“Did she too?”
“Stepped out calm as a clock, and as cold.”
MacMurrough said, “What about casualties?”
“Ask yourself this,” the officer replied: “three-foot trenches and the crack of dawn machine-guns spewing from above.”
MacMurrough exchanged glances with Doyler, each asking of the other the solution to this conundrum. “Have you heard tell at all,” said Doyler, “of a young chap, name of Jim Mack?”
“Not I,” said the officer. “Volunteer, is he?”
“Don’t know rightly what he’d be.”
“You can make all the inquiries you want, Doyle, after you report to Section. You missed parade on Sunday. You skipped your guard detail too. Now you’re telling me another man has your rifle. By rights, you’d be thrown in the guardhouse.”
“Is it Connolly in charge here?”
“Commandant-General Connolly is at the GPO. Commandant-General Connolly has been promoted commander-in-chief of all Republican forces in Dublin.”
Doyler whistled between his teeth. “So that’s what they gave him. Command of the Volunteers.”
“You know I don’t like you, Doyle, so you can button your lip. There are no Volunteers any more, nor Citizen soldiers. There is only the Irish Republican Army now.”
“Who’s in charge here, so?—sir,” he added.
“Commandant Mallin.”
How many commandants did they need? MacMurrough wondered. He wondered too what might be his station in life, this satisfied Republican soldier. Clerk, copyist, pen-repairer, some blind alley his talents would never be recognized. One saw it best at country fairs: the organizational zeal of stewards who the remainder of the year busheled along as grocer’s assistants, sacristans, the like. Or am I being a scintilla unfair? Who am I, MacMurrough, to impugn another man’s motives?
The wind of their bike-ride had flagged. A shame, but they walked again deadly-lively with the crowd. That bloody machine gun—like a very loud typewriter. Some old bugger in the Shelbourne firing off a complaint to the manager. He listened to the distinctive report of the rebels’ Mausers. He had shot Mausers himself, and he knew them for good guns, even these vintage single loaders. Shot straight, shot far, shot hard—just didn’t shoot very often.
Of course Jim’s all right. I should know, the world should blast it, were anything the slightest wrong.
“No,” the officer expanded, “this side of the Green we have little to fear of the British. It’s them hussies behind are the menace here.”
Yes, they were trailing something of a mêlée in their wake. Fishwives, slatterns, the usual Dublin viragos, hurled abuse at their backs for filthy rebels, dirty Sinn Feiners, fly-boys, fire-siders, pop gunners, together with some general remarks touching the male anatomy. Their leader and sense-carrier, a stout specimen with a wonderful, though perhaps accidental, décolletage, carried the handle of a pick which she slapped in her hand in a manner that quite overthreatened the meager elephant-guns of the insurgents. She took notice of MacMurrough’s admiring look and unleashed a stream of invective that cast his ancestry, vaunted these centuries, in a wholly new and uncertain light.
“Separation women,” the officer said, “paid off by the British.” He turned of a sudden and boomed, “If you are Irish women at all, you will return to your kitchens and mind your spinning.”
An utterance nicely gauged to disperse the viraginous mob. Even his companions raised eyebrows. “Spinning,” said Doyler in MacMurrough’s ear, “where does he think they’re out of?”
“Tell him about Baggot Street, the soldiers.”
“There’s military round the corner in Baggot Street, sir,” Doyler said. “Maybe three or four hundred. We cycled straight into them.”
“What are they at?”
“Drinking tea mostly. People in the houses is bringing it out to them.”
“Devil the tea they’d bring us.”
There had been a traffic accident at the end of the street which closer inspection proved a barricade. They passed through and of a sudden, there they were, behind the rebel line. Some few rebels were ranged upon a shady hump inside the Green, sprawled in regulation firing-pose; others sat on the slope behind, break fasting it seemed. Whistles blew; and every so often a party jumped the park railings and dashed the street to the College of Surgeons, a grim cold columned edifice whose pavement and roof were periodically swept by machine-gunfire from the Shelbourne. Rifle-shots skipped off the far cobbles, twanged off the bollards. How very differently, MacMurrough noted, a bullet sounded at the unfavorable end of the barrel. Saving ricochets, they were safe enough on this side of the street. But who were these others—“Who are those people there supposed to be?” he asked.
“Them?” said the officer. “That’s the gallery.”
Citizens, for the most part men, in doorways, on the steps of a church, in the maws of alleys and lanes, in far more obvious danger than any of the rebels, spectating. Here was that quintessence of Dublin, the epitome of the quidnunc, that quarter-moon, man-in-the-moon face, with the chin jutting to meet the nose and the mouth slanting some neat aperçu to its neighbor, cheekiest face in Europe, and the nosiest. MacMurrough heard, or fancied he heard, the commentary kept up: the accuracy of fire debated, the different weaponry compared, alternative venues cried up or down, the better vantages disputed.
The disappointment, which had swelled all during their walk by the Green, now lumped in MacMurrough’s throat. There was nothing going to be splendid here. The stupid wonder of these people, their excitable unconcern when—ooh!—a rebel was nearly downed crossing the street, it really was too much. It was unconscionable. And now, it wanted but this, here came the fishwives again, and wouldn’t you know, with cabbages this time to hurl with their abuse. He hurried out of range and there was some small stir when a rebel lad aimed his rifle at their ringleader. Shoot her by all means, MacMurrough enjoined, flicking bloody filth from his trousers, but don’t let’s spare the men with their mealy-mouthed mean-eyed gawping and never a one with the courage of his derision.
He felt a nudge from Doyler. He followed his nod. And there he was, Jim Mack.
He was acting as a kind of rebel policeman, standing in the street, waving the groups to cross to the Surgeons—no wait a minute, halt, yes quickly now, safely now, don’t trip. It was quite possible his job was important. It was even possible he was doing it well. What was undeniable was, a foot or so closer to the park and he should perform the same duty in absolute safety—but no, he must venture this further foot where the military could just bother the brim of his hat.
In a flash MacMurrough knew the morning he had spent. Nothing beyond him, nothing the equal of him, his earnest noddings, his half-baked suggestions, retreating from the trenches three or four times till he was satisfied he got it right. There he stood in his baggy drapes and his outsize hat. Behold, he goes to war, my boy.
It was a moment too glorious meanly to keep and he turned to Doyler as Doyler turned, their faces brimming, to share the delight. They nodded to each other, an agreement at last: not as prize-fighters will agree, or barristers, after their bout: an acknowledgment of what they shared, of two who had been led a merry old dance.
“I better report,” said Doyler.
“Yes, I suppose I had best make myself known.”
“You sure you’re staying?”
“Wild horses,” said MacMurrough.
“I’ll tell them you’s a Volunteer captain. It’s no lie anyway. I’ll tell them you was caught on the hop in Dublin and you can’t get down into Wexford. That’s no lie neither.”
Yes, his poor Wexford boys. MacMurrough wondered how they fared. It was a rotten shame, but he was not a man to lead other men. He could not give courage as great men do, as a comical kid could even. But he did not lack conduct, his aunt had reminded him that. He recalled now the small boy who had played along the sea-wall. By night he had dreamt of magnificence and on the wings of its tales he flew. Well, i
t was more miserable here than magnificent, he supposed. But he believed he might reach across the years to that boy and lift him up on his high shoulders. See, I come to war because I love that boy. See how beautiful he is, see how fine. Here is his friend: he too is fine and beautiful. They go to war because they love, each his country. And I too love my country. Do you feel the wind that is rising, the magnificent wind? These things will come, my dear. Let you dream of this.
He returned the little boy to his rocks by the sea where too the drizzle fell. He thought now of Aunt Eva as they wandered, he and Doyler, down the road to Jim. She’d have taken the Shelbourne, yes she would, with just her Webley a-wobble in her hand, and there’d be none of this nonsense of entrenching a park. Her verve, her dash, her bottom, her form—of all the misfortunes, Ireland’s too, to be incarcerated this week in the Castle.
Doyler was frowning. He was gazing beyond Jim at the terrace of buildings that fronted the end of the street. Gentlemen’s clubs, officers’ clubs, where the Union flag flew above. MacMurrough wasn’t sure, but he believed he too had seen something. Doyler said, “Them windows just opened.”
“Yes, I thought so too.”
“That second machine-gun, I wonder now what happened it?”
“Yes, I wonder,” said MacMurrough.
“Did you ever hear of a raking fire?”
An enfilade, MacMurrough was going to reply, but he was stung by something in the hand. He heard Doyler shouting. He was shouting Jim’s name. MacMurrough brought his hand to look at it. He found he was kneeling in the road. He looked at the blood dripping from his palm. While he looked, blood clouded his eyes.
Jim turned smiling at the shout. Doyler was running for him, that funny run he had. He saw his clothes on him, all wrists and ankles. He was just saying something, something like, Here you are at last, and Doyler flung into him. The breath thumped out of Jim. He fell flump on the road with Doyler on top. Doyler said something that sounded like Oh-oh.
Jim lifted his shoulders. The head hung limp. “Doyler?” he said, turning him over. He saw MacEmm sitting in the road with his handkerchief out. There was blood on his face. “Doyler?” he said again.
Feet were rushing across the street. There was some screaming. Pebbles kicked up off the setts. The second machine-gun had opened fire. But where? He shook Doyler’s shoulders. No no no, he had saved the sergeant. “MacEmm!” he cried.
Up along the street the trace of bullets came. Jim flattened on top of Doyler and the blast veered short. He sprang up and reached his arms under Doyler’s shoulders. He hefted him up. “MacEmm!” he cried. He was dragging Doyler toward the Surgeons. A burst of fire riddled the street and Doyler’s body jerked. His shirt was, his shirt was ripped, and his belly was, his belly was ripped too. Jim turned the other way, himself between Doyler and harm, dragging him against the fire, but the bullets zipped from the other gun now, and again the body jerked, just jerked. No no no, I saved the sergeant. “I saved the sergeant!” he screamed. Even as Doyler slipped from his arms, another fire ripped through him. Jim stood bestride his body, his rifle aimed. A body blundered by. The rifle was snatched from his hands. “MacEmm,” he said, “I can’t see where they are.”
MacMurrough aimed the rifle. His head teetered with ponderables: windage, distance, sighting, all useless. He could not hold his hand still. He lowered the gun. The fingers were gripped in his hand and he forced them to loose. The pain shot through and blood blinked in his eye again. Then all of one movement, he swung the gun up where it aimed and fired.
The near rattering ceased.
Jim was cradling Doyler’s head. He seemed in a shock. He was telling of some incident with a sergeant, most persistently telling it. “Yes,” MacMurrough said, “that’s good.” He took off his coat and he laid it over the maul of Doyler’s wounds. He slewed the rifle over his shoulder and pushed his Webley into Jim’s hand. “Guard me,” he said, knowing his words could have no meaning.
“You’re hit,” said Jim.
MacMurrough said, “My hand, nothing.”
“No, your head, hit in the head.”
He bent down and lifted Doyler in his arms. It seemed the very edge of madness, for they were talking in the middle of a street that whizzed with bullets and ricochets. Fire was returned from the Surgeons roof. Symbolic, like his own with the machine-gun that already had started again.
“Come now,” he said to Jim. He carried the body to the far pavement, Jim treading beside. The bollards twanged about them, the cobbles rebounded. In the sanctuary of a lane by the Surgeons, he laid Doyler down.
Already a man was at his side, whispering into his ear. Confiteor Deo omnipotenti, beatae Mariae semper Virgini . . .
MacMurrough looked at Jim’s face. The eyes were blinking with a strange period. His chin trembled. The whispered prayer stuttered on his lips. He lifted his face. “I saved the sergeant,” he said to MacMurrough.
. . . nimis cogitatione, verbo et opere . . . Of all things fatuous, MacMurrough noted the man’s pronunciation. A European Latin, as though it were a language.
“Volunteer Mack.” A hand touched on Jim’s shoulder. “Volunteer Mack, there.”
It was an officer. MacMurrough saw Jim snap to attention. His blinking had ceased.
“Is this a civilian death, do you know?”
Jim answered, “Doyle, sir. Citizen Army.”
“So it is,” said the officer. “May God rest his soul. He would best be removed to a hospital. I’ll detail two men.”
MacMurrough said, “No. He’s a soldier. He’ll be coming inside.”
The officer looked him up and down. “Do you say so?”
“So,” said MacMurrough. He bent down again to Doyler. His hand passed through the scrag of his hair and under his head. The man with the prayer had closed his eyes. Gently again he lifted his body. The pain seared up his arm to sway his head. He looked at Jim, who cold and unseeing stared. “Come now, my dear,” he said. “We’ll bring him in now.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
They were walking as they had often walked, dosey-doe together, with his arm round Jim’s neck and Jim’s head bending to his shoulder. He said, Will I tell you a story of Johnny Magorey? Tell so, said Jim. But he didn’t tell. His arm squeezed a pinch and he danced out ahead. Jim had a notion of his shirt loose in the wind and his black hair flowing. Then he dipped below the sand dunes. Come on, Jim heard him calling—Slow as a wet week, so y’are. Amn’t I coming, said Jim.
It was a place they knew very well, where they always came to swim, though when Jim tried he could not think the name. Doyler was already tugging off his clothes. Jim was far too fond to watch. He just smiled in the direction the shirt dazzled, where the gleaming black hair coursed in the wind. Are you straight, Jim Mack? Straight as a rush, Jim told him. Come on with me so. He was out in the waves where the breakers rolled and the sound came like far away. Will I tell you a story of Johnny Magorey? There isn’t any story, Jim told him laughing. Not much, said Doyler. His hand held out, and Jim reached for it, but he tricked it away and Jim pushed through a wave.
He dived under his legs and came back on the surface with his feet on the sand. Doyler was gone, and for a moment Jim couldn’t find him. Then he saw him back over by the dunes and he ran out of the water shouting, Doyler! Where you going?
It was hard work climbing them dunes and when Jim got to the brim he saw that Doyler was gone even farther away. He was walking up this slope, just walking up this slope, and Jim didn’t think if he’d ever catch him. Doyler! he called. Doyler, will you wait a minute! He was getting angry now and he called out, I’m not following you any more! But Doyler kept to his walking. Please stop, Jim cried. Won’t you stop it now? Doyler, please, you can’t leave me! Don’t leave me here!
“Doyler!”
He sat up bolt on the floor. His breath drew fast and shallow. Men coughed in the dark, they moved in their sleep. By the door the sentry horse-like stamped. He smelt the reek of slop-pails. From very clos
e behind, MacEmm said, “Are you all right, Jim?”
Jim nodded. He felt the miss of something in his hand, and he started, checking for his Webley. But the British of course had that taken from him. He leant back on MacMurrough’s shoulder and MacMurrough’s arm came round his side. They seemed alone in the vaulting barrack hall: a curtain of dark removed the other prisoners. He had that way, did MacEmm, of finding a place apart, or just by being there making it apart.
“MacEmm, I’m frightened,” Jim said.
“Yes, my dear,” said MacMurrough, sounding tired and low, “we’re all a bit frightened now that it’s over.”
“No, I’m frightened if they don’t shoot us.”
MacEmm’s arm gave a squeeze of his side. “Nobody’s going to be shot now.”
“They will too be shot,” said Jim. “But I’m worried they won’t shoot me. They’ll say I’m too young or something and I’ll be left out.”
“You’re being silly, Jim. We’re prisoners of war. There’s nothing like shooting going to happen.”
“You don’t understand.”
“Well, what is it so?”
“I know what I’ll become if they let me go. And I don’t know can I bear to be that.”
“You’ll be a schoolteacher, of course.”
Jim thought of that a while, trying to make sense of the sound of the word. A school, a teacher, schoolteachering. “I suppose there will be such things,” he said. “All that will go on, I suppose. But it won’t for me.”
He leant on his elbow, looking up at MacMurrough’s face. “You know, don’t you, MacEmm, what I’ll be. I’ll be ruthless with them. I’ll shoot them easy as stones. I won’t never give up. I’ll be a stone myself. Tell me you know that.” MacMurrough’s hand just patted him. “If you loved me, you’d tell me.”
“You’re tired, Jim. You’ll feel better in the morning.”
Jim weighed his head again on the shoulder. “I don’t know why you won’t tell me.”
At Swim, Two Boys Page 57
