by Iris Murdoch
The sun was hot. The two figures were running now in step. But by the time they got as far as Findlater’s Church Andrew forced Cathal to slow down. Cathal’s breath came in wailing gasps, like quick little screams, and his face, as Andrew glimpsed it, strained and moulded by fear, looked no less grotesque than his Lazarus head of an hour ago. They continued at a quick jolting walk. People eyed them uneasily as they passed; and here and there from side streets men with grimmer faces emerged and began to hurry down toward the centre of the city. One or two people now passed them at a run. An increasing murmur of anxious talk hung like a light canopy above their heads. Dublin, a little startled, a little puzzled, seemed already to be aware that this was no ordinary day in her history.
As they came past the Rotunda toward the upper end of Sackville Street there was a sound of rifle fire ahead of them and then, as in reply, a burst of firing in another part of the city. The murmur of talk fell almost to silence and the moving people, not yet numerous, seemed to draw together with an uneasy, eager purposiveness, already aware of themselves as a crowd compelled onward by the mystery of an historical event. Someone laughed nervously. The rifle fire was heard again.
The police had already formed a cordon across the end of Sackville Street and people were standing four and five deep behind them. Andrew and Cathal pushed their way forward until they could see, over the policemen’s shoulders, the wide expanse of the street, empty. That sudden utter emptiness, more perhaps than anything else, showed to the wondering gaze of the onlookers the extraordinary nature of what had happened. The Post Office had a strange look. The glass in all the windows had been broken and the spaces barricaded with piles of furniture. The building already had a huddled, beleaguered appearance, the air weirdly of a fortress. A large placard hung upon the façade read: Headquarters of the Provisional Government of the Irish Republic. While up above, in place of the Union Jack, a green flag blew out taut and clear, with the words Irish Republic written upon it in white letters. There was something miniature, amateurish, improbable about the scene, as if the line between dream and reality had been crossed in a blundering manner and almost unaware.
As they watched, the crowd almost silent now, a figure emerged on to the Post Office portico and began to speak, reading aloud to the empty street from a piece of paper which fluttered in his hand. While the sound of the voice, too far off to be understood, rang out thinly in the clear sunny air, a man near to Andrew who had some field glasses said, ‘That’s Patrick Pearse.’ Andrew could not hear Pearse’s words, but he read them later many times and on many days as they nightly appeared upon posters all over the city. ‘Irishmen and Irishwomen. In the name of God and of the dead generations from which she receives her old traditions of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom….’
The figure had vanished now from the Post Office portico and the deserted street seemed quiet, almost sleepy, in the sun. The crowd began to talk again in low voices. There was a baffled painful excitement which was like guilt.
‘Why didn’t the English take a pot shot at him while he was out there?’
‘Sure, that lot have no guns.’
‘He’s after declaring the Irish Republic, whatever the hell that is.’
‘Isn’t it the like of the bloody Sinn Feiners to do this on the day of the races, and it fine for once.’
‘The murderin’ idjuts, they’ve killed a horse.’
Andrew, peering between the shifting heads of the police, saw that they had indeed killed a horse. The horse lay in the middle of the street opposite the main door of the Post Office, a huge brown glossy mound. Looking at the dead horse, Andrew felt a piercing fright, an anguish which he scarcely understood. Then looking sideways he saw on the nearby pavement, some mounted and some dismounted, a group of Lancers in colourful uniforms and very evident disarray. Bound for Phoenix Park, the Lancers, who carried no firearms, had passed unsuspectingly down Sackville Street at a minute or two after twelve and had received the first volley from the rebels. Four men had been hit and had already been pulled away into the shops opposite. The horse remained. Andrew looked at the Lancers and looked at the horrified, frightened face of the young officer, a boy of his own age. Andrew’s heart expanded and contracted with a violence which almost broke it, as if the blood were trying to burst from his body with shame and despair. He touched himself, touched his cap and jacket to be sure that he was indeed wearing them, touched his shoulder with the single pip. He too was a British officer.
He was then at once aware that people in the crowd were looking at him. The crowd was detached, confused, if anything hostile to the Sinn Feiners. But they stared at Andrew and at his uniform without friendliness. By the violence which had already occurred a breach had been opened, and through that breach inevitably would flow the bitterness of centuries.
Andrew began to struggle back. People were pushing now alarmingly from behind. He edged through, pulling Cathal after him. He tried to manoeuvre his pinioned hand so as to get a grip on the boy’s wrist, but managed only to catch hold of his limp fingers. Cathal followed him unresistingly now, his head hanging forward. They picked their way back out of the densest part of the crowd.
Why had he done it? He was a dead man now, he had died there in that little room sitting there beside Cathal with his back against the wall measuring the slow hours and minutes of his dissolution. Frances and Millie, the figures of the women paled to nothing, he scarcely now recalled who it was that had been with him when the angelus began to ring. What was colossal, irrevocable and insupportable was the destruction of his honour. He had been murdered in that little room just as surely as if they had shed his blood. Why had he given in and let them destroy him?
Even as he replied Andrew knew that this was not the answer and that he was without defence against the appalling nature of his act. When Millie had whispered to him, driving him with her knee up against the scullery wall, that she had had a certain relationship with her brother, his father, and that there were letters to prove it, he had for a second not believed her. Then when she had gone on murmuring into his ear that unless he surrendered she would have those letters sent to his mother, his mind was overwhelmed with a pity for Hilda which had seemed to bring belief with it and to leave him with no other course but to protect her. Such knowledge could blacken his mother’s life back through time to its very roots. He could not risk, by any gambling with Millie, the possibility of so hideous a disclosure. He decided to give in at once.
Now he could doubt it all. The first shock, felt for his mother, brought belief. The second shock, felt for himself, brought disbelief. How could anything so horrible have really happened, anything so, as he now apprehended it, insulting to him? Perhaps there were letters, but they might mean nothing or be construed as harmless. Perhaps Millie would not, or could not, in fact have carried out her threat. Or perhaps, with a grotesque ingenuity, she had invented the whole story to terrify him with. That afternoon, he supposed, he would go to Upper Mount Street and find out. After that he would report to Longford.
But the thought of Longford and of his shame brought him to what lay deeper. He ought, whatever else he had done, to have faced Pat. He ought to have ignored Pat’s revolver and to have fought Pat with his bare hands. His cousin would not have killed him. Or if he had, that would have been better, far better, than this other death. He had been near to Pat, nearer perhaps than ever in his life, when Pat had smiled and said, ‘How else could you answer.’ At that moment there had been a bond between them of dignity and respect. But Andrew had merely spoken of his duty. He ought to have done it. He ought to have fought then and there in the Dumays’ kitchen with all the fury of his manhood. This was the encounter for which his whole life had been a training. He loved and he had always loved Pat Dumay. To have fought with Pat then up to any extremity of destruction and disaster would have been the last perfect expression of that love. But precisely because he had always idolized Pat the spr
ing of power was broken inside him. He could not command the splendour of will which would have taken his cousin into a wrestler’s embrace. He had dishonoured his uniform and this dishonour could not be forgiven, or blotted out by any degree of heroism ever. And he had done it, in the end, because of Pat and for Pat; and in doing it he had done the one thing which would make Pat despise him eternally.
Andrew found that he was still holding Cathal’s hand. He looked at the boy. Cathal’s face was oblivious, flushed and running with tears. Andrew felt near to tears himself. He said, ‘Come on, Cathal, we must find someone to get these things off us. Do you know where we could go?’ He pulled the boy along with him, pulling him away from the ominous dreadful emptiness of Sackville Street.
As they walked together, people were hurrying past them from all sides in ever increasing numbers, their talk filling the sunny air, louder now, more confident, already less amazed.
‘Is it mad they all are?’
‘They’re bringing field guns up into Trinity.’
‘They’ve got the Irish Lights boat up the river to shell them out of that.’
‘Please God they’ve got a priest in there with them.’
‘God and His Blessed Mother help them now, the poor bloody fools.’
‘Ah, sure isn’t this a grand day for Ireland.’
Epilogue
Blessington Street
April 1938
Dearest Frances,
I know I should have written to you ages ago but I’ve been rushed off my feet what with the work for the settlement and getting the house ready for the new lodgers, it’s a lot of small things really but there hasn’t been a moment. Jinny’s a great blessing of course, and her son has been painting the kitchen and scullery, a useful decent boy and not like the run of those kids at all. I hope the new lodgers will be all right. I got so fond of the other lot, we were quite like a big family here at Blessington Street! But I expect I shall soon get just as fond of the new ones. Did I tell you one had been a major in the British Army, a very nice kind of a man, who’s taking the two rooms at the top.
I loved to have the news of your family, how quickly they are growing up, it makes me feel so old to think you’ve got nearly grown up children now, Frances. Well, God help us we can none of us escape from anno domini and I’m lucky to have my health and strength, not like poor Millie. She’s a lot better now of course, but she was never the same since her operation. I think I told you I got her out of that damp place in Eccles Street and now she has a dear little room in Dargle Road, that’s off the Drumcondra Road. There’s a lot of other old crocks in the house and they all call her ‘my lady’, and that’s still good for a wet of whiskey! I took her out to lunch the other day at Jammet’s and a waiter recognized her and said she hadn’t changed a bit and that pleased her so much, poor thing, though God knows it isn’t true. And she started telling the waiter all about Easter Week at Boland’s Mill, and I suppose she was very heroic all that time in the back room tying bandages, but she talks so loud now she’s a bit deaf and all the restaurant was listening and passing remarks and I was quite embarrassed. Then after that she was on at me about Barney and how good he was to her and how she misses him yet and in the end we were both of us quite wretched. It’s hard to believe it’s all of ten years since poor Barney passed away, God rest his soul.
And when are you coming over here? I could make room for the lot of you at Blessington Street, there’s that big sofa still in the drawing-room and one of the kids could have the camp bed. It’d be so good to talk about the old days. I’ve found an album full of old snaps I’d love to show you, including such a nice one of your poor father in that old mackintosh hat of his, you remember the old mackintosh hat. And there’s one of Hilda at Claresville, such a pretty house and so sad that she never really lived in it. Now that you’ve all the children away at school couldn’t you be spared to give us a visit, even if you couldn’t persuade all the family to come? They say there’ll be a heat wave this summer and I know it would please Millie so much if you came, she’s always asking after you. And we could go and visit all the old places, Kingstown’s just the same, though I still can’t get used to calling it Dun Laoghaire, and Sandycove and the baths and all. I was down there the other week and went down past Finglas and looked into the garden. The old red swing’s still there. You remember the old swing and how poor Andrew mended it for you and took such trouble with it. Only they’ve painted the house pink now which I don’t like and they’ve renamed it Hillcrest, which is a silly name as it isn’t on the crest of the hill at all. I don’t know who the people are who are there now since the Porters left. I think they’re English people.
Well, I must stop this scrawl and do the laundry. Give my love to the family. And do come over this summer all of you to the Emerald Isle and ‘we’ll talk of old times till they put out the light’ like it says in the song!
Yours with fondest love,
Kathleen.
P.S. I’ve sent you some spiced beef. Don’t undo the cloth, just boil it for two hours.
* * * *
‘Who’s that great fat letter from?’ said Frances’ tall son.
‘From Aunt Kathleen.’
‘Is she complaining as usual?’ said Frances’ English husband.
‘Not specially.’
‘I suppose she wants us to go over?’
‘She always wants us to go over.’
‘Well, you can go. You’re not getting me over there again.’
‘Oh, I don’t really want to go,’ said Frances.
She saw her husband folding the newspaper in the careful way in which he always folded it at the end of breakfast to make it into a flat square package which would fit into his briefcase. She saw folding inwards the headline Franco Threatens Barcelona. She looked at the face of her tall son and quickly withdrew her eyes. Since her son’s best friend had gone to join the International Brigade Frances had lived with fear daily.
‘What’s the latest in your Irish family?’ asked Frances’ son.
Her children always spoke of her ‘Irish family’. It did not occur to them to regard themselves as half Irish. They did not even regard their mother as Irish. They had visited Ireland four times and expressed no wish to go again.
‘Oh, they’re very quiet as usual. Aunt Millie’s a bit better.’
‘Quiet! Quiet as the grave, I’d say,’ said Frances’ husband.
‘Well, after all, Kathleen—’
‘Oh, I don’t mean Kathleen, I mean the whole island. Do you remember how depressed we got last time? I never saw anything deader.’
‘Well, perhaps they enjoy it—’
‘I hope so, they certainly asked for it. They wanted to be by themselves alone, and they’re by themselves alone.’
‘I liked that place on the west coast,’ said Frances’ son.
‘No, you didn’t. You complained all the time because it was too cold to bathe. And it rained every day. I must say Ireland’s an object lesson.’
‘Well, I don’t mind things being quiet,’ said Frances. ‘There’s too much noise and rush over here. And I like rain.’
‘A provincial dump living on German capital. A dairy-farming country that can’t even invent its own cheese. And if there’s another war they won’t fight, any more than they did last time. And that’ll really finish them. ”
‘They did fight last time,’ said Frances. ‘The Irish regiments were famous.’
‘Yes, and where are those regiments now? Oh, a collection of mad-caps enlisted. But most of the Irish were looking after number one. And all that nineteen sixteen nonsense that your family was mixed up in.’
‘I don’t think it was nonsense,’ said Frances’ son.
‘It was unadulterated nonsense,’ said Frances’ husband. ‘Can you tell me what good it did?’
‘I don’t know—’ said Frances.
‘It made no sense at all. Home Rule was coming anyway. Only a lot of disgruntled fanatics wanted to draw attenti
on to themselves. It was pure bloody-minded romanticism, the sort of thing that makes people into fascists nowadays.’
‘They weren’t like fascists,’ said Frances’ tall son, ‘because they were on the right side.’
‘When you’re grown up,’ said Frances’ husband, ‘which let me once again remind you that you’re not, you’ll realize that politics is not a matter of sides, it’s a matter of methods. That’s why there isn’t a pin to choose between those two lots in Spain. If you ask me, it’s one gang of barbarians against another gang of barbarians.’
Frances quickly intercepted her son’s reply. She was used to this task of oiling the waters, a task that consisted in turning all serious discussion between her husband and children into vague generalities or harmless personal chat. ‘Father might have agreed with you. He was always against any kind of extremism. He said the Irish talked nothing but history, but had no historical sense at all.’