After the Rising

by Orna Ross

  Mr and Mrs Mernagh, she calls them, when she is telling these tales. I begin to refer to my mother in a similar way – first Mrs Devereux, then we shorten it to Mrs D. and Mrs M.

  One day Dee tells me that she’s afraid to give her mother advice anymore, since she suggested to her mother that she leave her father, and her mother cracked apart, saying she would have left long ago if it hadn’t been for the children.

  “All out frantic, she went,” Dee tells me. “She was clawing at my wrist, saying, ‘Tell me I did right, tell me I did right.’ Jesus!”

  I listen and nod, marvelling at how she lets it all spill out so easy. Somehow, she seems to like me. I overheard her describe me to Monica Rowe, another girl, as her friend. I want to give her something back. At night, I plan how I will share some Mucknamore story with her, but in the light of day I can never get one past my teeth.

  I have other friends too. Friends! They know nothing about Mucknamore, about hero uncles, absent fathers, mad aunts or abandoned mothers. I shove my difference down deep under my skin and – miraculously – they don’t smell it out. They believe in this manufactured, ordinary me.

  I am happy in the convent, though sometimes I have to lock myself in the toilet or go to one of the other secret places I have hunted down – behind the grotto in the corner of the grounds, at the bottom of the slope beyond the far end of the hockey pitch, under the stairs on the way up to study – to sit tight and empty my mind, to breathe deep and hard, until I am able to breeze out wearing the same broad smile I brought in.

  Terms pass, my life parcelled out between school and home. I have breasts now, and hips that elbow out beneath the red sash that knots around my gym-slip. My legs have sprouted and it feels good to be tall, to look down on younger girls. Dee and Monica and I skip hockey games by going to Fanny-Jo (Sister Frances Joseph) and asking for aspirin. Fanny-Jo is enthralled by periods. “Your monthlies, is it?” she whispers, when you turn up at her door, clutching your forehead or your abdomen. “You poor dear,” she will say, guiding you to the high, hard bed, never seeming to notice that it’s only been a week since you were there last time.

  It is widespread among the nuns, this fascination with bodies and the secret things they do. Soupy – Mother Superior – takes over one of our Home Economics periods to give us The Talk, an event that older girls have warned us about since we joined the school. She stands in front of the blackboard with her face set around her duty, to tell us all about the making of babies. She draws a picture of our insides on the blackboard with neon-pink chalk: womb and tubes and ovaries.

  Embarrassment twitches around the classroom as she talks. She tells us what can happen after a bath, when you are drying yourself. It’s not a sin, she says, to feel yourself as you towel yourself dry, but to linger over such a feeling would be a grave sin indeed. Some girls are weaker than others in such matters, more subject to immoral impulses. Each girl listening will know where she falls; her own conscience will tell her whether she is vulnerable.

  Soupy’s eyes flick around the classroom as she talks. I try hard to meet them but my gaze keeps sliding away from her words. If we examine our consciences and decide that we are in danger, she suggests precautions: wear a vest when having a bath; sleep with hands outside the blankets at night; avoid love stories in books and magazines. I feel Dee’s shoe pressing against mine.

  Afterwards, when she has finished and gone from the classroom, we crack into laughter. “I hope you always wear your vest,” we joke with each other, in shaky voices. Underneath the jokes, we are looking at each other in new ways, wondering who does what. We mock the nuns but we are just as bad, twisted inside our own silences.

  Swell

  1922

  As they came into the outskirts of Enniscorthy town, Peg, who was cycling upfront, made to dismount. “I have to have that drink,” she said. “I can’t wait another second.”

  Norah, who was coming up fast right behind her, pulled over too, braking hard, then swinging onto one pedal and jumping off. “Best idea I heard all day.”

  “And what a day. Could we have picked a hotter one to come cycling 23 miles?”

  After so long on the bicycle, the ground felt unsteady underneath Peg’s feet, but she hopped up the two steps into the shop with Norah just behind. It took a minute for her eyes to adjust to the darkness inside the small premises, so small that a third customer wouldn’t get in beyond the door frame. Flies buzzed, loud and insolent above shelves that were half bare. Behind the counter an enormously fat middle-aged man sat, leaning over one of his newspapers, ignoring them.

  “Em…Good evening,” Peg said. “Are you open?”

  He lingered on his paper a long moment before dragging his eyes up.

  “I am if you’re paying,” he said, with a significant look at their Cumann na mBan uniforms.

  “Of course we’re paying. We only want two lemon sodas.”

  With sighs and wheezes he lifted himself down. Leaning heavily on the stool, he bent from his hips, turning his vast, shop-coated rump up towards them. Peg widened her eyes at Norah and they both folded their lips to stifle rising giggles. Straightening up, the shopkeeper held the two bottles aloft between his fingers. “You’re part of the shenanigans going on above?”

  No answer to that was possible. He could see their uniforms; he knew right well what they were doing here.

  Slowly he drew the corks from the bottles. “I had your lot in here this morning. ‘Commandeering’ by their own account. Eggs, potatoes, butter, bread.”

  “Soldiers must eat,” said Peg.

  “Stealing more like.”

  Peg said, “If they were genuine Republicans, you’ll have been given a receipt.”

  “A Republican receipt won’t feed seven children.”

  Peg could feel answers rising in her. That if the rest of his family were the size of him, they could live off themselves for a year. That he should be proud to feed the soldiers of the Irish Republic. That many people with a lot less to give than him had given a lot more. But she put two coins on the counter and left it at that.

  Back outside, they crossed to the riverbank. “Wouldn’t they drive you up the wall?” Peg said, after they’d drawn the first long, delicious draughts down their throats. “The way they don’t see past their few greasy pence? We should have tried to find McDaid’s. At least they’re Republican friendly.”

  “Don’t mind him,” said Norah. “Just wait till we win them back the Republic. Then their old talk will turn.”

  Peg smiled at her. It was the first time she ever heard her friend say something like that. Norah was full of surprises today, in a state of high excitement ever since they left Mucknamore, whooping up at the birds in the trees, freewheeling her bike down the hills with her legs sticking out each side.

  “So who’s going in with the empties?” Peg asked, when they’d finished.

  Norah looked at her, wide-eyed. She hadn’t changed that much.

  “I’m only joking, give it here.”

  The shop man was stuck in his paper again.

  “I’m bringing back your bottles,” she said, placing them on the little counter.

  “Do you know what I’m wondering?” he said. “I’m wondering how two well-brought-up girls have got yourselves tied up with them rowdy boys above. Do you know the type you’re dealing with at all?”

  He held the tuppence he owed her for the empties aloft between two fingers, like a priest holding up the Communion host. When Peg reached for it he pulled back his hand, swallowing it into his palm. “As low a crowd of corner boys as Enniscorthy ever produced, demanding salutes from respectable people.”

  “They’re the cream of the country,” Peg said, and as soon as she’d said it, she was sorry. She’d never get a money-grabbing huckster like him to understand, not if she talked to him for a twelvemonth.

  “The cream of the country, is it, and they wrecking the same country from end to end? Do you even know what you’re fighting for?”

/>   “For the Republic, of course. For the future. For the coming generations.”

  “To grow up in a country that hasn’t a bridge or railway or decent building left intact. The coming generations are not likely to thank you, I’d say.”

  “You can keep your old tuppence.”

  She found Norah talking to two young men in trench coats with guns slung over their shoulders and it took her a minute to work out that one of them was Tipsy. The other fellow she didn’t know, a tall, thin chap with a helmet of tight curls.

  Norah looked concerned. “What’s the matter?” she said. “What did he say this time?”

  “You wouldn’t believe the go-on of him.”

  “Is that so?” said the stranger, putting his hand to the strap of his rifle. “Do you want me to go in and have a little chat with him?”

  “Steady there,” said Tipsy, fidgeting his feet at the thought.

  “We can’t have it said that we stood idly by while the women of the Republic were insulted.”

  “Don’t be soft,” said Peg. “He just annoyed me, that’s all.”

  “Oh well, if you’re sure,” said Tipsy, now that the chance of it was past.

  “Stop, I said. It would be more in your line, don’t you think, to be making introductions.”

  “Denis Heffernan,” said the stranger himself, lifting his cap to her and a second time to Norah and giving Tipsy a puck with his elbow.

  “Miss Peg Parle,” said Tipsy, with the air of a gallant that didn’t suit him. “And Miss Norah O’Donovan.”

  “Two fair and fatigueless fighters for Ireland, I gather.”

  “We do our bit,” said Peg. “Tell us, is it true? We’ve taken over the Portsmouth Arms?”

  “Aren’t we on our way there now ourselves? You should see if you can stay there. It’s the heart of the action. Here!” He took the bars of Peg’s bicycle and jerked his head towards Norah’s. “Hey! Delaney!” and they started to walk. He seemed all right, this boy, a little bit full of himself maybe, but it was nice to be meeting new people instead of the same old faces from Mucknamore. She was surprised it wasn’t Norah who’d pulled his interest. Norah looked even lovelier than usual this evening.

  “So tell us what’s been happening,” Peg said, as they began to walk towards the bridge. “There’s that many rumours about we don’t know what to believe.”

  Heffernan filled her in. The two armies, Free State and Republican, were pouring into the town and setting up quarters, an uneasy tension between them as each awaited news and orders from Dublin. The Staters had taken over Enniscorthy Castle, a castle built on the height of the hill, overlooking the town. Built by Anglo-Normans in the 1200s, Peg knew, and owned at one stage by the Elizabethan poet, Edmund Spenser. This stronghold had been besieged by Cromwell in 1649 and used as a prison during the 1798 Rebellion. It was now a private home belonging to a Mr Roche and his family.

  “The same Mr Roche was full of haughty protests at being turned out,” said Heffernan. “Apparently he kept saying over and over, in his West Brit accent, ‘I’m as Irish as you are, man. My family has lived in Wexford for three centuries. I’m as Irish as you are.’ But not even he could argue with a battalion of National Army rifles.”

  Heffernan was laughing through the posh English voice he affected.

  “They’ve set up a machine gun,” Tipsy shouted from behind. “On the roof.”

  “Hey!” Heffernan said, throwing a look back over his shoulder. “Who’s telling this yarn?” He turned back to Peg. “He’s right,” he said. “We’ve not been idle ourselves. The courthouse has been fortified and tomorrow we’re going to take over a photographer’s place beside it and a couple of other adjacent houses. And at the moment we’ve a troop clearing out St Mary’s.”

  “St Mary’s?”

  “The Protestant church.”

  Peg laughs. “No! You’re codding?”

  “I’m not. The church has a fine belfry. With the Staters up on the roof of their castle, we needed to climb up there to meet them.”

  “And the Proddie church is the only other building in the town that’s high enough.” Tipsy laughed.

  “Have you been up there, Tipsy?” Norah asked.

  “No, but—“

  “Tipsy?” laughed Heffernan. “Tipsy! Is that what you call him? He told me his name was Martin.”

  Just then, a sound like thunder approached from behind. Two military motors rumbled past, each packed with men, Republican flags fluttering from all sides of the vehicles.

  “They’re Tipperary men,” Tipsy said, bringing up his hand in a salute. Peg and Norah followed suit, tipped their fingertips to their temples.

  “Reinforcements are pouring in,” said Heffernan. “We’ve at least fifty men from Tipperary already. More Dublin boys are on the way too.”

  Tipsy was leaning on the handlebars of the bicycle to look after the disappearing lorries, his mouth hanging open around his too-big tongue. You could drive both military lorries through that mouth, Peg thought.

  “We’d better move on,” Heffernan said.

  As they got into the heart of the town, they found people standing at their doors to watch the activity. Peg felt self-conscious walking past in her uniform, her first-aid knapsack on her back, flanked by the two boys with rifles. They were like actors on a stage, all eyes turned their way, with a scrutiny so silent that she could hear the tick of the bicycle wheels turning.

  A barrier blocked entrance to the hotel lobby, fortified with sandbags and barbed-wire, but one of the two volunteers standing guard knew Denis and helped them to climb in and lift the bicycles over. Inside, soldiers swarmed all round, their activity contrasting with the luxury of their surroundings. Tables and chairs had been piled high behind the windows. The dining room was now a store for ammunition, grenades and other explosives. The bar had been sealed off. At the reception desk, two officers Peg had never seen before pored over a map of the town, one making lines on it with a pencil. Denis Heffernan lifted Peg’s bicycle up over his head and led them through to the back yard as if he had lived in the place all his life. Tipsy copied him. When the bikes were safely put by, Peg asked, “Where are the girls, Tipsy? Have you seen Molly?”

  “She was in the basement earlier.”

  “That’s where most of the women are holed up,” said Heffernan.

  He pointed the way down the narrow back stairs and they parted ways. Down in the basement too, activity was humming, women in groups performing various tasks: washing and drying dishes, making bread, mopping the floor, wiping down shelves and tables, cutting up bandages and making first-aid dressing packs.

  They found Molly in a corner of the kitchen, blacking a cooker. “Ah, girls, it’s great to see you. D’you want some dinner? What’s left is going to the pigs.” She upended a huge pot to show them the remains of a stew down at the bottom. “They ate well, but I could heat this up for you. Do you fancy?”

  They declined.

  “I’m surprised to see yourself here, Norah,” Molly said, with her usual directness.

  “I had to come,” Norah said.

  “Isn’t it amazing? I have to keep pinching myself, so I do. Cat is coming up too. She sent a message with Jim Healy that she’ll be up in the morning.”

  A soldier came in and slapped a heavy brown cardboard box on one of the long tables. “Anyone got a knife?”

  Molly had and she slit the box open. It was packed from base to brim with sausages, pounds and pounds of them, wrapped in greaseproof paper. She picked out one pack, held it up for the others to see. The volunteer slapped his hand down on top of another box. “Rashers of bacon,” he said. Another slap on another box: “Black pudding.”

  “Aren’t you the right little hunter-gatherer?” said Molly. “Where have you been?”

  “Buttle’s meat factory. Provisions for the Irish Republican Army, I told the supervisor. He wasn’t too inclined to do his patriotic duty until I made him acquainted with Betsy here.” He tapped the barrel o
f his revolver.

  “We’ll have a feast and a half in the morning,” Molly said. “We’ll get up early and make brown bread for it. You’ll help, girls, won’t ye?”

  “Of course we will,” Peg said. “Isn’t that what we’re here for?”

  “If you’re not busy now, you could take over the last tea round. Mary-Ann Maloney said she’d do it with me, but we could do with a bit of a break. We’ve been hard at one thing or another since the forenoon.”

  She showed them where the cups were kept and told them to put the milk and sugar directly into the big teapots. “Leave it to us,” Peg said. They made the tea as instructed and carried it up, Peg in charge of the big teapot with the two handles, Norah following behind with a tray of cups. Everyone was delighted to see them.

  “Here comes the tea,” the shout went up. “Good girls.” They saw Barney in a corner with a group and he came over, but there was no time to talk; everybody wanted refreshment. First the tea ran out, then the cups, then the tea again. It took five journeys to the kitchen before all were catered for.

  Collecting the teacups afterwards was an altogether more relaxed task, with time for a bit of banter, meeting up with old acquaintances and being introduced to new, so many new people they couldn’t possibly remember them all. When the crowd around them thinned out a bit, Barney slipped across, taking a place beside Norah.

  “Any bit of news from the front lines?” Peg asked.

  “Nothing much,” said Barney. “Just prep work, still.”

  “But we’re definitely going to make a strike?”

  “Definitely. But not tonight. We need the church back before we strike at the castle. The vicar sent a representation to Fleming, asking if he could do Sunday services as normal, then we could have it back.”

  “That’s gas,” Norah said, flicking a little smile at him.

  “Isn’t it just? A Protestant minister bowing the knee to the likes of us.”

  “I never thought I’d see such a thing,” said Peg.