—Nothing, I said.
—Right you are, boy.
Even now I didn’t run up the steps to kill him. Because I knew that that was part of the test as well.
—Right you are, he said.—And you’re not the bit annoyed with me.
He jumped the steps and thumped me onto the street. He followed me. Luckily, the traffic was scarce and slow, a few drays keeping up with the sun. Collins was playing. He loved his horseplay. As long as he was the horse. You had to be careful. He liked a bit of ear. He bit when he was winning and turned nastier if he was losing. I thumped him now, so that it wouldn’t hurt too much. He laughed and grabbed my neck. I laughed and grabbed his. I’d never had much time for this kind of cod-acting, unless I actually intended strangling the neck’s owner. But I was adaptable. The bossman liked a mill, so I gave him one, enough to let him think he was winning. I slapped the back of his neck. And laughed. He whacked both sides of my face with open palms. He laughed. I made to kick the side of his arse, then thumped him nicely just above his belt buckle. I’d let him play for a few more minutes. It gave me time to think. He drummed his fists into my coat and raised all the dust.
I really had been tested. I’d been watched all the way. In the pitch dark. When I’d cycled into the ditch. Right through Kildare and Westmeath. When I’d slowed down for directions. When I’d shouted into the sky at my twinkling brother.
I got out from under Collins. He grabbed from behind and lifted me.
I was rattled. I hadn’t been trusted. Not enough. Until now. And where was Jack? Was I trusted now? And enough?
I filled myself with some of that fresh air, and Collins had to loosen his grip as my chest grew. I turned and grabbed him on my way back down. I wasn’t angry. Or hurt. I searched for those feelings and anything like them as I turned on the street and brought him with me headfirst, and the speed and strength of my turn knocked him onto his knees.
I was delighted, that was what I was. Thrilled. I’d passed. The big test. A bit hysterical, to be honest. Not that far from angry. A real test, a true test of my loyalty and strength. I was in now.
I got behind Collins and pushed him the rest of the way to the street. I’d forgotten that I should have been losing. And I sat on his back.
—D’yeh give up?
He was a great man. I loved him. But I wanted to hurt him.
—I can’t hear you. D’you give up?
He grunted.
I stood up and got out of his way. I took my coat off and draped it over the handlebars; I’d forgotten about the gun on my back. I didn’t know when I’d accepted his grunt as surrender that he was being watched - or thought he was being watched - by Kitty Kiernan, from one of the hotel windows. I found out about her later. She ran the Greville Arms with her sisters and Collins was in love with her and probably one of the sisters. Big savage kid that he was, he thought that knocking the living shite out of me would impress her or, going back thirty seconds, the sight of a dusty messenger boy from Dublin sitting on his back would definitely not impress her. He got up slowly and shook himself. Then he stretched. He laughed.
—The best of men, he said.
Then he punched me.
I woke up in a bed in Roscommon.
In a dark, windowless room, with the immediate knowledge that one of my eyes was missing.
I sat up and shouted.
—Good, good, good.
There was someone else in the room.
—Who’s there? I said.
—Good.
—Who are you?
—Ah, good.
A woman. It was in the voice. And her age was in the cracks between the words. She was very old.
—We were worried there, young fellow. We thought it might be one of those coma occurrences and not right sleep at all.
I heard a chair groaning as weight came off it.
—But then himself told us that you’d bicycled all the way from Dublin in the one sitting and we knew that it was only sleeping you were doing after all. Even with your eye the way it is. Your gun is under the pillow. With the leg.
—What about my eye?
—You’ll be grand. It’s just gone black. Is the black one as handsome as the good one?
—I’ve been told it is.
—They weren’t lying who told you.
I could see her now. It wasn’t so dark. There was an oil lamp on the floor; its light rose from somewhere in front of the bed. It was an attic. I could see and smell the thatch.
—It won’t be the first shiner you’ve worn, I’d say now. Am I right, young fellow?
—You are, missis.
—There now. Good. I’m not going to ask you your name because then, when they ask me for it, I’ll be able to say I don’t know and it no lie.
—Who’ll be asking for my name?
—Ah now, she said.
She was small and ancient, and partly hidden in a shawl that might have had more colours than black.
—But you’ll be wanting to call me something, she said. —I have a name and it’s no secret. I’m Missis O’Shea.
She dropped the shawl to her shoulders. Her grey hair was in a bun.
A bun.
Brown eyes and some slivers of hair that had escaped from a bun.
I leaned forward quickly; I felt my sore eye shift and protest but it didn’t matter at all: I had to know.
—D’you have any daughters?
—Awake two minutes and he’s already thinking of the girleens. The men, men, the men. They’re desperate animals altogether. Good. Good. I’ve a power of daughters. And granddaughters as well coming along after them.
—Are any of them teachers?
I prayed to the thatch above me.
—Not a one, she said.—You’ll have a dropeen of soup now. To put some colour into those sad Dublin cheeks of yours.
I heard her climbing down the steps as I lay back on the bed and waited for my cheeks and neck to stop burning and for my eye to stop hopping. She’d seen my blushes, she must have, even in this gloom; that was why she’d denied their colour. I inhaled deeply - I could smell turf smoke coming through the boards from below - I inhaled and hauled my soaking heart back to its proper place. I’d almost seen her, Miss O’Shea; I’d been so close. For a second or two I’d been looking at her mother. Brown eyes and some slivers of hair that had escaped from a bun that shone like a lamp behind her head. I’d been under her roof, on the bed she’d been born in. Where she’d sucked on her mother’s tit, against this pillow, on her mother’s tit, and grown. Her hair, skin, her neck. I’d felt them here, for just that second. They were still here. Fading, going.
There was nothing.
I heard feet on the ladder.
—I’ve two of them nuns with the Little Sisters of the Poor and one a housekeeper in Mullingar. I’ve another a nurse beyond in London, a big handful of farmers’ wives and another one married to a man with a shop in Castlerea. And I’ve the youngest one that’s loose in her head still here with me. And there’s the granddaughters all around and scattered, married and not, up to everything.
I lifted myself in time to see a bowl of soup rising out of the floor, held high by two claws. Folding steam grabbed at the dust, followed by the rest of old Missis O’Shea. Her mother, but just for a cruel spit of a second.
—But none of them school teachering, said old Missis O’Shea.—Good. My poor knees crack on those steps. Two knees, seventeen steps. It isn’t a fair fight. Sit up now, young fellow, till we feed you.
I sat up, slowly this time, aware now that my sore eye didn’t want movement and that my erection was making a mountain of the blanket.
—But the men, the men, said old Missis O’Shea, looking only at the soup and the spoon and its journey to my mouth.
—I can do it myself, I said.
—Then what’ll I do?
She pulled the spoon from my closed mouth and I’d never tasted anything like the soup she’d left behind. It was vile.
—G
ood, she said.
More joined it. A shattering mixture of the raw and the rotten, and scalding with it, and I had to swallow the lot. I’d grown up on bad food but nothing as fundamentally evil as old Missis O’Shea’s soup and I ate it without a whimper because she’d nearly been my lover’s mother.
The house was on a farm. The farm was forty-odd lumpy acres of cow fields and bog, divided by low stone walls. There was no sight of a hedge.
—What’s all the yellow stuff? I asked.
—That’ll be gorse, she said.
I stood at the half-door the morning after I woke up from Collins’s thump and looked out at the rain running across the yard.
—Where am I?
—Rusg, she said.—The bog, it means. It’s a nice name but not fair. It only describes the half of it. And the next parish is called Rusgeile. The man who gave out the names in this part of the county had only the one good eye and it was only the bad he saw with it. Mind your own eye going over the bumps, young fellow.
—I will, I said.—Don’t worry.
—Off with you, so, she said.—Himself says you’ll be needing a safe bed now and again and you’ll always be welcome here. It’s not a big house but it’s a friendly one. We’re all for the Republic around here.
I hadn’t seen anyone, only herself.
—And it’s always nice to feed a handsome man. Off with you now, she said.—It’s a long ride to Dublin and we’re not getting any younger standing around here flirting.
—Thanks very much, I said.
—For what?
Poisoning me, I said to myself as I went through the rain in search of the Arseless, to a long barn that smelt of old oats and horse leather.
I caught up with Collins in Phil Shanahan’s.
—Sorry about the eye, though, Henry boy. I’ll let you win the next time.
But he didn’t.
I wasn’t angry now. My wounds always mended quickly. I grew fond of them as they faded and women were always fond of nice scars, and I was very fond of women. The black eye gave me the look of a lost pup. A big girl in a field behind Kinnegad had told me that as she licked it, and women were fond of pups as well. I’d taken my time cycling home from Rusg. I’d climbed off the Arseless several times, at Ballagh, Athlone, to look at the Shannon I’d crossed the first time in my sleep, and Kinnegad.
—We’re nearly there, Henry, said Collins.
He gave me his full face and attention: there was no one else in the room while he talked. He had the startings of a moustache that already added years to him; he was a businessman, a family man on his way home.
—We’ve Dublin organised and the other towns are more or less sorted and soon, soon we’ll have enough of the country ready for action. We have the men and the houses but not enough know-how or weapons. The bang-bangs are coming and you and some other good boys are going to supply the know-how. We’re going to give the British what’s what in the bogs, boy, and in the towns and all over the bloody place. No G.P.O. this time, Henry. To fuck with it. We won’t be trapped this time. You’re going back the way you just came from. First thing, tomorrow. To train the country lads. And to pick out the best ones for ourselves. We want our own boys holding the reins. We’ll have a drink now for tomorrow’s road and then you’ll go home and get some sleep. You’ll need all the energy you can muster, boy. And, by the way, Cathleen in Kinnegad says you’re the best and the slowest ride she’s had in weeks.
Nine
Three years on a stolen bike. Over mountains, rivers and provinces. But first I said goodbye to Annie.
—Does it make me look like a lost pup, Annie?
She grabbed my ears and stared at my black eye.
—It’s just a shiner, she said.—Don’t listen to anyone who says different. They’re only taking advantage of you. Now.
I watched her bruised knees slip past my eyes.
—Will I sing? she said.
—Yes please, Annie. A slow one.
—The slow ones are sad.
—Fine.
—And they still last three minutes, no matter how slow.
—Fine, I said.—I’m going away, Annie. For a while.
—You were never here, she said.
—I was, I said.
—No, she said.—Not really.
She tapped my head with her knuckles, and then tapped my chest.
—Not really you weren’t.
—I’m here now, Annie.
—You are at that, she said, and her fingers left my ears and I watched her rub her thighs as we began to push and pull and her hands drifted from her thighs to mine and up to my back, to my neck, and back down along the knuckles of my spine and she found the right notes and sang to me. She lives in a mansion of aching hearts, she’s one of the restless throng. She hoisted herself against me and did the work as she sang and I stayed as stiff and as still as I could. And it was easy. She was old and young at the same time, Annie. Young thighs, old neck. Young wrists, old hands. Young hair, old teeth. Young eyes - gorgeous, brave things drilling into me - and an old voice made filthy by a life of Dublin air, a thing made of smoke and sex. She blew on one of my nipples - oh Annie - and continued. Though by the wayside she fell, she may yet mend her ways. She slammed and sang and we came together that one last time. Some poor mother is waiting for her - we fought each other and won - who has seen better days - and lost, and lost. We fell apart just in time before we died.
I sat up.
—Are you crying, Annie?
—No, she said.
She was turned to the wall.
—Poor Annie.
—Poor nothing, she said.—There’s nothing poor about me. Except for the lack of spondulix. Worry about yourself.
—I’ve no worries, Annie, I said.—Was that one of the American songs?
—It was, she said.—I want to go there. I could do things there.
She turned to face me.
—I want to own a piano, Henry.
And she turned away again.
—Why don’t you go then?
—Because he wants to die for Ireland.
—He?
—I’m married, remember.
—I thought you were talking about me for a minute.
—I don’t care whether you die or not.
—Ah, you do.
—No, I don’t, she said.
And I believed her.
—Just remember that letter, she said.
—I will, I said.—Don’t worry.
—I’m not worried.
—Anyway, Annie, I said.—I’ll be back soon.
—No, you won’t.
—I will, Annie.
She shrugged my hand off her hip.
—You won’t.
—I will, I said.—I swear.
But she was right. I never did see Annie again, but I did write her the letter.
The Great War finally ended but not before the British did us another favour and tried to bring in conscription. The country was packed with able young men unwilling to die for the King and their mothers and lovers unwilling to let them go and by December 1918 and the general election, even though the threat of a forced holiday in France had gone, they all queued up, all men over twenty-one and women over thirty, the young and the poor, and they voted for Sinn Féin. De Valera, Griffith and most of the other leading lights had been arrested again. They’d decided that they were of more use to the cause in jail, so they’d made themselves easily caught. It worked out very nicely. Forty-seven of the candidates were in jail on polling day. Release the Prisoners, Release Ireland. Sinn Féin had very quickly become respectable, the party of the parish priests and those middle-class men cute enough to know when the wind was changing. It was the party of money and faith, and thrilling with it because of its links to the buried martyrs; it was outlawed by the British, but cosy. While I was under a wet bush teaching country boys how to stay still and keen until the approaching uniform was an unmissable target, many of my fellow revolutionaries
, in their Sinn Féin guises, were adding letters to their names. There was Michael Collins M.P. There was Dinny - Denis on the posters - Archer M.P. There was Alfred Gandon M.P. And there was Jack Dalton M.P. Give Him Your Vote and He’ll Give You Your Freedom. Jack was one of the candidates at liberty to campaign, but he spent most of the weeks in the run-up to the election dodging arrest in Dublin. Collins and Jack and other men like Harry Boland and Cathal Brugha who were busy on both the political and military fronts, and who knew that incarceration might get them elected but would leave the Volunteers and I.R.B. lost and nervous and in the sweaty hands of the moderates and johnny-come-latelys, had decided that it was wiser to stay out of jail. Sinn Féin and the Volunteers were controlled by the gunmen; the election was being controlled by men who had no belief in it. Collins made occasional appearances at public meetings around the country - Come in your thousands - but, to stay in control of the underground movement most Sinn Féin voters and members still knew nothing about, he and Jack stayed on the run. Collins’s contacts kept him well up to date on raids and cordons and he and the others played hopscotch with the G-men all the way to Election Day and past it.
So Sinn Féin, just a few years before a little gang of cranky nuts and bad poets, swept to victory everywhere except the bitter parts of Ulster and Trinity College, the original home of my bicycle. On the day the votes were counted I was on the same bike heading south from Limerick to Kerry, cycling into a wet gale that blew for me and me only.
There was no Henry Smart M.P. I was four years short of the voting age, I was never a member of Sinn Féin; I wouldn’t have stood for election if I’d been asked, but that was the point, and a point that didn’t drill itself into my head until 1922: I hadn’t been asked. I was bang in the middle of what was going to become big, big history, I was shaping the fate of my country, I was one of Collins’s anointed but, actually, I was excluded from everything. I was on a bike in the rain, all alone on the road. I was never one of the boys. I wasn’t a Christian Brothers boy, I’d been unlucky enough to miss Frongoch, I’d no farm in the family, no college, no priest, no past. Collins slept in the Greville Arms; I never made it up the steps. There was no Henry Smart M.P. There was no Annie’s Dead Husband M.P. And none of the other men of the slums and hovels ever made it on to the list. We were nameless and expendable, every bit as dead as the squaddies in France. We carried guns and messages. We were decoys and patsies. We followed orders and murdered.