by Roddy Doyle
The shells were dropping on us now in a steady, reliable stream. The machine-guns never stopped. And dinner was served.
—I won’t eat that.
I watched a Volunteer turn his back on the tin plate offered to him by one of the Cumann na mBan women, crouching under the bullets in a nurse’s uniform.
—Why not? she said.
—I won’t eat meat on a Friday.
It was Friday. What had happened to Thursday?
—I’ll have it, I told her.
I stood up straight in the main hall and ate the Volunteer’s dinner, the best bit of chicken I’d ever tasted. I felt the hot draught of passing bullets, a slice of shrapnel flew into one of my spuds and fizzled, but I ate it all up, every last mouthful. They watched me, waited for God’s bullet to send me down to hell. But, as two of the gawking Volunteers were hit by machine-gun spray and fell screaming onto the wet tiles, I lifted my head up, brought the empty plate up to my face and licked it clean. Then I handed it back to the woman.
—Thanks very much, I said.—That hit the spot.
—You’re very welcome, she said.
She was trying to control a grin.
—Compliments to the chef, I said.
—She’ll be dizzy, she said.
—Good.
We were trapped and cooking. The lift shaft was on fire, rushing flames to the basement. And, while the Provisional Government pow-wowed around Connolly’s bed, The O’Rahilly sent me up to the roof, to help keep the flames away from the ventilation shaft.
I crawled below the choking smoke with a hose tied around my waist. There were other men there but I couldn’t see them. Shells were falling behind me; I held on every time. I crept. Across the frame that had once held the glass of the dome, onto the safety of slates. In a gap in the smoke I saw a statue, one of the three stone women that topped the post office. Fidelity, I think. I cuddled up behind her skirt. I was right on the edge of the roof. Sackville Street was gone, buried in flame and black smoke. There was a short gap in the smoke, and I saw Clery’s: it had a front but no back, sides or roof; the flames tore out of its centre and steel girders hung black and useless. The Waverly Hotel had collapsed and there was nothing now where the D.B.C. building had been. The rubble was scattered in piles across the street. I unwrapped the hose. If the ventilation shaft wasn’t drenched quickly the G.P.O. would burn from the centre, clean down to the basement, the explosives and ammo and Miss O’Shea. I aimed.
No water. Not a trickle or cough. We’d lost the supply. Bits of stone nicked my skin, chipped from Fidelity by the bullets. I was down on my belly again. I slid through black water that was starting to boil. I couldn’t lift my face. I rolled down over slates that were cracking and melting as my weight flew over them. I stopped on hot concrete and the door was right beside me. It was slammed as I got to it. I butted and thumped it.
And I saw Collins.
—You’re not locking me out, bub, I said.
I pushed past him, down the narrow stairs. The O’Rahilly was there too. They put sand in the gap below the door and wet it with water from a bucket.
—Yis might as well piss on the flames, I shouted, but they didn’t hear me. I didn’t hear myself. The fire was eating every sound. There was a wind scooping up flames and a locked, raging roar from the lift. I heard a slow groaning, building into something huge; the pillars outside were about to give up. I tumbled down the stairs.
The women were being led to a side door, out to Henry Street. Some were scared, but most were angry. And I saw Miss O’Shea. She was being brought along by two other women and shouting back over her shoulder.
—I can fire a gun as well as any man!
One of the women in front had a Red Cross flag and they were all being led by a priest in a stovepipe hat.
—Jesus Christ! They’ll be killed out there!
But no one heard me and the door was cleared and open and the women were out. Miss O’Shea didn’t look back. She didn’t see me. The last thing I saw was the back of her neck, and she was gone. I gripped the banister. It was seconds before I realised that it was burning; I was trying to hear if the shooting outside had stopped.
Most of the men were now in the sorting rooms at the back and in the covered courtyard where glass fell in drops on top of them. I found Paddy and Felix there.
—What’s the plan? I said.
—We’re going to break through their barricade at the top of Moore Street and then go on into Williams and Woods.
The sweet factory. I’d often put my mouth under a pipe and swallowed the waste that poured out of Williams and Woods; it had been my dinner and tea.
—Then we’re going to break through again and head north to the country.
—Just like that?
—Just like that.
We got out from under the dripping glass. In the main hall, on the last table in the G.P.O., was a pile of food. Sugar, tea, hairy bacon, more cake.
—Fill your knapsacks!
I could see the ham curling, roasting in the heat. Pearse was up on the last chair, delivering a speech I couldn’t hear. Kitchener and George V were melting, slithering to the floor. Then The O’Rahilly and Collins were among us and there was action. The whole place was about to cave in.
We were in the first group, about thirty of us.
—Fix bayonets! Connolly shouted, from the bed.
Some of the men cheered.
—Henry, said Connolly.—Get out your father’s leg.
—Yes, sir, I said.
I took my daddy’s leg from its holster and lifted it into the air. The Citizen Army had seen it before, and seen what it could do; it had broken heads and rozzers’ fingers during the Lockout. They cheered and laughed.
—Up the Republic! I shouted.
The O’Rahilly was at the front.
—This is it, lads.
He looked back at Connolly.
—Cheerio, he said.
—Now!
The gate was open and we were out. Across Henry Street. In single file. A man fell in front of me. I jumped. His body was riddled with bullets meant for my legs. I landed awkwardly but terror gave me back my stride and now Paddy was in front of me. The men ahead of us threw aside sections of our barricade and we ran through the gap onto Moore Street. And at last I saw the enemy. At the top of the street. At last, the khaki uniforms. We broke into two lines, to the left and the right, and kept running at them and it suddenly seemed very quiet and then the noise was deafening and trapped by the walls of the street, and I heard nothing extra but Paddy fell in front of me and he was dead and his brain and hair were on my jacket and hands and I kept running, and The O’Rahilly had been hit but he kept going, he ran in a zigzag that brought the bullets to him, and Felix fell and I left him behind me, and I was the first, the only man left upright on the street and I could see the bullets, the air was packed with them and, for a fragment of a second, I could think and I jumped at a doorway and hid.
Four or five men were crawling and diving, trying to get out of the hail of bullets. The rest were on the ground; their blood was already like an oilcloth on the street. Paddy’s scalp was on my hand, as if I’d beaten his head with the wooden leg. I couldn’t cry. I couldn’t see him properly back there but I could see that Felix was dead as well; the bullets were still going into him but he didn’t know it.
The bullets chipped at the doorway, eating away my hiding place. I abandoned my rifle, put the leg in its holster and slithered out. I hugged the house wall and crept back towards Moore Lane. Every bullet ever made flew up that street, at me, at my feet, at my head. They gouged paths in the wall an inch above me. They fractured, made powder of the pavement right beside me. But I kept going, inch on inch, my face to the wall, inch inch inch, and I could see the corner and I was round it. And up. I ran at a door and it broke in front of me. I fell into the hall and heard screams from upstairs. I got away from the door, in to the parlour window in time to see the second wave of men running onto the
lane. And there was Plunkett, held up by two men, trying to hold his sword up, one spur hanging crookedly and alone from one of his boots. He saw me. He stopped and made the two men stop in the sea of bullets, and shouted.
—Come out and fight, you cowardly cur!
And he was gone. Connolly was brought past on a blanket, carried by four kids. I ran to the door, back out to the street. I could see men in the alleys and doorways but there were many more men on the ground. I ran to Cogan’s, the grocer’s on the corner. And through it - the smell of boiling ham - with the other survivors. To a cottage in the yard behind. And there was crying, wailing and a dead girl in the hall, face up on the earth floor, shot in the head - by one of us, there were no other bullets here. Men lay on the ground. I could hear nothing. But I could think. I was catching up. I sat against the cottage wall. Paddy was dead. Felix was dead. I waited to feel something.
—Let’s have a look at the animals.
A lit match was pushed into my face.
—You one of the leaders?
I said nothing.
—One of the ringleaders?
I said nothing and stared past the flame into faces I couldn’t see.
—You used dum-dum bullets, you cunt.
I said nothing.
—Didn’t you?
It was Saturday night and we’d surrendered. After hours of moving back and forth with white flags from our last outpost, Hanlon’s fish shop on Moore Street, to the army barricade at the Great Britain Street end. Elizabeth O’Farrell’s steps on the street outside were the first thing I’d heard since the day before, when I’d seen Paddy, Felix and The O’Rahilly falling. She walked past the window towards the barricade with her white flag held steady as the last of the gunfire died and her fading steps were replaced by the groans of our wounded and the tearing cough of a man upstairs with a bullet in his lung. And somebody’s whispered prayer from behind a wall outside. Jesus, Mary and Joseph assist me in my last agony. We waited for a shot or a warning cry. The silence hurt my ears; it was forcing me to remember. I heard Elizabeth’s returning steps and, this time, Pearse went with her.
—Shall we go? he said, and he held his sword back so that Elizabeth didn’t have to climb over it. He followed Elizabeth onto the street. We never saw him again.
More hours. Mumbling and groans; the smell of new blood and old fish. The coughing upstairs had stopped. She came back alone, with a note. In order to prevent further slaughter of Dublin citizens, and in the hope of saving the lives of our followers now surrounded and hopelessly outnumbered, the members of the Provisional Government present at H.Q. have agreed to an unconditional surrender—. Signed by Pearse.
We marched, four abreast and steady, down Moore Street. Eyes ahead, arms sloped. Past the silent Tommies; they looked as wasted as us, red-eyed, faces blacked by gun-powder. Another bright, glorious day. Great rebellion weather. We marched onto Henry Street, past the dead and the burning, the bullet-riddled walls and shutters, through the brick dust and heat, into the stink of the horses and smoke, onto Sackville Street, what was left of it. And, for the first time in days - a lifetime - I felt alive again. I felt the blood running through me: I’d wrecked the place, brought it to its knees. I wanted Miss O’Shea. Now. On the street. I wanted to celebrate and cry. Felix and Paddy. We’d really wrecked the place.
We swung around the Pillar, to the left. The flag of the Republic was still up there, scorched and smoking, on the remains of the roof, swinging from a pole that was hanging over the street.
We stopped outside the Gresham. The military were waiting for us, up at the Parnell Monument.
—Step five paces forward and deposit your arms!
We laid down our guns on the street.
—What’s that in your holster, Paddy?
—My father’s leg, I said.
—Out with it. With the rest of the weapons.
—No.
The rifle butt went into my back.
—Drop it.
—No.
The butt again, and others. They struck and lashed till I was numb. I wouldn’t fall. But the leg was gone, flung onto one of the fires. I was pushed and carried with the rest, up the street to the Rotunda lawn. And there all night without food or drink or permission to piss. The coldest night. I was a statue. Surrounded by soldiers who waited till dark before they got close in and robbed us. My date stamp and money orders, my shawlie commissions.
—Any German marks in your pockets?
I didn’t object or budge; I stood absolutely still. My snake belt and holster, the bandolier. Men cried, awake and in their sleep, continued to die in their dreams, cried out for their mammies and God. They shat themselves and stayed put in their shit, afraid of the drunken officers who kept Mooney’s open all night. Every streetlight broken and out, it was a darkness that only the farmers’ sons had ever known. And the soldiers were all around and among us. Beating and touching, strange accents in our ears. Promising revenge. All night. I stood still and straight, in a ring of bayonets and machine-guns.
Daylight came and the G-men with it, and other slinking bastards who walked around us and looked over the shoulders of the Tommies minding us. Clarke was pulled out and hauled away. And Daly. Two more men we never saw again. And, one by one, the rest of us were taken out.
—Name? said a fat rozzer.
He never wore a uniform but I’d seen him many times, hanging around the railings outside Liberty Hall and against the quay wall. A fat rozzer trying to look like a citizen.
—Name? he said again.
—Brian O’Linn, I said.
He looked at me.
I’d walked past him dozens of times, in and out of the Hall, but he’d never seen me before.
—Address? he said.
—None, I said.
—Are you being smart now?
—No.
—Britches but no home.
—I couldn’t afford both, I said.
He smiled, and saved himself a slow and painful death.
—Jesus, he said.—What were yis up to?
—It was a holiday, I said.—You have to do something special on a holiday.
—True for you, he said.—Go on.
We were marched across the city, to Richmond Barracks. No drink or food, still no permission to go to the jacks. Brian O’Linn was bursting and gasping. But he walked head-up through the rubbish and abuse, the sticks and smouldering masonry that were thrown at us as we crossed Dublin. The kids and shawlies, beggars and workers came out and lined the streets. They spat and cursed, followed us down through the Cornmarket and James’s Street, all the way. We marched right through it. Rotten meat, loosened cobbles, the contents of their chamber pots.
—Bastards.
—Hangin’s too good for yis!
They hated us. They absolutely hated us. I could feel it, a heat coming off them. The British were protecting us. I didn’t blame the women. It was the first anniversary of the first Battle of Ypres; many of them were in mourning for their husbands. And I didn’t blame the others. They were starving, some of them homeless, and a slum was better than no home at all. They wanted to tear us with their own nails and teeth. There were men around me sobbing.
—We did it for them. Don’t they know that?
And other men sang. She’s the most distressful country that ever yet was seen. I marched. For they’re hanging men and women for the wearing of the green. Stones hopped off me. A gob of poor man’s spit landed on my cheek. I could smell the furious breath of the city. I marched right through it. I saw other men hanging back, and women, faces behind the angry ones. Sad faces, looking out at us. Standing there to let us know: they didn’t all hate us. I saw them.
Into Richmond Barracks. We were stopped on the parade ground. More cursing and kicking. More G-men and rozzers. Roll-calls. Searches, robbing and pushing.
—O’Linn, Brian.
No one laughed.
—Anseo.
—Step forward.
Th
ere was a face in my face, daring me to flinch or twitch.
—In English, you bastard.
—Here, I said.
And de Valera marched into the barracks, the Spaniard himself, led by two Foresters on bikes, surrounded by other soldiers who looked thrilled to be off the streets. A man near me cheered and was butted to the ground. De Valera walked straight up to us. He had the staring, empty eyes of someone who hadn’t slept in years and knew he’d never sleep again.
—Solitary for that one, said an English voice to my right.
—Photograph first, sir. The last of the Shinners.
The famous photo. The last man to surrender. Hands behind his back, a Tommy on each side of him, another behind. I was there, to the left of de Valera (I never called him Dev). The photographer was a bollocks called Hanratty. A slithery little get with premises on Capel Street and connections in the Castle. I was beside the great man but Hanratty wouldn’t see me. I’d just put my life into the hands of the Empire by answering back with one of the few Irish words I knew - Anseo - still defiant, still proud and unrepentant. But I wasn’t important. The first time I saw the photo my elbow was in it, but even that went in later versions. No room for Henry’s elbow. Just all of de Valera and his guards, three English kids barely bigger than their rifles. If Hanratty had moved his camera just a bit to the right, just a fraction of a bit, I’d have been in. You’d know my face, you’d know who I was.
—Big smile now, said Hanratty before he disappeared under the focusing cloth. I was smiling. I hadn’t eaten in a week, I was manky and sore, I’d watched my friends die, but I still smiled for him. And he missed me. It became the photograph of Éamon de Valera. It became proof, part of the legend. There he is, the soldier, the father of the state. A foot taller than his guards. Serious and brave, undaunted and straight. I was there. He was wearing red socks and he smelt of shite. They marched him away.