by Roddy Doyle
Like a come-all-ye, the prayer was taken up by other men and others up and downstairs; some of our lads too, down on their socialist knees. I took my eyes from the street for a few seconds and watched Connolly across the hall, grinding his teeth; I could almost hear them crumbling above the rosary drone. Pearse was in a corner, on a high stool, his head in a notebook; he was mumbling as well. Collins, to be fair to him, looked ready to go in among them and kick them back to earth.
I looked out. The shadow of the G.P.O. had stretched right across to the other side of the street, up the walls of the Imperial, to the barricades at the windows and our men behind them. Higher up, on the roof, the Starry Plough was still in the sun’s white gaze. The last of the day’s heat was in the sweat at the corners of my eyes, and the blackness now in front of me - I couldn’t trust what I was seeing. There was nothing out there but I couldn’t be certain of it. There were shadows moving but they were nothing. Around corners, over the river, down on the quays the city was moving; it was the usual racket and whine but it could have been the Army coming at us. There was a spark behind a window that could have been a rifle barrel. There was a sharp, lonely crack that might have been a Vickers gun accepting its magazine. All was quiet but maybe appalling. And, behind me, my colleagues and comrades, my fellow revolutionaries, were on their knees - and they’d been on them and off them all day - with their eyes clamped shut, their heads bowed and their cowering backs to the barricades. What sort of a country were we going to create? If we were attacked now, we were fucked. I didn’t want to die in a monastery. I’d made up my mind to jump.
But I thought I saw something - the hint of fire behind glass across the street, beyond the Abbey Street corner. I was looking at it, waiting for it to become something definite, when the fireworks started. Real fireworks - whizz-bangs and cartwheels - tame, crackling, happy holiday sounds and then the whiff of powder, like a burning box of matches just beyond my nose. The sparks and whizzes were coming from way down the street, near the river, so they lit up the edge of my vision - I couldn’t see causes, anyone running or lighting fuses - until the bangs came from above our heads. Rockets zipped into what was now the night and exploded, and dropped their colours and I watched them melt and disappear and waited for the next explosion.
Most of the men ran to their stations but some of the rosary boys seemed to think that the Chinese crackers were a sign that their prayers were being spurned. They started shouting the responses; their foreheads were virtually on the ground, rubbing the flags to a new smoothness.
—Up off your knees!
—There’s a war on, lads!
They jumped or were kicked upright; they clung to their beads like their mammies’ fingers. Collins was in there with his boots swinging.
—Get rid of the beads and pick up your rifles!
And the firework sparks fell and died over Sackville Street. The streetlights were smashed and it was darker than ever before out there. Except for the odd flame and rush of a rocket, there was nothing to see. Were they finally coming at us, crawling in under the rockets and whizzers, taking us out with bangers instead of shells and bullets? Were the roman candles the measure of their contempt? They were already celebrating the easy certainty of victory. Crawling closer and closer, in fancy dress and drunk. They were going to push us over.
But I knew what was actually happening just after the fires started and lit the street and started to consume it. The flames lit the figures and they became people - boys and men, women, girls and strange shapes stooped under piles of furniture and clothes.
I heard the shock in the Volunteer voices.
—They’re looting over there, sir!
The kids had broken into Lawrence’s toy and sports bazaar, and had released all the fireworks. Now that it was night and safe and the rozzers had hidden themselves away, the citizens of Dublin were lifting everything they could get their hands on. And, once again, I felt that I was on the wrong side of the barricade. I leaned out and watched the show.
A small army of street arabs struggled past with a rocking horse held over their heads. They turned at North Earl Street and climbed over the barricade; they struggled up, dragging the horse, and the horse’s head disappeared as they slid down the other side. They were followed by another gang hauling a piano, with a young fella on top of it; he glowed in the dark, covered in iodine to kill his ringworm. Another kid, dressed in the threads of a golfer five times his size, dashed by with his back parallel to the street, held down by the weight of a full golf bag. An oul’ lad, already drunk from the promise of the unopened jars of whiskey he was lugging, staggered up towards Cavendish Row, his neck kept cosy by a feather boa that trailed for yards behind him. And there were ordinary sights too, people getting away with all the things they could carry. Dipping in and out of the shop displays, over my broken glass, and deeper into the departments and vaults behind them. Climbing into the gift horse’s mouth. Voting with their feet and backs; welcoming the new Republic. Prams and hand-carts full of fur coats and stoles, bloomers and stockings. And the sucking and gasping going by; I knew that the kids had liberated Lemon’s sweet shop.
The fireworks were gone or made lifeless by the real fires that had joined to destroy the far side of the street. I heard the approaching bells of the fire brigade and my heart let go of a whoop as Tyler’s in front of me ignited and joined the blaze. Almost immediately, my nose welcomed the bracing tang of burning leather.
An outraged voice beside us cried out.
—They’re Irish shops they’re robbing!
—Good for them, said Paddy Swanzy back at the Volunteer.
—It’s all Irish property!
—It’ll still be Irish after it’s taken.
Without saying anything, without even looking at one another, we - the Citizen Army men - suddenly knew that we would have to protect the people outside. My barrel still faced the street but I was ready to turn it in on the Volunteers who were itching to save Irish property.
One of the Volunteer officers, a red-faced chap called Smith, came storming towards our section. He was unbuckling his holster as he went but his fury made his fingers hopeless.
—We’ll have to make an example of them, he shouted. —Or we’ll be hanging our heads in shame among the nations of the world.
I turned from the window and pointed my rifle at Smith and waited for him and the others following him to see it. Paddy Swanzy and Felix had done the same thing.
—If it’s examples you’re looking for, said Paddy,—just keep doing what you’re doing and see what happens.
—And fuck the nations of the world, I said.
The Volunteers saw our barrels smiling at them and, before they could respond or do anything at all, the floor between us was awash with generals, commandants and poets, most of the Provisional Government of the Republic. Five seconds that very nearly shook the world - the revolution, the counter-revolution and the Civil War were all waiting to happen in that five-second spell in the G.P.O., as Dublin outside burned. I put my rifle on Pearse. I didn’t know what was happening upstairs and on the roof or downstairs with Miss O’Shea - she was still dancing to my tongue, even as I got ready to shoot Commandant Pearse - but, where we were, not one barricade was manned, not even one pair of eyes faced the street. For the duration of those five, crawling seconds Britain stopped being the enemy. Pearse saw my rifle and saw my eyes and my intentions in them, and he turned slightly, giving me his profile, hiding his squint; he was ready for an elegant death.
Then Connolly spoke.
—There’ll be no Irishman shot by an Irishman tonight, he said.
—How will we deal with them then? said Smith.
—You won’t, I said, still aiming at Pearse.
—We’ll send out a squad now to get them off the streets, said Connolly.
It was over. We looked across and stored away the faces for another day. I met the hard stares of country boys and shopkeepers, met and matched them. But, for now, it was
over. I could hear the fire engines behind me and sniper fire from Trinity College. And over their heads, at the door to the stairs, I saw Miss O’Shea. How long had she been there? We looked at each other. She rubbed her neck, right behind her ear where she hid her little creases from the world. And she frowned at me.
—We’ll do it nice and politely, said Connolly.—Those fires will be getting dangerous.
—I’ll go, I said.
—No, you won’t, said Connolly.—I want you here.
The barriers were pushed away from the front door and Paddy Swanzy and other men slipped out. I looked over to the stairs door. Miss O’Shea had gone.
—You wouldn’t have come back.
Connolly was beside me, his moustache almost in my mouth.
—I resent that remark, sir, I said.
—Good man. We’re surrounded by gobshites, Henry.
—I know, sir.
—Catholic and capitalist, Henry. It’s an appalling combination.
—Yes, sir.
—I want you near me, Henry.
—You can count on me, sir.
And I meant it.
—Back to your post now, he said.—But keep your hand on your father’s leg.
—I will, sir.
I could hear the vicious hiss as the rain and the fire brigade hoses smothered the flames, and people ran from the flats above the shops. And I watched as the steady trail of people went by, adding to their height and bulk with bits and lumps of Irish property. Two men rolled by with a cooper of stout. About twenty people marched past with a long roll of carpet over their heads; it must have come from one of the hotels and, against the fires, the procession looked like the march of a huge, headless centipede. Straw and wrapping paper tumbled down the street, some of the straw on fire and spilling tiny lights. A gang of women wore pots as head-dresses. They clanged their new hats with wooden spoons and spatulas - Oh thunder and lightning is no lark - and they sang into the flames - when Dubellin City is in the dark. A kid skidded past with four tiers of a wedding cake. If you have any money go up to the park. Four more women went by with a bed on their backs. And view the zoological gardens. A man was trying to stop them; he was pointing back down the street with his umbrella, obviously asking them to take their stuff back to where it had come from. One woman started fencing with him, ladle versus umbrella. I’d seen him before.
—Who’s your man?
—Sheehy-Skeffington, said Charlie Murtagh.—Skeffy. He’s a pacifist, so the smart money’s on the brasser with the big spoon.
I couldn’t tell where the bullet had come from but, across the street, right in front of me, I saw a man being shot. He stiffened; he dropped slowly to his knees, grabbed a pillar, and stayed there, kneeling. For two days. Further up the street, two drunks were getting sick at the stony feet of Father Mathew and a woman made an armchair for herself out of one of the dead horses; she wrapped herself from the wind and rain in velvet curtains and cuddled up between the horse’s legs. There was serious madness going on out there. And, in the middle of it all, Pearse gave us a speech. Dublin, by rising in arms, has redeemed its honour forfeited in 1813 when it failed to support the rebellion of Robert Emmet. I looked out at Dublin rising. And there she came, through it all, out of the darkest of the flames, the loveless old hoor herself, Granny Nash. She was carrying a wall made of books; she had two of them open on top of the pile, reading them already, one eye for each, as she strolled up Sackville Street. She looked singed and half-destroyed but she moved like a dreaming child on her way to school. And I cheered her on. I shouted with all I had but she never looked up from her books. The country is rising to Dublin’s call. And we waited. We waited for the advance or attack. We wondered what was happening behind the cracks of distant bullets. We didn’t know that we’d been cut off, that the military now controlled the line along the river and the land to the north. Or that there were dead men scattered all over the city, soldiers and rebels and people who’d been in the way. Irish regiments have refused to act against their fellow countrymen. Such looting as has occurred has been done by hangers-on of the British Army. We didn’t know that there were eighteen-pounders coming in from Athlone, blasting everything in the way. Or that they were taking back everything, the train stations, Stephen’s Green, the bits and plots of Ireland we’d freed the day before. We were alone and stuck and we didn’t know it.
Someone came back from outside with news of a charge; they’d be coming over the river any minute.
—This is it, men, said Connolly.
We waited.
—Fix bayonets.
And we waited for the attack. Old Clarke came over to my window and stared out.
—Our time has come, he said.
I’d never seen a man look so happy.
The rosary was whipped back into life. We waited all night. All the time searching, listening. Listening.
—What the fuck was that? said Paddy.
It was different. The firing had intensified since before daybreak; we’d been pulled awake by noise that was sudden and near. The walls and street were being shredded by machine-gun and sniper fire and we’d heard the first awful booms of an eighteen-pounder from somewhere across the river, opposite the Custom House, somewhere. The story whizzed around the building that it was the German guns nearing but the same story died as we felt the streets rock, heard the first walls and roofs collapsing, not far away any more, and we knew that these shells weren’t being sent to support anyone. There were marksmen and machine-guns on the roofs of Trinity, the Burgh Quay Music Hall, Jervis Street Hospital, all around us, the tower down at Amiens Street station, the roof of McBirney’s - a vicious bastard who even shot a blind man with a very white stick and the St John’s Ambulance man who ran to help him - the roof of the Rotunda, all raking us and our other positions nearer the bridge, Kelly’s tackle shop on the corner of Bachelor’s Walk and Hopkins & Hopkins, the jewellers; we’d a few men in each of those buildings, pretending they were whole squadrons. We were surrounded and we all knew that the end was coming up the street; the bombardment was a yawning sky above us, waiting to fall. The rosary had broken into a sprint and there was a queue upstairs for the priest. The bullets and silences were getting nearer and nearer and the air was a soup of brick dust.
But this was different. A huge clang. Like the world’s gong toppling over. The end, and its echo. Like nothing we could ever have been ready for. A new, appalling weapon. Rage roaring up from the earth’s core.
—What the fuck was that? said Paddy.
He was the only one who could speak. The rest of them waited for the next roar and its result, and hoped they’d understand it.
Word came down from the roof. A shell had hit the Loop Line bridge. They were bombarding Liberty Hall from a gunboat on the river and the iron bridge had got in the way; it was really a fishery protection vessel but gunboat made us feel better. They were dropping hot bombs and incendiary shells on the Hall, to flush out all the rebels. They didn’t know that Peter Ennis, the caretaker, was the only man in the building. The headquarters of the I.T.G.W.U., my home and the birthplace of our revolution, was being battered into the ground.
And Connolly was delighted. He clapped his hands and thumped his chest.
—Now they’re taking us seriously! he shouted at the dome.—They’re rattled!
—They’re not the only ones, said Paddy.
What did I say back to Paddy? Nothing at all. Too scared? Too busy? No. I just wasn’t there when he said it. I was downstairs, in the basement, in a hot little room with much more dust than air. Did I hear the shell hitting the Loop Line? Did I hear the clang? I did, but I thought the noise was coming from me. I was falling onto my back when it happened. I’d been pushed on top of a high bed made of blocks of stamps, sheets and sheets of the things, columns of them, sticky side up. I was stuck there with my britches nuzzling my ankles as Miss O’Shea grabbed my knees and climbed on top of me.
—This skirt, she said.—Wait.
—Now, she said.—That’s better.
Her fingers landed perfectly on my hips.
—What’ll you say about the skirt? I asked her.
I couldn’t cope with silence.
—I’ll say I tore it for Ireland, said Miss O’Shea.—And it’s no lie.
Her hair washed over me. I was in her mouth so quickly - Jesus, the heat! And her teeth and tongue! - and out again, before I’d the time to know it. And again, for longer and out, and she climbed up my jacket. I tried to grab hair, cloth, anything - it was pitch black in there, just heat and fingers - but she slapped my hands away, and harder when I slapped her back.
—I’m still your teacher, Henry Smart, she said.
—Yes, Miss, I said.
Her hands were on my neck; she prodded and glided, looking for ways to kill me. I hadn’t a clue what was happening. My slouch hat hit a wall.
—We won’t be needing that.
And she was right over my face now. She kissed the top of my head, then filled her mouth with hair and pulled. She let go and lifted herself. I heard tugging, a ping and there was warm flesh on my face, velvet skin swaying over me then pressing down on me. A nipple closed my eye as a hand grabbed my wee fighting rebel and he skipped from her fingers and she grabbed again. And she was gone from on top of me and my eye clung to the memory of her nipple. And her weight was gone. I was ready to let go of a shout, a howl - I’d never been so furious, so exposed - but I was in her, just like that - the scorch, the heat! - and she was on me again. And now she let me hold and find her.
—Keep your legs down, Henry, she said.
She tickled my balls and I went towards the ceiling, and she slapped the side of my leg.
—Do what you’re told, she said.
I dropped my legs again and she rode me slowly, with a rhythm that was cruel and wonderful and could never have held on to music. It surprised and taunted, dragged and built me and made me feel like the king of the world and a complete and utter fuckin’ eejit.