‘It just so happens he was telling the truth, but you didn’t know that. The one with the camera was a G-man, down from the Castle. Fuckers stand out like blood in the snow. You shouldn’t be letting anyone take your picture.’
I’ve better things to do than stand here being lectured by some lilting sleveen from West Cork. He’s younger than me for Christ’s sake. I always pegged him for an eejit to be honest. But he cleaned up at cards in Fron Goch. Maybe that was his secret. Six foot plus and you never saw him coming.
‘We need you to go on a trip for a few days. But we need to be sure you’re committed,’ he says.
‘I’m committed to a Marxian republic, not some Fenian gombeen version of what we have already.’
‘Victor, you’ve been letting that mouth of yours run away with you too much lately. You’ve been drawing attention to yourself. It has to stop,’ says Dick Mulcahy.
‘Don’t give me orders, Dick, I’m Citizen Army, not a Volunteer.’
‘I’m Citizen Army and I say that’s no longer a meaningful distinction,’ says Arthur.
‘Arthur, these altar boys want to change the flag and nothing else and you know it.’
‘Jesus, but youse socialists are a barrel of laughs,’ says Mick, with all the usual aggressive collegiality, but Dick Mulcahy grabs me roughly.
‘Damnit, Lennon, if we want freedom we need a revolution and for revolution we need bloody fierce-minded men who don’t care a scrap for death or bloodshed. A real revolution is not a job for children or for saints or scholars.’ He lets go of me. ‘Like I keep saying, in a revolution any man, woman or child who is not with you is against you. Shoot them and damned to them,’ he says to Mick. ‘This fellow is too soft for our purposes.’
‘You’re being too hard on him, Dick,’ says Mick. He’s watching me closely, reading me. I keep looking at Arthur. Yes, it’s him I’m surprised at.
‘Connolly himself said there’s no more Irish Volunteers, no more Irish Citizen Army, only the Irish Republican Army. I’m sick of losing. These lads have a plan that might work,’ Arthur says.
‘Can you be trusted to follow orders?’ says Mick. He knows Bat has already approached me. He knows I’ve already wriggled out of taking the secret oath of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. They only want political revolution, but I’ve been shouting from the rooftops that without social and economic revolution, it’s a waste of time. I don’t suppose they like it. Besides, virtually every IRB man I know is a fucking prick. But I can’t really say that to these lads.
The train is slowing, I’m guessing we’re approaching Harcourt Street. Mick peeks out under the bottom of the drawn blind, and seems suddenly impatient. ‘You were at the GPO and Fron Goch, fair enough, but that isn’t enough any more. Go to Phil Shanahan’s and wait, there’ll be someone to meet you there later. Go straight there now, no detours.’
‘I’ll need to go home and change out of the uniform.’
Bat pulls down a suitcase from the overhead compartment. It’s my suitcase. He tells me he stopped by my room earlier and picked up some things. ‘Sorry about your door.’
‘You’ll be at Shanahan’s,’ says Dick, wearing a look that makes clear it’s not a question. For now, it’s easier just to agree with them. I nod.
‘Good man,’ says Mick.
Dick Mulcahy shows me out onto the marbled platform of Harcourt Street station. I’m on the plush, loyalist south-side now. Not such a smart place to be wearing this damn uniform. I straighten my sloped green hat, keep an eye out for peelers, and make for the nearest public toilets to get changed. Back in the civvies, I’m stepping out of the jacks when I hear someone shout my name. I turn and I see a face from another lifetime.
Charlie Quinn.
He’s older. Skinnier. His hair used to be an auburn thatch but it’s thinner and greyer now. He’s still handsome in a country sort of way. He sports a Kitchener moustache and he’s walking with a hell of a limp. He lurches forward and throws his arms around me. ‘I’ve been in Dublin for days looking for you,’ he says. ‘I knew you’d be at the funeral.’
He feels slight and bony. Charlie comes from shopkeepers, he should be pink and fat and boyish like his da, but he looks older than a docker of his age, and dockers age the quickest. ‘Was that you shouting my name back in Amiens Street?’
‘I followed you onto the train. I didn’t think you’d heard me.’
‘I wasn’t sure I did.’
He smells of ointment but beneath that there’s something else, something like you’d smell in a butcher’s specialising in offal on the turn. It’s like the smell of Connolly in those last hours at our little Alamo on Moore Street, when there was nothing left to do but ensure the surrender was worded properly before the ceiling came in around us. Two days after a ricochet ripped into his ankle. Two full days of agony and morphine, and he was laughing and crying at the same time, like only someone hopped-up to the eyeballs can. Charlie is holding a thin wooden cane against his left leg; he lifts the cane and gives it a little tap against his left shin. The sound of wood on wood. He smiles bravely.
‘The doctors tell me I should wear this prosthetic all the time, but to tell you the truth, I hardly ever do. It chafes something terrible. Could have been worse. At least I kept the knee.’
‘What happened?’ I say, but I see his greatcoat and the little patches of wool darker than the rest, where regimental insignia have been stripped off.
‘Shell fell right on top of us. I was lucky, really.’
‘King and fucken country, Charlie? How could you be so stupid?’
He waits till I exhale, so he knows I’m finished. Not the best way to start a conversation with an old friend, I confess. ‘I’ve come to bring you home,’ he says. ‘It’s your da, Victor, he needs you.’ Charlie lifts his hand in a drinking gesture. ‘Worst I ever seen.’
‘My da isn’t the sort of man would be taking advice from me,’ I say. It’s the most unexpected thing, and I’m trying not to show it, but I feel like I’ve been waiting a long time for this invitation.
‘Och, Victor, don’t be like that. Everything is forgot about now.’
‘I haven’t forgot nothing.’
Stanislaus let himself in the front door and found Mrs Geraghty waiting in the hall, clutching a telegram in her fist. ‘Jeremiah just delivered it. It’s from Dublin, Father,’ she said, half breathless.
‘Thank you, Mrs Geraghty,’ he said, and started up to his study, leaving her disappointed at the bottom of the stairs. He stopped halfway up. ‘I’m sorry to keep repeating myself, but the correct form of address for a bishop is Your Grace.’
‘I thought that was only for proper bishops?’
‘An auxiliary bishop is a proper bishop.’
In his study Stanislaus set the little post-office envelope on his desk beside the newspaper he hadn’t yet read and sat down. He picked up the telegram, sliced it open, then set it down again. Unready. He looked around the bulging bookshelves that lined three walls of the room. They made the place claustrophobic. He turned the chair around, as he always did, to the window, which commanded a view straight down the middle of Madden village. The chapel, the graveyard, National School, Parochial Hall, post office and Poor Ground; all the comings and goings were under his gaze. He could almost see into the terraced homes of his parishioners. The women were indoors, the men were in the fields, the children were at school. Red flags fluttered from homes and telegraph posts, and bunting crisscrossed the street, but