A Star Called Henry

—Get down out of that now, missis. There’s a war on.

  —I know there’s a fuckin’ war on, said the woman back at Collins.—Over in France, with my Eddie.

  —This is a fuckin’ post office, said another one who was climbing up beside her.

  —You can’t come in, said Collins.

  —Who’ll stop us?

  —The Army of the Irish Republic.

  —The Irish wha’?

  —Republic.

  —We don’t want a republic.

  —That’s right. God save the fuckin’ King.

  —Call yourselves men? You’re only molly men.

  —Wait till the real Army catches yis.

  —Yis’ll taste steel then, I’m tellin’ yis.

  —You’ll have to go away, ladies, said Collins.

  —It’d take more than a big-eared country boy to make us go away.

  —What’s under your hat, love?

  Collins gave up.

  —Shoot the first one that tries to get in, he told me.—Up you go now and defend your country.

  I climbed back up to my perch and looked out.

  —Ah now, there’s a man.

  —Howyis, girls, I said.—What seems to be the trouble?

  —We only want our money, said one of them.

  —Fair enough, I said.—Get down off the ledge there, so you don’t go hurting yourselves.

  —Can we have our money or wha’?

  —I’ll see what I can do, I said.

  Collins was near.

  —Permission to suggest something, sir.

  —Go ahead, he said.

  —Those women have children to feed, I said.

  —And themselves, he said.

  Jesus, I hated the Volunteers. The poets and the farm boys, the fuckin’ shopkeepers. They detested the slummers - the accents and the dirt, the Dublinness of them. When was the last time Collins had been hungry? I knew the answer just by looking at the well-fed puss on him.

  —There’s plenty of money upstairs, sir, I said.—It was in the tills, beyond.

  —So?

  —So, seeing as there’s no one outside to fight, why not let the first act of the Irish Republic be the paying out of these women’s allowances?

  —Because their husbands are in the British Army?

  —A job’s a job, sir, I said.—Some of the men here were in the Army. And most of the military garrisoned here in Dublin are Irish.

  —It’ll start a riot.

  —A riot of support, I said.

  I’d heard the stories about Collins.

  —There’s some good-looking women out there, sir.

  —I’ll talk to Commandant Pearse, he said.

  And ten minutes later I was up on my barricade again with one of the till drawers, handing down neat piles of silver and copper to an orderly queue of grateful shawlies who went home happy and republican, with their money under their shawls - minus my 10 per cent - and their husbands far from their minds, buried beyond their eyebrows in the mud of Verdun and Ypres.

  —What are you doing after the insurrection, young fella? said one of them.

  She tightened her hold on my hand so I couldn’t drop the money onto her palm.

  —I seen him first, said another.

  —He’s fit for all of us.

  —Where will I find you? I asked.

  —Go up to Summerhill and ask for Annie, she said.—They all know me.

  —Piano Annie, said another one behind her.—She’ll play a jig on your spine, sonny.

  Annie pulled my hand.

  —What about a kiss to keep me going?

  —Hang on to my feet, Paddy, I said over my shoulder to Swanzy, and I was sliding over the end of the barricade, past the last few shards of broken glass, sliding down to Annie, to see what was under the shawl; she was only young, not much older than myself, and gorgeous now that her mouth was shut and hiding the butts of her teeth. Her eyes were starving, greedy and dark, and darker as I got nearer to them. I hung on to my hat and Paddy’s hold on my ankles tightened; I felt other hands grabbing my legs and feet. I was being held by three men - maybe they thought I was deserting, and maybe I was - by the time I had my face down to Annie’s and I gave her my eyes -

  —Holy Jesus, where did you get them?

  and I touched her cracked but lovely lips with mine - and I heard something. I definitely heard something.

  Brasses.

  And nails on stone. And I looked and saw hoofs knocking sparks out of the tramlines.

  —Get me up! I shouted.

  —Aaah, said Annie as my face rose over her and she was left with nothing but her allowance in her fist.

  —I’ll come looking for you, Annie, I said.—Don’t worry.

  I kept looking at her until I was hauled over the top of my barricade and I was back inside.

  —They’re coming, I said.

  —We know, said Charlie.—The Lancers.

  —A horse is a grand big target, said Paddy.

  I was ready.

  At last.

  I aimed at Tyler’s window.

  I heard the first shot crack brick. And then I fired. I heard, then saw the shop glass break and disappear as the trigger threw my finger forward. I pulled back the bolt, the empty cartridge flew over my shoulder. I grabbed the trigger back and fired at the exposed boots and slippers. Then I fired at Noblett’s window, and the cakes and cream jumped out of their stands. O’Farrell’s. The glass fell onto the tobacco and cigars. The cartridges hopped around me, the recoil was taking the shoulder off me but I kept at it. My aim was true and careful; every bullet mattered. Two for Lewer’s & Co. and their little boys’ blazers, suits and knickerbockers. I felt my fingers burning; the barrel was overheating. But I kept on shooting. A bullet for Dunne & Co., and their hats danced in the glass. One for the All-Ireland Servants Registry Office - there’d be none of that shite in the new republic. And Cable and Co., and more and more shoes. And back over to the Pillar Cafe - I’d been thrown out of there before I was properly in the door, me and Victor; I could still smell the manageress’s breath - and I took out all the café windows with timing and precision that impressed but didn’t surprise me. I shot and killed all that I had been denied, all the commerce and snobbery that had been mocking me and other hundreds of thousands behind glass and locks, all the injustice, unfairness and shoes - while the lads took chunks out of the military.

  They drove their bullets into the dragoons - the Sixth Reserve Cavalry Regiment, from Marlborough Barracks, I found out a few years later when I was comforting one of the widows - and their fat, gleaming steeds. By the time I was finished with the shop windows, there were horses, dead or twitching, lying all over Upper Sackville Street and their riders were under them or hobbling and crawling away, back up towards Cavendish Row. The bullets still pinged and skipped and the street-sides tossed back the echoes. I aimed at a chap who’d lost his helmet, whose face was cut in half by a moustache with ends standing up like black candles. He looked stranded out there, trying to control his horse and hold on to his lance; the horse was spinning on its hind legs, propelled by its terror. I waited till horse and rider gave me their side view again. Then I let go of a bullet that went through the rider’s leg and the horse dropped flat onto the street.

  They were beaten. A mess of flesh and shit on the street. We cheered and gave hard slaps to the nearest backs. I’d never been so close to people before. There’d only ever been Victor. I was sharing the world with these men. I trusted them; their nearness lit me.

  It had been so easy. We had occupied a solid block of Wicklow granite and they’d sent a few toy soldiers on horses to get us out. The knowledge made us giddy; they were eejits. The Empire was collapsing in front of us. I had the last of the till money in my pocket, so I didn’t join in in the victory dance; I didn’t want it to jangle. Paddy and Felix swung each other till it got dangerous and Connolly let go of a roar. He was furious again. He shook himself at us.

  —Why didn’t you wait u
ntil we had them all in our sights? he said.—That wasn’t even the start of it.

  —God, said Paddy,—there’s no pleasing that man.

  We got back to our posts and waited. A gang of Volunteers arrived on a commandeered tram. The Kimmage men, they all slept in a barn out on Count Plunkett’s farm, having come back from England to avoid conscription. They’d spent their days helping on the farm and making home-made bombs.

  —Sorry we’re late, said one of them as he climbed in the window.

  —Did you pay your fare? I asked him.

  —We did in our arses, he said.

  It was the last tram to run that week. De Valera’s men had got into Ringsend power station and taken away some of its vital parts. The trams sat dead around the Pillar. Some of them ended up in barricades; they were easy things to topple.

  Some of our men, led by a Volunteer officer, ran across the street and occupied the Imperial Hotel. We watched as our own flag, the Starry Plough, the flag of the Citizen Army, flew over the hotel, property of William Martin Murphy, the bollocks who’d locked us out in 1913.

  —Hope the fucker can see it.

  —If he can’t, he’ll hear about it.

  I watched the flag being played by the wind that was bringing in the evening over Dublin. And night followed that and we still waited.

  I slept that night. On the floor in the basement of the G.P.O. Sandwiched between Paddy and Felix, the three of us wrapped in a roll of carpet we’d liberated from an office upstairs. I was asleep before I lay down properly. Cuddled by two bowls of Cumann na mBan stew, tucked in and utterly gone. I dreamt of nothing and woke up new and wondering who and where I was. It was still dark.

  —Cock-a-doodle-doo, said Paddy Swanzy, beside me.

  I listened for gunshots or shouting but there was nothing, no loud or hurrying noises from above. I searched the dark for my boots and shook blood into my legs; they’d gone numb in the britches. There was light coming from the big room to the left, and a smell with it.

  —Porridge, said Paddy.—That’ll stop the bullets. There’s murder going on over at City Hall. They say. The Devil’s Half-Acre is submerged in blood and liver.

  I listened again but could still hear nothing.

  —Whose blood? Theirs or ours?

  —Most of it’s imported, said Paddy.

  He was joking. He knew as well as I did: most of the British soldiers were Irish. Irishmen who’d needed the work. And anyway, we’d nothing against Englishmen either, or Scots or Welshmen. We were fighting a class war. We weren’t in the same battle at all as the rest of the rebels. And they’d find that out soon enough.

  I stood up, strapped on my bandolier and joined the queue of men still numb and crooked from the night. The porridge in the air set my stomach yapping. I grabbed a bowl from a card table and held it out to be filled.

  —Two and two?

  I was looking at two brown boots that had a woman’s toes neatly packed into their points.

  —Don’t know. Two and two what?

  —Bottles.

  —What’s in them?

  —Porter.

  I looked at her.

  —Four.

  —I knew it was you, said Miss O’Shea.

  —It’s me alright. It always has been.

  —You’re still a great one for the answers.

  Brown-black eyes and floating slivers of hair that had escaped from a bun behind her head. It had been five years since I’d last seen her, since Mother the Nun had come into the classroom and ended my education. She hadn’t changed a bit; the five years had done no damage. But I’d changed, of course. I was up over her now and, as I stood there, I could remember what I’d been like when I’d knocked on her door, with Victor. I could feel Victor beside me; I could feel his sweat in my hand. Henry, the small, filthy boy who’d been a whopper for his age was now a man, and big for any age. He was tall and broad with the skin and hair born of sound blood and clean living. The sores and crusts had fallen off me. I was a sparkling young man; I fought every day for my cleanliness. My eyes were blue and fascinating whirlpools; they could suck in women while warning them to stay well away, a fighting combination that had them running at me. And I knew exactly what my eyes could do.

  And Miss O’Shea hadn’t even got to them yet. She was still feeding on my britches. I stood at ease and let her. She was mesmerised. I looked down at the bun that had been above me the last time I’d seen it. It was a mass of the finest brown hair, endless hair that was dying for fingers to comb it. And, under it, her neck, and my eyes slid down to the start of her Cumann na mBan uniform. And the badge on her breast, the rifle held by the slender curling letters. C na mB. She saw me and blushed and I remembered that too.

  —You still have your leg, she said.

  It was in my holster, my da’s leg, varnished and ready to knock heads for Ireland.

  —I do, I said.—I’ll be seeing you.

  And I left her there, dangling. I went into a corner and downed my porridge. It was early days. There’d be more porridge and, with a bit of luck, wounds to swab and bandage. We’d be seeing each other again. Miss O’Shea wasn’t going anywhere, and neither was I.

  Another day of waiting. Day Two of the Revolution and I was already bored. Staring out at the empty street and the rain. Listening to the far gunfire, waiting for it to come closer. Waiting to be surprised. Wanting it. Badly. Wanting to shoot and wreck and kill and ruin. But Dublin, that part of it outside my window, didn’t really wake up at all. No trams now, four empty tramlines outside, no hawkers, hardly any people, or acknowledgement that we were ready and wanting a fight. Only the odd group or individual coming up to the window. Most were bored and some were angry, kept from their work. They remembered the hunger of the Lockout, and they were blaming us now.

  —You’re a shower of irresponsibles.

  —Is Mick Malone in there with yis? He has the keys to the print-shop and we can’t get in.

  —Nothing but a shower of irresponsibles.

  —Tell him we’ll have to break the door down or lose a day’s pay and the foreman says the door’ll come out of his wages if he still has the job when he comes back.

  —Where’s Mick Malone? I shouted.

  —With de Valera, said Felix Harte.

  —He’s over in Boland’s Bakery, I told the young fella outside, under my barricade.

  —What’s he doin’ there?

  —Eating all the fig rolls, said Paddy Swanzy.

  The Cumann na mBan women were cycling all over the city and coming back with news. The stories were flying, facts and rumours and little bits of extra we made up ourselves to get us through the day. There was full-scale war going on out at Ashbourne; Thomas Ashe and Dick Mulcahy were up to their thighs in Saxon gore and cow shite. Michael Mallin and Countess Markievicz had taken Stephen’s Green; the Countess was training the ducks in the finer points of urban warfare. There were boatloads of guns and machine-guns being run onto the beaches of Kerry, and other huge killing machines, already on their way to us. German boats full of weapons for us; they’d got through the British blockade. The British had been off their guard after the Aud was sunk in Queenstown harbour, down in Cork. They thought they’d dealt with the crisis but the Aud had been just the first of many, the nose of a long convoy. There were even German troops coming off the boats, squads and squads of them, big twins and triplets; they’d marched through Tralee. They were marching up the Naas Road. And the Irish Brigade with them, homesick Irishmen from the German prisoner-of-war camps, marching towards us. And boats of Irish-Yanks already on the Atlantic, heading our way, with new guns and muscle; Jim Larkin had landed at Sligo with an advance party. The whole country was up, Wexford, the West, Kerry. The Irish regiments were defecting and the Orangemen had marched through Balbriggan the night before, on their way to flush us out; they were going to join up at Ballybough with the cadets from the School of Musketry in Dollymount. But we weren’t worried. De Valera and the Third Battalion were holding ba
ck all the armies to the south and Ned Daly and Éamonn Ceannt were doing the same to the west. They’d taken over the South Dublin Union and armed the sick and mad. Dublin’s nuts were holding back the armies of the Empire. And they were doing a good job of it; we didn’t see a hint of a soldier or hear an angry shot all day. Or even a fat rozzer to have a crack at. All we fought was the boredom and abuse.

  I kept a tight watch on all the street corners and let Miss O’Shea make up my dreams for me. She was down there waiting for me, with a bowl of stew, slices of thick, warm brownbread or maybe even a couple of chops. She was down there, dreaming of me. As my eyes searched the broken shop windows across the street, I licked Miss O’Shea’s ear. And she felt it, downstairs in the basement, I knew she did, as she drove her wooden spoon and watched the potatoes breaking off the wall of the cauldron. Her ear had never been licked, not even by a pup or a sister. I could feel her skin shivering under my tongue, felt the slight heat of her blush as I crawled up the little creases behind her ear, three little rivers, towards her bun - I was going to free that hair and lie down in it. I knew exactly what I wanted. I was no ordinary boy. I was practised and cool, an out and out pleasure machine, my hands oiled and scented with the stuff that made my rifle sing. I moved another half-inch and her hair melted on my tongue. I pressed myself into the barricade.

  —Will you look at those gobshites.

  It was Paddy and his timing was perfect; I’d very nearly shoved the barricade out the window. There was an extra leg in my britches, fighting for space and purpose. Baying for a republic.

  —What gobshites? I said.

  I kept my eyes on the street and my bollix on the sandbag.

  —Those gobshites, he said.

  I didn’t have to look now; I heard them. Some of the Volunteers had their beads out and were down on their knees, humming the rosary.

  —The revolutionaries, said Felix.—Will you look at them?

  Plunkett was in there with them. He could hardly stand; he spent most of his time on a mattress. The man was dying, a waste of a bullet, but he had the energy to beat his breast and drive his knees into the tiles.

  —The first sorrowful mystery, said Paddy.—How we ever ended up with those gobshites.