Shamrock Green, page 22
Fran took a final mouthful. ‘You’re right, Kaygan. Besides, time I was on my way before my head splits with this noise. I can hardly hear myself think.’
‘Are we for the south side, for the canals?’ Kaygan said. ‘I reckon that’s where we’ll find most activity.’
‘I’m headed for Watton’s.’
‘Sperryhead?’ Kaygan retrieved the bottle, corked it and put it inside his coat. ‘What’s doing at Sperryhead that might be worthy of a line or two?’
‘If the British want a back door to the quays – I’m certain they will – they’ll have to close off Sutter Street and the Sperryhead Road and isolate our positions this side of the river.’
‘Is that not clever now?’ said Kaygan. ‘Would it be some Whitehall pundit who would be dreaming that up, or some general fresh from Flanders?’
‘What would you say, Kaygan?’ Fran asked him.
‘I would say it was shrewd on somebody’s part to occupy Watton’s, that’s what I would say. How many men are there, Francis? Have you any idea?’
‘Charlie expected fifty to turn out this morning.’
‘Citizen Army?’
‘Brotherhood of Erin.’
‘Ah, young McCulloch’s stout brigade. How did they shake off damned old Daniel then? Did they screw him into a barrel?’
‘I think he went to the races,’ Fran said.
There was a lull in the firing at the front of the building.
Kaygan raised an eyebrow enquiringly. ‘Tea-break?’
‘I doubt it,’ Fran said. ‘Perhaps they’ve run out of ammo.’
‘Already?’ Kaygan said. ‘I thought we delivered enough to storm Ypres, let alone the castle.’
As if to answer the journalist’s question the lull was broken by a furious burst of rifle fire. The sound of shattering glass was followed by the boom of a shell exploding nearby. Kaygan clutched a hand to his heart, to the whiskey bottle in effect, and pulled a long face.
‘What the devil was that?’ he said. ‘Surely the British can’t have gunboats in the river already?’
‘Field gun,’ Fran said.
Another bark and boom prompted the men to step hastily away from the window. ‘Holy Mother of God!’ Kaygan said. ‘Should I wave my carte blanche at them, do you think?’
‘Wave your ding-dong at them if you like,’ Fran said, ‘but I doubt if it’ll serve much purpose.’
Kaygan did not smile. ‘So they’ve moved in artillery, have they?’ he said. ‘Don’t they care about Dublin?’
‘Did they ever care about Dublin?’ Fran said. ‘Say farewell to the boys out front and let’s get out of here. Are you coming to Sperryhead, or have you other fish to fry?’
‘Don’t you have a wife down that way?’
‘Don’t I have wives everywhere?’ Fran said.
‘Will she conjure us up a bite of breakfast, do you think?’
‘I imagine she might,’ Fran said and, pressing the portmanteau firmly to his chest, ducked out of the doorway and scuttled down the steep back staircase with Kaygan hard on his heels.
* * *
Schools were closed, no bread was to be had and there were no deliveries of milk or mail. Maeve cared not a fig about such inconveniences.
She struck out for Sutter Street at eight o’clock with the sack of potatoes that Jansis had lugged up from the cellar. She carried the sack on her shoulder and was forced to rest now and then which gave the neighbours an opportunity to question her.
‘What have you heard from that man o’ your mother’s?’
‘If you mean Mr Hagarty,’ Maeve replied, ‘I have heard nothin’ but the best of news.’
‘Is it true the volunteers have took the whole town?’
‘Aye, that’s true,’ Maeve said.
‘An’ thousands o’ Germanians have landed at Kingstown?’
‘True an’ all, every word.’
She re-gripped the sack, slung it up. It thumped against her spine, almost knocking the breath out of her. It had been careless of Charlie not to take food into the warehouse. At least there were no snipers in Sperryhead Road yet, though Jansis said – and Jansis had been out very early – that down beyond the laneway a handful of British soldiers were marching up and down with rifles on their shoulders waiting for an officer to arrive.
‘I hear the cavalry’s lined up for a charge at the Post Office?’
‘The lancers, aye,’ Maeve said. ‘They’ve been told to spike everything that moves, startin’ with the women and children.’
‘Have they really now?’
‘Aye, they really have,’ Maeve lied, ‘really.’
She went on around the corner into Sutter Street where half a hundred angry warehouse employees had gathered outside the gates. They were arguing with her Uncle Charlie. To give himself stature and a view of the crowd Charlie had climbed up on one of the bales that formed part of the defences. Turk and a handful of other men in uniform, all armed to the teeth, stood outside the warehouse’s sliding doors.
‘You can’t keep us out, McCulloch. We work here.’
‘Aye, no work, no pay.’
‘You’ve a damned, blasted cheek raidin’ Mr Watton’s warehouse.’
‘We’re not raidin’ anywhere,’ Charlie shouted. ‘Calm down.’
‘Calm down! Calm down, he says!’
‘Where’s Mr Watton anyway?’
The crowd stirred and a few among them squinted suspiciously at Maeve as if they thought she might have Mr Watton hidden in her sack. She put the sack down, folded her arms and listened to the shouted questions.
‘Where’s Mr Giles, where’s Mr Ottway?’
‘Where’s Mikey Lamb too?’
‘They’ll be hidin’ away from the trouble.’
‘Or fighting,’ Charlie shouted. ‘Perhaps they’ve got more sense than you have an’ they’re out with the brigades fightin’ for our cause.’
‘Our cause? By God, it’s not our cause. I’m not for your daft rebellion.’
‘Nah, nor me.’
‘Don’t you want to be rid of English oppression?’ Charlie shouted. ‘Don’t you want to rule your own destiny?’
‘I just want t’ get paid.’
‘Me too, me too.’
Charlie made a gesture of disgust and spat on to the cobbles. ‘You sicken me, so you do. Call yourselves Irishmen. You’re just toadies to the wage packet.’
‘It’s all very well for you, McCulloch, you an’ your bottled stout. You can afford for to play at soldiers wi’out your family starvin’.’
Her uncle was close to losing his temper. ‘You’ve no idea what sacrifices I’ve had to make to stand here before you.’
‘Bugger your sacrifices. Let us in, let us in.’
‘I’ll let you in,’ Charlie yelled, ‘only if you want to join us in the fight.’
A large woman, a year or two younger than Gran McCulloch, threw herself against the ironwork and screamed abuse at Charlie while the men around her shook and rattled the gates.
When the crowd surged forward Maeve was left behind. Lifting herself on tiptoe she heard the sound of gunfire in the sultry air. She tried to catch Charlie’s eye, to signal that she had brought food and ask what she should do with it. But her uncle was preoccupied. He was howling at the mob now and dancing up and down like a little monkey on top of the bale, then he tripped, flailed his arms to regain his balance and toppled head-over-tail to the cobbles, the sombrero tipped over his eyes.
The big woman brayed with laughter and everyone brayed with laughter at her uncle’s misfortune. Maeve couldn’t stand to see Charlie being treated like a clown. She elbowed a path through the crowd.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ she cried. ‘Are you all bloody deaf?’
She slapped down the potato sack and plastered herself against the gates.
Charlie struggled to his feet, the sombrero hanging round his neck. Turk unholstered his big revolver and held it up like the starter of a foot race, the lanyard making a heavy elegant loop in the air. He looked grim, grim and heroic, Maeve thought, and she would not have wanted to cross him at that moment.
Maeve shouted, ‘Listen, listen. Can’t you hear it?’
And, miraculously, the warehousemen, carters, cleaners and even the skittish young girls who did the invoicing listened because she, Maeve McCulloch, had told them to. Rifle fire had crackled throughout the night, of course, but they were listening now, all of them, to the boom of the big guns shelling the city.
Maeve shouted, ‘Do you know what that is? That’s British soldiers blowin’ up our town. Try tellin’ them you just want to earn your pay.’
‘Who the hell is that girl?’
‘One o’ the McCullochs.’
‘Is she right, though? Sure an’ she is right?’
‘It is artillery. Is it comin’ this way?’
‘I think maybe it might be.’
‘Where’s Mr Watton? He should be here t’ talk to them.’
‘He’ll have run off to his big house in the country.’
‘Is that a fact?’
‘’Course it’s a bloody fact. If you had a big house in the country, wouldn’t you be runnin’ off to it?’
‘The dirty coward!’
They dispersed quickly, breaking away from the railings until only a handful remained, stubborn and scowling. The big angry woman put a hand on Maeve’s shoulder and pushed her back against the gate. Turk stuck the barrel of the revolver through the railings and in a quiet, Wexford voice said, ‘Lay a hand on her, missus, and you’re dead.’
The big woman lifted her hand from Maeve’s shoulder and held it up placatingly. ‘Sure an’ you wouldn’t shoot me, would you?’
‘By Gad I would,’ Turk said, ‘if you come between me an’ my breakfast.’
‘Is it food she’s got in the sack?’
‘It is,’ Turk said. ‘Now go home, missus, go back home an’ look to your children. It’ll be over soon enough.’
‘I need the work,’ the woman said. ‘That’s all it is – the work.’
Turk withdrew the revolver, holstered it, and unlocked the gate. He opened it a little, drawing it inward. Maeve pushed her shoulder against the ironwork but Turk refused to let her enter. He took the sack from her and passed it back to Kevin who carried it into the building.
Maeve said, ‘Let me stay, Turk. Please let me stay.’
‘That I cannot do,’ said Turk.
‘Please.’
He was already linking the gates, dropping the vertical bolt, reaching for the shiny new padlock. Maeve put her hand on his wrist. He glanced down at her. He did not seem hard now or military. He looked like a big soft Wexford farmer even with a sombrero on his head and bandoliers crossed over his chest. He stopped fiddling with the padlock and reached through the ironwork and caught a strand of her hair between his finger and thumb. He tugged gently until her brow was pressed against the cold iron then he kissed her brow and said, ‘Don’t forget to bring us our dinner, now.’
‘I won’t, Turk,’ Maeve said, meek at last.
‘Off you go then, my sweetheart, off you go.’
She left the gates of the warehouse and went away, drifting up Sutter Street in the wake of the crowd, drifting towards the sound of the guns.
* * *
Up in the vicinity of Sackville Street a candy shop had been broken into and the pavements were littered with barley sticks, peppermints and liquorice straps. On the steps in Magellan Lane the young citizens of Dublin were gorging themselves on midget gems and red jelly eels, comfits and Empire creams or fought over chocolate bars and boxes or scratched in the carpet of broken glass for a toffee or a marzipan that had somehow escaped.
In Brower Street shoes, hats, stockings and ribbons trailed sadly away from looted shops, and a woman told her that the volunteers had shot twenty looters and Patrick Pearse himself had signed an order saying that all looters were to be shot. Maeve had seen a man shot yesterday and had not been much affected but at the tail end of Brower Street she saw a dead horse, a fine handsome stallion with its legs sticking up in the air and a huge reddish-blue pool of blood around it, and before she knew what she was doing she was running for the shelter of the Sperryhead Road.
She slipped down the lane and in by the kitchen door and, tugged by a familiar voice, went along the corridor into the dining-room.
Two men were seated at the table. The polished surface was protected by oilcloth and a vase of flowers, withered now, had been pushed to one side to make way for plates, cups, a teapot, and a bottle of Powers and two glasses. The men were hunched over the table, laughing tipsily. One of them was Fran. She had seen his back often enough to recognise the tight old suit he wore. The other man was a stranger to her, a round jolly fellow sucking on the short end of a cigar and sipping whiskey from a glass. Mam sat with the baby on her lap as if she were just another wife entertaining her husband and his friend and there was no rumble of gunfire loud in the air outside.
‘Now here’s a young lass who’s just been up town by the look of her,’ the stranger said. ‘She’ll give us all the news, won’t you, chicken?’
‘Ah, Kaygan, let the girl alone.’ Fran glanced over his shoulder and winked at Maeve. ‘Come here, darlin’, come and give old Fran a kiss.’
Fran had never asked her for a kiss before. She had kissed him only when she felt like it. She had sat on his knee once or twice but it was not the same as sitting on Turk’s knee or, as far as she could recall, on Daddy’s knee. She was relieved to see Fran, however, and went to him and kissed him on the lips because she knew he was showing off to his friend Kaygan how good a father he could be when he tried.
Mr Kaygan said, ‘Would it be unpardonably forward of me to ask the young lady for a kiss too, even though we are of but slight acquaintance and I’m not inclined to class myself as a relative, blood or otherwise?’
Maeve ignored the stranger’s request and leaned against Fran. She could smell strong whiskey off him and knew that he had been a while at the bottle.
‘Have you been at the fighting, sir?’ she said.
‘I have been fighting with your father – Francis, I mean – to ensure that news of this great adventure of ours reaches the enemy’s ears and the ears of the world at large. And’ – Mr Kaygan held up the cigar and waved it about – ‘and to make sure that our brave volunteers are armed, not with sword and buckler, not with hayfork and hoe but with the best weapons that dollar money can buy. We have, in a word, been distributing arms.’
‘Aren’t you going to the warehouse?’ Maeve asked.
‘Fran’s exhausted,’ her mother said. ‘He needs sleep.’
‘Oh!’ Maeve said. ‘What’s in the case?’
‘Case?’ Fran said.
‘In the case between your knees?’
‘Oh that!’ Fran said. ‘Nothing for Nosey Parkers.’
‘Is it a revolver?’
‘What a girl!’ Mr Kaygan said. ‘By gum, Francis, what a girl! Tell me, lass, would you like a revolver? Would you like to go shoot a few British soldiers, is that why you put the question with such fervour?’
‘It’s not, is it?’ Maeve said.
‘No,’ Fran said. ‘It’s not.’
Sean looked like a little papoose all wrapped up in wool and lace, Maeve thought, but a bubble of milk clung to his lips and she left Fran’s side, went around the table and daintily wiped it away with a corner of her sleeve. She kissed her tiny brother on the brow.
‘Ah well.’ Mr Kaygan put the cigar back into his mouth. ‘I see that kisses in this household are reserved for those and such as those. I’ll just have wait until I get home to claim my rightful dues.’
Maeve drew out a chair and seated herself close to her mother.
She felt that she had earned the right to sit with the adults now. She had seen a man shot and a dead horse, had been close to the fighting and had not been afraid. Thanks to her uncles and granddad, to Turk and Fran, she had been in this thing from the beginning and would be in at the end, even with the British moving through the streets with all the cunning of wolves. Who had said that about wolves? Mr Whiteside. Mr Whiteside was up at the Green with the Citizen Army. She wished she could be at her teacher’s side right now, the whole class lined up at the gates of the Green, chewing on their looted toffees or sucking their liquorice straps and chanting like the twelve times table, ‘Shoot us. Shoot us if you dare.’
She said, ‘I promised Turk I’d take more food.’
‘Is it safe?’ Mam said. ‘Are there no troops in Sutter Street?’
‘If there aren’t,’ said Mr Kaygan, ‘there soon will be. Martial law will prevail tonight or if not tonight by tomorrow, and that will surely wipe the smile from the face of the populace.’
‘What’s martial law?’ Maeve said.
‘The law of the gun,’ said Fran, wearily.
‘Our law?’ said Maeve.
‘Military law, the right to do wicked things with government approval.’
‘Mr Pearse won’t stand for that,’ Maeve said; then added, ‘Will he?’
‘Mr Pearse, little lady, can only hold out so long.’
‘What about the reinforcements?’
Mr Kaygan and Fran exchanged a glance that she could not interpret. They had been laughing together when she had entered the room but they were not laughing now. They were not so much sober as resigned. The abrupt change in mood troubled her.
Her mother said, ‘Jansis has bread, cheese and boiled eggs ready in the kitchen but you’ve not to go round to Sutter Street, Maeve. You can toss it over the wall. Charlie will know where to look for it.’
‘I’m not afraid. I’ll take it right round to the gate.’
‘No,’ Fran said. ‘It isn’t safe.’ He dribbled whiskey into his glass and into Mr Kaygan’s. ‘Drink up, Kay,’ he said, ‘then you’d better be on your way.’
‘I better had, yes,’ Mr Kaygan said. ‘Will I take the Hudson, and if so, when will I call back for you?’
‘Leave the car behind the house,’ Fran said. ‘You can walk, can’t you?’
‘I suppose I can,’ said Mr Kaygan. ‘Are you endeavouring to indicate that you no longer require my assistance?’
Fran pushed himself back from the table. He seemed weary and rather sad. Maeve could not fathom why. He had planned for this day of triumph but now it had finally arrived he seemed to have lost all interest. She felt a vague sense of unease, a suspicion that many of the things Fran had told her had not been exactly the truth.
