After the Lockout

by Darran McCann

  Johnny Morrissey stands up and cries angrily: ‘The Poor Ground was good enough for my daughter.’ Everywhere, heads look up from their study of the floor. The silence is stunned. ‘My Daisy only lived for an hour. How can she be damned?’ Johnny says.

  ‘I have a twin brother in the Poor Ground,’ says Jim O’Hagan, full-back from the football team. ‘He died when we were born and but for the grace of God it would’ve been me. I don’t believe I won’t meet him some day. I won’t believe it.’

  And one person after another stands up and shouts about the person they love who’s lying in the Poor Ground. The chapel is noisy with the anger of those confronting the bishop and those defending him. Benedict grips the side of the lectern, as if he’s afraid he’ll be swept away. He has turned white. Maggie’s head is buried in her hands.

  ‘My Daisy is in heaven,’ Johnny Morrissey cries.

  ‘Get out of this church, Victor Lennon. I cast you out, and all those who would stand with you,’ Benedict shouts, recovering sufficiently to muster some ferocity. There seems no point in staying silent now.

  ‘My mother is in heaven,’ I say. ‘Yes, my mother, Deirdre Lennon, stands acquitted anywhere there is justice. And by God there is none in this place. She is damned only by you and your dogma.’

  TP McGahan can’t write quickly enough. Pius’s head is bowed. Maybe he’s praying. Maggie is crying. Charlie struggles to his feet. ‘Get out of this parish, Victor, get out and don’t come back, you fucken lunatic,’ he cries, his oath prompting gasps.

  Turlough brushes past me and storms towards Charlie. ‘Sit down and shut your mouth, Quinn, you’re not in your regiment now. Victor Lennon has done more for this parish and this country than ten generations of youse leeching gombeen bastards,’ he snarls. Charlie shrinks. Turlough would take Charlie out and shoot him like a dog if I ordered it.

  ‘Out! Out of this chapel, Lennon, Moriarty and all your fellow-travellers. I cast you all out,’ Benedict roars, trying to take back control of the situation.

  I summon the attention of the congregation. ‘Let me say this to you all: go to any village in Ireland and the priest will have the biggest house while working people struggle to live. Bishop Benedict talks of the Penal Days but he forgets the Famine, when the priests locked their doors and let the people starve. I have seen priests collude to keep Irishmen out of work and out of food. I have seen priests bring starvation to children and claim it as Christ’s will. I have seen priests lock people out of their very graves. And the Bishop has locked us out of our Parochial Hall. As always, when the people are in need, the Church locks us out.’

  ‘The Parochial Hall is Church property,’ Benedict replies, but I’m surprised at how weakly the words slither out.

  ‘It is built by the sweat and muscle of the men of Madden. All the Jesuitical capitalist dogma in the world can’t dilute our rights!’

  ‘It belongs to the Church,’ he says again, still more weakly.

  ‘These people are not the poor, illiterate peasants of the Famine days. These are proletarians and they have built their own People’s Hall. The People’s Hall is our Mass Rock.’ I turn away from Benedict, I am finished with him. I speak to my people. ‘Comrades, our work is not yet finished. Let every able-bodied man, woman and child come with me now to the Poor Ground to complete our great project.’

  Maggie is still crying.

  Turlough whoops and Sean press-gangs some of the young lads around him towards the door. I stride through the throng and out the door, not stopping till I’m on the other side of the street. Turlough comes first, Sean last, and between them a crowd of fellows emerge blinking into the daylight, shocked and scared and angry but most importantly, there. They remind me of some of the Volunteers who turned out on Easter Monday expecting to do the usual drills and manoeuvres and be home by dinnertime. Sorry, lads, today’s the day you do the thing you’ve talked about doing for so long.

  I count the men. Aidan Cavanagh’s there. Jerry McGrath. Johnny Morrissey. Jim O’Hagan. Plenty more. Maybe twenty men. That means twenty families, which means a hundred or more people we can rely on. Not bad at all.

  Maggie probably hasn’t stopped crying yet.

  You had to do it, Victor. You just had to, didn’t you?

  Stanislaus closed the vestry door behind him, tugged the stole from his neck and threw off his vestments with a roughness that was almost irreverent. He exhaled, long and loud. Father Daly came in, picked up the vestments and folded them. ‘Almost everyone is with you, Your Grace. Lennon hasn’t twenty followers,’ he said gingerly. ‘It is shocking to see scenes like that inside a church.’

  ‘Where do you stand now, on this fellow, and the threat he poses?’ Stanislaus demanded.

  ‘I think his stay in this parish should be concluded very soon. I thought that even before this morning’s … unpleasantness.’ He paused. ‘You decided against telling them what Charlie Quinn told you?’

  ‘You were right. It would have been wicked, to condemn Ida Harte. Particularly since the rumour may not even be true.’

  ‘Our Lord often reserved his greatest compassion for fallen women.’

  ‘Yes, thank you, Father.’

  On leaving the vestry they found Pius Lennon alone in the empty chapel, looking like he had barely moved since the mass ended. Stanislaus glanced over to make sure Pius was well. The man was deep in prayer. Outside they found a crowd milling on the street. The mood was ugly. As long as they’d been inside the church walls they had mostly kept their heads bowed but now, unbounded, they were angry and unstable.

  ‘We’re with you, Father, we don’t want the like of that there here,’ said Kate McDermott. ‘What you said about the Penal Days was right, these youngsters nowadays don’t know how we had to fight.’

  Charlie Quinn had a fearful zeal in his eye. ‘Why are we standing here talking when the communists are building their hall as we speak? Why aren’t we over there burning the place to the ground?’ he cried, and the emboldened crowd cheered. ‘Let’s drive Victor out of Madden on the end of a rail!’

  Charlie looked over his shoulder and saw Pius Lennon behind him. He blanched. Stanislaus was slightly glad. There had been a sight too much speechifying lately. Charlie seemed to steel himself.

  ‘Go on about your business, every one of you,’ said Pius, and the crowd dissipated quickly.

  Stanislaus was relieved to get back to the sanctuary of his study. He poured himself a large brandy and noticed Father Daly looking askance. ‘If every morning was as eventful as this, society would look very differently on an early-morning stiffener,’ he said defensively as he slumped into his chair.

  Charlie Quinn bounded in suddenly, uninvited and unannounced. ‘Why didn’t you tell them?’ he demanded, sounding quite deranged.

  ‘Charlie, sit down before you fall down,’ Stanislaus commanded.

  ‘I will not sit down. Victor’s in there every night fornicating with thon hoor and you are saying nothing.’

  ‘I am not prepared to destroy Ida Harte’s life.’

  ‘Last night you said you would. Last night you told me to say nothing because it would carry more weight coming from you.’

  ‘I know what I said,’ Stanislaus snapped, though he remembered only hazily, ‘but I have to believe this parish can be saved without denouncing one of our own.’

  ‘She’s not one of us and she never will be.’ Charlie paused. ‘Are you going to tell the people about Victor and his whoring?’

  ‘I am not.’

  ‘What if I did?’

  ‘I must do what I believe to be right. So must you.’

  Mollification spread across his face. Father Daly and Stanislaus exchanged grave glances as they heard Charlie’s crutch negotiating the creaking stairs.

  Later, in the early afternoon, Stanislaus was alone in his study when Mrs Geraghty poked her head around the door. ‘There’s a girl to see you, Father. She says you sent for her but I hardly think …’

  ‘Send her in.’r />
  Mrs Geraghty did nothing to mask her distaste as she showed Ida Harte into the study. Stanislaus signalled for her to sit down. ‘Thank you for coming. Can Mrs Geraghty get you anything?’

  ‘Cup of tea would be great. And I’d take a sandwich if there was one going. Or a biscuit or whatever you have handy. I didn’t get a chance to eat anything yet. I’m starving.’

  Mrs Geraghty’s lip almost curled in on itself as she sloped out with the petulance of a Frenchman. She will boil-wash the cushions Ida’s sitting on, he thought.

  ‘Do you know why I asked you to come here?’

  Ida shrugged.

  ‘Victor Lennon.’

  He hoped she would betray herself with a panicked comment or look, but he saw no recognition, no admission that she had even heard the name before, in her wide-open, black eyes.

  ‘Ida, you know it’s a sin to lie to a priest?’

  ‘Is that all the time, or just in confession?’

  ‘All the time.’

  She grinned mischievously, as if she didn’t believe him. Stanislaus hoped his own expression betrayed no doubt. ‘I never lie, Father,’ she said.

  ‘Do you know what Victor has been up to at the Poor Ground?’

  ‘I know the same as everybody else.’

  ‘I thought you might have knowledge of a more intimate nature.’

  Again Ida’s expression gave away nothing. Mrs Geraghty came in and set a tray on the desk. She poured two cups of tea while Ida grabbed a ham sandwich and bit off a chunk. Mrs Geraghty tutted as she retreated from the study, as if the sight of this feral creature in her pristine Parochial House was more than her good manners could tolerate. Ida seemed not to notice as she devoured the sandwich, and when she finished it, she reached for another. Finally she met Stanislaus’s gaze. She gulped.

  ‘Have you anything to say?’ said Stanislaus.

  She swallowed and shrugged. ‘You seem like you have something you want me to say, Father. Why don’t you tell me what it is, and I’ll tell you if you’re right.’

  Stanislaus slammed his fist down on the desk, at last seizing her full attention. ‘Who do you think you are, to speak to me with such presumption? But for me, you would be run out of this parish with your head shaved. I alone vindicate you. I alone do not take you for a whore.’ He paused and took a breath. ‘Rumours are circulating. You have been carrying on with Victor Lennon. So far, I have suppressed the rumours, but Ida, you must tell me the truth. Ida, you must confess.’

  This time, every wrinkle and crevice in her face bore witness against her. But it wasn’t guilt Stanislaus discerned. It was more like some diabolical pride.

  ‘Who has been talking about me? I want to know who has been talking about me,’ she demanded.

  ‘You deny it?’

  Ida stood up, picked up a sandwich, and turned to leave. ‘I’ll find out myself if you won’t tell me who has been casting aspersions. Good day to you, Father,’ she said.

  ‘I can’t protect you any longer,’ Stanislaus replied as she walked out the door.

  Sean comes over to where I’m sitting on the Poor Ground wall, my thoughts miles away, and tells me we’re finished. ‘One more nail and it’s done. Come on, get up the ladder. You should be the man to do it,’ he says.

  I look at it: the People’s Hall. It’s rudimentary and ugly and it’ll be draughty as hell – it’s a glorified hayshed, truth be told – but it’s there. It’s a tangible statement in wood and iron, and for all my talk, I realise now that I had never really believed we’d finish. My twenty men, my last remaining stalwarts, look to me now. They are proud men, discovering for the first time in their lives what it’s like to be in the saddle instead of under the lash. From the looks of it, they like it. Aidan Cavanagh beams as he hands me a hammer and Johnny Morrissey hands me a six-inch masonry nail. My men whoop and holler as I ascend the ladder and drive home the final nail. From atop the ladder I wave down to them. This must be what victory feels like. I descend and shake hands with every man there. Aidan Cavanagh prises off the lid of a bucket of paint. ‘Just the right shade of red,’ he says, and dunks the paintbrush bristles into the scarlet goop. He hands it to me and nods. I take it and daub a long diagonal line on the wall of the People’s Hall, and top it so it looks like an elongated capital T tilted to the side.

  ‘What’s that?’ says Turlough.

  ‘It’s a hammer,’ say Aidan.

  From the corner of my eye I spot Ida Harte coming out of the Parochial House. My heart falters. Benedict is sitting at his window, watching. What the hell is Ida doing at the Parochial House? Be calm, Victor. Calm now. The vultures are circling, but don’t panic. Panic burdens good comrades. Panic is selfish and childish. Panic is moral incompetence. Bad comrades panic. Don’t panic, Victor. Calm now. I plunge the bristles once more, and I make a question mark, tilted on its side and crossing the elongated T.

  ‘And what in God’s name is that?’ says Sean.

  ‘A sickle,’ says Aidan, pleased with himself. ‘The hammer represents the proletariat. The factories and the cities and such. The sickle represents the peasants.’

  ‘And that’s us, is it?’ says Johnny Morrissey.

  ‘The workers in the fields,’ I say. ‘The hammer and sickle together represents the alliance of workers in all countries. It’ll be on the Irish flag after the revolution.’

  ‘After we kick out the English fuckers!’ cries Sean, to a great cheer.

  ‘Arise ye workers from your slumbers, arise ye prisoners of want,’ I sing. ‘Come on, lads, you know it by now.’

  ‘For reason in revolt now thunders, and at last ends the age of cant,’ Aidan joins in, and Johnny Morrissey starts in as well. Soon enough, they’re all at least trying.

  ‘Away with all your superstitions, servile masses arise, arise.’

  Ida stops near Kate McDermott’s doorway across the street and regards our ceremony with amusement. People start coming out of the houses along the street to see what’s going on. At first they come slowly but soon there’s ten, fifteen, thirty and more people in the street, facing we twenty singing workers with only the Poor Ground wall standing between us.

  We’ll change henceforth the old tradition and spurn the dust to win the prize.

  They look with morbid fascination at the strange symbol daubed on the wall of the People’s Hall. And grimly they look at we who built it.

  So comrades, come rally and the last fight let us face. The Internationale unites the human race.

  I stride up and down our line exhorting the comrades who look like they might falter before the undisguised hostility that faces us from the other side of the wall. Kate McDermott. TP McGahan. The Murphys. The other Murphys. They look at us like they hate us.

  So comrades, come rally and the last fight let us face.

  Charlie hobbles into their midst.

  The Internationale unites the human race.

  ‘That’s the symbol the communists use to signal to start killing priests,’ says Charlie, pointing to the hammer and sickle.

  ‘That’s bullshit,’ I say.

  ‘Listen to him, with his fancy Dublin sayings,’ Charlie replies with a scorn that seems popular on his side of the wall.

  ‘Aye, it’s bullshit and you’re nothing but a dirty fucken crippled Tommy fucken liar, you and your fucken king.’

  ‘Calm down now, Victor,’ says Turlough.

  ‘Don’t tell me to calm down. What was he doing when I was fighting for Ireland? He was bayoneting fellow workers and singing about how the sun never sets on the British fucking Empire. Hoping to get himself an OB fucken E.’

  ‘There’s no call for that now, Victor,’ says Jerry McGrath at my shoulder.

  ‘Charlie Quinn is a traitor to his country,’ I say. ‘He joined up because he’s loyal to the king of England and he thanks God the surgeon saved his knee because that’s where he lives, on his knees.’

  Father Daly appears at the back of the crowd and calls on everyone to break up the sce
ne. The mob parts and I see Ida, still standing in the doorway across the street, watching. ‘Stand aside there, let me through,’ Father Daly commands. ‘What’s going on here?’ he demands when he reaches the front.

  ‘Look at what they’ve painted, Father,’ Kate McDermott shrieks, pointing to the hammer and sickle.

  ‘That’s just a squiggle. Ignore it,’ says Father Daly.

  ‘Are you siding with him?’ Charlie snaps dementedly.

  ‘I’m siding with no-one, now all of you go home,’ barks the priest.

  ‘You’re siding with this dirty fucker who has been in and out to Ida Harte every night since he got home?’

  ‘Shut up now, Charlie,’ said Father Daly.

  ‘Every night he’s in to see that little kitty. Sure half the street hears her moaning like a banshee.’

  Aidan Cavanagh turns to me. ‘Victor, it’s not true. Is it?’

  Every night, indeed. Charlie’s a liar. I don’t suppose people will appreciate the distinction if I tell them it was only once, though. But they aren’t even looking at me. They’re turning to Kate McDermott’s doorway, where Ida stands. The crowd is satisfied of her guilt. A stone the size of a chestnut thuds savagely on her breastplate. She puts her hand to her throat and her impish face screams but no sound comes out. A smaller stone hits her shoulder and she makes a pathetic appeal for mercy, but a rock the size of a whiskey tumbler cracks sickeningly against her temple, and a jet of blood flashes across the street as she falls to the ground. Aidan Cavanagh leaps over the wall into the crowd and throws punches left and right, his face contorted with hate. No more stones are thrown but cries of whore and slut and jezebel rain down on Ida with as much ferocity, if less injurious an impact. Father Daly is unable to rein in the mob as they shout for Ida’s hair to be hacked off and for her skin to be tarred. Ida is a ball curled in Kate McDermott’s doorway, her head and face covered. They might kill her and I won’t be able to stop them. Thank God Benedict sweeps into view, cassock swishing and cane clicking with menace. He stands over the visibly trembling girl and faces her tormentors. The mob shrinks from him.