The Soldier's Song

Part One

I

II

III

IV

Part Two

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

Part Three

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

The kids in the street were fighting again. They were always squabbling over something, but this time it was serious. He heard scuffling and shouting, and the high-pitched voices rising to a crescendo – then a distinct slap, and the wail of a child crying. As he bent to look out through the lace curtain, he saw some of them darting into the gloomy hallway of the tenement building across the street. A welter of skinny legs and heads shaved for nits. Running to mammy, he thought, smiling to himself, though they’d probably all get a clip round the ear for their trouble. That was the hardest lesson they’d learn; that she didn’t care what side they were on.

He was still smiling as he turned back to the mirror and finished fastening his cufflink. He straightened his cuffs, enjoying the feel of the heavy, luxuriant cloth around his wrists, and then took the jacket from the back of a chair and slipped it on. Nearly ready now. He plucked the invitation from the shabby gilt frame of the mirror and looked at it for a few moments before slipping it into an inside pocket. Not bad, he thought, standing up straight and sticking out his chest as he surveyed himself in the glass. Quite elegant, in fact – although he couldn’t resist tugging the tie just a little more to one side.

He glanced down at the table, stacked with books, and thought about all those evenings he’d spent teaching sweaty, dull-eyed young lads to bluff their way through the civil service exams. The tedium, the endless bloody repetition. But it had been worth it at a bob a time. The suit was the only thing he’d ever had tailored, and he smiled to himself again as he admired it in the mirror. It was a good suit and he carried it well. At nineteen he still had the gangly limbs of an adolescent, but he was tall and well proportioned and there was a certain grace in his bearing. With his fair hair brushed and his face freshly shaved, he thought he looked presentable, if not downright handsome. And definitely elegant. He could easily pass for a gentleman.

‘Stephen!’

The reedy voice barely carried down the stairs, but Stephen’s face fell at the sound. What was it this time? More tea? Or a mug of porter? Or did the chamber pot need emptying again?

‘Stephen! Stephen!’

He walked out into the narrow hallway in his stockinged feet. ‘I’ll be up now!’ he shouted up the stairs, and scowled to himself as he went down the passage into the kitchen. Why couldn’t Joe see to him? He’d heard him come in from work hours ago – the slam of the hall door and then his heavy boots on the stairs as he went straight up to bed. The late nights were catching up on him. He’d been out until the small hours again last night, over in Liberty Hall with his union pals. That was all very well, but he still had to be up at the crack of dawn to queue with the corner boys and bowsies looking for work on the docks. If the Da was in better health he would have had something to say about that. Joe could do better. He’d been an apprentice coachbuilder before they were all locked out – regular work and good prospects. Now he was lucky if he got three days a week.

Stephen’s shoes stood on a sheet of newspaper on the kitchen table. They were his old shoes – the money from the lessons hadn’t stretched that far – but they’d been polished until they seemed to glow in the shaft of evening sunlight that came in through the scullery window. As he sat down to put them on, he wondered if it suited his brother not to have a regular job. The lockout had ended a year ago, and he could have gone back to work with all the others, but Joe said he wouldn’t lower himself. He’d found his niche in the trade union – working in the soup kitchen at first, then helping to organize pickets and rallies. Now he was a sergeant in the workers’ militia. Stephen had laughed when he heard about that. A soldier in Jim Larkin’s ragbag army? Much good they’ll do, armed to the teeth with stones and bottles! But that was before he found the gun.

A real gun – a rifle. He walked back up the dingy passage, his shoes ringing loudly on the cracked lino, and stopped at the foot of the stairs. He’d left the parlour door open and he could see the sideboard against the far wall. That was where he’d found it, when he went in there to fetch a book. It was wrapped in a potato sack and stuffed underneath the sideboard. The sacred bloody front parlour of all places – their mother would be spinning in her grave! But more worrying was where it came from: the Irish Volunteers had landed hundreds of rifles from a yacht the Sunday before, and there had been trouble when they smuggled them back into the city. A riot, shooting on the quays, and four civilians had been killed. Joe had been out all day Sunday, coming home sunburned but unusually quiet. Now Stephen knew why.

The gun was gone when he brought the book back the next day, but he had a feeling it hadn’t gone far. It gave him pause for thought. Joe was always on about fighting for the rights of the workers. Maybe they were doing more than just talking up a revolution over in Liberty Hall.

‘Stephen! Stephen!’

‘I’m coming, Da!’

He dreaded going back up. He’d been up there half the afternoon, and he still hadn’t got over watching Phillips unwind the bandage; the smell that filled the small room, the purple, puffy look of the mangled leg. His father had borne the indignity without a murmur, keeping his face to the wall, but even Phillips had winced when he saw the wound. He was enough of a doctor to know the agony it must be causing.

Watching the examination, it seemed to Stephen that the pain had shrunk his father physically. Every time he walked into that room he was shocked to see how frail he had become. Perhaps it was because he’d been so hearty before. A blacksmith, with a blacksmith’s arms and chest. Stephen could barely remember his mother’s illness, but he thought it had been different for her. Where his father had shrunk, she had faded away. Even her red hair had lost its shine as the disease consumed her, turning her greyer and greyer, until finally it seemed the only colour left in her was the scarlet flecks of blood on her lips. His father had been strong then. Every evening, he’d carried his two sons up to bed, one on each arm, and then gone back down to tend to his dying wife. Now he could hardly raise himself up in the bed to piss.

Stephen stood silent, listening, hoping he’d fallen asleep.

There was a soft tread above and Joe appeared on the landing. His shirt was open and his face puffy with sleep. He was shorter than his older brother, but as stout as his father had once been, with a barrel chest and muscular arms. His hair was jet black, and clung to his round skull in tight curls.

‘He’s asking for you,’ he said, with a jerk of his head. ‘He wants to see the suit.’

So that was it. Stephen sighed as he went up the stairs, feeling his brother’s eye on him. He could feel another row brewing, but he was in no humour for it tonight. Joe held his peace too. The bedroom door was open and both of them had enough respect for their father not to let him see them fighting. Joe waited until he came up and then squeezed past him on the narrow landing and started down the stairs, his face stony. Stephen straightened his jacket and touched his tie. He could already see the childlike smile on the ravaged face, the withered hand patting the bedspread, telling him to sit. He loved his father, but he hated to see him like that. Still, it had to be done. A deep breath and a false smile, and he walked into the darkened room.

By the time he came back down, Joe was in the kitchen, sitting at the table with a mug of stout and a plate of bread and cheese. The sun had sunk out of sight, and the kitchen was gloomy again. Stephen’s top hat stood on the table, freshly brushed and gleaming.

‘Did your man come and have a look at him?’ Joe asked. Your man was Phillips.

‘He did.’

‘And what did he say?’

‘He said there’s some infection that we need to keep an eye on. He put on a fresh bandage and said we should change it every other day and wash the wound while we’re at it. He put some iodine on it and left the bottle.’

‘That’s all he did? He put on a fresh bandage?’

Stephen picked up his hat from the table and brushed some crumbs from the brim.

‘Yes. That’s all he could do.’

‘Ah, my arse, that’s all he could do! Could he not give him something for it?’

‘What do you mean, could he not give him something for it? What could he give him? He’s only a doctor, not a miracle-worker.’

‘He’s not even a doctor!’

Stephen’s mouth tightened into a grimace. It was true; Phillips was still only a medical student – which was why he didn’t prescribe anything. But he knew his business and he would take hardly any money. Joe liked to sneer at him, but he wasn’t the one who was paying.

‘Well, he will be a doctor, and he knows more about medicine than that quack chemist of yours with all his powders and potions.’

‘Sure, if he knows that much, why can’t he help our Da? All he ever does is put iodine on it and change the bandage. Why can’t he make him better?’

Stephen had to put the hat down to keep from crushing it in his hands. He could feel his colour rising and anger swelling in his chest. That was Joe all over: always black and white, yes or no, nothing in between. Always going at everything like a bull at a gate. Did he really think his father’s leg could be mended just like that? As if it was ever that simple.

‘You know why, Joe! You know damn well nothing’s going to make him better. Have you ever seen the state of his leg? Have you? Have you ever looked at it with the bandage off? Phillips said it’s a wonder he never got gangrene. And I’ll tell you what else he said to me. He said he’d have been better off if they’ damputated it. He’d have had a chance then. But he’s too weak for it now – the operation would finish him off altogether.’

Joe had never seen his father’s leg – not because he was squeamish, but because he couldn’t bear to even think about it without blaming himself. He shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He was the one who’d dragged him down to the rally on Sackville Street during the lockout. The old man had never had much time for trade unions, but he’d let his son talk him into coming down to support them. Joe had told him the only way he might get his job back was if all the workers would unite and show the employers that they couldn’t just be shut out on the street. He wasn’t to know that the police would charge the rally, or that a police horse would run his father down as he tried to get out of the way. He’d wept as he helped to carry him to safety, the poor man screaming in pain every time they moved his leg. It wasn’t his fault, everybody kept telling him; it was those bastard coppers. But he knew who was really to blame.

Stephen had picked up his hat again and watched his brother take a long swallow from his mug of stout. He knew the guilty look, but he knew also that Joe was obstinate. This was his way if he was on the back foot; he’d clam up, grow surly. He wasn’t finished yet, not by a long chalk. There was a palpable tension as Stephen settled the hat on his head and picked up his cane from the corner. Joe eyed him with barely disguised contempt.

‘Go on so, go out and enjoy yourself,’ he muttered, as his brother stepped into the hallway.

Stephen turned to give him an angry stare. ‘I will. And why wouldn’t I?’

‘Why wouldn’t you? Your own father’s lying sick in his bed and you’re off to a party with your college chums. Have you no shame at all?’

Shame? Stephen had to master the urge to hit him with the cane. He’d a hard neck. He pointed furiously at the ceiling.