“Mick—I mean Chairman Collins—is in conference with Minister Mulcahy. I can’t speak officially for Dev; he’s on the other side now. But according to our latest intelligence he’s reported back to his old battalion and asked to be sworn in as an ordinary soldier. He’s been posted to the Hammam Hotel.”
“Jesus in a jaunting car! Don’t the Republicans know better than to concentrate their leadership in one place?”
Kathleen said, “We believe they’re hoping to find a way to evacuate the Four Courts garrison. Rory O’Connor dug an escape tunnel leading to the sewers that empty into the river, but they forgot the river is tidal. The sewers are flooded now.”
Henry groaned. War, he thought to himself, is fifty percent farce.
THE battle went on. Windows along the quays, many of them only recently replaced after the Rising, were smashed again by artillery concussion or snipers. Dubliners who lived in the center of the city huddled, terrified, in their homes, but the churches and some pubs remained open.
The day gave way to a second night of gunfire, ambulances, chaos. Street lamps, were, for the most part, unlit. Henry heard children in a laneway chanting a mocking sing-song. At first he thought it was just some of the doggerel beloved of street children; then he stopped to listen. “England gave the orders, and gave the cannon too, For England’s bloody vengeance must be satisfied anew.”6 Henry dutifully copied down the words, though he doubted anyone would print them.
NEXT morning he awoke with the profound conviction that the universe was run by a cosmic comedian with a bizarre sense of humor. A civil war was raging in Dublin and he had the worst toothache of his life. His jaw was so swollen he could hardly close his mouth.
Rain was drumming on rooftops. The field guns had not yet resumed, but machine guns were clattering in the distance as Henry left the house. Only a few civilians—the poor to whom the streets were home—could be seen. Dublin had the look of an abandoned city. Trash and sodden newspapers littered empty streets.
As Henry made his way toward the scenes of yesterday’s action, the pace of the gunfire began to pick up. The artillery roared again.
He paused to chat with a tubercular newsboy sheltering in the doorway of the boarded-up Singer Sewing Machine shop on Talbot Street. The lad, who was sitting dejectedly on a stack of yesterday’s unsold papers, said, “Them Free Staters got them Republicans pinned down in that block o’ buildings either side o’ the Hammam Hotel. They shoot at any man what tries to look out a winder.”
When Henry reached the corner, a uniformed member of the Dublin Guards informed him, “Some of our men managed to get into the west wing of the Four Courts during the night. Now the field guns are concentrating on the part of the building still held by the Republicans. The government means to end this thing today. There’s over two thousand men ready to storm the place, and ambulances and motorcycles and everything down there. I have orders not to let anyone go any farther in that direction.”
“That’s where I need to be, unfortunately,” Henry replied, showing his press card.
The soldier shrugged. “Sorry.”
Give a man a uniform and a little power and he goes mad.
“D’jou say something?”
“Sorry,” Henry muttered. “I must have been talking to myself.”
He backtracked up to Parnell Street, then zigzagged by way of Capel Street—where a nest of IRA snipers allowed him to pass unmolested—to King Street and thence to Church Street. There a sandbag barricade blocked his way. He could see a thread of unusually black smoke rising from the direction of the Four Courts. “What’s happening down there?” he asked a soldier in Free State uniform.
“A fire at the rear of the building,” the man said. “There was a truce earlier to let the Irregulars evacuate their wounded, but we’ll have them all out soon.”
Irregulars again. Not Republicans anymore; they must be called by a more derogatory title. While Michael Collins is still hoping for a way to save the Republic.
Henry continued working his way around north Dublin, talking to anyone he could find. Occasionally glancing at the smoke still rising from the rear of the Four Courts. Listening to the gunfire.
The pain in his jaw grew progressively worse. He finally found a chemist’s shop that was open and asked for oil of cloves, but there was none in stock. The shop had been depleted of everything by soldiers provisioning both sides. “You should go home and put a poultice on that jaw,” the chemist advised him. “I think I’ll go home myself. There’s no point in keeping the doors open when you can’t do business.”
The smoke at the rear of the Four Courts was becoming thicker as Henry once more tried to approach the area. When he happened to glance down a crooked laneway, he saw something that stopped him in his tracks.
HECTOR HAMILTON, PAINLESS DENTIST read a neatly printed card in the second story window of a narrow brick building. Inside the room a light was burning.
There is a God after all.
Henry took the stairs two at a time.
The door on the second-storey landing was ajar. Inside was a man on his knees, fiddling with the adjustment of a dentist’s chair. He jumped up when Henry knocked. “My first patient of the day!” he exclaimed brightly.
Henry nodded. It was easier than speaking.
“Sit here and let’s have a look.” The dentist was a stringy middle-aged man with quick nervous movements, like an excitable bird. He talked continuously, the sort of person country folk described as “all chat and chortle.” When his fingers fluttered close to his patient’s sore mouth, Henry shrank back in the chair.
“Open up now,” Hamilton said, “This will only take a minute…That’s a good fellow.”
Henry mumbled, “You sure this is painless?”
“Absolutely.”
The next quarter-hour was the most painful Henry had ever endured. At the end of it, Hamilton triumphantly flourished a bloody molar. “Never seen a longer root,” he announced happily.
“Keep it. Frame it.” Henry rinsed his mouth and spat blood. “I thought you said it was painless.”
“It didn’t hurt me,” Hamilton chirped. “Ha, ha.”
“Ha, ha,” echoed Henry. “Maybe it didn’t hurt you, but I will. I’ll wring your neck with pleasure.”
“An hour from now you’ll be singing my praises. Sit still while I pack that hole with cotton. Tell all your friends about me, will you?”
At that moment the room reverberated to the sound of a shell exploding somewhere nearby. Hamilton flinched violently. For a moment the dentist’s mask of jollity slipped and Henry saw naked fear in his eyes.
“That was too close. I’d go home if I were you,” Henry advised. Then he realized that the little man’s clothes were very wrinkled and there was a growth of stubble on his face. “Have you been sleeping here?” he guessed.
“I…uh…yes. I have digs in Hammond Lane, you see. Right by the Four Courts. Since the shelling started I can’t get home. Not that there’s anyone waiting for me. The wife died years ago, and the children are…” He gave an eloquent shrug that somehow encompassed all birds flown from the nest.
“Listen here to me,” said Henry. “Close up shop and go to Lower Gardiner Street, number 16. Tell Louise Kearney that Henry Mooney sent you, and she’s to give you a basin of hot water and a proper bed.” Taking out his watch, Henry added, “It’s a few minutes after twelve, but tell her I said you should have a good breakfast too.”
“I thought you wanted to wring my neck.”
“I still do,” Henry assured him, “but it can wait. In the meantime do as I tell you.”
The grateful dentist shook Henry’s hand. “The extraction is free, Mr. Mooney, there’s no charge to you.”
“Nonsense,” Henry replied, digging into his pocket, “I always pay what I owe. Now let me tell you the safest route to Gardiner Street.”
The two men left the building together. Henry turned toward the river and Hamilton went the other way.
&n
bsp; The Free State forces were distracted by watching the fire that now engulfed the rear of the building, so Henry was able to get closer to the Four Courts than he had since the bombardment began. When no one was looking, he managed to slip between a pair of armored Lancias and enter the gate nearest the east wing.
A moment later the world exploded.
Chapter Forty-one
HENRY was flung violently onto his back.
The shock of concussion numbed; the roar of collapsing masonry deafened. All the breath had been knocked out of him. A gasping inhalation made his chest muscles spasm with pain.
God in heaven, it is the end of the world.
A huge pall of dust and smoke boiled outward, enveloping the universe and Henry Mooney.
Hail Mary full of grace the Lord is with thee blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus.
He could not breathe, could not see. Another desperate inhalation, but nothing filled his lungs.
HolyMarymotherofGodprayforussinnersnowandatthehourofourdeathAmen.
The next thing Henry knew he was on his hands and knees. Crawling. Crawling because it seemed the only safe form of locomotion. Crawling not away from, but toward, the direction of the explosion. Men might be dying in there. He rubbed his arm across his face to clear his eyes and looked up—then recoiled from what he saw.
An immense column of dark smoke towered hundreds of feet over the Four Courts. Within the column leaped tongues of lurid red flame, like a vision of hell.
Henry staggered to his feet. A piece of blazing debris fell on his shoulder. He brushed it away only to be inundated by similar material. Tiny hot sparks stung his face and hands like vicious insects while he slapped frantically at his clothing to keep from being set afire.
Around him soldiers were running in every direction. Shouting, cursing, gesticulating. Waving their rifles in the air. Getting in each other’s way.
Flames leaped toward the great dome, clawing with crimson fingers as if guided by a malign will. Meanwhile a rising wind caught the smoke from the explosion and rolled it toward the east, resculpting it into thunderheads. From them fluttered a strange snow. Millions of minuscule pieces of paper began falling over Dublin.
Henry tried to reach the central block, but his way was blocked by men and vehicles. To approach further would be to risk getting shot. At that moment no one seemed quite sane, and certainly no one was in charge.
As the first fire brigade vehicles came screaming down the quays, a figure clambered over the rubble with his jacket on fire and lurched straight toward Henry. Tall, thin. A crop of black curls.
Whipping off his own jacket, Henry ran toward the man and enveloped him in fabric while he beat desperately at the flames.
Please God. Just this once more. Not Ned. Please.
A stench of scorched fabric and hair. A muffled voice gasping, “Jaysus, stop, will you? You’ve put out the fire but you’re suffocating me.”
Henry peeled away the jacket to find a smoke-blackened but unfamiliar face staring at him. “Bless you,” the stranger murmured.
“Here, let’s get you out of this.” Henry led him away from the conflagration. “You sure you’re not injured?”
The other man coughed, shook his head, gingerly felt his arms and torso. “Don’t seem to be. A bit shaken, that’s all.”
“What the hell happened in there? Did the field guns…?”
“Not the guns. Us. Our main munitions dump was in the cellar of the Public Records Office.”
Henry gazed dumbfounded at the blizzard of tiny bits of paper drifting down upon them. The entire contents of the Public Records Office, historical records and legal documents of every description, some dating back to the twelfth century. Falling like the snow of other days.
“What set off the explosion?” he asked through dry lips. “The fire I saw earlier?”
“I dunno; maybe some of our officers did it on purpose. Couldn’t let the enemy have our ammunition and gelignite, could we? They’re going to overrun this position soon; we already had the whole place mined to take out as many as we could. Say, that was a bloody brave thing you did, coming to help me. Didn’t you realize the bloody traitors might shoot you too?”
“Traitors?” Henry repeated blankly.
“The bloody Free Staters, of course. But they won’t win. To get back the Republic we’ll kill every one of them if we have to—unless they kill every one of us first.”
Henry did not return to number 16 until very late that night. Louise was waiting for him. “What’s happened how are you I thought you were dead!”
“Take it handy, Louise. I’m not even hurt.”
“But just look at you! There’s blood and soot all over you.”
“I was helping get some of the wounded out of the Four Courts. At the time of the big explosion almost forty Free State soldiers had reached the central hall, and many of them were badly hurt. Miraculously, though, no one was killed. Even me,” he added with a weary chuckle. “Blocks of masonry were flying through the air like kites. It’s a sight I’ll never forget, and I hope never to see another like it.”
“I was terribly worried because I didn’t know where you were or what was happening. None of the lodgers went to work today, so I tried to get one or two to go looking for you, but nobody would. Cowards. I’m going to raise their rent.”
“Did a man called Hamilton show up here?”
“He did, the poor soul, and him exhausted. I gave him a meal and the room across from yours and haven’t seen him since.”
Henry longed for his own bed, but Louise had planted herself between him and the staircase. “Is the fighting over?”
“Only at the Four Courts,” he replied. “Around three-thirty the Republicans raised a white flag on a pole and asked for terms, but Paddy O’Daly insisted on unconditional surrender. At last Liam Mellows and Rory O’Connor led their men out. A lot of them were just lads, leaning against each other, they were so weary.
“A surrender document had already been drawn up. Leave it to Mick Collins to think of that in advance. Ernie O’Malley signed the surrender for the Four Courts garrison and myself and some of the other press men served as witnesses. Then O’Daly demanded the Republicans turn over their weapons, which they did—except for O’Malley. He threw his revolver into the river. I heard him say, “Here’s an offering for Mother Liffey.”1
“What about the rest of the city, Henry? What’s happening there?”
“The Republicans are holding the east side of O’Connell Street and they have posts in the Rotunda, Lower Abbey Street, Moran’s Hotel, and what’s left of the Customs House. They mean to fight to the last man—or woman. There’s a contingent of Cumann na mBan nurses in the Hammam Hotel.”
Louise crossed herself. “God-a-mercy.”
ONCE more there was hand-to-hand combat in the streets of Dublin. Snipers, grenades, armored cars, landmines…the entire ugly paraphernalia of war. Free State forces, working street by street and house by house, took over four hundred Republican prisoners. During the first days of July most of the east side of Upper O’Connell Street was destroyed when the Crown, the Granville and Hammam hotels were bombarded by Free State troops. Artillery demolished the temporary GPO and the Hibernian Bible Society as well.
Curious crowds gathered behind sandbags to watch the final hours of the drama. Oscar Traynor and most of his staff had taken up headquarters in Barrys Hotel in Great Denmark Street, from which base they ordered the evacuation of the O’Connell Street positions. Cathal Brugha, together with seventeen men and three women, refused to leave the Hammam. They held out until evening, when Brugha finally ordered everyone out before the building collapsed. They surrendered to a company of Free State soldiers in a laneway at the rear of the hotel. But Cathal Brugha was not with them.
Henry sadly recorded: “Suddenly Cathal Brugha appeared in the doorway of the blazing hotel. He had a revolver in each hand. Friends and enemies alike called to him to surrender. He
shouted, “Never!” and ran forward firing both guns in the air. A volley of rifle fire cut him down.
“Ironically, the bravest man in Ireland died at the hands of his former comrades-in-arms.”
Next morning Henry managed to speak briefly to Michael Collins. The chairman of the Provisional Government was, as usual, on his way between offices, loaded down with three briefcases. While he paused to talk to Henry, a member of his former squad stood less than two yards away with one hand in his pocket. The man never moved, but his eyes were never still.
Collins was visibly grieved at Brugha’s death. “Cathal was so sincere I would have forgiven him anything. At his worst he was a fanatic, but he fought in what has been a noble cause. At best I numbered him among the very few who would have given their all so this country should have its freedom.”2
“That sounds like a speech. Can I quote you, Mick?”
“You can of course. I’m not ashamed of my admiration for a brave Republican. You’ll not hear me calling any of them traitors,” he added with ill-concealed bitterness. “Speaking of brave Republicans, did you hear about Ernie O’Malley?”
“What about him?”
“He’s escaped. Simply strolled away while O’Daly was gathering the prisoners in the old distillery before transporting them to Mountjoy.” Abruptly, Collins flashed the old grin. “Ernie saw his chance and took it; I couldn’t have done better myself.”
“Good on him,” Henry could not resist saying. “Listen here to me, Mick. Can you give me a pass to the Four Courts? I’d like to write an eyewitness account of the damage.”
“Just don’t get yourself killed too,” Collins warned. “The feckin’ place isn’t safe.”
The area was still barricaded and heavily patrolled to keep back the hordes of sightseers. Continued explosions of the munitions stored in the cellars had made the situation too dangerous for the fire brigade, so the fire had been allowed to burn itself out. What remained was a blackened shell.
An eerie echoing place as sinister as a murder scene and giving off the same chill.
1921 Page 42