After the Lockout

by Darran McCann

  ‘I never knew you drank before.’

  ‘There’s a lot of things I tried to leave in the past. For your mother.’

  ‘Tell me what Ma was like when she was young, Da.’

  ‘She was the most beautiful girl in the county. Men would come from everywhere looking to court her. She could have married a millionaire. Nobody knew why she would take an interest in a man like me. If there’s any goodness in me, she put it there. She put the drunkenness and meanness out of me. She brought me to the Church. It keeps me civilised, now she’s not here. There’s them would say I’m not civilised, but all I can say is I’d be worse but for the Church.’

  He takes a long swig.

  ‘I’m tired, son. I’m tired of playing the civilised man. I’m going to hell. There’s no avoiding that. Sometimes a man does things and there can be no redemption. But your mother gave me twenty years of peace and it was more than I deserved. Maybe God will give me peace in the next world, but I don’t suppose He’ll be much inclined to.’

  It’s after midnight when Pius says it’s time to go. The important thing is to hand the gun to the proper authority. Pius says he believes the OC can be trusted. Either way, it’s the only chance we have of not seeing the gun turned straight back on us. We walk slowly into Madden. Pius keeps the rifle cocked and I hold the pistol carefully, my hand tucked inside the breast of my coat. It’s pitch dark and we walk with great deliberation till we get to the wall of the Poor Ground. The night is moonless and starless without a sliver of light. Only the smouldering glow of fireplaces inside slumbering homes punctuates the still gloom. How will the OC, whoever he is, even know we’re here?

  ‘When he comes, take the bullets out and hand him the empty gun. We’ll leave the bullets by the side of the road further up. We’ll leave a cigarette lit beside them so he can find them.’

  Something stirs. I look up the street, back the way we came, and in the darkness perceive a figure moving towards us. Pius squints. ‘He’s alone, isn’t he?’ The figure comes closer. ‘Right then, take out those bullets.’

  Stanislaus was wakened by shouts and screams and cheering and jeering. He went to the window but his bedroom faced away from the village so he could see nothing but a dim orange tint in the black night. He dressed and went down the stairs quickly, and was surprised to find Father Daly at the kitchen table sharing tea with two men he had never seen before.

  ‘You’re up late, Your Grace,’ he said.

  ‘Who are these men?’

  ‘Motorists. They were passing through and had a bit of trouble. They’ve thrown themselves on our mercy.’

  ‘There’s something going on outside. Are you deaf, man?’ Stanislaus hurried out the door and saw angry orange shards dancing in the night sky. Bleary-eyed families stood in the street, some looking on passively, others scurrying furiously, as the barn that Victor Lennon had built burned like a bonfire. Sean Moriarty exhorted everyone to join the relay of people slopping buckets messily from hand to hand from the well by the National School. Victor, Pius and Turlough dashed recklessly in and out of the burning building, momentarily dampening the most urgent areas until the blaze blew beyond control elsewhere. The sheer violence of the fire struck Stanislaus as odd. The building was mostly metal, the fire could only feed on the thick beams that formed its skeleton. Though hardly fireproof, the stanchions would have been a reluctant accomplice to an arsonist. Yet looking closer he saw the fire had indeed eaten deep into the wood. Some patient firestarter had nurtured it from a mere flicker to the great conflagration that now licked through the body of Victor Lennon’s building.

  Crowds were gathered across from the Poor Ground. Kate McDermott. Jerry McGrath. TP McGahan and his notebook out. Aidan Cavanagh looked manic. Many others were there, and in the dancing light of the flames, Stanislaus fancied he saw hate in their faces. Kate McDermott said it was like the Titanic: this was what happened when men poked their fingers in the eyes of God. A great crack and creak announced the imminent collapse of the far end of the building; the fire-fighters shrieked with terror while the rest looked on with grim satisfaction. Margaret Cavanagh, the schoolteacher, ran towards the onlookers in great distress.

  ‘Please help us. There aren’t enough of us to fight the fire. Please, before someone is killed,’ she begged.

  ‘Stop running after that fucker and making a fool of yourself, Maggie. Come here to me now,’ Aidan Cavanagh cried to his sister.

  ‘Shut up, Aidan,’ she replied.

  Jerry McGrath turned to Stanislaus. ‘What should we do, Father?’

  Stanislaus marvelled dumbly at the flames as they leapt exultantly heavenwards, defying the night. So it is by fire that the parish will be cleansed, he thought. So be it. Victor threw more water, like an emperor putting down rebellions left and right, though his engulfment in revolution was already assured. The flames would have their way. Stanislaus’s flock looked to him. He gripped his cane tightly and shook his head. ‘You should tell them to stand back and let the fire burn itself out,’ he said.

  ‘Victor is inside there. Pius and Turlough too. If you tell people to help we can still put this fire out.’

  ‘Miss Cavanagh, I have spoken.’

  ‘But Your Grace …’

  Stanislaus didn’t wish harm on Pius or Turlough or even the Victor fellow, but that wasn’t the issue. Those helping Victor fight the fire weren’t necessarily choosing his way – when confronted with a fire, it was natural to try and put it out – but those who took a step back with Stanislaus now, their inaction was definitive. Their standing by was a profound statement of solidarity with Christ.

  ‘Sometimes one must surrender to a greater opposing force.’

  Charlie Quinn came hurrying up the street as quickly as his good leg would carry him, looking murderous. ‘They smashed my window. They’ve robbed me again.’

  We’re arriving home safely when I first spot the daggers of flame shooting up in the sky, and I know it’s the People’s Hall. I don’t need to waste time trying to discern detail, I know. And we aren’t going to be able to save it. Even as we sprint back down the road we have just crept up so gingerly, even as we arrive in the village and see the conflagration, even as we smash into Charlie’s shop and commandeer all his buckets, I know it will all be in vain. Blinking, sleep-eyed neighbours emerge from their front doors to see what’s happening, and I exhort them to help. I form relay lines of the willing and, steeling every sinew, throw myself into the fight. I promise them the hall can be saved but I know it’s finished. The fire will reduce the People’s Hall to a burned-out shell, and each pail I throw at the flames is as forlorn a gesture as Cúchullain at the waves. At the far end of the barn, the stanchions holding up the roof look like used matches, pillars of packed carbon retaining their shape but no more now than ghosts of the wood they were. They’ll fall soon. The others will follow.

  No more buckets are coming in. No more water. Turlough has abandoned me, only Pius remains. He pleads with me to flee but I shake my head, I’m staying in this poisonous, crackling heat. I gulp the smoke. My lungs scream, my skin bakes and detachedly I note how the roof threatens with searing credibility to collapse. This fire must be put to good use. If I die beneath a fiery beam, how might that help bring about a serious social programme? How can I use it to wrest the initiative from the likes of Arthur Fox and Bat McClatchey and Father Daly and Bishop bloody Benedict? The people need example. It’s a parish of spineless fools and it needs a shock.

  ‘Victor, son, please, please, son, take my hand,’ says Pius, and his tone is so startling that I stop beating the flames with my jacket. It’s as if he’s going to cry. ‘It’s over, son,’ he says.

  I take his hand and he leads me outside. It’s like plunging into ice and my poor crackling skin tingles with relief. The clear, clean air dives into my lungs and swirls in my belly, cleansing as the first smoke of the day. Buckets are strewn in an abject pattern across the Poor Ground where people have gathered to watch the demise of the
People’s Hall. Maggie is in the crowd, her relief undisguised. I suppose most people are glad I’m alive, all things being equal. I look back to the People’s Hall as it creaks and groans and the fire hisses and roars. Only now does terror visit. I think I went a bit mad just now, standing under a burning roof and thinking only of how to implement a social programme: that is mad.

  ‘You fucken thief, you fucken robbin’ thief! You’ll pay for my window and for all them buckets too,’ I hear Charlie Quinn cry out, and as I turn my head his cane swings for me. I hear the crack of wood against my skull an instant before I feel the pain. It’s like someone is pouring hot tar in my ear. I slump to the ground and feel the cane bang against my ribs, but it all seems somehow far away. My head lies against a large stone on the ground. Maggie runs forward to try and stop Charlie as he swings his cane but she won’t make it. He’s going to dash my brains out. Yet it’s the strangest thing; everything seems to happen in half-speed. The red second stretches out. My head is gone before Charlie’s cane reaches it, and I’m on my feet before he has regained his balance. My instincts have preserved me against stronger and faster than Charlie Quinn. I wipe the blood from my eye, that same cut as always, and ignore the pain’s urgent pleadings. I plant my back foot in the turf and throw a straight left, out from the shoulder, and the shopkeeper collapses like an accordion. He’s unconscious before he hits the ground. I draw my boot and aim for about nine inches behind the heart so my steel toecap will still be travelling when it connects, but Maggie throws herself in my way. I seize her in my arms so as not to send her falling back onto Charlie.

  The moment is over. Thank God I didn’t kick Charlie. I’d have killed him.

  The bottom section of the hall collapses in a ball of fire. There’s also a high-pitched, piercing bang but, in the din of the collapsing hall, no-one hears it except me. They hear the second shot, this time the low boom of a shotgun. I look around wildly. Forty yards away, around the side of the People’s Hall, my father slumps down on one knee, the shotgun in the crook of his elbow pointed towards the blasted remains of Bat McClatchey.

  The percussive noise from the crowd ceased and the whooshing violence of the fire scored the wordless scene. Stanislaus looked to the bloody, lifeless body of the dead man, and Pius Lennon, slumped to one knee, presumably drunk. A wisp of smoke came from the barrel of Pius’s shotgun. He had finally done it. Stanislaus moved towards them but with a head start of thirty yards and fifty years, Victor Lennon got there well before him.

  ‘Da! Da, are you all right?’ Victor cried in panic. He took his father in his arms and howled, primal as a wolf. Stanislaus finally arrived, looked with dread to the dead man and checked whether there was a last breath in the poor fellow, that he might administer the Last Rites, but the dead man was dead as could be. His chest was a mangled shambles and he wore an open-eyed look of wonder. He would have to meet his maker as he was. A second man approached, and Stanislaus realised the dead man was one of the motorists, the men who had thrown themselves on Father Daly’s mercy. Stanislaus put his hand to his mouth in horror. Two men passing through, needing only refuge for a few hours. They must have been trying to help fight the fire when, for whatever crazed, drunken reason, Pius had done murder. The other motorist brushed past Stanislaus and bent over his dead companion. Stanislaus supposed he was praying for him until he saw the other motorist wrench something from the cold fingers of his fellow. Stanislaus looked back across the distance to Pius, and saw that Pius was not all right. His shotgun had fallen to the ground and he lay in Victor’s arms, holding his belly. The flickering firelight showed Pius’s middle to be dark and sticky and wet, as though someone had thrown oil over him. Stanislaus looked back at the motorists. This was no mere murder. The living one stood over the dead and aimed the pistol at Victor, but by now Victor was standing over his father and pointing the shotgun back at the motorist. The pistol sent a high-pitched syllable screaming into the night. Women shrieked and panic was everywhere but Victor Lennon did not panic. His rifle contained only two shots, one of which was spent, but Victor was all decision. He dropped to one knee, no doubt as he’d been taught in his jerry-built army, and fired. The boom of the rifle was like a bass drum to the pistol’s snare. Half the motorist’s shoulder came away, and he spun backwards, landing five yards from his dead mate and maybe four from his pistol. Victor sprinted across the intervening ground quickly and picked up the gun. He pointed it at the motorist, who was still alert enough to feel every bit of the pain he was in.

  ‘Victor, don’t,’ Stanislaus cried. Victor turned wildly and let the gun follow his eyes so it was pointed at Stanislaus’s heart, but realised the danger and turned the gun to the ground. Stanislaus was terrified. An unintentional gunman was no less terrifying than an intentional one. ‘He’s just a motorist passing through. You don’t have to kill him,’ said Stanislaus in slow, regular syllables, hoping to soothe the beast.

  ‘Motorists? Where is their car?’ Victor demanded.

  Stanislaus could not say he had seen their car. Nor gloves, goggles, leathers or anything else that might have corroborated their story.

  ‘Ask your curate who these men are,’ Victor said. The motorist’s eyes were open but he had gone quiet and wasn’t moving. His lips trembled. Perhaps he was praying.

  ‘Your father needs you, Victor. Put down the gun and go to him,’ said Stanislaus.

  ‘You go to him. It’s a priest he’ll want, not me,’ said Victor.

  Stanislaus felt the hand of Margaret Cavanagh the schoolteacher on his shoulder. He told her to tend to Pius, as she was the nearest thing to a doctor present, but she shook her head. ‘Victor’s right. Please, go to him, and leave me with Victor.’

  Pius Lennon lay motionless now. I must go to him, Stanislaus told himself.

  Shards of metal and glass and stone are strewn across the copper roof of the GPO. You’re flat on your belly peeking out from behind the marble toes of Hibernia when someone shouts: ‘Take cover, they have snipers everywhere.’ You see one of the bastards across the way, on the roof of the Metropole Hotel. You have a clear shot, and you fire. He disappears. Three or fours shots come at you in a short burst, riddling poor Hibernia as you crouch beneath her. Lumps of the statue fall off and as you look up, Hibernia’s falling right hand punches you in the temple on its way to the ground. Immediately your eye starts to weep blood. That same old eye wound as always. You try to see whether the sniper at the Metropole is still there, but instead see a shell screaming up from the south. The rumour is true: they really do have a gunboat on the Liffey and they really are shelling the second city of the Empire. The shell falls short and blows half of Clery’s department store to kingdom come. Clery’s, the jewel in Murphy’s crown, reduced to rubble. You laugh and your comrades look at you like you’ve lost your mind. Another shell comes from the direction of D’Olier Street, sailing over you and blowing a chunk out of Jervis Street. They’re finding their range. A third shell spins gracelessly towards you, and while your comrades flee, you stay to watch the huge tin barrel’s progress with fascination, whispering to yourself that life is in the letting go, life is in the letting go, life is in the letting go. The shell whistles past and lands twenty yards away, splattering Wicklow granite and Dublin guts all to hell. You bawl at the young fella crouched beside you, one of the last comrades there: ‘Damnit, Smart, you’ve pissed yourself. Let’s get the hell off this roof.’ You grab him by the shirt front and throw him back inside the shell of the GPO; you both trip over a crowd of Volunteers huddled together mumbling a Rosary. Usually they at least have the wit to save their mumbo jumbo for quieter moments.

  ‘Get up to fuck and get to your posts, d’ye not know we’re under attack?’ you roar, and though you’re not their OC they jump up and run. Fucken schoolteachers and altar boys and poets, here to fight for ‘Ireland’, whatever that is. Not against oppression as such, just the indignity of being oppressed by foreigners. What the hell sort of a country is it that the likes of them and the li
kes of us are on the same side?

  Later you’re huddled in the cell among the cold and wet and blood and piss and morphine, with the screws poking through the doors with bayonets and screaming that you’re next for the firing squad, and you whisper the mantra to your comrades. Life is in the letting go, lifeisinthelettinggo, lifeisinthelettinggraciouslygo. They don’t know what you’re talking about but they repeat it like good apostles anyway, and they keep repeating it till the words become strange in your ears, and all meaning is lost. The meaninglessness is like balm.

  ‘Victor, please, no,’ says Maggie softly. I don’t look at her. I’ll lose my nerve if I do, and I can’t afford to lose my nerve. I look at Pius instead. I’ve seen men wounded less devastatingly and not lasted as long. Benedict is talking to him. Getting him ready for whatever he believes is coming next. He is pleading like a debtor with bailiffs at the door, sobbing into Benedict’s ear like it’s a telephone to heaven. We won’t speak again, my father and I. Time won’t allow. Arthur’s eyes are closed and his lips are mumbling. For all his talk, here he is, praying. A pathetic deathbed convert.

  ‘Open your eyes, Arthur,’ I say. In them I see more resignation than fear.

  ‘You’re going to kill me.’

  ‘What would you do in my shoes, comrade?’

  Barely perceptibly he nods, closes his eyes and goes back to his praying. I look around the dumbstruck Madden mob. I see Charlie, groggily returning to consciousness. The People’s Hall teeters, and the fire must conjure in Pius’s last conscious moments a vision of hell. There is nothing left to do but finish the scene. I will go to Mick Collins and beg for absolution, but I know that two graves demand a third. Things are serious now. Even the rising was innocent compared to now. All I signed up for was socialism, but the revolution has become something else, evolved into something darker and altogether more real. I don’t know when this happened.