A Star Called Henry (17 page)

—You won’t, I said, still aiming at Pearse.

—We’ll send out a squad now to get them off the streets, said Connolly.

It was over. We looked across and stored away the faces for another day. I met the hard stares of country boys and shopkeepers, met and matched them. But, for now, it was over. I could hear the fire engines behind me and sniper fire from Trinity College. And over their heads, at the door to the stairs, I saw Miss O’Shea. How long had she been there? We looked at each other. She rubbed her neck, right behind her ear where she hid her little creases from the world. And she frowned at me.

—We’ll do it nice and politely, said Connolly.—Those fires will be getting dangerous.

—I’ll go, I said.

—No, you won’t, said Connolly.—I want you here.

The barriers were pushed away from the front door and Paddy Swanzy and other men slipped out. I looked over to the stairs door. Miss O’Shea had gone.

—You wouldn’t have come back.

Connolly was beside me, his moustache almost in my mouth.

—I resent that remark, sir, I said.

—Good man. We’re surrounded by gobshites, Henry.

—I know, sir.

—Catholic and capitalist, Henry. It’s an appalling combination.

—Yes, sir.

—I want you near me, Henry.

—You can count on me, sir.

And I meant it.

—Back to your post now, he said.—But keep your hand on your father’s leg.

—I will, sir.

I could hear the vicious hiss as the rain and the fire brigade hoses smothered the flames, and people ran from the flats above the shops. And I watched as the steady trail of people went by, adding to their height and bulk with bits and lumps of Irish property. Two men rolled by with a cooper of stout. About twenty people marched past with a long roll of carpet over their heads; it must have come from one of the hotels and, against the fires, the procession looked like the march of a huge, headless centipede. Straw and wrapping paper tumbled down the street, some of the straw on fire and spilling tiny lights. A gang of women wore pots as head-dresses. They clanged their new hats with wooden spoons and spatulas -
Oh thunder and lightning is no lark
- and they sang into the flames -
when Dubellin City is in the dark.
A kid skidded past with four tiers of a wedding cake.
If you have any money go up to the park.
Four more women went by with a bed on their backs.
And view the zoological gardens.
A man was trying to stop them; he was pointing back down the street with his umbrella, obviously asking them to take their stuff back to where it had come from. One woman started fencing with him, ladle versus umbrella. I’d seen him before.

—Who’s your man?

—Sheehy-Skeffington, said Charlie Murtagh.—Skeffy. He’s a pacifist, so the smart money’s on the brasser with the big spoon.

I couldn’t tell where the bullet had come from but, across the street, right in front of me, I saw a man being shot. He stiffened; he dropped slowly to his knees, grabbed a pillar, and stayed there, kneeling. For two days. Further up the street, two drunks were getting sick at the stony feet of Father Mathew and a woman made an armchair for herself out of one of the dead horses; she wrapped herself from the wind and rain in velvet curtains and cuddled up between the horse’s legs. There was serious madness going on out there. And, in the middle of it all, Pearse gave us a speech.
Dublin, by rising in arms, has redeemed its honour forfeited in 1813 when it failed to support the rebellion of Robert Emmet.
I looked out at Dublin rising. And there she came, through it all, out of the darkest of the flames, the loveless old hoor herself, Granny Nash. She was carrying a wall made of books; she had two of them open on top of the pile, reading them already, one eye for each, as she strolled up Sackville Street. She looked singed and half-destroyed but she moved like a dreaming child on her way to school. And I cheered her on. I shouted with all I had but she never looked up from her books.
The country is rising to Dublin’s call.
And we waited. We waited for the advance or attack. We wondered what was happening behind the cracks of distant bullets. We didn’t know that we’d been cut off, that the military now controlled the line along the river and the land to the north. Or that there were dead men scattered all over the city, soldiers and rebels and people who’d been in the way.
Irish regiments have refused to act against their fellow countrymen. Such looting as has occurred has been done by hangers-on of the British Army
. We didn’t know that there were eighteen-pounders coming in from Athlone, blasting everything in the way. Or that they were taking back everything, the train stations, Stephen’s Green, the bits and plots of Ireland we’d freed the day before. We were alone and stuck and we didn’t know it.

Someone came back from outside with news of a charge; they’d be coming over the river any minute.

—This is it, men, said Connolly.

We waited.

—Fix bayonets.

And we waited for the attack. Old Clarke came over to my window and stared out.

—Our time has come, he said.

I’d never seen a man look so happy.

The rosary was whipped back into life. We waited all night. All the time searching, listening. Listening.

 

—What the fuck was that? said Paddy.

It was different. The firing had intensified since before daybreak; we’d been pulled awake by noise that was sudden and near. The walls and street were being shredded by machine-gun and sniper fire and we’d heard the first awful booms of an eighteen-pounder from somewhere across the river, opposite the Custom House, somewhere. The story whizzed around the building that it was the German guns nearing but the same story died as we felt the streets rock, heard the first walls and roofs collapsing, not far away any more, and we knew that these shells weren’t being sent to support anyone. There were marksmen and machine-guns on the roofs of Trinity, the Burgh Quay Music Hall, Jervis Street Hospital, all around us, the tower down at Amiens Street station, the roof of McBirney’s - a vicious bastard who even shot a blind man with a very white stick and the St John’s Ambulance man who ran to help him - the roof of the Rotunda, all raking us and our other positions nearer the bridge, Kelly’s tackle shop on the corner of Bachelor’s Walk and Hopkins & Hopkins, the jewellers; we’d a few men in each of those buildings, pretending they were whole squadrons. We were surrounded and we all knew that the end was coming up the street; the bombardment was a yawning sky above us, waiting to fall. The rosary had broken into a sprint and there was a queue upstairs for the priest. The bullets and silences were getting nearer and nearer and the air was a soup of brick dust.

But this was different. A huge clang. Like the world’s gong toppling over. The end, and its echo. Like nothing we could ever have been ready for. A new, appalling weapon. Rage roaring up from the earth’s core.

—What the fuck was that? said Paddy.

He was the only one who could speak. The rest of them waited for the next roar and its result, and hoped they’d understand it.

Word came down from the roof. A shell had hit the Loop Line bridge. They were bombarding Liberty Hall from a gunboat on the river and the iron bridge had got in the way; it was really a fishery protection vessel but
gunboat
made us feel better. They were dropping hot bombs and incendiary shells on the Hall, to flush out all the rebels. They didn’t know that Peter Ennis, the caretaker, was the only man in the building. The headquarters of the I.T.G.W.U., my home and the birthplace of our revolution, was being battered into the ground.

And Connolly was delighted. He clapped his hands and thumped his chest.

—Now they’re taking us seriously! he shouted at the dome.—They’re rattled!

—They’re not the only ones, said Paddy.

What did I say back to Paddy? Nothing at all. Too scared? Too busy? No. I just wasn’t there when he said it. I was downstairs, in the basement, in a hot little room with much more dust than air. Did I hear the shell hitting the Loop Line? Did I hear the clang? I did, but I thought the noise was coming from me. I was falling onto my back when it happened. I’d been pushed on top of a high bed made of blocks of stamps, sheets and sheets of the things, columns of them, sticky side up. I was stuck there with my britches nuzzling my ankles as Miss O’Shea grabbed my knees and climbed on top of me.

—This skirt, she said.—Wait.

I heard a rip that set my balls butting each other.

—Now, she said.—That’s better.

Her fingers landed perfectly on my hips.

—What’ll you say about the skirt? I asked her.

I couldn’t cope with silence.

—I’ll say I tore it for Ireland, said Miss O’Shea.—And it’s no lie.

Her hair washed over me. I was in her mouth so quickly - Jesus, the heat! And her teeth and tongue! - and out again, before I’d the time to know it. And again, for longer and out, and she climbed up my jacket. I tried to grab hair, cloth, anything - it was pitch black in there, just heat and fingers - but she slapped my hands away, and harder when I slapped her back.

—I’m still your teacher, Henry Smart, she said.

—Yes, Miss, I said.

Her hands were on my neck; she prodded and glided, looking for ways to kill me. I hadn’t a clue what was happening. My slouch hat hit a wall.

—We won’t be needing that.

And she was right over my face now. She kissed the top of my head, then filled her mouth with hair and pulled. She let go and lifted herself. I heard tugging, a ping and there was warm flesh on my face, velvet skin swaying over me then pressing down on me. A nipple closed my eye as a hand grabbed my wee fighting rebel and he skipped from her fingers and she grabbed again. And she was gone from on top of me and my eye clung to the memory of her nipple. And her weight was gone. I was ready to let go of a shout, a howl - I’d never been so furious, so exposed - but I was in her, just like that - the scorch, the heat! - and she was on me again. And now she let me hold and find her.

—Keep your legs down, Henry, she said.

She tickled my balls and I went towards the ceiling, and she slapped the side of my leg.

—Do what you’re told, she said.

I dropped my legs again and she rode me slowly, with a rhythm that was cruel and wonderful and could never have held on to music. It surprised and taunted, dragged and built me and made me feel like the king of the world and a complete and utter fuckin’ eejit.

Henry Smart, the freedom fighter, had gone down to the basement with conquest on his mind. There were new territories to explore, uncharted rivers behind little ears. I was coming off the bottom step when she saw me. She looked around, saw a clear coast and pulled me by the bandolier into the store room.

And now she was shoving my shoulders down into the stamp sheets and lifting and dropping and there were wet slaps now banging out a beat and gumming my arse to the stamps. She’d break the rhythm now, again, dip herself to my face, to remind me that she was there, the inventor, and torturer if she wanted to be.

Her mouth was on my ear.

—What if they came in now, Henry?

—
Who?
I said.—The other women?

She grunted.

—Pearse and Plunkett?

She licked my ear.

—The
British
?

—Oh God.

—The Dublin Fusiliers?

—Oh
God
.

—The Royal Norfolks?

—Yes.

—The Royal Irish Rifles?

—Ye
sss
.

I was running out of soldiers. She pulled my ear with her teeth. She growled.

—The Scottish - oh fuck - the Scottish Border
ers
?

—
Maithú
, Henry!

—The Sherwood Fah-fah-foresters?

—
Maithúúúú
- oh -
maithú
—

—The Bengal fuckin’ Lancers!

And we came together - although I didn’t know it - in a froth that cemented the pair of us to the stamps and nearly frightened the shite out of me because nothing like this had ever happened to a woman before and I didn’t know if she was dying or laughing on top of me. She hammered me into the gum. (My forehead still carries two nipple-made pockmarks.) She pounded my chest. She cut my neck. She gave me a hiding I never recovered from. She growled and hummed while I guffed and heaved, my teeth were chattering, I’d spurted everything and she dumped herself beside me. We were freezing, gasping and soaked in sweat, spunk and post office glue.

—God, she said.—The mess.

They’d never seen walls shake before, and the gunboat’s shells, and now the shells from two nine-pounders across the river at Trinity, reminded them that they weren’t just up against superior numbers; they had no shells of their own to send back. The Vickers guns and snipers were closing in and impossible to find. They were playing hide-and-seek with the men on the roof, using and vacating all the vantage points around. The spray of lead coming from the Anzacs on the roof of Trinity and other shifting points was constant now and nearing all the time.

The G.P.O. had no electricity, no radio or telephone link-up. The only outside contact was a line of twine running across the street, over the tram wires, to the Imperial, and messages carried in a can that had already been hit by a sniper. The ceilings were crumbling and falling, pipes had been pierced. The smell of escaping gas made the men feel trapped, and Connolly had them strengthening the barricades, locking themselves in.

—They’re busy upstairs, I said when I thought I could trust my voice again and my spine had stopped yelping.

—Are you surprised, Henry? she said.

—Surprised at what?

—Me. Are you surprised at me?

—No, I said.—Not really.

The biggest lie of my entire life. I was still so surprised, I was almost unconscious.