Shamrock Green (27 page)

Chapter Fourteen

Early on Saturday morning Inspector Vaizey received news that the
Aud
had been scuttled off Queenstown, that the German captain and crew had been taken prisoner and, more by luck than design, Roger Casement had been captured while trying to land from a small boat on the Kerry coast. He welcomed the tidings from the south, for the loss of the arms shipment would surely put paid to the brotherhoods' plans for an uprising.

Across town the rebel military council met and elected to call off the mobilisation that had been scheduled for Easter Sunday, a decision that the rank and file viewed as cowardly, for, in their view, any gesture was better than no gesture at all. The rebel council met once more and this time, bowing to the wishes of the majority, voted to strike at noon on Monday.

‘Here it is,' Turk Trotter shouted. ‘Here it is in black and white.'

‘What does it say, Turk?' Maeve begged. ‘Tell me what it says.'

‘Four city battalions will parade for inspection at ten a.m. today.'

‘The signature, man, the signature?' Kevin demanded.

‘Thomas MacDonagh signed it.'

‘The brigade commandant wouldn't let you down,' said Maeve.

‘No he would not,' said Turk. ‘So more of that bacon, me buttercup. More eggs, more tea, more of every damned thing, for we are needin' to be fed like fightin' cocks for
this
ten o'clock parade.'

‘Does Charlie know about the order?' Peter McCulloch asked.

‘Charlie it was who gave me the copy,' Turk answered.

‘Where is he then?'

‘Marshalling the troops.'

‘An' where's Fran?' Peter said. ‘Is he upstairs knockin' his fancy-wife?'

‘Enough o' that now,' said Turk while Jansis, in the passing, gave Peter a rap on the ear to remind him there were ladies present.

‘We haven't seen Fran since yesterday afternoon,' Maeve said. ‘But he'll be here to go over the wall with you, I'm sure.'

‘I hope he brings gelignite,' said Kevin, ‘so we can blow the road if it comes to a retreat.'

‘A retreat?' said Turk. ‘There'll be no retreat. We'll hold Watton's warehouse till they raise the flag o' the republic over City Hall.'

‘Aye,' said Peter, ‘or until we're all kilt.'

Her uncle was ugly, Maeve thought, with gargoyle features and a wispy straw-coloured beard.

‘I've no intention o' getting killed,' said Turk. ‘I want to be alive an' free as a bird, an Irish bird flying round the Irish flag.'

‘An' shittin' on Bedford Tower,' Peter said, grinning.

‘I'll do that dirty thing on you, sonny, if you don't shut your gob.' Turk reached and pulled Maeve to him. ‘What about you, my sweetheart, will you go flyin' round the Irish flag with me?'

‘Sure an' I will, Turk,' said Maeve.

Jansis and she had cooked supper for them last night and breakfast this morning, for Mam was busy with Sean. The men had spent the night in the Shamrock and when they had appeared this morning they wore the uniform, Erin's pride, and looked grand and manly in light green with bandoliers criss-crossed over their chests. Turk wore a sombrero and a holstered revolver that he let her hold when she asked him, the weapon big and heavy in her small hands. There was no sign of her grandfather, for he was ill again, though not so ill he couldn't attend the races, it seemed. Charlie had taken over from her grandfather. The brewery at Towers had been shut down, for Charlie had been promised a seat in the new parliament by the president, Patrick Pearse.

Lovely it was, at dawn in the smoke-filled kitchen with the men in uniform. Her breath caught in her throat when Turk put his big hand across her stomach and told her what a fine time they would have fighting the British, how the spirit would prevail and Ireland would belong to the Irish again for the first time in four hundred years. The stove was roaring and through the open door she could see the hens, the few that were left, sleepily pecking at the gravel. She would feed the hens soon, feed everyone and anything, then she would go out to watch her friends marching, only this time the march wouldn't end back in the drill hall or in the pub but on the barricades.

She leaned against Turk, resting on his stomach and thigh. The boys were laughing, even Peter. She wished Daddy could have been here with them, not fighting for the English a thousand miles away. She despised him and yet she loved him too in spite of all Mr Whiteside had told her about the nature of betrayal and that the Germans were their allies against the English and that no decent Irishman should bear arms against an ally.

Turk pulled a watch from his breast pocket and consulted it.

‘Eat up, lads,' he said, soberly. ‘It's time to push along.'

Kevin got to his feet. ‘Death or glory, chaps, what, what?' he said in a mock English accent. ‘Up and at 'em.'

‘Up an' at 'em is it.' Slipping Maeve from his knee, Turk got to his feet too. ‘Sure this is one parade we don't want to miss.'

‘That we do not,' said Peter.

*   *   *

The uprising took everyone by surprise and the ease with which the warehouse fell to twenty-two men from the brotherhood struck Maeve as an anticlimax. They did not clamber over the wall from the back yard of the Shamrock but marched unchallenged down Sutter Street to the warehouse gates.

‘Now what's all this, son?' the gateman said. ‘Don't you know we're closed for the bank holiday?'

‘Aye, we know,' Kevin said, rather sheepishly. ‘We are here to claim the property for the Brotherhood of Erin in the name of the new republic.'

‘An' what the devil are they goin' to be doin' wit' it?' the gateman said.

He was a fat fellow, round as a cannonball, with thick white hair and a white moustache. He had on a uniform of sorts, not military, and a big key-chain dangled from his belt.

‘Occupy it,' Kevin said, ‘in the name of a free Ireland.'

‘Home rulers!' The gateman shook his head. ‘Well, well, well!'

‘It's the revolution, man,' said Kevin. ‘It's the uprising.'

The gateman remained unmoved behind the padlocked gate.

At this hour of a Monday morning heavy lorries would normally have been rolling in and out, for Watton's stored a vast assortment of piping for the gas and water companies as well as steel plate and corrugated iron, bales of raw cotton and jute and gigantic slabs of granite that the cranes slung about as if they weighed no more than communion wafers. Over a hundred people, including women and girls, were employed by the company but today only a few storemen were visible in the yard.

Turk had told Maeve that it wasn't safe for a girl on her own, for there might be shooting and he didn't want to have to carry her home to her mamma with a bullet in her head. She had followed them down from the parade ground at the Green none the less, down and across the bridge again, back to dreary cobbled Sutter Street that seemed to have nothing in it but dusty sunshine and flocks of pigeons. Turk knew she was behind them, but he was intent on playing the soldier and ignored her.

He squared his shoulders, stuck his thumbs in his belt and eyed the gateman with ferocious patience. Charlie, dapper as a dandy in his uniform, seemed content to let Kevin do the talking.

Kevin said, ‘Joseph, for God's sake, will ye not be lettin' us in?'

‘I'm thinkin' about it.' Joseph, the gateman, was alone at his post, the wooden hut behind him empty. ‘Tell me, son, what it is you want with a warehouse? There are no English soldiers here.'

‘It's a strategic position,' Kevin hissed.

‘Is it now?' Joseph stroked his moustache, jangled his key-chain, looked nonchalantly up and down Sutter Street. ‘What's strateeejeeeck about it?'

‘Jaysus!' Turk burst out. ‘Why are we arguin' with this idiot?'

Hauling the revolver from its holster, he stepped to the gate, took aim at the big iron padlock and pulled the trigger. The clang of metal striking metal echoed sullenly over the rooftops. Pigeons rose in unison and flew off while the boys of the brotherhood dived to the ground, ducking the fragments of metal that ricocheted from the gate and the gateposts.

The remains of the padlock dangled on the chain for a moment then fell off with a tinny sound, and the big gate swung open.

Joseph shook his head again. ‘Sure an' there was no call for that.'

‘Aye, but there was,' said Kevin.

‘Forward,' Turk cried.

The boys of the brotherhood scrambled to their feet and fell in behind him as he swaggered into the yard to occupy the warehouse in the name of the new republic.

*   *   *

‘I saw a man get shot tonight,' Maeve said.

Sylvie glanced up, astonished not so much at the nature of the information as the casual manner in which her daughter delivered it.

‘Where?'

‘Up by St Stephen's Green, near the Shelbourne.'

‘What were you doing there? I told you not to cross the Liffey,' Sylvie said. ‘Did you take the tram?'

‘There are no trams,' Maeve said. ‘Have you not been out at all?'

‘We've been a-waitin' for Mr Hagarty,' Jansis said. ‘Tell us about this fellow you saw shot; an English soldier, was he?'

‘Nup,' Maeve said, ‘just an ordinary bloke.'

‘One of us then?' said Jansis.

‘One of nobody by the look of him,' said Maeve.

All the excitement had been squeezed out of her. When Turk wouldn't let her into the warehouse with them she had gone up town again and had spent most of the day wandering from one barricade to another. She sat at the kitchen table now, elbows spread out and if she hadn't been so famished Sylvie reckoned she would have put her head down and would have fallen asleep.

The back door was open and there was still light, though not much of it. Sylvie could see the chicken coop and the wall of the yard and part of the warehouse roof outlined against a dark blue sky so calm and bland that she could hardly believe that her brothers-in-law were crouched inside, making ready for a shooting match. Even in the snug kitchen, though, you could make out the little whip-snaps of rifle fire floating down from the town.

Head propped on one hand, Maeve scooped up peas with her fork.

‘Funny,' she said, ‘you couldn't see a soul in the park, though you knew they were there. But I hardly saw a policeman all day long.'

‘The Metropolitans aren't armed,' Jansis stated. ‘You won't see much of them when there's real trouble in the streets.'

‘Did you see any British soldiers?' Sylvie asked.

‘No, but I heard a lot had been killed in the Portobello Road.'

‘Is that where the man was shot?' Jansis said.

‘Nup, at the barricade at the Green. Motor-cars an' beds an' barrows an' all sorts of stuff was piled on to it. They'd taken the man's trade cart, I think,' Maeve went on. ‘There wasn't a volunteer in sight until the man – a big chap – came stridin' out o' Bellevue Street an' headed straight for the barricade. He wanted his cart back and he'd come to fetch it. The volunteers – Citizen Army – appeared behind the palings, come out of hiding in the bushes.'

‘Where were you while this was happening?'

‘Standin' in among the crowd.'

‘Crowd? What crowd?' said Sylvie.

‘Some folk had just got back from the seaside. There were no trains an' no trams so they'd had to walk all the way an', by Gad, were they bad-tempered,' Maeve said. ‘The cart man was near as old as Granddad and up he went to the palings with his finger waggin' and told them he wanted his cart back. They told him to leave it right where it was if he didn't want shot, but the chap said he needed the cart to earn a livin' and ran back to the barricade and started to haul it out of the pile. That's when they shot him. Blew a hole in the top o' his head, I think.' Maeve sighed. ‘Then a woman ran out into the road, screamin' like a banshee. I thought they'd shoot her too, but they never did. She got down on her knees in the road and shrieked at them and they vanished away into the bushes again. Some folk from the crowd lifted the man an' carried him to the hospital next door to the Arts Club. Do you know where that is, Mam?'

‘No,' Sylvie said.

‘Was he dead?' said Jansis.

With finger and thumb, Maeve removed a piece of gristle from her teeth and laid it on the side of the plate. She was drowsy with fresh air and exercise, the long day behind her. She had no fear in her, no anxiety, no horror. The shooting of a man, an ordinary citizen, had not affected her; Sylvie was dismayed by her daughter's apparent callousness.

‘Did Fran not come back?' Maeve asked.

‘No, he did not.' Jansis had never taken to Fran Hagarty and still regarded him as a cuckoo in the nest. ‘What else have you heard? Is there no word of the Germans landin' in Kerry yet?'

‘I heard all sorts o' things, but nothin' about Germans. We've taken the Custom House and the Post Office but not the castle. Mr Pearse declared the republican government in power from the steps o' the Post Office and the tricolour is flyin' from all the flagpoles.' Maeve paused, mouth open, meat visible on her tongue. ‘Listen to the guns,' she said. ‘Don't you hear the guns?'

‘I do,' said Jansis, crossing herself. ‘God help the boys behind them.'

*   *   *

The garrison had been taken completely by surprise and if he had been the commandant he would have stormed the castle regardless of the cost in lives. On the whole, though, the brigadiers had done a fine job and by Tuesday morning the city centre was as secure as it would ever be. Kaygan assured him that most of the strategic points south of the Liffey were well defended and that if the Brits wanted to prevent the rebels extending the lines they would have to bring in cannon.