-standing dinner engagement, been fixed for ages."

He heard Ernest Wilkins, the man who was walked over, the man whose temper was always secured.

"I don't think in his present mood, with the importance of the operation currently being launched by the Service, that your Director General would take kindly to backsliding, but you are at liberty to try him… Good, excellent. We'll be taking over the E.O. room in an hour when the domestics have scrubbed it through."

Jorelyn heard, and looked out of his office to check it, Ernest Wilkins striding down the corridor and whistling the theme to

'Carousel’, and there were two ladies with mops and buckets and clean sheets and laundered pillows working over the Emergency Operations room, and there was a Curzon Street engineer carrying into the E.O. room enough radio equipment to fit out a frigate, and an apprentice behind him festooned with telephone handsets and cable.

It would have been four years, maybe longer, since Emergency Operations had been manned round the clock.

"What I heard," said Jocelyn to Ronnie, "it's Ernest's finest hour. He's enmeshed the P.M. He's got Charles and Bill and Archie sleeping on the job…"

"When did they not?"

"No bloody joke… Poor old Mr Donnelly, I'd say he's a bad bet for insurance."

They went down the corridor. They looked into the E.O. room where the engineers tested the radio and confirmed the phone lines. There was a full-face picture of Jon Jo Donnelly, life-size, on the wall above one of the two iron-framed beds, and on the pillow of that bed was a pair of folded, ironed, pyjamas.

On the upper deck of the big ferry boat Jon Jo leaned on the rail. The salt was in his lungs, the wind cleaned his throat, the air scoured his cheeks. Winter stars above him, and the swell of the waters of the Biscay below him. He felt freedom, and the love that a man has for the going home from work hard done.

The dawn had not yet given way to day when death came again to the mountain.

He was ambushed halfway between Donaghmore village and the start of the mountain climb. Death was carried by a burst from a Sterling sub-machine gun and two aimed rounds from an F.N. rifle.

The milk cart was slewed across the road. The driver's window was smashed. A body was slumped over the steering wheel. Blood seeped in the cab. A foot was rooted down onto the accelerator pedal and the drive wheels spun wildly in the rain ditch.