Stanislaus stood up noisily from his seat, clattering his knees painfully against the desk as he rose. ‘Miss Cavanagh, what on earth are you teaching these children?’ he said.
The children dropped their pens and chalk. The young girls looked up from their knitting. Miss Cavanagh seemed shaken. ‘It’s dictation, Your Grace,’ she said.
‘This is not dictation. Do you think I’m unaware of what you’re drip-feeding these children? Everything is a unity of opposites, gradual change leads to a turning point – you’re teaching them revolution. In my own school!’
‘It’s dialectics,’ she whispered.
Stanislaus stepped into the aisle and strode towards the teacher. ‘That was Marx, what you were just telling them.’
‘It’s Plato.’
‘I don’t care who it is! Your job, Miss Cavanagh, is to teach these children skills that will help them in life. Reading, writing, arithmetic, handiwork. If you have any pupils with vocations, you will direct them to me and I will arrange for their further instruction. Otherwise, you teach them the how, not the why. This is a schoolhouse.’
Stanislaus stared at her till her eyes dropped to the floor. He walked to the door, turned and looked around the classroom, as if to make clear that he would be keeping an eye on things from now on. When he was satisfied that Miss Cavanagh seemed to understand, he left the shamefaced schoolteacher. He would put a big question mark by her name, he thought as he headed back to the Parochial House. What was it she said it was: dialectics? It had been forty years since he’d read Plato, but that did ring a bell. He would have to consult his Republic.
The blinds of Quinn’s General Stores are still drawn but the lights are on inside. I bang on the door and shout for Charlie to hurry up. It’s not quite opening time but I’m too close to Ida Harte’s for my liking.
‘In Dublin next arrived, I thought it was a pity to be so soon deprived of a view of that fine city, ’twas then I took a stroll …’ someone sings, loudly and badly. Jerry McGrath comes around the corner: ‘… all among the quality, my bundle then was stole in a neat locality, something crossed my mind …’
‘You’re in great form this morning,’ I say.
He pats the postbag hanging limply from his shoulder. ‘That’s my duties discharged till Monday morning. “Says I, I’ll look behind, no bundle could I find upon my stick a-wobbling, inquiring for the rogue, they said my Connaught brogue, it wasn’t much in vogue on the rocky road to Dubbelin, one two three four five.”’
Charlie opens the door and ushers me inside. ‘My favourite customer,’ he says. I tell him about our roof and he whips out notebook and pencil. ‘Spurtles, grapes, rope, wire mesh: I have everything you need,’ he says, gesturing to the highest shelves behind the wooden counter.
‘Spurtles?’
‘Spurtles. Fletches. Thatching forks. Whatever you want to call them.’ He sets a thatching fork on the counter. It’s like a square hairbrush the size of a tennis racquet with nails for teeth. I scrape the sharpened points against my palm. Charlie sets a bundle of two-foot sally sticks on the counter. ‘You’ll need loads of these. Scallops. You remember what scallops are, city boy?’
‘Shellfish.’
‘You twist and bend them into a U-shape and use them like wooden bands to hold the thatch in place,’ he says, demonstrating the process.
‘Yes, I know what fucking scallops are. I have thatched a roof before, you know.’
He smiles as he scribbles on his notepad. ‘I’ll draw up a list of all the things you need and get one of the young fellas to drop everything up to you this afternoon. Have you plenty of straw?’
‘I thought I’d get the tools first and then see about cutting some of them reed spires that grow over there in Granemore …’
He loops his thumbs inside his apron and leans forward on the counter. ‘They’re no good, them reed spires. Leave it with me. Straw is a bloody nuisance, truth be told. There’s plenty of people around here mad looking rid of the stuff since the wheat was harvested.’
‘Thanks, Charlie.’
‘Is it just you and Pius doing the whole roof? Big job. You should take on a few men.’
‘I’ll get Turlough and Sean.’
‘I’ll come and help too if you want. But I’m not much use up a ladder any more though.’
‘Shite, I don’t think we have a ladder either.’
Charlie shakes his head, as if he’s looking at the most pathetic sight in the world. He ushers me under the counter, through his little office and out to the yard at the back of the premises. Under a canvas tarpaulin he shows me a huge stock of perhaps twenty ladders laid out carefully: some are six or eight feet, others must be thirty, all expertly crafted in cedar, I think, with smoothly rounded rungs buttressed by metal strips. I see the price-tag on one of them and whistle. ‘I’m getting a nosebleed just looking at the price of that. I didn’t know they were so dear.’
Charlie puts his hand on one handsome-looking twelve-odd-footer. ‘I’ll loan you this one for the job, as long as you promise not to get any scratches on it.’
‘Big demand for these, is there? You’re carrying a lot of stock.’
‘Big order in from the Fire Brigade, but keep that to yourself now.’
The next morning the sun is still rising and the fat in the pan hissing and sputtering as Pius fries up breakfast when Charlie and the Moriarty boys arrive with straw enough to thatch the shell of the GPO. They’ve brought young Aidan Cavanagh, Maggie’s brother, with them. We take the squelchy, gristly bacon and kidney sodas in our hands and meet the lads outside. Turlough looks to the sky and says he reckons we might have nine hours of daylight ahead. The day will be cold but dry.
‘And how much am I going to have to pay you?’ I say to Aidan.
‘Nothing, Victor, nothing. It’s my honour,’ he says, and he’s so earnest that it’s hard not to be embarrassed.
‘A working man has to be paid. Let’s say five shillings for the day.’
‘Honestly, I wouldn’t accept it, Victor.’
‘Six shillings, and you have to tell your sister I was asking for her. My last word.’
‘Tell her yourself. She’s bringing me up my dinner this afternoon.’
We get to work straight away, investigating the roof. The existing thatch is threadbare and soaked and brown, and worn back almost to the mud layer at the base of the roof. Hardly any scallops remain and the spars, which shouldn’t even be visible, stick out like spikes. Water runs throughout the body of the thatch and the walls are stained brown with moisture. Turlough tells us gravely that if the water has penetrated beyond the surface of the walls, we’ll have to replace rafters and all. He climbs up the ladder and crawls along the bottom of the roof, stopping to cut away a fistful of thatch with a knife. He puts his hand onto the wall, holds it there and thinks about it for a long moment before shunting across like a crab and repeating the process on another section. At last, he tells us we’re lucky: we don’t need a whole new structure. We’ve gotten away with it. A little longer and there would’ve been structural damage. He starts hacking away the rotten, spindly reeds from the ridges, the gables and around the chimney, where it’s most decayed. I organise the workers. I direct Aidan to carry loose armfuls of straw from the cart to Pius and Charlie, who tie it together in bundles of fresh thatch. Then Aidan and I bring the thatch to Sean, who carries it up the ladder. Meanwhile Turlough strips the roof, and he and Sean together lay the fresh thatch onto the naked spars. ‘Make those bundles extra thick, eighteen inches at least, remember they’re going onto a bare roof,’ I tell them.
‘Whatever you say, Henry Ford,’ Sean chuckles.
Cheeky comparison, but the production line is soon moving quickly and efficiently. We all work like mad and soon we’re all sweating. It’s good to see Pius with a bit of colour in his cheeks. Pius, Aidan, Charlie and I have a hell of a time keeping up with Turlough and Sean, who plough through their work like ten men. They end up doing half of everyone else’s j
ob too, helping tie together bundles, carrying them up on the roof, laying them in place. I get the feeling they’d almost rather the rest of us just got out of their way. As we work, Sean says there’s something he wants to ask me.
‘People are selfish, that’s just human nature, and you can’t change human nature. What do youse socialists say about that?’
All eyes turn to me. I pick up a bundle of thatch and throw it across my shoulder, so everyone knows to keep working while I explain a few things to them.
‘Say you’re being employed to do a job of work. Well, you’re the labour end of the equation, right?’ I say, handing the bundle up the ladder to Sean. ‘The man paying you provides the capital. Capital and labour. One without the other is useless. So they divide the wealth created as a result. Capital’s share is called profit. Labour’s share is called wages. But how do you know where to make that division? What criteria do you use? It’s like you said yourself: people are selfish. So capital will always want the greatest possible profit margin and labour will always wants the highest possible wages. That division is a constant source of conflict. That’s the central reality of capitalism. It’s a conflict that can never be reconciled.’
‘I’m just checking here, but you’re still going to pay us what we agreed?’ Sean jokes.
‘So how will socialism help us kick the Brits out of our country?’ Turlough goes on, looking serious.
‘Working men have no country,’ I say. I can tell that they neither understand nor care for my argument. ‘Lookit, the Empire exists for two reasons: one, so the Brits can access physical and labour resources. Irish farmers feed Britain’s industrial cities and Irish labour builds their railways and canals. It would be contrary to British interests if Ireland ever became rich. That’s partly why we’ve had so many famines here, and why half our people have to emigrate. And two, so the Brits have markets to buy their surpluses. Ireland is virtually made of peat and turf yet we import boatloads of coal every day. No colony can have economic justice within the Empire, since the point of the Empire is to prevent it. Everything is rigged in favour of the master. Imperialism is the enslavement of nations. Socialism is the emancipation of the people through economic justice. That’s poison to empires.’
Turlough seems pleased but Sean isn’t following. ‘The way I see it, there’s only one way to get the Brits out of our country and that’s at the point of a gun. I would’ve thought you boys from Easter Week would understand that better than anybody,’ he says.
‘You think an Irish boss would be any better than an English one?’
‘Bastard probably wouldn’t be but at least we wouldn’t have foreigners ordering us about in our own country.’
We’re into the second half of the job by early afternoon. The roof looks like a flag: half thin, meagre, greasy, sickly-looking; half golden, thick, secure, new. By increments, the new is overwhelming the old all across the Lennon land. The courtyard is clean. The outbuildings are tidy-looking. We’re in the ascendant in our war with the overgrowth. In the fields, cattle sidle around. One of the cows is due to calve any day. It almost feels like the place I grew up, when we were the envy of the parish and every family in Madden wanted one of theirs to marry a Lennon. That’s what I’m thinking when Maggie walks gracefully into the yard, carrying a wicker basket under her arm. She wears a fancy golden brooch that ties her blouse together at the neck and she has her hair plaited elaborately. I clamber down the ladder to greet her.
‘What are you doing here?’ Charlie asks her. She wrinkles her nose at him.
‘Come on inside to the kitchen,’ I say, and lead her by the elbow away from the rest of them. I close the door behind us and take the basket from her. My fingers brush against hers and our eyes meet for a second. She snatches back the basket.
‘I’ve brought our Aidan his lunch.’
‘Why don’t you stay a while and make lunch for the men?’ I say. She stands between the table and the sink and I squeeze past her to get to the scullery. I come back with eggs, liver, kidneys, lard and dripping, and look at her with my most pleading eyes. She’s giving me a look and honest to God I don’t know what it means. I blink, as if to say give me a clue, but she has a hard stare about her. I reach into the drawer, take out an apron and offer it to her, but still she doesn’t thaw out. ‘What’s wrong?’ I say when I can think of nothing else.
‘I had a visit from the bishop the other day, he sat in on class. He said he’ll be watching me. He got really angry with my teaching. It was The Peloponnesian War, for goodness sake.’
‘Him and his whole stinking class are scared to death, and so they should be.’
‘Victor, would you ever just shut up? I’m a teacher in this parish and Bishop Benedict can change that any time he wants. He’s out to get me, and all because of you.’
I put my hand on hers and squeeze it. ‘I won’t let any harm come to you, I promise.’
She turns purple and lets out a loud exhalation of frustration. Honestly, she’s the most confounding person sometimes. But there’s a softening in her eyes, and after a long pause she says, with only the thinnest layer of bitterness: ‘You’re a bloody nightmare!’ She ties the apron around her waist and takes a knife from the drawer. She knows instinctively where to find it. She takes a loaf from the wicker basket and starts slicing it. ‘You go on back to work, I’ll call you all when the dinner’s ready.’
I float into the yard singing, ‘If you were the only girl in the world’, ignoring Charlie’s daggers and singing ever more loudly, though the others are starting to get annoyed too. Sean is still banging on about whether I’ll turn out for Madden in the county final, but instead of answering I just sing the next line a little louder, and keep singing until Maggie, my beautiful Margaret Nora, calls us inside.
Maggie is at the stove, fussing and clattering around as she puts the food onto plates. Yellow cotton cloth and the cutlery laid neatly on the table. A large pot of tea sits steaming in the middle. Baskets filled with bread and boiled eggs piled high in their shells. This place looks like home. I sit at the head of the table. Sean makes to sit at my right hand but that’s Maggie’s seat.
‘Is Maggie staying?’ says Charlie.
‘Look, I’ve already shelled an egg for you,’ I say.
She pauses a moment before she sits down. At the far end of the table Pius clears his throat. ‘Bless us O Lord for these, thy gifts …’
‘… which of thy bounty we are about to receive …’ Charlie chimes in. The rest of them follow, with bowed heads, closed eyes, monotonous incanting. I touch Maggie’s warm, soft hands. Her eyes open with mortification but she doesn’t withdraw her hand. Aidan opens his eyes and sees our hands touching.
‘… we are about to receive, through Christ, Our Lord, Amen.’
Little is said as we eat, apart from tributes to Maggie. ‘Hard-working men deserve to be well fed,’ she says.
‘Everyone is born equal and no-one should starve, ever. That’s what socialism is all about,’ I say.
‘The poor you will always have with you. Our Lord Himself said that,’ Pius grumbles.
‘Our Lord knew nothing about the theory of surplus value.’
Pius slams his fist on the table and glares furiously at me. ‘By God, if you’re going to blaspheme you can take yourself out of this house.’
‘Lookit, let me explain,’ I say. I hold up a slice of bread. ‘Say this bread represents the total amount of wealth Ireland produces in a year. Now, say half goes to labour – chance would be a fine thing, but anyway’ – I tear the bread in half – ‘that means the workers can afford to consume half of the wealth created, right?’ I stuff the bread into my mouth, swallow it down, then hold up the remaining half. ‘This is capital’s profit.’
‘Give it a rest, will you?’ says Charlie, but I keep holding up the piece of bread.
‘This is capital’s profit. Capital can’t ever consume its whole share, so there’s always a huge surplus left over. Labour’s wages are spen
t, so labour can’t buy the surplus. So capital always needs access to undeveloped markets. That’s why we have empires. But what happens when there are no more available markets for capital’s surpluses?’
Around me, blank stares.
‘The day will come when capitalists make goods, only to throw them in the sea. They’ll fill lakes with wine and build mountains out of butter. That’s why the ultimate collapse of capitalism is inevitable.’
‘If it’s inevitable, why does there need to be a revolution? Why not just get on with your life and wait for the inevitable?’ Maggie asks.
‘Change doesn’t happen by itself.’
‘So you admit it’s not actually inevitable?’
‘As long as it gets the Brits out of Ireland, it’s all right by me,’ says Sean.
After lunch I walk Maggie down the laneway. The autumnal sunshine is a dreamy haze; it makes everything look like half-remembered memory. I see a glint of ruby red in Maggie’s hair. She tells me I should play in Sean’s football match. ‘Our Aidan is on the team. He thinks you’re God’s gift. He’d be so excited if you played with them.’
‘Are you going to watch it?’
She nods. ‘The whole parish is going.’
‘I will if you come to the cinema with me next week.’
But I’ve already made up my mind to play. No way I’m going to miss a chance to impress her. She doesn’t answer, save for an enigmatic smile, and as I watch her leave, all I can think is what a fool I am.
We race against the encroaching darkness to get the roof finished in a single day. Pius has slowed considerably as the day has gone on; Charlie is a soft shopkeeper and will never be anything else; Aidan is game but he’s still just a boy; I have performed reasonably; but Sean and Turlough possess the kind of muscle on which revolutions are built. They are keen to do whatever I tell them, and I know why too. They grew up hearing about their granda the Fenian and they wish to God they had been at the GPO, so they’re in awe of me, since I was. Good to know. The proletariat is a leviathan, and the power of any leviathan is in its muscle. Of course a leviathan requires direction from its brain, and of course the revolution will inevitably be led by an intellectual elite, but the likes of Turlough and Sean have a crucial role to play.
After the Lockout Page 10
