The acquaintance with Mrs. Fitzgerald grew, though circumstance set limits upon it. Her work kept her to herself. All sorts of people used to call, and I do not doubt some of them were of interest to the British authorities. Once she must have held a meeting of some importance, because a picket, who seemed to have cross eyes, stood outside the house and glared at me when I came home, and I thought he was there to assassinate me.
But though we never shared the secrets of her work, the acquaintance grew, and she gave us peeps into her life.
She was an out-and-out Republican, and contemplated nothing short of the Republic. I was sure she was doomed to disappointment, and hinted this once. She answered:
“If we do not get a Republic at the end of this, there will always be a Republican party, and I shall belong to it. We will never give up the Republic.” A minute later she said an illuminating thing. “We are not in sympathy with England. We would sooner make an alliance with some country like France.”
Although she held extreme views and had suffered for them, I found her far less bitter in her statements about the enemy than the sympathisers who gave sympathy as a sole contribution to the movement. She spoke of the Crown Forces in a professional manner as part of the obstacles to be got out of the way. She would have shown them no mercy; but she bore them no more rancour than was necessary. She was used to dealing with them, knew all the tricks of the trade, and made use of her advantages.
This same Mrs. Fitzgerald, I came to find out, mother of three children, woman of so many duties that she went at a jog-trot in the streets, this Mrs. Fitzgerald was a most romantic person. Her first hero had been Padraig Pierce, a leader of the 1916 Rising, and she had called one of her boys after him. The man to fill his place was Michael Collins, Mick as she called him, the Republican Minister of Finance, who used to be spoken of as “a certain minister,” the phrase whispered from person to person, as if his name spoken aloud would blast the lips that uttered it.
She spoke quite simply of being battered from pillar to post, of having her household gods damaged, of doing without them, of the frequent difficulty of getting a roof over her head, yet I believe she thought wistfully now and then of the fleshpots she had given up for the Republic. She reminded me of those women who have been drudges for the sake of their children, and who point fiercely at what they have produced when some scented, jewelled creature passes by.
