by Lia Mills
A hairy bluebottle crept up the glass. At the top corner, it buzzed and turned in tight circles, as if it didn’t know there was the space of an entire room at its back. I got up and pulled the sash down so it could escape. It sank too, bouncing and buzzing at the corner of the window-frame, a pantomime of frantic rage. With the window open wide, the fly resumed its buzzing circles, not knowing how close it was to freedom. I could see the veins on its wings. Shoo! I said, waving my hands. It sprang away, rediscovered flight and soared off into the morning, leaving me alone in the empty room, to wait.
Stories of atrocities on the Continent brought a sour panic to my throat. I pushed it away. This was Ireland. There were Irishmen in the British Army. Ireland was part of the Empire. There’d be discipline. There would. British soldiers lived here. They used our shops, stayed in our hotels, walked out with Irish women. Many of them were Irish themselves. I’m as Irish as you are.
Not only my hands but my feet were clenched, coiled tight. Tension ran its wires through me; my pulse ticked like a clock. I listened to May humming through the ceiling, Dote’s low voice steady and calm. Where on earth could Hubie have gone, what was keeping him? I itched to know what was happening outside, couldn’t bear to sit on my hands and wait a minute longer. There were people at the mouth of the lane. They might have fresh news, maybe someone had a newspaper. Hubie had left cigarettes in a silver box on the mantel. Telling myself he’d as good as given me permission, I put a handful into my pocket.
I called up to Dote that I was going out for a minute, grabbed Liam’s coat and slipped out.
A notice was pasted to the door of the Pepper Canister Church. The word ‘Proclamation’ in large letters drew me closer. It was a declaration of martial law.
An elderly man materialized beside me. ‘Is it over?’ His coat was worn so thin it shone. He smelled of dust and mothballs, peered at the notice as though he had difficulty in reading it, although the print was large enough. ‘Can’t make it out,’ he muttered.
‘It says there’s a curfew. Half seven in the evening ’til half five in the morning.’
‘Bit bloody much. Where do they think they are?’ He wandered off.
The further I went towards the river, the more my steps faltered. I’d a sense of being lost, familiar streets made strange by a fear that clogged my ears and beat in my throat. There was no one else around. Full of sudden dread – what had I done, coming out alone? – I saw myself stranded in an empty street, caught between two advancing armies and all doors shut against me, lost in my own town.
I turned into a side street off Great Brunswick Street on tiptoe, as though the sound of a single step might draw gunfire my way. A woman leaned out of a window to ask what I could see, her sleeves rolled up to her roughened elbows. I told her I could see nothing. For all of five seconds I wondered could I ask for shelter. Then she asked me did I want to go in and some reserve made me say no thank you, I wanted to cross the river if I could. ‘Not a chance,’ she said. ‘Did you not hear the gunboat earlier?’
A young man in a doorway opposite took a stick he was chewing out of his mouth and leered. ‘Come in here with me, darlin’. I’ll look after ya.’
Then there was a crashing explosion, the likes of which I’d never heard before. I ducked, arms over my head. When I took them down, slivers of glass sparkled on my sleeves.
The woman stood back from her window, but I still saw that her fat forearms were threaded with blood. Shouts of outrage sounded the length of the street, where every window had blown out and the nets were gone. I could see right into the corner of the room behind the woman. A young man with no legs was propped up on a mattress against the wall. An army coat was thrown over a nearby chair.
I turned back for Percy Place, cutting through backstreets and lanes. I stopped at every corner, hurried across the empty spaces. I might have given up if I hadn’t seen others doing the same. It was nearly like a dance we’d all learned the steps of. Pause, peer, dash. Pause, peer, dash. The one time I came across a small company of soldiers, setting up a roadblock, their captain told me to hurry in off the streets, trouble was on its way.
A low stone railway bridge made a deep pool of shadow I was wary of, the bridge so low I could nearly reach up and touch it.
Liam and I used to come to places just like it. We loved to scare ourselves stupid when the trains passed over, so close you could feel the ground shake underfoot. In the glorious days of Ellen, we’d slip out of the pub, find a railway bridge and wait for trains to pass overhead. We’d close our eyes and be caught up in a storm, an earthquake, a shipwreck, whatever we fancied. The scream of the engine and clash of iron as the brakes squeezed the wheels to a halt approaching the station made our hearts race. Our breath came fast and furious, and we’d run, squealing, terrifying ourselves even though we knew exactly what it was, not a monster at all but a train we might take to the seaside in the summertime.
After Liam left for the Front, I went to the Amiens Street arches on my own. Wrapped in his coat, I pressed my back against the stone, closed my eyes and listened to the trains’ roar overhead, thinking, is this what it’s like out there?
‘How much, love?’
I opened my eyes to find a docker watching me, his hands deep in his pockets. I shook my head, tightened Liam’s belt and walked away, tripping over my heels on the uneven ground.
There were men up on the track – their caps were visible above the parapet. I looked around to make sure no one was watching and called up to them, cautiously. The heads disappeared. I called again, ‘I have cigarettes, if you want them.’
Slowly, a pale, young face rose from the parapet.
I held up a hand full of cigarettes. ‘You’re not the army?’
He laughed. ‘Who’s asking?’ A thin man in shirtsleeves stood up beside him, leaned over and let down a basket on a rope. I put the cigarettes into it. While he hauled it up, I asked if by any chance they knew Matt Crilly.
‘Never heard of him. What’s happening up the town?’
I told him where I’d seen the troops and what the Captain had said, ‘There’s more on the way.’
‘About feckin’ time. We’re sick of waiting. Ah, well, thanks for these.’ He winked, and vanished.
A sound like drumming came from the ground or the air or somewhere else entirely – I couldn’t place it. My heart knocked harder at my throat. I began to run, past backstreets and tenements, areas of waste ground I barely knew existed, on past the maternity hospital and up the length of Merrion Square to avoid the corner overlooking Mount Street Bridge – where the gunmen were – that exposed stretch of road Hubie had warned us against. A man ran up to a door and in through it. I was tempted to follow, just to get out of harm’s way – but I kept going. Past the Pepper Canister Church, the towpath, the small bridge. A spate of shots to the east, machine guns, hard to say where. The water on my left could be trapped light, the light could be water rising to a surface of sky. I couldn’t run another step. My lungs were bursting.
Nearly there. May’s hall door was open a crack and there was Dote, leaning out of it, waving with big sweeps of her arm, Come on, come on, hurry!
We didn’t know it then, but a column of Sherwood Foresters was marching straight into a bloodbath. They would be trapped on an exposed stretch of Northumberland Road, just around the corner from Percy Place, with no shelter other than household steps, kerbstones and a few young trees, while bullets tore into them from well-chosen positions in ordinary-looking houses. More than two hundred of them would crawl over their comrades to be killed or severely wounded in the course of one lethal afternoon.
For all the talk and speculation, my imagination about what was to come had been decidedly orderly, shaped by known streets and spaces, the familiar grid of my existence. Long files of uniformed men would march along the streets and halt in formation outside the buildings where the gunmen were. There’d be a challenge issued, shots fired in the air to demonstrate authority. Flags would be lowe
red and raised, weapons would clatter to the ground and the rebels would come out, looking sheepish. I’d spent more time wondering what would happen next, what the world would say of them, of all of us.
I didn’t expect the relentless racket of rifle fire, all the more frightening for being out of sight, or the piercing shrill of whistles that urged the men forward. I didn’t expect the screaming.
I raced up the steps and in through the door. Dote bolted it behind me. May sat on the stairs, holding her head. Paschal was on the banister, tail down, sucking his fingers.
My heart beat in all the wrong places: my wrists and neck, my ears. A sudden crash of gunfire erupted from the bridge down at the main road. May groaned and hurried upstairs with Paschal in her arms, his retreating face a pink heart peering over her shoulder.
I went into the parlour and over to the window, parted the drawn curtains with a finger, and moved my face into a gap that reeked of dust and dead fires. I wanted to see what I hadn’t dared look at while I was running. On the far side of the canal a group of people seemed to be watching the bridge. When I looked where they were looking, I saw nothing other than empty road, the steel ribbon of the canal, the black lock, the bridge. But I could hear, like distant, irregular drums, an exchange of gunfire more intense than anything we’d heard so far.
Men in khaki began to emerge from the lane to my left. They moved furtively along Percy Place towards the bridge, pressing themselves into railings, crouching at the coping stones of the canal. There was a single pane of glass and a short garden between me and the broad shoulders and stiff cap of an officer. He was waving at other men to come on. One of them stopped suddenly. His knees made separate angles and he pitched, face down, on to the road.
‘Come away from there’ – Hubie’s voice, behind me. I dropped the curtain.
Hubie brought May down from her room and said we should wait it out in the back hall off the kitchen, in the basement, where there were no windows and we’d be out of sight. The sounds of fighting were muffled down there, and May seemed more relaxed.
It was a space like a well, about ten-foot square. A step beside the scullery led down from the kitchen to its stone floor. A door opened to the upper part of the house at ground level. The ceiling followed the slope of the back stairs leading up to the upstairs hall. The plaster was rough, like the rock face of a pale cave. A broad curtained archway led to the kitchen. The curtain was drawn to cut down on draughts in winter. It was the coldest, deepest part of the house, with the faintest whiff of damp.
Dote gathered cushions and blankets, while Hubie and I carried in kitchen chairs. ‘We might be here a while, may as well be comfortable.’
When he pulled the heavy red curtain across, it was surprisingly dark and close. May let out a squeak and we decided to leave the curtain half open for the moment, for the light. Paschal played with currants in a dish and ate them, while Dote and May and I played cards, despite the tremor in May’s hands. Her bracelets shivered, ’til I longed to ask her to take them off. Hubie sat off at an angle, on the low step, drawing in his notebook, the one with squared paper. He steadied it with the edge of his right fist, sketching careful lines and angles with his other hand.
‘What’s that?’ I asked.
He looked at his work, then at me. ‘A design for a double-hinged digit. Look.’ He showed me the page. I didn’t know what to make of the sketches. One gadget was shaped like an intricate, short-handled fork, with four hinged tines and an array of wires.
‘Can you not guess?’ A spate of sudden shooting started up outside. He folded down the cover of the notebook. ‘It’s a design for a mechanical hand.’ He put it aside. ‘It needs more work.’
Something stirred in me. It could have been pity, but felt more like pride – although I’d no idea why I should feel such a thing.
May was fretful. ‘How long have we been here? Could we not go out to the garden, even?’
‘Not yet,’ Dote said. ‘I’d say we’ve been here an hour?’ She looked at Hubie for confirmation.
He angled his wrist to the light, tapped the face of his watch. ‘It’s stopped.’
‘Will it ever end?’ May sneezed. ‘Lord!’ She sneezed again. ‘Dust.’ Paschal curled up in her lap like a cat. It was strange he didn’t mind the tremor.
Dote said there were lamps in the press if we wanted to read. I went to get one. I felt foolish, creeping across the kitchen in my stockinged feet in daylight, like a game of hide and seek. I found the lamp and matches and turned to go back to the hall when I heard quick heavy footsteps on the gravel, right outside the front window. I stopped, afraid to move and call attention to myself.
‘Katie?’ Hubie looked out from the hall. I put a finger to my lips.
Something banged against the glass. I turned my head and found myself staring at a battered-looking face, a bull of a man. Dark, bushy brows on dirt-scored skin, a downturned mouth. Eyes narrowed and fierce. Another, smaller man seemed to hang from his neck by one arm, his head down. The dark soldier said something I didn’t catch. He let go the other man’s wrist and pounded the window with his open palm. It’d be nothing to him to break it.
‘He wants in,’ I said.
Hubie stepped into view. The soldier’s face changed. He stood back from the window, looked over his shoulder as though for help.
‘He’s hurt,’ I said.
‘Let me see.’ Hubie crossed to the window. He made an impatient sound and went out to the door.
‘Don’t,’ Dote said, her voice so low I barely heard it over Hubie’s struggle with the bolt. But she made no move to stop him. I put down the lamp and went to help him. It took both my slipping hands to work it loose. He turned the latch and pulled the door open. A wave of sound and a sulphurous smell washed in from the street, past two soldiers, one sagging against the other. The standing one jutted his chin our way, as though he’d bite us. I flinched.
‘Is he safe here?’ His accent was strange.
‘Safe enough,’ Hubie said.
The soldier used an elbow to push the door wider open. Hubie took the hurt man’s second arm around his neck and between them they brought him in, feet dragging. I’d never seen anything like the sweat that coated the younger man’s face. I fetched a chair, but it was clear he couldn’t sit in it. Hubie said to get blankets and I went for them, pausing only for a second to look at Dote. She shrugged and cupped her hands as if to say, What difference will it make now?
I made a sort of nest on the floor for the wounded man: the dark tartan rug first, doubled over to cushion him, then two worn, buff-coloured blankets with bronze satin edging. Hubie and the able-bodied soldier laid the injured one down. I slipped the cushion Paschal last slept on under his head. ‘Where is he hurt?’ I asked.
‘He’s my brother. It’s his leg. He’s not strong.’ The soldier hesitated, looking from us to his brother, then back out the door. Heavy footsteps ran down the road. ‘There’s a field dressing in his pack.’
He patted the top of the man’s head and left. I didn’t understand how he did that, how he walked away from shelter, shrugging his pack into place, adjusting the rifle in his hands, breaking into a run.
‘Oh, dear.’ Dote looked at the injured soldier moaning in the nest I’d made for him, his arms crossed on his tunic, his legs bent to the side. A dark stain spread above the knee of his trousers. ‘What are we to do with him?’
Hubie said, ‘Get the scissors, Katie. You’d better do this, your hands are better than mine.’ He took the young man’s pack and opened it, looking for the dressing. He asked Dote for clean rags and told me to cut the soldier’s trouser leg longways, so we’d see the wound. I was afraid I’d cut skin by mistake, but soon a pale, hairy leg was laid bare, a knitted sock gartered at the knee, a jagged wound in the thigh, surprisingly black and mucky, with blood seeping from it. The soldier cursed when Hubie tried to pull out some threads that were stuck to its edges. He was only a boy, I could see now.
‘We’ll have to ge
t him proper attention.’
‘Should we try to clean it?’ Dote asked.
‘We could do more harm than good.’ Hubie’s voice changed when he spoke to the boy. ‘Are you hurt anywhere else, mate?’
‘Bellyache.’
‘Right.’ Hubie told me to wrap the field dressing around the thigh, as tight as I could. He took a stub of pencil from the young man’s pack and had me wind the end of the bandage around and hold it to slow the blood while he sent Dote for pins. When all of that was done, I worked the boy’s garter free of his sock and pulled it up over the bandage, to be sure.
‘Good idea.’ Hubie stood and went towards the door.
‘You’re not going outside?’ Dote said.
‘There’s an ambulance,’ he said. ‘And the shooting seems to have stopped.’
‘Wait for me,’ I said, but he didn’t.
I went after him, out to where he stood in the shelter of the steps, craning for a view of Mount Street Bridge.
On the far side of the canal the crowd of spectators had grown. To the right, a soldier sat against a tree, facing away from the fighting. His cap was gone. Blood ran down his face. There was a spill of khaki further up, at the mouth of the bridge: men strewn in the road, as though someone had flung them down from a height. Only their groans could be heard, and then came shouts from across the water. ‘They’ve stopped the fight! There are women on the bridge!’
I stood out from the shadow of the steps for a better view. Men carried forms on stretchers in the direction of Paddy Dun’s Hospital. Two girls carried water from man to man.
Hubie pulled me back. ‘Careful.’
‘They’ve stopped firing. We could help.’
As we watched, two ambulances began to creep closer to the bridge, and then a third came into view at the bend in the road on our side of the water. It stopped, maybe two hundred yards away, and made a turn, so that its back end faced us.
