by Lia Mills
Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
I heard them not in the poet’s high, incantatory voice but in Liam’s, warm and rich.
I was relieved when Isabel finally closed the book and Mother put it away. There was a sound of distant gunshots. ‘I don’t understand, who are these people? What do they want?’ She said this the way someone repeats a thing they’ve said many times already, with no expectation of an answer.
Lockie had come up to clear the dishes. ‘I heard your man John Connolly from the Abbey was one of them, and he shot dead,’ Lockie said.
‘Not Sean Connolly?’ Isabel said.
‘Sean, John, what matter?’ That was Mother.
‘Matt’s friend?’ I was as stunned as Isabel looked. Half the young women in Dublin were gone on Connolly, a handsome young actor. I’d seen him myself a fortnight ago, signing programmes at the stage door, shaking hands with people. He winked at me over their heads, mocking himself and his popularity. I’d walked on, smiling, for no better reason than that he’d smiled at me.
‘That anyone we know would be involved – although, really, Matthew’s artistic friends hardly count.’ Mother shook her head.
‘Everyone knows everyone in this town,’ I said. ‘One way or another.’
‘They’re after a republic,’ Lockie said. ‘So they say.’
‘Pity they had to use bloodshed to get it,’ Isabel said.
‘And stab our own soldiers in the back while they’re at it.’ The mourning brooch on Mother’s chest rose to catch the light, like some strange fish. ‘It’s a scandal, a handful of layabouts, taking advantage of the holiday. Do they think they can throw on any old outfit and call it a uniform, make themselves an army, start off their own war in the middle of town?’
Lockie gathered up plates and clattered them on to the sideboard, but that didn’t distract Isabel. ‘No uniform justifies killing,’ she said.
I sucked in a breath. How did she have the nerve to say such things, and to us?
She put down her cup. Her hands were unsteady. ‘No cause is worth it.’
‘How disloyal you are.’ Mother’s lips were white.
Colour flushed through Isabel’s neck. ‘I’m as loyal as anyone,’ she said, with dignity. ‘But principles need our loyalty too.’
‘I meant to Liam. To his memory.’
Air drained from the room. Isabel’s hands tore at each other in her lap. Her fingers found the ring and began to twist it.
I was ashamed. Here she was, stranded in our house, the world outside our door gone mad, and everyone except Lockie lined up against her. Liam would be livid with all of us. My instinct was to get her out of there, and fast. ‘It’s getting late. Your father will be worried, Isabel.’
‘She can’t go out in that commotion,’ Lockie said.
‘I’d like to try.’
I said I’d go with her, and in the heel of it Lockie came too, sent by Mother to make sure I came back. It was bad enough that Dad and Matt hadn’t come home.
Unseemly and unsavoury didn’t even enter into it. We’d only gone a short distance when we knew it would be impossible to go further. The street was lit by bonfires. It boiled with people, a seething cauldron of firelight and oily shadows. If the city were to drink itself insensible, this is how it might dream, like a sleeping dog, twitching and moaning.
Lockie turned us straight around, as though we were children. And, as though we were children, we turned at her bidding and retreated home.
I pitied Isabel, stuck with us, but I was relieved to be back, whole-heartedly on her side. Where Liam would want me to be.
Isabel couldn’t take Matt’s room, because what if he turned up in the middle of the night? She would sleep in the spare bed in Florrie’s room.
Tishy pressed close to my side. I put an arm around her. ‘Tishy can squash in with me.’
‘But not the monkey,’ Mother said. ‘Not upstairs. There are limits.’
Lockie poured the remnants from the teapot on to the table to wash it down for the night. ‘Where will we put him, so?’
‘He sleeps on top of the wardrobe at home,’ Tishy said.
Mother looked scandalized. ‘Not in my house, missie!’
Someone wandered past outside, singing in a wavering, off-key voice. ‘A little of what you fancy does you good …’ A woman laughed. In the distance, we heard the crack of a rifle.
Tishy started to cry.
‘Oh, all right. But just this once.’ Mother sighed. ‘I wish Bill was here.’
Isabel stopped me on the landing. ‘I’ve something to confess. I suspected you of reading my letters to Liam last year, before you gave them back to me. I’m sorry. I should have known better.’
Guilty, I remembered that horrible afternoon when Dad read out the letters. Mother’s reaction. ‘How do you know I didn’t?’
‘I just do – and I’m not sure I’d have been as principled, in your place. You’re a good friend.’
No, I was a fraud. I gave her a weak smile and turned away, into Liam’s room. It was his privacy I’d been guarding, not hers.
I spread an old jumper on top of Liam’s wardrobe, a nest for the monkey. He seemed to understand that he should stay there. He talked himself to sleep, complaining quietly to the hand he used to cover his face, the thumb in his mouth but the fingers, disconcertingly human, spread in a wide fan across the rounded ridge of his nose. Tishy turned on her side and slid her thumb into her mouth too. The house settled, the city was quiet at last.
I took off my clothes. Too tired to hang them up, I folded them over the chair and climbed in beside Tishy, moving her whitish hair off the pillow so I could put my head down.
Tuesday, 25 April 1916
I dreamed a child at a burning window, yelling for a ladder. A cold draught woke me. Tishy had kicked the blankets off the bed. I hauled them back up over me and tried to burrow down towards sleep again, but sleep wouldn’t have me. The dull crrump of an explosion was followed by a scare of birds, then a throbbing silence, into which crept a braided sound of breathing, deep and regular. A faint whistle drew my eye to the wardrobe. I froze. A dark tail dangled from the cornice. Then I remembered: the monkey. He was snoring.
Beside me, Tishy slept on, sprawled on her back. One small arm was bent under her head, palm upwards. Her thin feet poked out from under the sheets. I got up, settled the covers over her and went to the window. It was another glorious, blue morning. A pale spiral of smoke wafted away from Sackville Street. Disgruntled birds were returning to roost on chimneys and ridges and in the trees across the road.
Still heavy with sleep, I pulled on my clothes and slipped out of the room, carrying my shoes so as not to wake anyone on my way downstairs. I sat on the bottom step to put them on and went into the kitchen. Lockie was at the sink, running water into the kettle. In front of the oven was the empty space where Beck had slept in a basket through his last months of life.
‘Did you hear that noise?’ I asked.
Lockie leaned sideways on to the window for a better view of the street. ‘I can’t see anything, only that cat from next door, the yoke. Shoo!’ She knocked on the glass, seeming to set off another explosion, then turned back to me. ‘You’re not going out? God only knows what’s happening.’
‘I’ve to go round and see if the Leamys got my note, about Tishy. Listen out for her, will you? I won’t be long.’
I was tense, hurrying across the top of the Square and down the west side. There was litter strewn everywhere, paper and rags on the street and banked up against the pavement, but few people, as though the earth had opened up and swall
owed the revellers as suddenly as it had spewed them out. On Parnell Street the buildings jostled and nudged each other, the better to whisper last night’s scandals. A cart had miraculously escaped the destruction and stood at a tilt, its shafts pointing two long arms at the sky, its two big wheels buckled on the cobbles. My shoes bit down on broken glass. Pity the barefoot children now.
The door to the Leamys’ shop was still shut, that was something. Loud knocking roused no one. The victualler next door had a covered arch leading back to the lanes. I walked through it. There were people there, recounting last night’s events, assessing the damage. The Leamys weren’t back yet, they told me. Two of the children, Maria and John Joe, had come in late, sick from sweets and excitement, to find the shop a wreck and Tishy gone. The granny came and brought the pair away for safekeeping in Drumcondra, or was it Phibsborough? No sign of the parents, or of Frieda.
I explained that we had Tishy with us. ‘Frieda left before the trouble started,’ I said. ‘She wasn’t to know.’
There was something in the air I couldn’t put my finger on. Some of these people could have been among the mob that stormed the shop, for all I knew. ‘That was a bad business, here, last night,’ I said, testing.
‘Shocking.’ This man’s voice had a smarmy lilt to it I didn’t trust. I’d had it in mind to bring Tishy back and leave her here, where her parents would find her, among people she knew. Now I wasn’t so sure.
They were all listening to Mrs Clancy, who owned the newsagent’s and knew everyone’s business. A narrow woman with a beaked nose and pitted skin, she leaned in to talk, stabbing the air for emphasis. The rebels were holed up in buildings the length of the street, she said, and along the quays. The military would roust them out of it, any minute.
A pair of boys wheeled a cart loaded with wood down the bumpy lane.
‘There yiz are,’ Mrs Clancy said. ‘About time too.’
The neighbours set to work unloading the wood.
‘What’s it for?’
Mrs Clancy took hold of a plank as long as she was, and propped it against a wall. She might have been wiry, but she was strong. ‘We’re putting up shutters, for to keep the gurriers out.’
‘You’re expecting them back?’
‘Who’s to stop them, only ourselves? You’d best get on home and see what’s to be done.’ She went for another plank.
‘Do ye have a gun in the house?’ the smarmy man asked, as I moved away.
‘Pardon?’
‘Only, ye might need one. If things get any more hectic.’
Liam’s voice slid into my mind. Say nothing.
‘I hope ye’ve a few strong men about the place, anyways,’ Mrs Clancy said.
‘My father,’ I lied. ‘My brothers.’
Back at home, I went straight upstairs to the box room. The gun cupboard was locked. The key was kept in the linen cupboard on the landing. I wanted to see if we had bullets, for all the good they might do. I didn’t know the first thing about guns. Matt wasn’t likely to either, but Dad should be back before long.
The key stuck in the lock. I jiggled it around ’til it bit and the door creaked open. The cupboard was empty. No matter how hard I stared, there wasn’t a single gun in there.
There was hardly a point to locking it up again, but I did, and put the key back in its hiding place. Liam must have moved the guns, after all. I couldn’t think why, or where he’d have put them.
I went back down to Lockie, in the kitchen. The monkey was sitting on a chair, gripping the table with both hands, staring at her with fierce concentration.
‘Lookit this.’ Lockie threw a bite-sized piece of bread into the air. He caught it in his mouth. ‘He’s gas altogether,’ she said, patting his head. ‘I wonder has he other tricks. Did you find the Leamys?’
‘They’re not back yet. And there were no newspapers that I could see. Lockie, Liam’s guns have gone. Do you know where they might be?’
‘I do not.’
‘Did he move them? Who else would have taken them?’
‘How would I know?’ She threw another piece of bread to the monkey, too hard. He scrambled under the table to retrieve it. He sat on his hunkers, down there in the dark vault made by table and chairs, and peered out like a prisoner. ‘Go on and get yourself a bite of breakfast. And don’t you go saying anything about the guns, upstairs. This carry-on will end soon enough once and the military decide to grace us with their presence.’ She dusted her hands together and wiped them on her apron. ‘No need to upset your ma over nothing.’
‘Tell me, Lockie. You know something. What is it?’
She scraped leftovers from the plates with a bone-handled knife, into the chipped blue bowl we used for scraps. ‘Leave it alone.’
‘If you don’t tell me, I’ll go straight to Mother and tell her the guns are missing.’
The knife dropped to the flags, making them ring with a shrill, bouncing echo that nearly covered what she said. ‘I don’t know anything for sure. But last week I noticed the key was in the lock. I should have checked the cupboard, but I didn’t. I tried the door and it was locked, so I put the key away.’ She picked up the knife and slid it into the sink. ‘Then Matt called me away and I forgot.’ At last she met my eye.
‘Matt? Lockie, you don’t think he’s in with that crowd inside the GPO?’
‘I swear to God I don’t know. I didn’t think of it ’til now.’ She looked me full in the face, let me see her worry. ‘Do you think he’d be one of them?’
‘He’s not the type.’ No more than Sean Connolly, whose name hovered nearby but refused to be spoken.
There was a queer, unpleasant atmosphere in the dining room, as though I’d interrupted something. Mother was folding her napkin into a tight square. Florrie was inspecting her nails. Isabel looked on the verge of tears.
‘What’s happened?’
No one answered. The knocker sounded, a loud, fast bang on the front door.
‘I’ll go,’ I said.
‘I’ll go with you,’ Mother said.
‘We can’t all go,’ Florrie said. Nevertheless, we all trooped out to the hall to see who it was, Isabel last. In came Eugene, hatless, perspiring in his heavy overcoat. Tight little curls, darkened and damp, clung to his forehead. Florrie beamed and patted his arm, looking thrilled and magnificent, as though she’d made him herself.
While we bombarded him with questions, Eugene pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it to the back of his neck, then his forehead. ‘There’s nothing to see. They say there’s Germans behind it. I need to go to Cabra to check on Mother. Come with me. You’re too close to the trouble here.’ A bald spot the size of a shilling gleamed at the crown of his damp head. ‘I’ve a side-car waiting around the corner. Someone else will take it if we don’t hurry. How many are you?’
Mother looked around our small crowd. ‘We couldn’t possibly.’ Her voice was faint. ‘I shouldn’t leave the house. If Bill – there are too many of us – what should I do?’
‘I’ll stay, ma’am,’ Lockie said. ‘When they come in, I’ll tell them where ye’ve gone.’
‘I’d rather leave a note. I’ll need you, Lockie. We don’t want to put a strain on Mrs Sheehan’s household.’
‘I’ll go home, in any case,’ Isabel said.
Eugene objected, but she stood tall and proud, at an angle where I couldn’t see her face, and said she’d find a way, she had money to pay a cabman.
I waited for Mother to say this was nonsense, but in a chilly tone she said, ‘Very well, you must do as you please.’
‘Must you?’ I asked.
‘Believe me, I’d rather.’ Her voice shook. She shivered, and folded her arms around herself.
‘Then I’ll go with you.’
Mother objected, which made me more determined to accompany her than I had been. ‘What would Liam have to say, if we let her go alone? And I can call in to Baggot Street to leave a message for Frieda about Tishy.’
Eugene said
we must shut all the windows and bolt the downstairs doors before leaving. Florrie and I went off to do this, while Lockie was despatched upstairs for Mother’s jewellery case. Nothing else, he said.
When we came back down from checking the windows, Isabel was in the hall with her coat and hat. Lockie had Mother’s teak jewellery box, wrapped in a towel. Tishy was there too, the monkey in her arms.
‘I won’t foist that brute on Eugene’s mother.’ Mother glared at poor Paschal, as if everything were his fault.
‘He’s not the worst, ma’am,’ Lockie said, flicking a forefinger against the monkey’s cheek.
‘I wouldn’t dream of asking.’
There was a small silence Eugene did nothing to fill. Tishy tugged on my skirt. ‘I want to stay with you,’ she whispered.
Isabel sent a look of utter loathing Mother’s way. She cupped Tishy’s white head with her hands, smoothed her fine hair. ‘You and your monkey are welcome at my house, lovey.’
‘Whoever’s coming, we need to leave now.’ Eugene ushered us out of the house and on to the pavement. The side-car was at the corner, with the driver talking to two men who climbed on while we watched. Eugene said something I couldn’t hear and propelled Florrie along towards them, gesturing for us to follow.
‘Really, Katie! How will you get back?’ Mother asked, looking from Eugene and Florrie to me, to Isabel, then back towards the corner. ‘I’ll be worried.’
‘I’ll be at Isabel’s, or Eva’s. I’ll come straight home when things are back to normal.’
‘They’re leaving, ma’am.’ Lockie pulled the front door shut and tested it, to make sure the latch had caught. She took hold of Mother’s elbow and steered her after the others. I watched ’til they were safely ensconced in the side-car. They made a strange-looking group. I’d a pang of regret, seeing them go.
We stopped a man who was hurrying away from Sackville Street to ask if he knew what was happening. He said the gunmen had the hotels; the guests had been told to leave. He was just after helping a pair of elderly sisters up from the country find shelter. Their boarding house was full to bursting and the woman there said they’d run out of supplies before long. There was no sign of the army, but word of German submarines off the coast. ‘You ladies’d be better off staying indoors, ’til it’s over.’ He lifted his hat and strode away.
