The Volunteer pulled his rifle off his shoulder and clubbed the man with the butt end. “Any other words of wisdom for me, mister?” he demanded as the man scrunched on the ground, holding his head in case there were other blows coming, but there weren’t.
“This is great,” said the young lad next to Eoin.
“What’s happening?” asked Eoin.
“Rebellion!” came the gleeful reply.
Eoin smiled, intrigued by the boy’s enthusiasm. “I’m Eoin Kavanagh,” he said, putting out his hand.
“Vinny Byrne,” came the quick, cheery reply, along with a strong handshake. “There will be a hooley in Dublin this week!”
Vinny was diminutive, with reddish blond hair and a pink complexion. He was dressed in a Volunteer’s uniform, his only show of rank being his Pioneer’s pin, which was stuck above his left breast pocket.
“I’m from South Anne’s Street,” Vinny said, pointing.
“Golden Lane,” replied Eoin, “over by St. Patrick’s Cathedral.”
“The Piles?” Eoin nodded. “God help ya,” replied Vinny, without malice. “I’ve got to get moving now,” said Vinny. “We’re going to take Jacob’s Factory for the Republic. Will you come with us?”
Eoin was taken aback. “I can’t,” he stammered. “I have my brother and sister with me,” pointing at the children.
“Fair enough,” said Vinny. “But the invite stands!”
Eoin nodded and took the children away from the chaos and into the Green. “Swans!” Dickie tore his stale bread apart to feed his favorite birds. “Here, here,” he said, tossing the bread into the water, where it was quickly scooped up, the swans beating a hasty retreat. Soon Mary handed him two pamphlets she had found and asked her big brother to turn them into paper sailboats. Eoin dutifully made two boats, saying, “This one is the Lusitania, and that one is the Titanic!” The kids didn’t understand his black sense of humor and rushed to the “lake” to set sail. With that, Eoin took a seat and watched them playing joyfully with their ships by the pond.
Eoin was still thinking about the proclamations posted to the front gate. Was it more empty Fenian talk, or was this the real thing? The war in Europe was getting closer to Ireland, he knew, and he had heard his parents talking about him eventually being conscripted into the British army. They were against it, he knew, because they considered themselves Irish, not British, like Uncle Charlie. Both his parents’ families had managed to live through the famine because they lived in Dublin City and were not subjected to the utter devastation of the countryside. Still, old memories—and hatreds—died hard in the Kavanagh and Conway families. They would cut the British no slack.
Eoin unrolled his copy of the proclamation and read the top again. His Irish was miniscule, but he knew that Poblacht Na Éireann meant “Irish Republic.” He then looked at the names of the signatories but recognized only two, Pearse and Connolly.
Pearse was famous because of the oration he had given at the grave of the old Fenian Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa last summer at Glasnevin Cemetery: “The fools, the fools, the fools!—They have left us our Fenian dead. . .” The whole episode had made an impression on Eoin because Rossa had died on Staten Island in New York City, but the Volunteers had dug him up and brought him back to Ireland. His father had even brought him to the City Hall to see Rossa, lying in state in his open coffin. It always impressed Eoin that Rossa had been dead for more than a month, and he didn’t stink, even at the height of summer. Could Rossa, Eoin thought, be Ireland’s Lazarus?
Eoin knew Connolly because he was Jim Larkin’s successor at the Irish Workers and Transport Union. A lot of people said he was a troublemaker and a rabble-rouser because he was a socialist and for the working man. He was also considered dangerous because he had his own militia, the Citizen Army. At the beginning of the Great War, he had hung a sign on the front of his headquarters at Liberty Hall: “We Serve Neither King Nor Kaiser, But Ireland.” Eoin had heard his father say that if there were more men like Connolly in Ireland, the Kavanaghs wouldn’t be living in the putrid, godforsaken Piles Buildings.
Soon it got noisier near the front gate, and Eoin’s curiosity got the better of him. He fetched the children and headed back to where the action was. The first person he bumped into was young Byrne, who was howling his eyes out. “Vinny,” Eoin said to his new friend, “what happened?”
“Lieutenant Shiels sent me home,” he said, tears pouring uncontrollably. “He said I was too young to take Jacob’s.”
“What’s going on here?” said one of the Volunteer officers. Vinny explained his demise. “Sure, come along out of that, and don’t mind him,” reassured the officer.
“Yes,” interrupted Major John MacBride, impeccable in his sartorial splendor and beautifully coiffed hair and mustache. “We need all the men we can muster. Sure, I just volunteered meself. Everyone should volunteer for Ireland!” MacBride had been on his way to the Wicklow Hotel to attend a luncheon for his brother, who was getting married, when he ran into the Volunteers assembling on Stephen’s Green for revolution. The temptation was too great, and he couldn’t resist an “invitation” to take Jacob’s for the new Republic. Eoin knew him from the newspapers. He was always in them because of something, usually a scandal involving a woman other than his wife, Maud Gonne, who was often referred to around Dublin City as “Gone Mad” because of her nationalistic and suffragette endeavors. MacBride’s hatred of the British was also legendary—it had carried him as far as South Africa to fight against them in the Boer War. “Will you join us?” he asked of Eoin.
“I can’t,” replied Eoin, again pointing. “The children.”
“Well,” said MacBride, “at least you can march with us to Jacob’s.” Eoin could and would. Soon the brigade was mustered into shape. MacBride and Thomas MacDonagh, the commandant in charge, led them down to the Harcourt Street side of the Green to Cuffe Street, where they made a smart right. They marched the short distance to the rotunda of Jacob’s Biscuit Factory, where Bishop and Aungier Streets met. There they came to a halt. The air was heavy with tension as concerned citizens came out of their tenements to see what all the fuss was about.
Eoin had a feeling in the pit of his stomach that he was about to miss one of the greatest moments in Irish history. “I’ll be buggered,” he said under his breath, took then took Mary and Dickie in each hand, and walked them back up Aungier Street, just a block from home.
“Mary,” he said to his sister, “take Dickie by the hand and bring him home to Mammy.”
“Where are you going?” she asked.
Eoin was conflicted. But it was time to stand and deliver. Finally he blurted out, “Jacob’s Biscuit Factory.” He paused. “Tell that to Mammy and Da. Here, take this proclamation, which will explain it to them. Now hold onto Dickie’s hand, and go straight home.” He watched them go down Whitefriar Place by the side of the Carmelite Church, holding their paper boats in their little hands.
“I’m back,” Eoin said to Vinny at the back of the column.
Vinny smiled, his tears now just a memory. “It’s going to be a grand adventure,” reassured Vinny.
Eoin fell in line, and the only thing he could think of was the sentence from the first paragraph of the proclamation: “Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom.” He looked at Vinny and some of the other young lads, and, with a shiver running down his spine, wondered how Vinny’s grand adventure would play out.
3
The two children burst into the tiny scullery, Mary dragging Dickie by the hand. Instinctively, Rosanna knew something was wrong. “Where’s Eoin?” she asked tentatively.
“He’s gone with the others to Jacob’s,” replied Mary, breathlessly.
“Why?”
“Jacob’s has been taken over by the . . .”
“Fookin’ Fenians,” interjected Dickie, parroting what he had just heard in the street.
Joseph looked at Rosanna and didn’t know whether to lau
gh or cry. “Now, now, son,” he finally said, “we shouldn’t be using that dirty word.”
“Fenian?” replied Dickie.
“No, the other one,” interrupted Rosanna. She turned to Joseph sternly. “You better go out and get that boy. I don’t know what’s happening. I thought the maneuvers were canceled.”
“So did I,” replied her husband, putting on his jacket and grabbing his cap.
Before he could go through the door, Mary held the proclamation out. “Eoin says this will explain all.” They unrolled the proclamation, and, as soon as they saw
POBLACHT NA H EIREANN.
their hearts sank. The signatures told the tale.
“Jesus, Rosanna,” said Joseph. “Pearse, Clarke, and MacDiarmada. It’s the bold Fenian men themselves!” Rosanna sank into a chair in despair. Joseph tried to reassure her. “I’ll be back with the boy in a few minutes.” But it was not a few minutes—he didn’t return for nearly an hour.
“Well?” asked Rosanna.
“No luck,” replied Joseph. “The Volunteers have the street cordoned off. They wouldn’t let me through. The fellow I spoke with said he didn’t know any Eoin Kavanagh.”
“What in God’s name is going on?” asked Rosanna.
“Revolution, my love,” said Joseph, gently taking his wife’s hand. She stifled a cough and looked intently into her husband’s eyes, as the words of her youngest son echoed in her ears.
“Fenians, fookin’ Fenians.”
4
“I hope me Mammy won’t be cross with me.”
Those were the first words in the rebel diaries of Eoin Kavanagh. The “diaries” were notebooks, school ledgers, and assorted pages. The material covering April and May 1916 was now spread before his grandson on the bed where the old rebel had died the week before. So this is the surprise, thought Johnny Three. He was indeed surprised. Although his grandmother was a well-known author in both Ireland and America, he had no idea the old man liked to scribble as well. There were nine cardboard boxes in all. Johnny went about taking the diaries out of the boxes, dusting them off, and trying to form a chronology of events.
“You’re very quiet,” said Diane.
“I wonder why he left them to me?”
“Well, you are the writer in the family.”
Johnny shook his head. “No, my grandmother was the writer in the family. I’m just a glorified hack.”
“Though well reviewed.”
“Through friends in the business.”
“He left them to you because he trusted you,” Diane responded. “He didn’t leave them to the state archives or some university.”
“Probably because he didn’t trust them,” agreed Johnny. “The old man didn’t trust anyone, which may be the reason he lived so long.”
“They may also be worth something,” she added. “Did you think of that?”
“I did, indeed. He always admonished my poor father: ‘money on trees does not grow!’” Diane laughed with him. “Listen to the first line: ‘I hope me Mammy won’t be cross with me.’” Johnny shook his head. “He was a typical Irish lad, he was, influenced by the matriarch of the family.”
“Poor boy,” said Diane as she took hold of the page. “What beautiful penmanship.”
“The nuns and the Christian Brothers,” said Johnny. “Big emphasis on penmanship back then, so you could get some low-paying job as a clerk.” Johnny shook his head and re-read Eoin’s first sentence. He became pensive. “He deeply loved his Mammy, my great-grandmother,” he said to Diane. “She was dying of consumption—tuberculosis—at the time of the rebellion. You know, the British used to call TB ‘the Irish disease.’” He gave a bitter laugh. “What a poor, fucked-up family.”
Diane shook her head sadly.
Johnny continued to read aloud: “‘Mammy asked me to take Mary and Dickie up to the Green for a walk this Easter Monday holiday. The rebels were gathering, and I got carried away in the excitement. They were on the way to Jacob’s to liberate the biscuits, so when we got to Aungier Street with the battalion, I sent Mary home with Dickie and went along for the adventure in Bishop Street.’”
“He has a way with words,” said Diane.
“He was a great storyteller, wasn’t he?” added Johnny. “Look at these,” he said, holding pieces of paper up for Diane to view.
“What?”
“They’re genuine.”
“Wow!” said Diane. “I’m surprised he kept these papers so secret.”
“He probably had his reasons,” replied Johnny, “and I’m sure we’ll find out what they were in due time.”
“This is bothering you, isn’t it?”
“I don’t feel comfortable with this stuff. I’m afraid there may be family skeletons that I don’t want to confront in these boxes.”
“What could be the big secret?”
“I’m not sure, but I suspect there was a lot more to grandpa than being Michael Collins’s bodyguard. He kept himself to himself. I have a feeling that, in America, it was politically correct to be an Irish rebel, but not one with blood on his hands. I think he didn’t want to scare the electorate.” Johnny smiled. “Grandpa knew how to collect a pension.”
“How many?”
“Let’s see. The Irish Army. The U.S. House of Representatives. Dáil Éireann. Plus Social Security and the Irish Old Age Pension. Five. Not bad!”
Diane took Johnny’s arm, drew him close, and kissed him. Johnny laughed; then he kissed his wife full on the lips and slid his hand down the back of her capris, running a finger into her beautiful crack. Even after thirty years together, they were still awesomely horny for each other. “Not now, dear,” admonished Diane.
“Ah,” said Johnny, “how Presbyterian of you!”
Diane was used to the slagging about her being the only Protestant in a mad Irish-Catholic nationalist family. (In her defense, she had taken to listing off Protestant patriots, such as Wolfe Tone, Robert Emmet, Lord Edward, and Charles Stewart Parnell, to keep the “Papists,” as she fondly referred to her family, in their place.)
“Behave yourself,” she said to her husband, “or I’ll hide your dick pill!”
“Ah, ‘The Vee-ag-gra!’” said Johnny. “The Pfizer Riser! The County Cork pecker elixir! You’ve got to look out for those four-hour erections.”
“If you get a four-minute erection, I’ll alert the media!”
Johnny looked at his wife and decided that his friend Frank McCourt was right about Irish men’s attraction to Protestant women. They were indeed a step up in class—and in sex—and dating one was a way of thumbing one’s nose at Holy Mother Church. “Time to look at grand-pa’s diaries,” she said. “I’m sure he wouldn’t have left anything to upset you.” But Johnny knew that the last thing Eoin Kavanagh worried about was the comfort level of his only grandson. Then Johnny laughed.
“What?”
“You’ve just reminded me of one of grandpa’s favorite sayings: ‘Comfort the afflicted—and afflict the comfortable!’”
And it was working, because with a poke from the grave, Eoin Kavanagh III was getting less comfortable by the minute.
5
EOIN KAVANAGH’S DIARY
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 26, 1916
General Post Office
Sackville Street
Dublin, Ireland
What a day! My wound is bandaged and I have dry clothes on at last. Safe—if you can call it that—in the GPO. It looks like a bloody disaster here. Nothing but wounded men and broken glass. It was safer over at Jacob’s.
After we took Jacob’s, we were very busy the first few hours. Commandant MacDonagh and Major MacBride had us fill up the windows with sacks of flour to guard against snipers. We were covered in flour, swiftly moving white ghosts on a mission. “Keep your bloody head down, boy,” MacBride warned me with a wink, “and welcome to the fight!” We also unwound the fire hoses just in case of fire. Most of our rifles were aimed at the Ship Street army barracks near the Castle. After we had our fi
ll of biscuits, it got quite dull. We knew the British army was out there, but they didn’t make a rush to take us. The only excitement was caused by Vinny Byrne, who was sent out on patrol and had a ruckus with the fine citizens of the Blackpitts. Apparently they don’t care if Ireland is free or not. Anyway, some eejit tried to take Vinny’s gun away from him, and someone was shot—and it wasn’t Vincent Byrne.
Tuesday the skies were dark, and it was pouring bucket after bucket without any sign of letting up. It was like the heavens were weeping for poor old Ireland. We ate more crackers and patrolled the factory. We’d filled up every available vessel with water in case the city water supply was interrupted or tampered with by the British. The only grousing from the men is because we’re not allowed to smoke for some reason. Still, some go off and hide for a quick puff.
Jacob’s must be a nice place to work, clean and not too many mice around. They have an employees’ canteen, and there is plenty of tay for everyone. Their bathrooms are cleaner than anything we have at the Piles. You could eat your dinner off the floors here. They are even cleaner than the toilets under Tommy Moore’s arse in Westmoreland Street. And unlike the public toilets on the quays, I don’t have to watch some wrinkled old priest waving his willie at me.
During the night, Commandant MacDonagh had a few of us lads brave the elements to place empty biscuit tin boxes outside the factory as noise booby-traps so that we would know if the British were sneaking up on us. A cunning stunt on the commandant’s part, I think. He also explained to us the importance of Jacob’s in the fight. He said that we now controlled Dublin because we held the GPO, the Four Courts, Stephen’s Green, and the South Dublin Union. The British army would probably land at Kingstown and march on Dublin. We at Jacob’s were in a position to cut them off, depending on where they crossed the Grand Canal. Commandant de Valera, he said, would probably have first shot at them at Boland’s Mills. We could also block any advance by the British, MacDonagh explained, from Portobello Barracks just to our south and Richmond Barracks to the west. We were right in the middle of it all. Commandant MacDonagh is a good egg, and it’s surprising to me that such a quiet, gentle man like him would sign such a bloodthirsty proclamation. But the British war with their first cousins, the Germans, is beginning to grate on the Irish. Even gentle folk are threatening sedition.
The 13th Apostle: A Novel of a Dublin Family, Michael Collins, and the Irish Uprising Page 3
