At Swim, Two Boys Part 48

After the Glasthule feis, back last year, after he had packed his parcel and made his goodbye to his mother, and to Jim, Doyler had walked to Dublin of course. It was a Sunday morning and very quiet. Dawn was only breaking when he came into town. Not anything moved save the murk of the river. He sat against one of the supports of the Loop Line bridge, gazing at the grey drab building opposite. The windows were blinded and a lantern hung outside like it might be a kip or a police station. A band along the front read, Irish Transport and General Workers' Union. Irish Transport and General Workers' Union. The letters above the fanlight said, The letters above the fanlight said, Liberty Hall. Liberty Hall.

He had closed his eyes a while, when the high double doors opened and a man was sweeping dust from the lobby inside. He started to sweep the steps. He swept away while Doyler watched, then he leant on his broom. "Busy?" he asked.

He was a Scotchman. Doyler gave a shrug.

"There you go," he said, holding the broom in Doyler's direction. Doyler spat in a circ.u.mspect way. He left his parcel down and took the broom. He supposed it was the bruises on his face, for the caretaker said, "You were fighting."

Doyler answered, "Not much."

"He was a sight bigger than you."

"Him and the other. Wasn't that but they had a priest for bottle-holder."

"Foolhardy." The man's mustache was thick and combed down over his mouth so you wouldn't know for sure was he smiling. "What brings you here then?"

"I'm to join the Citizen Army." Doyler was tired after his walk and no sleep that night, and he hadn't announced this with quite the dash he'd intended.

"You maybe like a fight so. You'll be a member of a union anyway?"

Doyler told him no-though he had wanted to be. He had a Red Hand badge that they wouldn't let him wear, but he wore it all the same inside of his collar.

"What work was that?" Doyler told him, adding that it didn't matter anyway, for he'd lost that work now. The priest had got him that work and the priest had told him he'd get him the kick too.

The caretaker wasn't so sure it didn't matter. "Maybe there's others there looking to join the union."

But Doyler could put the caretaker right about that. "They're all of them yellow. Yellow to the last boy."

"Yet you didn't join neither."

"What does it matter if I joined? I put the badge on me once, which is the same thing, and the priest had the clothes ripped off of me. I knew he would and all, but I couldn't bear it any longer, hiding it."

"If you were in the union, but, you might have fared different."

"I'd have lost me job, man, amn't I after telling you?"

"But you did lose your job."

Doyler frowned. "I suppose if you wanted to look at it that way, you could." He was irritable with his lack of sleep, and this caretaker irritated him too, hiding behind his mustache. "I was a newsboy a long time in Kingstown," he said. "In the Lock-out the newsboys was the first to strike."

"You were out in the Lock-out then?"

"No," he said glumly. "I was down in County Clare. But I would have been out, G.o.d's oath on that. I would have been proud to be out."

"You'd have been hungry, son," said the caretaker. Again Doyler couldn't tell was he laughing or what. "You'll want a cup of tea?"

"If you're making it, I will."

"If I'm making it," repeated the caretaker, shaking his head. He was a short thickset man with bandy legs. Doyler followed him into an office. "Milk and sugar?" he asked.

"What about them?" said Doyler.

"What about them," he repeated and he stamped off down a corridor, making noisy creaks on the boards.

Doyler looked round the room. There were maps on the wall. Paris, he read, Moscow, Cuba in the civil war. The building was startlingly quiet so that any little noise he made sounded grossly out of place. The caretaker returned with the tea. Doyler, looking at the maps still, said, "Paris Commune."

"You know of the Paris Commune then?"

"1871, aye. Sure they have a Carnegie library in Kingstown."

"You can read and write then?"

Doyler took a step back and said scoffing, "Can you?"

"Read I can, but there's many have doubts can I write." It was confusing really, like talking with a ventriloquist, for under his mustache you couldn't see his mouth move hardly at all. He had a big round face above a neat collar and tie. "So you think to join the Citizen Army. Wouldn't the boy scouts be better, young fellow like yourself?"

Doyler corrected him. "It's not the boy scouts. It's na Fianna ...ireann you mean."

"You speak Irish?"

"Enough of it."

The man sat down on the chair. There was a bed by the wall, neatly made. Doyler wondered was this where he slept. He had a queer relaxed way for a caretaker. "I'll tell you now," he said, "they had me locked up, a year since. They had me thinking I was there for a good long stretch, so I asked for an Irish grammar to be sent in. I hadn't the cover opened before the authorities had me out. They're a way feared of me learning Irish, I thought. But I hadn't the opportunity since."

"What was you locked up for?"

"Sedition."

Another man came down the corridor. He stopped at the door and the two men were talking. The door across was half ajar and Doyler ambled over with his tea. It looked like a meeting-hall inside. He peeked round the jamb. And there it was. It was hanging on the wall. He just stopped in the door staring at it. The truest blue he had ever seen, like the bluest deepest calmest ocean. The plough wasn't at all how he had imagined, something you would have to guess at, like the shapes in the sky, but it was a real plough, a manifest thing, you might nearly step up to the flag and pull it away to do work in a field. The stars were done in silver and the plough was done in gold. The gold and silver had a motion, they seemed to swish with movement, like a breeze through the blue. It was surely the most beautiful thing in the world.

He said, hardly aware if he was speaking, "The Plough and the Stars. It's the Starry Plough of the Citizen Army."

The man had come behind. "What're you here for, son?"

"I want to serve my country."

"How'll you serve your country in Liberty Hall?"

"The working cla.s.s is the only cla.s.s that never betrayed Ireland."

"Did you hear that, Bill? We have a theoretician with us."

"No," said Doyler. "But I've read Labor in Irish History, Labor in Irish History, by Mr. James Connolly. And if I wasn't such a ludamawn, I'd have known all along it was Mr. Connolly I was speaking with." by Mr. James Connolly. And if I wasn't such a ludamawn, I'd have known all along it was Mr. Connolly I was speaking with."

That day Doyler joined the crowds that trooped behind the coffin of O'Donovan Rossa, the dead Fenian. He was told afterwards that a fine speech was given at the graveside, but back where he was standing he could hear nothing. What was the use of fine speeches when the thousands who were there wouldn't catch a word? He didn't give a curse for speeches anyway, nor for dead Fenians, come to that. He slept a few hours under a hedge in Glasnevin. The evening then he was back at Liberty Hall. He asked could he see Mr. Connolly, and after a deal of waiting he was shown to a door where he knocked.

"Here he is," said Mr. Connolly when he entered. "Do you know at all where South Lotts is?"

"I can find out for you."

"He's a comedian this one," he said to the other man who was with him at the table. "I know where South Lotts is. Do you, is the question. You'll never be much use for a messenger if you can't find your way about Dublin."

"I can learn it. I'll learn it tomorrow. I won't stop till I know."

"He's willing anyway," said the other man.

"You have no work?" said Mr. Connolly.

"Not yet I haven't. I'll try for hand-carting tomorrow."

"You have a busy day. You'll join the union?"

"I'll be proud to."

"That's one and thruppence. You think to be a Citizen soldier? That's sixpence a week for the uniform fund. You're in debt to one and ninepence already and you haven't a stroke of work done."

"I have a suit I'm to p.a.w.n. It's nearly new."

Mr. Connolly laughed and the other man laughed, then Mr. Connolly said to the other man, "Well, Kane, is he any use to you?"

"I don't know now. Won't look too handsome running messages with that leg."

"Ah get him an old bicycle, for G.o.d's sake. There's any the G.o.d number of men will risk their lives for Ireland. Few enough these days will risk their jobs. He's sharp enough too. Put him in with a couple of the other lads. And find him something to eat. He's not winked at food all day to look at him."

He was already busy with the papers on the table. Doyler asked Kane in the corridor outside, "How did he know if I risked my job?"

"Inquiries confirmed your story, son. That'll do you for now."

They had an entertainment that night in the Hall. Doyler waited at the back, till a woman in the benches beckoned him forward. It was cheap sitting as standing, she told him. Bottoms squashed up till room was found. A man patted his back as he sat down. By nod and wink he was welcomed. He saw their laughing faces. He laughed a little with them. Then he nodded off, leaning upon his neighbor's shoulder.

Two lads took him to where they lodged, a widow woman's room at the very top of a tenement building. She bade him welcome, regretting if the welcome was bigger than the feast. In their curtained-off corner the lads showed him to side-step where the boards were rotten. There was a tiny paper-mended window and a mattress on the floor with little enough s.p.a.ce for one. It didn't signify. Nothing extraneous signified any more. Home now would be Liberty Hall.

It made him laugh in the months after, that the Hall had been so quiet that first morning. For never again, though he came there all hours of the day, and the night too, and he came to master the topsy-turvy of its corridors and stairs, never again did he find the remotest chance of peace in the place. People were ever rus.h.i.+ng in and out, men and women on union business, boys of the Fianna and girls too, Citizen soldiers. The printing-press would be clacking away, musical instruments were blaring, somewhere deep in the recesses a mysterious hammering would be going on, you wouldn't know what was preparing. Plays were rehea.r.s.ed and put on, and G.o.d forgive him, he even acted in the chorus of one. And the trains all day rattled over the Loop Line bridge. He had never known a place like it.

Days on frost when no work was to be had, and whatever hour he had to himself, he spent there. He lent his hand to anything. Simple things at first, like carting coal or helping in the kitchen. He took messages on an old yoke of a bike, and he'd deliberately s.h.i.+ne no light and cycle on the footpath, careless of any peeler. He went nowhere without a sheaf of the Workers' Republic Workers' Republic to hawk it in the street. Any reading that came his way, he devoured it. to hawk it in the street. Any reading that came his way, he devoured it.

With the other lads he'd go heckling the recruiting meetings of the British Army, while the Fianna boys-little newsboy gurriers, right larkers, right scrawls-crept in under the legs of the speakers, throwing up the booths till everything was mayhem. There was a strike at the docks, and he helped out there, standing picket if called on. He was a b.u.t.tonman at last, with the pride of a b.u.t.tonman, his red-hand badge stuck out from his lapel.

As time pa.s.sed he was let in deeper to the secrets of the Hall. A munitions factory in the bas.e.m.e.nt where explosives were devised: grenades of condensed-milk cans, bombs stuffed in cocoa-tins. He spent days filling shotgun cartridges, then nights bricking them away behind false walls. He helped in the workshop where bayonets and crowbars were made. There was even a miniature rifle range where he was let practice with a saloon-pistol. He was sharp and he was useful. And when there was nothing useful to be doing, which was rare but not unknown, he argued tactics with whoever was there to argue him back.

The army drilled in the late evening. A talk would be given after on a military subject. Sat.u.r.day nights they camped at Croydon Park and drilled in the good green fields. He had no gun of course and wouldn't be trusted with one a while yet. But he trained like the other youngsters with a solid pick-axe handle, shoed at one end with metal. It was just that bit longer than a peeler's baton, just that bit heavier, so that the peelers had learnt to stand clear of their road. Days when the breweries were malting, when every oven in the city must have a cake it was baking, they marched with the hop of hunger in their bellies. November came and they marched through the fall of leaves. The rain fell in sheets and still they marched, with a cold hope of broth on the boil. The children laughed and aped them with sticks in the street. And they pa.s.sed with the Plough and the Stars before them, shoulder to shoulder each man to his neighbor, marching to the drum of their feet. It was grand. It was very grand.

Days hurtled one into the next. He didn't lie down but he was fast asleep. He didn't wake but he was down to the Hall. He had never imagined a time like it. The world was made a wind to rush him. His hair flew in that wind when he took at a leap the steps to the Hall. Its roar was in his ears when he sang with the men, the words that Connolly had penned for them,

Send it aloft on the breeze, boys That watchword the grandest known That Labor will rise from its knees, boys And claim the earth for its own.

Some weeks he earned enough out of carting to send a little home to his mother. Most weeks he went hungry. It was so cold that winter, in the widow's garret they took it in turns to sleep in the middle of the bed. They had to take their boots in under the blanket with them, for fear the rats would get at them. One night they got the knock. They scrambled into their clothes, which had been their pillows, stumbling into each other in their hurry. They were down at the Hall at the kick of time, the widow woman hobbling after with a can of tea. Doyler grabbed his sheaf of mobilization orders, biked like a maniac to the cottages and tenements that were his watch. They were a muddled and edgy army that formed in the dark before the Hall. Then Connolly came down the steps. "City Battalion of the Irish Citizen Army, by the right, quick march!"

They marched that night on Dublin Castle. "We'll be back," said Connolly to the startled peeler on point behind the gates.

Shortly after this, each man was called individually into Connolly's office. When it came Doyler's turn, he saluted his commandant and stood at ease.

"I want to know this," said Mr. Connolly. "If it comes to a fight, and we know it will, sooner than later: if the Volunteers won't fight, are you willing to go on without them?"

Doyler had no trouble answering that. "I'd prefer it even."

When you got to know him, you could tell from his eyes when Mr. Connolly would be smiling. "I liked you. I liked you the first I saw you. Doyle, isn't it?"

"Yes sir."

"Did the night maneuver alarm you, son?"

"I'd better have liked it with a gun."

Mr. Connolly nodded. "Dismissed, Private Doyle."

He had a problem with his Ss. Dih-mit, it sounded like.

Doyler had his uniform then. It had belonged to another man who had died or dropped out. He would have to sew it and fit it himself. But he was proud to stand in the army hall, with the dark green on him, and the Red Hand in his hat, standing before the Plough and the Stars. He was a Citizen soldier. The Citizen Army was the guard and guide of labor. It was an arm round labor's shoulder, you could say. The workers were with them. They could not fail. He lifted his hand and saluted his flag.

Afterwards, this was a moment he kept deep in his heart, for it was the last of his undisturbed love for Liberty Hall.

He was back again at the Russell Hotel the next day after St. Patrick's. He sent a note for the boots and soon enough he was up on the roof. This time he worked his way towards Earlsfort Terrace, noting as before the skylights, drainpipes, the sneak-ups and grease-downs.

He enjoyed this kind of work. It made sense to him. The kind of fighting it supposed made sense too. Snipe from the rooftops, a round or two, then powder away to be lost in the crowds. Drilling and parading was well and good, but column advance, feint, enfilade and defilade-lot of use was that against the British Empire. No, first bring the workers out. All the workers, a general strike. Bring the country to its knees. Then snipe and run, a bomb here, a grenade tossed there. Angry mobs where the military could be trusted to lose their nerve. Soon have the country ungovernable.

It wasn't himself had thought any that up. Connolly's teaching was that. Yet these days he heard no talk of a general strike. The talk was all of them joining with the Volunteers. That together they'd take over Dublin. It was mad talk, mad as their sham attacks on Dublin Castle. It made him spit to hear it, and his forehead to frown like a ploughed field.

He heard something, and turning quick, he saw that quilt of a boots had climbed all the way along the rooftops carrying two mugs of tea. He put away the notes he was writing. "Mary and Joseph," he said, "I don't know but you're a resourceful fellow. How'd you get them mugs through that skylight?"

He managed it some way or other, he wasn't sure now.

"Did you put back the skylight after you?"

He had. They were in the dip between two pitches of roof, quite out of sight except of any pigeons pa.s.sing. Doyler took a sup from his tea. "Get a job here meself, I think. They don't give you hardly nothing to do."

The boots sat down. He wasn't chatty so much as anxious to talk. He was from Lucan, he said, he didn't know anyone in Dublin. He nodded to Doyler's badge and said he had a brother was a b.u.t.tonman and his uncle too. Good for them, Doyler told him. He supposed Doyler was wondering why had he left his employment in Kingstown. He didn't like to say, but he'd tell Doyler if Doyler wanted to know. Did Doyler want to know?