I got in over the wall from Patrick Dun’s hospital. British snipers were posted on the roof, but Louisa took them up tea and sandwiches to distract them.
I peeked into the dispensary where May said de Valera was based. But there was no sign of a tall man. Two volunteers were arguing.
“He’s deranged. He keeps changing his mind and disappearing. He’s jumpy as hell, is Dev.”
“No, the Long Fella’s smart. He fooled the Helga into firing at the tower of the distillery house and not us. He just can’t sleep. And we are all jumpy.”
I moved quickly, down by railway sidings and sheds, as dawn broke. I was worried that both sides might shoot at me. At one stage I trembled so much with fear that I crawled down beside a disused railway carriage and had to stay there to recover my nerves. I don’t know how long it took. But I forced myself to keep going, yard by yard, shed by wall by building. The only relief was that I was wearing trousers. I knew now why boys moved so freely, and why the Countess was so keen on them.
Near Westland Row, I came across the Royal Carriage and, overcome by curiosity, peeped in. A long-legged man in red socks was lying there, on the red royal seat under the paintings of nymphs and cherubs. His clothes were dusty with flour, his face haggard. I guessed he was de Valera, “The Long Fella” from the height of him.
I went in. He leaped up like a madman, wild-eyed and quivering.
“Is that angels I see? Am I in heaven?”
“No, they are paintings of nymphs and cherubs –” I realized how high and girlish my voice sounded. So I coughed and tried to sound more masculine. “This is the Royal Carriage.”
He looked at me wild-eyed but quickly came to his senses.
“Boy, are you back already? And you’ve released the horses from the bakery stables and the dogs and cats from the pound as well? They have a better chance of survival out in the open and we can’t provide the manpower to feed them.”
I wondered if he thought I was Jack.
“This is a man’s war. I don’t want boys caught up in this. I have four children myself. But since you’ve come back I see you are determined to risk going back over to the GPO.”
So, he had mistaken me for my brother.
He unfurled his jacket and took out a battered old tin of Jacob’s Cream Crackers.
“Pass this on to Tom Clarke. For the Yellow Bittern. We haven’t needed it.”
I grabbed the tin of Cream Crackers, and pushed it deep into my knapsack, thinking it a very strange souvenir. We have some exactly like it at home, yellow, with a picture of a smiling maid on the front. Jack uses them to store his soldiers in. I was utterly mystified by de Valera’s reference to the Yellow Bittern, which I think is a bird, but I was relieved that I hadn’t been given a gun or a bomb.
De Valera patted his pockets, took out his spectacles and stepped forward to take a closer look at me, but I sprang out the carriage doorway. I might pass muster when he was shortsighted and half asleep but I would not stand close scrutiny.
I should have known it – Jack was going back to the GPO, the centre of operations, where all the webs were spun. I gambled that when Jack got back to de Valera he’d be sent to the GPO and I would be there waiting for him.
As I passed out of Westland Row Station, I saw a rebel using a handful of coppers to get sweets and cigarettes out of the kiosks on the station platform. I was struck with how honest these rebels were – paying their tram fares, issuing receipts. If they hadn’t been carrying guns, I would have thought them the nicest group of people I had ever met.
When I got outside, I crouched in a doorway, took out the tin of crackers and opened it. The lid was quite stiff and I glanced in hastily because I saw the khaki uniforms of British soldiers in the distance. But the tin just had crackers in it. I pressed on.
I saw the British troops passing down towards Trinity College on both sides of the street, so I decided to cut back up past Stephen’s Green via Merrion Square, hoping to loop over by a western route. There were several soldiers’ barricades but I picked my way carefully across the square and, at this early hour, I was unnoticed by the sleepy soldiers.
As I came towards the Merrion Street junction with Stephen’s Green, I heard the clatter of hooves. At first I thought it was a new gun, but then saw a troop of horses pass in a cloud of dust. I thought they must have released the Boland’s horses. I took out my spyglass and tried to focus and saw the unmistakable shape of Jack on horseback, leading them towards the park. I ran at full pelt.
“Jack! You are to give this to Tom Clarke!” I screamed after him, brandishing the tin of Cream Crackers like an eejit.
Most of the horses stood panting outside the park gate but Jack emerged again from the park in a cloud of dust. He rode up to me. I stood stock still, more out of nerves than bravery, and he grabbed the tin from my hands, like we were a circus act. Jack, rising on his horse from the cloud of dust, smiled at me like an angel and gave me a thumbs-up, then shoved the tin inside his buttoned-up jacket.
Bullets from the Shelbourne Hotel whizzed through the air, raising brick dust where they hit the granite kerbstones and the walls.
Jack’s horse broke away and went up Grafton Street, bullets hitting the ground behind him as he went. Bullets and hoofs like twin drums beating out a tattoo. Jack rode on – his horse vaulting over a makeshift barricade of bicycles as if in a steeplechase. Past children bizarrely holding huge bunches of bananas looted from a fruit shop, women with aprons full of oranges and apples, boys holding boxes with tins and bottled fruit. A whirl of silver, pink and white paper shaving used for packing fruit rose like multicoloured snowflakes under the hooves. A clatter of broken crockery and glass rang out as a sniper missed Jack and fired into a china showroom.
Stunned soldiers looked at him in amazement – scratching their heads, not believing their eyes at the mad audacity of rider and horse. One even cheered. A tat-tat-tat of surprised sniper fire snapped at the horse’s heels, marking Jack’s route. I ran to the bend in Grafton Street, panting. I saw him whoop and holler as he swerved down Suffolk Street. Clearly, he wasn’t going to risk going past the death trap of Trinity College once again. I ran to the next barricade and followed him in my spyglass.
But no – it was a feint. He continued on round by the bank at College Green and down Westmoreland Street. The snipers at Trinity were silent – caught unawares. Onlookers were now cheering him on from windows and street corners. Fairyhouse Steeplechase come to war-torn Dublin.
At O’Connell Bridge an armoured vehicle blocked the way. Guns trained on him. He was snookered. But then out of alleys and doorways, people flocked onto the bridge in a wave of excitement.
“Hold fire!” roared an officer.
In the blink of an eye, Jack disappeared into thin air!
Everyone else was looking at the riderless horse. But I saw the splash in the water.
I knew instantly what he had done. Jumped into the Liffey, no doubt clambering to the arches under the bridge. .
My mad, wild brother was dicing with death. It was fifty-fifty if he had survived. But if he had – for how long?
Later Thursday afternoon 27th April.
The GPO.
I saw a bewildered soldier holding the horse. The crowd dispersed and we were ordered to go back up Westmoreland Street. But before I departed, I ran to the barricade and craned to look into the water. I could have sworn I saw the glint of a tin soldier caught in the grip of a wave before the current pulled it under. Another life gone – if he was lucky. It wasn’t yet nine o’clock in the morning.
But I was wrong. There was a tin soldier, standing to attention between two of the columns of the balustrade of the bridge. All I had to do was bend down and reach beneath the barbed wire to snatch it. Another one for my collection.
The soldiers pushed us right back up Westmoreland Street but I slipped left onto College Green.
A man ran down from his house.
“Did you see that boy!” he exclaimed. “I ho
pe he made it. I saw you following him from my skylight.”
He ushered me inside his house, the Provincial Bank on College Green. He saw my look of surprise but put both his hands out in a disarming gesture and I decided to trust him. We went to his top room on the fourth floor and he pointed to the skylight.
“The soldiers are very jumpy and are afraid of snipers,” he whispered. “But you are concealed here and you can see out the skylight.” He pointed to a spot and pulled over a chair. He had rigged up a crude periscope with mirrors to scan the battlefield that Dublin had become.
I climbed up and scanned about. There was no sign of Jack. The horse, however, was still being held on the bridge.
I scrambled back down to join the man.
“My name is George Duggan,” he told me. “I’m a reputable banker, but yesterday a drunken sot of a soldier thought I was a rebel.” He tried to control himself but his hands shook. “They threatened to shoot me.”
I looked at the man. He was dapper and well dressed and so clearly a respectable citizen, it made me realize just how nervous the soldiers were.
“After the massacre at Mount Street Bridge yesterday, the rest of the Sherwood Regiment will be looking for revenge,” he said. “They will take it out on innocent civilians. I was nearly one of them.”
We went down to the second floor, and in the drawing room, his hands still trembling, Mr Duggan held out photographs of his sons.
I looked at the photographs of two fine-looking men. “My fifth son was a captain in the Royal Irish Fusiliers. My youngest boy, God rest his soul, was a lieutenant. He was killed last August in Suvla Bay in Gallipoli.” His voice faltered. “Same day as his brother . . .”
The poor man poured himself a shot of whiskey to steady his nerves.
I looked at the shining young faces of his sons, their genial natures evident.
“One was the best runner Trinity ever saw and the other the best shot, by God. I don’t support the rebels, but I can see why young lads like you don’t know who to fight for.”
I was at a loss as to his meaning but then I saw a puzzled young boy under a cap reflected in the mirror over the mantelpiece. I was still wearing Jack’s clothes! I’d noticed that the British soldiers were more sympathetic to girls and women trying to get through barricades. I needed to become Molly again.
I explained to the kind gentleman that the boy on the horse was my brother and needed my help. He accepted my simple explanation.
“Under any other circumstances, I would prevent you from leaving, but when a respectable banker isn’t safe in his own home, I cannot guarantee your protection,” he said. “Now let me offer you any assistance I can.”
“If you could lend me a lady’s hat,” I said.
He merely smiled and fetched me a range of bonnets and hats, plumed, buttoned and beribboned. I settled on a simple green felt cloche. Nor did he blink an eyelid when I transformed back into a girl. My new cream coat, which was crushed in my knapsack, was streaked and caked with dried blood. I could not bear to put it on. So he gave me a new coat, a good woollen cape in a drab grey-and-brown plaid belonging to his wife. He insisted she no longer wore it. I thanked kind Mr Duggan from the bottom of my heart and promised to visit him when all this chaos was over.
The cordon was tightening around Sackville Street and nobody was being admitted. I decided to try a route keeping west to get to Sackville Street, reckoning I could cross at the Four Courts Bridge. Little did I know I was walking further into the lion’s den.
I wheedled and cajoled my way through every barricade in Dublin. Begging and entreating to see my sick uncle, or mother. Crying my eyes out where simple requests failed. Pretending I lived at a range of addresses. At around eleven thirty, I heard the sound of heavy gunfire once more in the direction of Sackville Street. It sounded like rifles, the stutter of machine guns and heavy artillery.
As I weaved passed the Saint James Gate of the Guinness Brewery, an extraordinary vehicle nearly ran me over. A cylindrical iron lorry used to transport stout had holes drilled in the side to create an armoured vehicle. It headed up the quays towards Sackville Street.
I spoke to a Guinness worker who was stationed at the gate and he was surprisingly unsympathetic to the soldiers. “The Dublin Fusiliers killed two of ours and are trying to pretend they were rebels. Bad cess to them!” he said in disgust.
I learned that the City Hall had surrendered on Tuesday and I wondered how Jack’s friend, young Matthew Connolly, was and prayed he hadn’t met the same fate as his brother.
I soon found out. At a barricade at Parliament Street there was a very chatty fusilier, who was boasting and regaling his fellow sentry with tales of his derring-do. I stood among a group of shawlies trying to pass through.
“Caught a young ’un we did, up at the Castle end of City Hall. They left him behind. Fast asleep he was, with ’is bugle around his shoulder. Bunch of kids they are.”
I blessed myself in relief. Matthew had survived. For now.
His companion shook his head in amazement. “They were young blighters held out at the Mendicity Institute an’ all. Threw out all the old down-and-outs they did. They ran out of ammo and threw our grenades back at us. Heuston was one of their leaders – little runt. I coulda killed ’im with my bare hands when I saw how small their force was.”
“The rebels are still holding out in the South Dublin Union and their outposts all around the Four Courts,” said the other. “They’ve got women fightin’ too. General Maxwell’s not going to show them any mercy.” He punched his fist into his hand in demonstration.
Their words made the blood ice in my veins and I felt a sudden nausea. I walked back down an alley and retched. But I forced myself to go on. I had to find Jack before it was too late, tell him to lie low and go into hiding, that he was more valuable for Ireland alive than dead. Even if he wouldn’t listen to me, I had to see him. The thought of never seeing him again was unbearable. I saw an abandoned milk jug on a windowsill and grabbed it. The milk was on the turn and the smell nearly made me throw up again but would be a useful prop.
I approached the sentry and held up my milk jug. Unfortunately it was the mean fellow, with hooded eyes in a narrow face and sharp fox’s teeth.
“My mother sent me out for a twist o’ tae and some milk for the babby. We live over on Henry Place. Please let me back.”
The sentry raised his rifle at me. I stared down the dark nothingness of the barrel and raised my eyes to see pure hatred. My legs turned to jelly, I broke out in sweat.
I started to wail. This time I wasn’t acting. I was really frightened.
“She’s just a kid,” said his companion.
“They’re all just kids. Like that blighter on the horse. He’s been making a monkey of us all week. Captain’s offered ten guineas to whoever pots him.”
I saw the mean one tighten his grip.
The friendly fusilier pushed away the gun and gave his companion a warning look. “Don’t come out again, if you know what’s good for you,” he said to me, not unkindly.
I raced over the bridge and had to sit down for a long time to recover, by the back of the Four Courts. The sound of sniping came regularly from nearby, mixing with the thump of my heart in my ears. My head was swimming, I felt hot and cold at the same time and thought I would pass out. But then the cruel soldier’s words came back to me. Ten guineas for whoever shot the blighter on the horse. I needed to try with every bone in my body to warn Jack.
I saw many children also scurrying around, searching for food. There was a little fellow of no more than seven, his trousers in rags and a little mother, a girl my own age, carrying a toddler in a shawl, probably her brother or sister.
“We’re trying to get to Father Matthew Hall in Church Street,” the girl said. “They have bread there.” The child in her arms was listless and pale. The girl had a dirty face and no shoes on her feet. I gave her the jug of sour milk. She rewarded me with a warm smile. We were allies in the strange
lunatic asylum Dublin had become. I realized I was able to move about because I was no different from a hundred other young people drawn by curiosity or necessity to roam the streets.
It gave me courage. I sneaked along from door to door, sitting down sometimes in tenement hallways. I passed some dead bodies, some covered with sacks, Lord have mercy on their souls. Then a Red Cross Ambulance collecting some of the dead. I wondered how many innocent citizens had been caught in the crossfire. Hundreds, I guessed. I had heard the nurses at the hospitals talking about some of the poor victims. A man on a stairway bringing a glass of water to his sick wife. A nun closing a window at dusk in a convent. A mother and daughter, sitting frightened by the fire, the same bullet killing them both. A baby in a pram. Death was stalking the streets.
At Richmond Hospital there was a barricade manned by Volunteers. Private Chapman who I’d given dressings to on Monday recognized me as the “First Aid Girl” and let me through. There was a crunch of glass underfoot as he led me to a hole in a house in Henry Street and I crawled through the holes in the buildings. I came out at the side entrance of the GPO.
I got through just in time. Two Cumann na mBan women, Min and Phyllis Ryan, the lively sisters of the medical student Jim Ryan, were hanging about outside the side door on Henry Street. Two beautiful girls that should have been going to a dance.
“We’re sneaking back in. If the men are going to die, we will too,” said Min. “I have a safe address for The O’Rahilly if he manages to get out.”
I remembered The O’Rahilly whispering something to her when he sent her out to visit three wives of British soldiers being held prisoner. It must have also been a mission to set up the safe house. She waved the piece of paper and I saw the address in Drumcondra.
The Easter Rising 1916 - Molly's Diary (Hands-on History) Page 17