After the Lockout

by Darran McCann

  ‘More.’

  I refill the glass. He drinks quickly. ‘That’s lovely,’ he says. Colour returns to his cheeks and he opens his eyes fully. This isn’t the man I remember watching in the fields, thinking he was the strongest man in the whole world. Sixty-two is old in anyone’s book but he looks much older.

  I’m cold and tired and hungry and I want heat and comfort and a cup of tea so I pick up the brush and shovel by the hearth and set to work sweeping it out. I can feel him watching me from the sofa but I say nothing. I wouldn’t know what to say. Better to work than to talk. He refills the glass and glugs it thirstily. When the hearth is cleaned out, I go outside to the woodpile and I’m surprised and pleased to find there’s a bit of firewood and turf there. It looks like it’s been here for quite some time, but it’s chopped and seems dry. I fill my arms and go back inside. As I’m building the fire, Pius sits up.

  ‘Did you get the train up from Dublin?’ he says. I nod and grunt an affirmative. ‘Many on it?’

  ‘Not really.’

  Do you have nothing else to say to me, old man? Shouldn’t you be slaughtering a fatted calf, instead of asking about the traffic in Jerusalem?

  ‘Sorry I wasn’t at the dance. Was there many turned up?’

  ‘Hundreds. They had bunting and red flags out for me and everything.’

  ‘That bunting is for the footballers. They’re playing Derrynoose in the final in a couple of weeks.’

  Charlie said something about that all right, about how the Madden footballers are in the county final. Of course. Red gansies. ‘I mean they had a big banner up for me in the Parochial Hall.’ The wood is burning well and slowly catching with the turf. I’ll get this fire going soon enough. ‘Will they win the final?’

  ‘Not at all. They’re useless.’

  The fire is starting to catch, the first bits of real heat are emanating from it. I leave it alone and hunt for the kettle to make a cup of tea. I find it, bizarrely, lying in a dark corner, beside a shotgun that’s snapped in the middle with shells strewn around. I pocket the bullets, make sure the gun’s empty, click it together and stand it in the corner. I fill the kettle and hang it above the fire, bring in the pail of milk, rinse two dusty cups and a teapot I find in the dresser, and make the tea. Pius takes the cup from me.

  ‘What time did you come in last night?’

  ‘Late enough.’

  ‘I must’ve fell asleep in the chair here.’ He drinks his tea and sets down the cup. Without a further word he gets up and walks out the door. I wait a moment to see will he come back in but when he doesn’t, I follow. I reach the bottom of the lane and see him up ahead. He’s almost at the village. I walk more quickly than him and close the gap, but I’m just passing the Parochial House as he’s clambering clumsily over the wall into the Poor Ground. His eyes are trained on the ground, where the stones burst through the shallow soil. I stand atop the Poor Ground wall for a moment and watch as Pius stops at a little pile of stones and manoeuvres himself gingerly onto his knees. He clasps his hands together and bows his head. I hop down with a squelch and draw closer, past a few other little piles of stones scattered around. Pius’s lips move silently. A hard and bitter wind whips in from the east.

  ‘He wouldn’t even let you put in a gravestone,’ I say.

  ‘I know the right spot.’ Pius mumbles through the words he has come to say. He opens his eyes. ‘Would you not say a prayer for your mother?’

  ‘Ma’s dead.’

  He makes a sign of the cross, rises to his feet and takes a couple of steps back. He reaches inside his coat pocket, pulls out a tin hipflask and takes a swig. He offers it to me.

  ‘I don’t think you should be starting …’

  ‘God damn you, I said take a drink.’

  I take the flask, unscrew the lid and, looking him in the eye, pour it out onto the stony ground. He lunges desperately to try and save the last few drops but he’s a sozzled old man and he’s too slow. He looks down at the little poteen puddle, more crestfallen than a man with his own distillery at home need be. ‘Why did you do that?’ he hisses. He has hateful vengeance in his eyes, but I’m not a child any more and I’m not afraid of him.

  ‘I’m home to save you.’

  His expression shifts. Anger. Scorn. Mirth. Shame. He tries to speak but whatever is going on inside him, the words won’t come. A long and violent exhalation is all he can manage. He looks broken-down, confused, bitter, old. He can’t contend with the world swirling around him.

  ‘We’re going to fix up the house and get the land back to the way it should be. And there’ll be no more drinking.’

  Again his face shows a kaleidoscope of passion but again he settles on shame. ‘I need it. It’s for my condition. I have a terrible affliction without it. My hands shake something terrible and nothing else will stop them.’ He turns his eyes to the ground. He looks so pathetic that, despite everything, I relent.

  ‘I’ll make you a deal. You can drink after dark, but by day, we work. No matter how bad you have the horrors.’

  ‘All right, son.’

  It’s drizzling and dark clouds hang overhead. You hop over the rickety wall of the Poor Ground and look for a relatively soft part among the stones. You pick a spot and thrust the spade into the soil, hoping it’s virgin territory. Everyone knows the awful tales of accidental exhumations. Ordinarily the neighbours help in digging graves but not for a burial such as this. It’s just you and your brothers. No-one even stops to offer condolences while you work. Best not to talk about such things. This is for family alone. Pius isn’t here. He’s been drinking poteen all night and he’s lying unconscious at home. But Charlie comes. ‘She was like a mother to me too,’ he says. With nine men at work, the hole is soon finished.

  Charlie waits with you by the graveside while your brothers go and get Pius from home and your mother from the wake house. She’s wrapped in a brown blanket and they carry her on their shoulders. You go into the grave and they pass her down to you. You lay her gently on the earth and kiss her forehead before you get out of the hole. Then Maggie arrives, a black shawl draped over her head. She could be family too. You could make her a Lennon today if you wanted to. Your brothers heap soil on Deirdre while Pius watches silently, swaying in the breeze. He doesn’t look at you, not at any stage. The clouds begin to spit, turning the fresh-dug earth to mud, and your brothers work quickly to get finished. There are no prayers over the grave. Pius won’t allow it. Afterwards you stay until only you and Maggie are left.

  ‘I’m getting the train this afternoon,’ you tell her. ‘Come with me. It doesn’t matter where we go, let’s just go.’

  ‘I have a family, I can’t just leave them. I have to stay here, Victor,’ she says.

  ‘You can’t leave and I can’t stay.’

  ‘You could stay. You could stay if you wanted to.’

  People would have seen the newspaper report. Stanislaus held it in his hand as he waited by the downstairs window of the Parochial House while Father Daly cranked the starting motor on his buggy. All but a few would have been shocked by it. Stanislaus had planned to devote his homily to the article, and to the disgraceful behaviour at the dance, but when he spotted Pius Lennon sitting alone in the pew, with no sign of his son in attendance, he decided to hold his peace. People would have noticed Victor’s absence. If Victor thought he could inject atheism into the spiritual bloodstream of the parish, like he was some travesty of an evangelist, he misjudged the people of Madden. Stanislaus believed the best strategy was to allow Victor enough rope to hang himself.

  The automobile coughed into life and as he hopped gleefully behind the steering column, Father Daly signalled to Stanislaus that they were ready to depart. Father Daly seemed to spend half his life poking around the engine trying to fix the latest malfunction in his disgustingly dirty and unreliable vehicle, and he had a devil of a time washing off the grime and oil from his hands – hands that were supposed to be worthy of handling the Blessed Eucharist! Stanislaus
climbed into the vehicle. It was a crisp and clear spring day, it didn’t look like rain, but still, it was a relief that the vehicle had a retractable canvas awning. Most of the ones Stanislaus had seen before didn’t. He accepted Father Daly’s offer of a blanket for his knees, to keep the cold off, but rejected a pair of goggles. Stanislaus had spoken to the curate before about the need for men with spiritual responsibilities to present themselves to the outside world appropriately, yet here was the young man wearing not only goggles but a leather jacket fastened with one of those hookless interlocking-teeth fasteners. Pearls before swine.

  Every bump in the road felt like a kick up the backside. Stanislaus changed his mind about the goggles when he realised that the front window merely reduced the amount of flies and dirt rushing into his face, it did not prevent them entirely. He lurched violently in his seat as the uneven road delivered another kick, and told Father Daly to slow down. Stanislaus disliked automobiles as he disliked the general mania for the new. War always had the effect of speeding up the new. Automobiles. Moving pictures. Aeroplanes. Even telephones were becoming more common. He had read a report from America that they planned to read out news ‘bulletins’ in the future via radio waves, and they were working on mass-producing wireless sets small enough and cheap enough for people to have in their homes. This theme of mass access and participation seemed to be everywhere, and Stanislaus was sure it had something to do with the Marxians. He did not look forward to the world the war would leave in its wake.

  ‘At this speed we would cover almost thirty miles every hour. Every hour, mind you, road permitting,’ Father Daly roared in triumph above the engine and the onrushing wind. Stanislaus had to admit these automobiles moved quickly. They were probably about halfway to Armagh already. It was extraordinary that this could be achieved without the use of rail. Still, he felt sure the discomfort involved would ensure it stayed confined to a minority of enthusiasts.

  He still had the Armagh Guardian in his hand. He looked at it again, for the same reason he couldn’t help poking at mouth ulcers with his tongue, and flicked inside to the main news story, set between the ads for Boys’ Whitby Suits, Beecham’s Pills, and below GW Megahey of Scotch Street’s promise of an ‘Extraordinary Cheap Sale, with Bargains For All and Boots, Shoes and Slippers at Ridiculously Low Prices’.

  COMMUNIST SOWS DISCORD

  Took Part in Sinn Fein Rebellion

  RETURN OF VICTOR LENNON DIVIDES MADDEN

  Controversial Opinions on Church and War Effort

  CELEBRATION ENJOYED BY ALL, OTHERWISE

  OPINION is divided in the village of Madden on the homecoming of Mr Victor Lennon, who was recently released from the camp for Irish prisoners at Frongoch in Wales. During a dance held in his honour at Madden Parochial Hall, Lennon was heard to criticise the Roman Church and Cardinal Logue, as well as make seditious and wholly unpatriotic remarks.

  KNOWN FELON

  Mr Lennon has been domiciled in Dublin for several years past and was associated with the Communist wing of the outbreak of anarchy last April. His return to Madden was attended with great ceremony but his speech, made while clearly under the influence of intoxicants, caused great consternation. The following is an extract.

  MISREPRESENTS CONDITION OF WORKERS

  ‘Workers in Armagh face the same humiliating, inhuman conditions as everywhere else, and we will not have justice until that exploitation is at an end. A foreign nation denies us control of our destiny. Empires are rapacious and capitalistic, so neither socialism nor the justice manifest in socialism can be achieved as a colony of empire. That is why we proclaimed the Republic on Easter Monday, but the Republic is not an end in itself. Irish capitalists are no different than English ones. The lockout taught us that.

  ARGUMENT WITH ECONOMICS, NOT EMPIRE

  ‘The Republic is a necessary first step. We must overthrow the institutions of empire and build institutions of the people. Unions. Co-operatives. Pearse said Ireland unfree would never be at peace, but an Ireland ruled by capital shall always be unfree, no matter where the parliament sits. It is firstly capital that enslaves us. Peace will come when Ireland is sovereign and socialist, and when the people have ownership of the means of production.

  SEES ALMOST EVERYONE AS ENEMY

  ‘We must defeat the empire, but the empire has no monopoly on tyranny. We must overcome the reactionaries and counter-revolutionaries, the so-called reformers and crypto-capitalists who claim to want change but in fact buttress the status quo. Our political process is the property of spineless collaborators like Redmond. Our economy is run by and for slavers like William Martin (expletive) Murphy. Our society is dominated by churches more insidious and corrupting than any empire. Comrade Connolly died to ensure a dynamic social programme at the core of our revolution and Comrade Lenin is continuing that work in Petersburg (sic) as we speak. Without that social programme, so-called Irish freedom isn’t worth a Dublin-minted farthing.’

  CONSTERNATION WIDESPREAD

  Reaction to Mr Lennon’s speech was mixed. There were cries of disgust but also shouts of ‘Hear Hear!’ from the large crowd in attendance. Mr Lennon, 27, is a former docker and tram driver. He was sacked for his part in the failed Larkinite strike of four years ago, and is believed to have made his living as a trade union organiser and journalist since then. He attended Madden National School before leaving for Dublin, where he is not known to have furthered his studies. He was the only speaker at the event in Madden, which was a social gathering rather than a political meeting, despite Mr Lennon’s unfortunate outburst. Otherwise the event was a great success and enjoyed by all. Mr Ignatius Harney, 35, won a week’s supply of mincemeat from Sweeney’s Butchers of Ballymacnab in the raffle, organised in aid of Madden GAA.

  ‘Apparently Victor said far worse things that they couldn’t print,’ said Father Daly.

  ‘What they did print is quite bad enough.’

  ‘Victor must have been very drunk, to say some of those things.’

  ‘In vino veritas. From the looks of this article, he was eloquent as a serpent.’

  ‘I think TP may have tidied it up a bit.’

  ‘Some of the people applauded him,’ Stanislaus scolded. He was perturbed by Father Daly’s sanguinity.

  The car hit a bump in the road and Stanislaus cursed the pain to his poor back. Cars like this cost a hundred pounds or more, a sum that could be gathered from a priest’s salary only after years of sacrifice and prudence. For Tim Daly, though, the car had been, like his youthful handsomeness, easygoing manner and seminary education, a gift from his parents. The Dalys were well-connected businesspeople who rejoiced in their son’s entrance to the priesthood. Tim’s academic ability too had been a gift. Success for him had required little of the character-building labour that leads to excellence. Stanislaus had known many fellows like him; fellows who had never known sacrifice or hunger or failure. Life was easy for them, and this ease led to complacent liberalism. They could no more grasp the danger of a Victor Lennon than lemmings grasp the oblivion beyond the cliff. ‘This is no time to play devil’s advocate, this is not a seminary game. We must find out who supports him. We need to know who’s against us,’ said Stanislaus.

  ‘Madden people aren’t communists, Your Grace,’ Father Daly countered. ‘If Victor waves a green flag they’ll salute him. If he waves a red flag, they’ll just be confused. To them he’s an Irishman striking a blow against the English, that’s all.’

  Father Daly may have been right. Mrs Geraghty was usually a good barometer for how people were feeling – the decent people at any rate – and she had been appalled by what Victor had said. That kind of talk might find an audience in the slums of Dublin, but these left-wing fellows he admired so much spoke of collectivising agriculture. That meant the government taking the land off the people, and that conjured all-too-recent nightmares in Irish country people.

  The two great spires of the cathedral, visible for miles around, were close now. They had covered five m
iles in little more than twenty-five minutes. Cold, dirty, uncomfortable though it was, the motorcar was undeniably fast. But when they left the macadamised road and hit the cobbled streets of the city, the car bumped and rocked and jiggled so much that Stanislaus considered walking the rest of the way. Riding these contraptions on cobblestones was impossibly punishing. Another reason they wouldn’t catch on. At least the streets were quiet – people would have laughed their heads off at the two goggled priests bouncing around like unfastened cargo in their spluttering, juddering buggy. The motorcar chugged up Irish Street, losing speed with every yard but just making the summit without rolling backwards. They passed the Protestant cathedral, an unassuming, ancient building that they too named for St Patrick, before freewheeling with a merciless velocity down the hill to the Shambles yard. The car cornered like a dreadnought around the dogleg of Edward Street and Father Daly brought it to a full stop at the gates of the Catholic St Patrick’s Cathedral. He put the car in reverse with a guttural clanking of the gears and manoeuvred it to point away from the gate and the cinder path that snaked up the hill to the cathedral. Navigating out the egg-shaped window sewn into the back of the canvas awning, he let go of the handbrake and reversed uphill in a whirl of dust.

  ‘What on earth are you doing?’ asked Stanislaus.

  ‘The fuel is in a tank at the back but the engine is in the front. The fuels flows forward to the engine by gravity, but I’m low on fuel, so gravity doesn’t get the job done. If you’re low on fuel, you have to reverse uphill.’

  ‘Silly contraptions.’

  Four great granite institutions bestrode the hill like a citadel: St Patrick’s Cathedral; St Patrick’s College and Junior Seminary; the Synod Hall; and Ara Coeli, official residence of the Cardinal. Stanislaus was surprised to see motorcars parked everywhere, most of them, like Father Daly’s, the black, Henry Ford variety they made in Cork. Good thing he’d arrived in one after all. He saw an elderly infirm-looking man being helped from a car by two young curates. It was Johnny Mangan, an old friend. He was four years younger than Stanislaus and had always been the picture of health, but the years did terrible things. Stanislaus hopped out and moved across the yard with sprightly steps. He put his hand on Johnny’s shoulder, as much to help him as to greet him.