‘Are you all right, Your Grace?’ whispered Father Daly, climbing onto the stage.
‘For all you care, seminarian,’ said Stanislaus, mustering his strength to walk off the stage, beating a path through the people with his stick. Father Daly took hold of his elbow, and though he tried to shrug him off, there was little force in his protest.
‘You don’t look well, Your Grace.’
As they passed him in the doorway Victor Lennon nodded, smiled and gulped heartily from a huge bottle. He laughed as he looked at the bishop. Stanislaus wanted to stop him, to insist that the event was teetotal, but his knees buckled beneath him. Had Father Daly not held him up, he’d have crumpled.
‘Are you all right, Father?’ said Charlie Quinn, smoking a cigarette with Turlough Moriarty by the door.
‘I’m surprised at you, Charlie Quinn, I’d have expected better,’ Stanislaus wheezed as Father Daly helped him into the street. ‘There would’ve been no problem if you’d ended proceedings when you were supposed to. If you only …’ Stanislaus said to Father Daly, but hadn’t the breath to finish.
‘You just need rest, Your Grace, you’ve been overdoing it lately,’ said the curate.
‘If you’d made sure it was over by eleven like you were supposed to,’ Stanislaus said again as they arrived at the Parochial House, suddenly more weary than angry now that he was inside his own front door. Almost immediately, his eyelids started to droop. ‘Victor Lennon may be the only layman in the parish who knows how to address me correctly. Isn’t that funny? Isn’t that awful?’ he said.
Stanislaus’s last thought before he fell asleep that night was the look on Charlie Quinn’s face as he’d chastised him. The young man had seemed genuinely distraught.
People are cheering for me and shaking my hand. Benedict looked so strong and unyielding up there on stage, laying down the law, but I knew the people were with me. There’s a huge banner draped from the ceiling, and yes, it’s green when it should be red, but it is a tribute to me. He looked around the packed hall, five hundred people here at least, and saw sheep in need of a shepherd. I saw comrades in need of example. The young priest with the blond hair has to drag the old bastard off the stage and out the door after the musicians and the dancing start up again. Some ruddy-faced fellow thrusts a bottle into my hand just as Benedict is passing me at the door, and I take a drink, assuming the clear liquid inside is water. Come to think of it, a stupid assumption. It tastes of nothing but pain, and my face screws up as the poteen goes down. The young priest steers Benedict to the door and he’s gone before I get my breath back. I feel like I’ve been punched in the windpipe at the very moment I should be enjoying my victory, Benedict’s defeat. He was so very white-looking! So beaten-looking. Like a prize-fighter being helped from the ring after being knocked out. I remember a couple of years ago how the audience in the Volta Picture Palace tore the place apart with excitement after the newsreel showed Jack Johnson getting his comeuppance. As they all line up to talk to me, to shake my hand, to pay tribute, I feel how Jess Willard must have felt after he knocked the big nigger out. Champion of the bloody world.
I know a lot of faces but I’m struggling with names. ‘Stay close to me and drop people’s names into conversation in case I forget,’ I say quietly into Charlie’s ear. ‘Try and not make it too obvious.’
‘Hello, Colm, how are all the McDermotts this evening?’ says Charlie to a man of fifty who comes up to me, and a matronly woman beside him.
‘Welcome home, lad, welcome home,’ says Colm McDermott, shaking my hand like he’s trying to wring something out of it.
I tell him it’s great to see him again, and take a punt on the woman beside him. ‘And how are you, Mrs McDermott?’
‘Ah, Victor, I see you didn’t lose your manners away in Dublin. But sure you know to call me Kate.’ She pushes grey wisps of hair behind her ears, grabs me and kisses me on the lips. ‘God bless you, Victor Lennon, and God bless Ireland.’ She’s drunk, like most of the men who shake my hand and the women who slobber my cheeks and lips. Charlie keeps me right with the names. The Kellys, the McCabes, the Gambles, the Murphys, the Sweeneys, the O’Kanes, the other Murphys, the Vallelys, the Campbells. The music is loud, the dancing raucous. The place stinks of sweat and smoke and hooch with a thin sliver of Lifebuoy in the mix. Youngsters who should be in bed are still running around. Old-timers are falling asleep in corners. All in tribute to me.
‘Did they do anything like this for you when you came back from France?’ I ask Charlie. He makes an effort to smile. Barely perceptibly, he shakes his head. Sean Moriarty, Turlough’s brother, comes over and lifts me off my feet in a bear hug. He nearly squeezes the puff out of me. Strong as an ox, he is. They all have questions, crowding around me like I’m a famous tenor or something. What’s it like being a national hero? Did they really shoot Connolly, and him strapped to a chair? Who was the best fighter? How do you say that name, Dee Valeera? And what’s a Spaniard doing fighting for Ireland anyway? Sean, though, is only interested in the football.
‘I heard Dick Fitzgerald was at Fron Goch, and all the prisoners played football every day. Dick Fitzgerald! The man has three All Ireland medals,’ says Sean, as if anyone didn’t know who Dick Fitzgerald was.
‘Ah well now, there was a lot of hours to fill and we wanted to stay fit.’
‘So you did play?’
‘Every day.’
‘And was Fitzgerald there or was he not?’
‘You couldn’t throw a stone in Fron Goch without hitting a county man. Frank Burke. Paddy Cahill. Brian Joyce, boys like that. Frank Shouldice, he was in the Four Courts garrison. And you had Phil Shanahan, Seamus Dobbyn. Hurlers, like, but they wouldn’t let us have hurls in the camp. Good footballers all the same. And aye, if I recall, Dick was there too,’ I say coyly.
‘If you were playing with Fitzgerald and them boys every day for a year, you must have got good enough yourself. Maybe you’ll turn out for Madden in the county final?’
I am fit, I will say that. That was one good thing about Fron Goch – it was ten months off work. Circuit training beats shovelling coal or digging ditches. Of course, I’m nowhere near the class of Fitzgerald and the rest, but as time went on, my presence on the same field as those lads became less and less absurd. ‘Och, I’m all right I suppose,’ I shrug. They’re rapt, watching me. There’s children here weren’t born when I was last home. Young fellows who were wearing short trousers when I left. They’ve heard of me like they’ve heard of Redmond O’Hanlon, the bould Robert Emmett and the gallant Henry Joy. I feel like Robin Hood. They crowd me, press up against me, everyone wants to touch me. I feel like the Pope. ‘Tell us a story, Victor,’ they say.
‘I’ll tell you one about the lockout.’
‘Tell us one about the Rising.’
‘I said I’ll tell you one about the lockout.’
I’m about to start when I see her across the room. I don’t suppose she wants to approach me first. Fair enough, I’ll approach her. Let them wait for my story. She’s wearing a pretty white dress. Shows that seeing me is important to her. Her brown curls are all tied up save for a few that refuse to be bridled, that cascade across caramel skin into hazel eyes. Her mouth is fixed in a polite smile.