‘Can’t say it was. Can’t say I even understand what any of that stuff means.’
‘Little Catholic Belgium then, being raped by the Protestant Hun?’
‘I didn’t give a damn about Belgium nor about the Hun either. I just wanted to see what this Great War was like. I wanted to get a gun, see a bit of the world, and feel like a grown man.’
The bastard scab announces the Nelson Pillar and we hop off, electric cables crackling overhead. We reach Montgomery Street. Canvas awnings promising Meats, Drugs, Tobacco or News shade the broad pavements of Monto and gentlemen in fine suits walk quickly with their heads down, hoping not to be seen. A gang of malnourished, barefooted gurriers, none more than ten or eleven, idle by the corner and eye us suspiciously. There’s an army of gurriers in this city, I see them all the time, trying to huckster a living either side of the tram line. Some beg, some pick pockets, some shine shoes or hawk early editions of The Herald. These lads are typical: bony and dirt-caked with narrow, cynical slits for eyes and cigarettes clamped between black teeth. ‘Have you a penny to give these lads?’ I say, and Charlie stops to rummage in his tunic. I take a couple of pence from my pocket.
‘Ah, keep your money, mister. You’re Citizen Army, aren’t ye?’ says one of the gurriers. I nod. ‘We’ll not take an’ting off you, but we’ll take it off your man.’ He points to Charlie, ‘John fucken Bull, wha?’
Further up the street two women lean out of a ground-floor window of a tenement. One of the women is big and brassy and could be anywhere between thirty and sixty. Her face is painted white, her lips are scarlet and her head is covered by a raven-black wig, stacked high and precarious. The other one is only a young thing. She’s painted and dressed up the same but that only makes the contrast all the more obvious. The usual combination: an old whore for the young lads fresh up from the country with dreams and virginities intact, and a young floozy for the older men. Working girls festoon most of the windows around here.
‘Come on in till I wet yer willy mister,’ jeers the old whore, cupping her hands around her chest. We walk on. The young floozy catcalls after us, are we men at all at all. Peggy O’Hara is leaning out the bottom window of the tenement I live in. Peggy is our tenement’s old whore. Charlie’s appalled that I live here, he can’t hide it.
‘Howya, Victor. Who’s your friend?’ says Peggy, pushing forward her young floozy, a pretty wee thing, perhaps fifteen with big, bewildered brown eyes and cheeks plastered preposterously in rouge. ‘Dolores here’s a real patriot. If he’s a friend of yours, she might do him a discount.’
‘Only a discount, not a free go, for a national hero?’
‘Look around you, Victor. Youse heroes have damn near put us out of business.’
She’s right. This place used to be black with soldiers, all loose change and aggression, looking for a good time in the red-lit windows of the Second City of the Empire. But the soldiers are confined to barracks now. Of course the high-end houses for the rich are still here, and go out the back of any pub on a Friday night, you’ll see the bottom end of the market relieving careless working men of their pay packets; but the servicemen were always Monto’s bread and butter. The Monto girls have cut down more British soldiers with knob rot than all the generations of rebels ever managed with muskets and pikes.
‘Better to die on your feet than live on your knees,’ I say.
‘I make my living on my knees.’
I have to laugh. Whores are my favourite capitalists. They’re the most honest, and often among the smartest. Every smart whore I’ve ever met has the same dream: to own her own place and run her own girls. Peggy O’Hara’s only complaint about the grinding boot of capital is that she’s not wearing it.
We don’t go inside. No detours, Mick said. ‘It’s an eye-opener around here, isn’t it?’ I say.
‘I’ve been here before,’ Charlie replies. ‘I was billeted at Beggar’s Bush before they sent us to France. We spent a lot of time up here. They were giving free ones to boys in British uniforms that time.’
‘Whores and armies are well met,’ I say.
I wonder what I’d have said if we’d met then, as he was getting ready to go and fight for the king. I don’t think I’d have been able to look past the uniform. Soldiers are fucken pigs. I think I’d have spat in his face. ‘That coat of yours sticks out like a sore fucken thumb so it does.’
‘I took off the epaulettes,’ Charlie protests.
‘You don’t think people know what it is?’
There’s a time and a place, Victor, let it go. Life is in the letting go.
The doors of P. Shanahan Wines Spirits Ales Licensed Imbibing Emporium are locked and a large billboard announces the premises are Closed By Order Of The Lord Lieutenant Until Further Notice. Beige blinds bearing the legend Select Bar are pulled down over the windows. I knock till a voice from inside asks who it is.
‘Fron Goch prisoner 19531977.’
The door opens a few inches and Phil Shanahan ushers us in fussily. ‘Who’s this with you?’ he asks.
‘Friend of mine. He’s all right. Is it all right if I wait here? There’s supposed to be somebody coming to meet me here later on. I was told to wait.’
Phil waves around the empty room in agreement. The room is long and narrow and the bar runs its full length. It’s all dark corners. It used to be full of people like me talking politics, or naïve country lads newly arrived in the big smoke; desperate for anything familiar, they’d make straight for the premises of Phil Shanahan, the famous hurler. There’s someone in the snug down at the bottom, I can just about see movement through a gap in the snug door. I pull up a high stool so Charlie can sit down, plant my elbows on the bar and duck my head under the window. Phil stands squarely across the bar from me with his thumbs looped in his waistcoat pockets. ‘What’ll it be, men?’
‘Bushmills.’
‘Oul Protestant whiskey.’
‘Good Ulster whiskey.’
Phil smiles and sets up the bottle and three glasses. He leaves me to pour while he reaches under the bar and produces a dog-eared newspaper page that looks like it has passed through many hands. He sets it down in front of me and smirks. ‘Did you see this? I’ve been showing it to all you socialist lads.’ I finish pouring the whiskey and take the paper from him. It’s from the Freeman’s Journal, couple of months back. Yes, of course I fucken saw it. Down in the bottom left corner. Our glorious leader.
LARKIN MAROONED
The Sydney New South Wales Correspondent of the ‘Daily Mail’ cables: – Jim