Dear Mr/Miss Lennon,
I write out of concern for your father, Pius, who I must inform you, has succumbed to the evil of drink. His maintenance of the land and his spiritual and physical wellbeing are of concern to all in the parish, and though we have attempted to divert the self-destructive course on which he is set, it is my pastoral experience that only family can save a man in times of moral despond.
I beg that you return home and care for your father, or failing this, that you ensure another of your siblings can do so.
Yours in Christ,
Most Rev S. Benedict, Bishop Emeritus
Six, seven, eight months passed. Jeremiah McGrath assured him nothing was wrong with the long-distance mail, even with the war, and slowly Stanislaus came to accept that there would be no replies. The name circled in red ink rebuked him. The Victor fellow had left Madden boasting of Brooklyn or Botany Bay, but everyone knew he was in Dublin since his name had appeared in the margins of the press during the industrial unrest. He had been a minor figure, not a Larkin or a Countess Markievicz, and Stanislaus had denounced Larkin’s union from the pulpit, as per the Cardinal’s policy, but he knew the parishioners had a sneaking regard for ‘their’ Victor. When their Victor joined the insane adventure of Easter week, sneaking regard flowered into strident pride. No-one from Madden had ever been famous before.
Victor’s best friend Charlie Quinn had volunteered to go to Dublin to find him. Stanislaus asked Charlie whether he thought Victor would agree to come home. Charlie said he didn’t know. What he was willing to predict, though, was that Victor would still be every bit as angry as he was the day he left Madden. Stanislaus was discomfited to think of the rage-filled boy coming back into his life a full-grown man. He pushed the newspaper across the desk under Father Daly’s nose and pointed to the Ulyanov headline.
‘This is the kind of man we’re talking about. A bolshevist, you know,’ he snapped.
‘He can’t be that bad if he was with Connolly, God rest him,’ said Father Daly.
‘Connolly was a communist.’
‘Only in life. No-one will remember that whole communist thing in the long run.’
Stanislaus got up from his desk. He had no intention of debating with a guileless liberal not five minutes out of the seminary. ‘I’m going for a walk,’ he said. He went downstairs, opened the door and pulled on his coat as he strode out the gate into the street. He grimaced at the red bunting and flags as he passed under them. Otherwise good parishioners openly disobeying his injunction – and the Cardinal’s – against Gaelic games. They’ll all be thrilled when they hear of their Victor Lennon’s return, he thought. He whispered a prayer for the peace of the parish.
It’s your stick. You found it. It’s the best stick you’ve ever seen: three feet long, thick but pliable enough to bend double without cracking. Your brothers are jealous of it. Charlie’s jealous of it. Even Maggie’s jealous of it, and she’s a girl. You use it to hunt, to fish and a hundred other things. It’s yours, and the bastard thinks he can just take it. Phelim Cullen. You know the name. Everyone does. He’s three years older than you, looks like he’s nearly six foot, fifteen and out of school with the cigarette to prove it. He tells you to go away, stop pestering him. You are far from home, five or six miles at least, in his parish to watch the Madden footballers take another hammering. It’s his parish and he says he’s keeping your stick. He’s laughing but he’s threatening to lose his good humour any second. But it’s your stick and he can’t have it, no matter what.
‘You rotten thieving bastard.’
His expression darkens and he swings the stick at you with a terrifying whoosh. Last warning. Christ but he’s a vicious bastard. Charlie and Maggie are looking at you with pleading, terrified eyes.
‘If you don’t hand over the stick I won’t be responsible for what happens to you.’
The crowd gathered around winces as his open palm cracks loudly against your cheek. A slap in the face. Wouldn’t even dignify you with a closed fist.
Well, you’ll dignify him with one.
He doesn’t see it coming. Not in a million years did he think you’d do it. He’s stunned, and he’s not the only one. Your fist opens his nose like a knife through a feed sack. You swing again and again and the blows land again and again, till he drops your stick and flees like a beaten dog. You pick up your stick, gingerly, since your knuckles are bruised and bloodied. But it’s not your blood.
Charlie and Maggie look at you differently now. It’s like they’re scared. You’re a little scared yourself.
Charlie follows me onto the Number 14 tram. My old route. Once upon a time I knew every tram driver in Dublin but I don’t recognise this young, ignorant-looking fellow with the shirt collar too small on him. He yanks the handbrake too sharply and rings the bells like he’s Quasimodo. Everything about him screams non-union. A bastard scab. We sit down among the well-heeled, law-abiding south-siders and trundle past Carson’s house, the Stephen’s Green and the College of Surgeons, still pocked and scorched by bullet and fire. Ladies in expensive fabrics promenade prettily beneath the awnings of Grafton Street. They’re carrying parasols. In Ireland. In November. Businessmen, bankers, professionals in starched collars walk stiffly around College Green, Trinity College, Westmoreland Street. Little boys and girls strut after their parents in collars and jackets and short pants, and there’s a fat Metropolitan peeler on every corner watching protectively over the oppressing class. We cross the Liffey to the north side, where the oppressed live. The Kapp and Peterson building stands on the corner of Bachelor’s Walk and the street they call Sackville and we call O’Connell, unscathed and alone like a cigar stump in an ashtray. Further up, the shell of the General Post Office stands at the centre of a square half-mile of rubble. I look at Charlie. At where his leg used to be. I shake my head. ‘What possessed you? Home Rule? Rights of Small Nations?’
‘Can’t say it was. Can’t say I even understand what any of that stuff means.’
‘Little Catholic Belgium then, being raped by the Protestant Hun?’
‘I didn’t give a damn about Belgium nor about the Hun either. I just wanted to see what this Great War was like. I wanted to get a gun, see a bit of the world, and feel like a grown man.’
The bastard scab announces the Nelson Pillar and we hop off, electric cables crackling overhead. We reach Montgomery Street. Canvas awnings promising Meats, Drugs, Tobacco or News shade the broad pavements of Monto and gentlemen in fine suits walk quickly with their heads down, hoping not to be seen. A gang of malnourished, barefooted gurriers, none more than ten or eleven, idle by the corner and eye us suspiciously. There’s an army of gurriers in this city, I see them all the time, trying to huckster a living either side of the tram line. Some beg, some pick pockets, some shine shoes or hawk early editions of The Herald. These lads are typical: bony and dirt-caked with narrow, cynical slits for eyes and cigarettes clamped between black teeth. ‘Have you a penny to give these lads?’ I say, and Charlie stops to rummage in his tunic. I take a couple of pence from my pocket.
‘Ah, keep your money, mister. You’re Citizen Army, aren’t ye?’ says one of the gurriers. I nod. ‘We’ll not take an’ting off you, but we’ll take it off your man.’ He points to Charlie, ‘John fucken Bull, wha?’
Further up the street two women lean out of a ground-floor window of a tenement. One of the women is big and brassy and could be anywhere between thirty and sixty. Her face is painted white, her lips are scarlet and her head is covered by a raven-black wig, stacked high and precarious. The other one is only a young thing. She’s painted and dressed up the same but that only makes the contrast all the more obvious. The usual combination: an old whore for the young lads fresh up from the country with dreams and virginities intact, and a young floozy for the older men. Working girls festoon most of the windows around here.
‘Come on in till I wet yer willy mister,’ jeers the old whore, cupping her hands around her chest. We walk on. The young floozy cat
calls after us, are we men at all at all. Peggy O’Hara is leaning out the bottom window of the tenement I live in. Peggy is our tenement’s old whore. Charlie’s appalled that I live here, he can’t hide it.
‘Howya, Victor. Who’s your friend?’ says Peggy, pushing forward her young floozy, a pretty wee thing, perhaps fifteen with big, bewildered brown eyes and cheeks plastered preposterously in rouge. ‘Dolores here’s a real patriot. If he’s a friend of yours, she might do him a discount.’
‘Only a discount, not a free go, for a national hero?’
‘Look around you, Victor. Youse heroes have damn near put us out of business.’
She’s right. This place used to be black with soldiers, all loose change and aggression, looking for a good time in the red-lit windows of the Second City of the Empire. But the soldiers are confined to barracks now. Of course the high-end houses for the rich are still here, and go out the back of any pub on a Friday night, you’ll see the bottom end of the market relieving careless working men of their pay packets; but the servicemen were always Monto’s bread and butter. The Monto girls have cut down more British soldiers with knob rot than all the generations of rebels ever managed with muskets and pikes.
‘Better to die on your feet than live on your knees,’ I say.
‘I make my living on my knees.’
I have to laugh. Whores are my favourite capitalists. They’re the most honest, and often among the smartest. Every smart whore I’ve ever met has the same dream: to own her own place and run her own girls. Peggy O’Hara’s only complaint about the grinding boot of capital is that she’s not wearing it.
We don’t go inside. No detours, Mick said. ‘It’s an eye-opener around here, isn’t it?’ I say.
‘I’ve been here before,’ Charlie replies. ‘I was billeted at Beggar’s Bush before they sent us to France. We spent a lot of time up here. They were giving free ones to boys in British uniforms that time.’
‘Whores and armies are well met,’ I say.
I wonder what I’d have said if we’d met then, as he was getting ready to go and fight for the king. I don’t think I’d have been able to look past the uniform. Soldiers are fucken pigs. I think I’d have spat in his face. ‘That coat of yours sticks out like a sore fucken thumb so it does.’
‘I took off the epaulettes,’ Charlie protests.
‘You don’t think people know what it is?’
There’s a time and a place, Victor, let it go. Life is in the letting go.
The doors of P. Shanahan Wines Spirits Ales Licensed Imbibing Emporium are locked and a large billboard announces the premises are Closed By Order Of The Lord Lieutenant Until Further Notice. Beige blinds bearing the legend Select Bar are pulled down over the windows. I knock till a voice from inside asks who it is.
‘Fron Goch prisoner 19531977.’
The door opens a few inches and Phil Shanahan ushers us in fussily. ‘Who’s this with you?’ he asks.
‘Friend of mine. He’s all right. Is it all right if I wait here? There’s supposed to be somebody coming to meet me here later on. I was told to wait.’
Phil waves around the empty room in agreement. The room is long and narrow and the bar runs its full length. It’s all dark corners. It used to be full of people like me talking politics, or naïve country lads newly arrived in the big smoke; desperate for anything familiar, they’d make straight for the premises of Phil Shanahan, the famous hurler. There’s someone in the snug down at the bottom, I can just about see movement through a gap in the snug door. I pull up a high stool so Charlie can sit down, plant my elbows on the bar and duck my head under the window. Phil stands squarely across the bar from me with his thumbs looped in his waistcoat pockets. ‘What’ll it be, men?’
‘Bushmills.’
‘Oul Protestant whiskey.’
‘Good Ulster whiskey.’
Phil smiles and sets up the bottle and three glasses. He leaves me to pour while he reaches under the bar and produces a dog-eared newspaper page that looks like it has passed through many hands. He sets it down in front of me and smirks. ‘Did you see this? I’ve been showing it to all you socialist lads.’ I finish pouring the whiskey and take the paper from him. It’s from the Freeman’s Journal, couple of months back. Yes, of course I fucken saw it. Down in the bottom left corner. Our glorious leader.
LARKIN MAROONED
The Sydney New South Wales Correspondent of the ‘Daily Mail’ cables: – Jim Larkin, the Irish Labour leader, left the United States for Australia in a steamer which was to make its first call at Auckland, New Zealand, but the captain, according to instructions, landed Larkin at Pago-Pago in American Samoa. Larkin indignantly protested to the American Administrator, who replied that he had no power in the matter. Larkin is virtually marooned in the middle of the Pacific.
Phil roars laughing as he lifts his glass. ‘Up the Republic!’
‘God save Ireland,’ says Charlie.
‘All power to the soviets,’ I say.
The first drink of the day rasps against my throat. I light a cigarette and pour another drink. Phil excuses himself and goes back to the snug.
‘How come the place is empty?’ says Charlie.
‘They took Phil’s licence after the Rising.’
‘He doesn’t seem the sort to be mixed up in that sort of thing.’
True, Phil’s idea of a political opinion is to moan about how hard it is for an honest publican like himself to make a living. If I’ve heard his joke about his membership of the Irish Publican Brotherhood once, I’ve heard it a thousand times. Yet there he was on Easter Monday morning, walking across the deserted street toward the barricade outside the GPO where I stood guard, a rifle strapped across his back and a toolbox full of ammunition in his hand.
‘Is it yourself, Victor? Is it the socialists are rising out? I heard ye were having a crack at the English.’
‘Go on home, Phil. We haven’t a chance of winning.’
‘I’m not in the least bit concerned whether we do or not.’
I remember thinking for a moment that if a man like Phil Shanahan was with us, maybe we had a chance after all. Charlie asks for a cigarette. He inhales and splutters. ‘You should smoke more,’ I tell him.
‘I know. Did you keep the card?’
I hand it over. Cigarette cards don’t interest me, but people are religious about them. ‘What are they, Navy Cut?’
‘Gallaher’s.’
He’s disappointed. ‘I’ve nearly got the full Player’s collection: the Large Trench Mortar, the Stokes Trench Mortar, the Vickers Field Artillery Piece. I only need the Lewis Automatic Gun.’ The card read Plants Of Commercial Value. Charlie’s face squirrelled up with distaste. ‘Flowers, like. Papaver rhoeas is a variable annual wild flower of agricultural cultivation. The four petals are vivid red, most commonly with a black spot at their base. Blah blah blah. Who gives a damn?’
I down the whiskey and pour another. Through the gap in the door of the snug I see one of the fellows with Phil take out a shiny gold pocket watch and fidget with the chain. I recognise that fidget. Alfie Byrne, the Shaking Hand of Dublin himself. Such a nervous fellow, if he didn’t have someone’s palm to pump, he would take out that bloody watch chain and fidget with it. Couldn’t sit still for a moment. He had shaken hands all the way to the House of Commons. I down the whiskey.
‘You have to come home, Victor. Your da isn’t the man he was. The drink has him.’
‘A man with fifteen children can afford to lose one son.’
‘He has nobody.’
Nobody? The Lord said Go Forth and Multiply, and by God Pius Lennon took him up on it. He made my ma into a production line.
‘They’ve all left. Everybody’s gone. Pius is alone.’
Most of my brothers would knife the old man in the guts if they thought it’d get them their inheritance a day sooner. The Lennon land is worth a lot, at least in the conception of Madden people. ‘What d’you mean gone? Gone where?’
‘The
four winds. We’ve tried everyone else. You’re our last hope.’
I get up and knock on the door of the snug. I ask Phil to lend me pencil and paper. He goes behind the bar to see if he can find anything, and as he rummages, I wave to Alfie Byrne. Alfie looks well, with his crisp moustache and stiff collar and expensive shoes. He waves back. Is he starting to lose the hair? He won’t like that, the vain bastard. I can only see the knees of the third man, who stays seated in the snug. Phil hands me a pencil and a copy of the Picturegoer magazine.
‘It’s all the paper I can find.’
‘Do rightly.’
According to the Picturegoer there’s a new five-reeler coming soon starring Kitty Gordon. Don’t think much of her to be honest, but apparently she’s the Most Magnificently Gowned Woman On The Screen. I thumb through the pages quickly to see if there’s a picture anywhere of Mildred Harris. I like Mildred Harris. Don’t see one. I throw the magazine down in front of Charlie. ‘Fifteen is a lot to keep track of. Write on this.’
Charlie opens the Picturegoer at a random page and glances at the picture. ‘There’s a new picture palace only after opening in Armagh,’ he says.
‘Is that a fact?’ I say as I take it back from him. If you want something doing, honest to God. ‘I’ll write. Let’s start with Seamus. Where’d he go?’
After the Lockout Page 2
