was a chalice he could not refuse. Short of dying, Art had no means of breaking that cycle of indenture.
Yet Art argued now with his college chums that surely to God – if there was a God – the Great War’s slaughter had overturned all previous rules and conventions. Crippled beggars on the London streets were daily reminders that any pretence of innocence was gone. For the Great War to mean anything it had to herald the advent of a new era. Freedom was not about one Kaiser defeating another, it was about granting people the liberty to be truly themselves.
Before the Bolshevik revolution the bulk of humanity had sleepwalked through life, unaware that they could possess total power if they merely looked up from their chains. Every day the imperialist press repeated lies about millions starving in Russia because they were afraid to report what was really occurring there. But once ordinary British workers understood this truth, they would emerge like risen Christs from the tomb, liberated from the inbred fear of their alleged betters. Last year the miners had suffered on strike without the country rising to back them and today it was the engineers’ turn to be locked out. But once the Communist Party was fully organised across Britain a day of reckoning would come.
Fletcher laughed at Art’s intensity and rang the bell for his manservant to fetch more stout. The others agreed with Art’s assertion that the Labour Party had become lured away from its revolutionary roots and was now merely a cloak and dagger ally of imperialist expansion. But Art sensed the hollowness of their convictions. They were flirting with radicalism, like their fathers on Grand Tours of Europe once flirted with exotic dancers. Typically short-sighted, they regarded Lenin’s revolution as too foreign to impinge upon their world. These student discussions were not about genuine revolution, but simply a chance for the privileged idle to enjoy a brief frisson of danger by pretending to be different from their parents. After college they would drop such notions and take up golf and banking, fattening out into premature middle age. Art lost patience with their play-acting and was about to leave, when the manservant returned and sought him out with a sympathetic look.
‘Begging your pardon, Mr Goold Verschoyle, but I thought you should know the news from Ireland. I’m afraid your Michael Collins has been shot dead in an ambush.’
The room went quiet, the others studying his face. They had no interest in the civil war raging in Ireland since the peace treaty was narrowly accepted and British troops had withdrawn. The treaty had divided the country, with the majority of people sick of war and anxious to accept the partitioned Free State which the treaty offered. But Art could not imagine any compromise on a full Republic being accepted by such men as the IRA commander who had once returned the family motor to Maud in the Donegal hills. In the ensuing split he surely sided with the diehards like de Valera and the Countess who were now fighting against Michael Collins and his fellow treaty negotiators whom they accused of betraying the dream of a Republic. Art had initially been excited by this civil war, seeing parallels with the power vacuum in Russia in which Lenin seized authority. But de Valera was no true revolutionary. Art still hoped that both factions might weaken each other sufficiently for a communist takeover, but – with the union leader Jim Larkin sidelined in an American jail – there was nobody of sufficient stature to lead such a coup d’état. Art’s enthusiasm for the IRA had never recovered from his encounter with that Cork commander. It left him feeling occluded from all sides in recent years, as the conflict grew increasingly bloody. The Troubles had taken a toll around Dunkineely, not just in occasional killings and reprisals, but in the way that people came to be judged purely as being on one side or the other. At times in Donegal he was made to feel a foreigner, whereas in London he was viewed as a totally Irish outsider.
Having delivered his news, the manservant slavishly waited for a morsel of acknowledgement.
‘That is shocking,’ Art said. ‘Thank you for letting me know.’
‘They shot him like a dog, sir. Mr Collins claimed that when he signed the peace treaty he was signing his own death warrant and he was right.’
‘Thank you, Jenkins,’ Fletcher interrupted. ‘That will do.’
‘Yes, sir.’
The man placed four bottles of Imperial Russian stout on the table and left. Fletcher leaned over to refill Art’s glass. ‘Damned bad news,’ he said. ‘I liked Collins. He was a murderer but one you could do business with. My sister developed quite an attraction to his picture in the papers when he came to London for the peace talks. The whiff of danger I suppose. You know romantic girls. These must be worrying times.’
‘Yes.’ Art sipped his stout, surprised at how moved he was by this news. Dunkineely would be shocked, even those who felt that Collins had sold out the Republic. He longed to be among people who understood this contradiction. His sister Eva had recently enrolled at the Slade Art School, but she was sleeping in a London girls’ hostel where he would not be welcome at this late hour. Besides, though he loved Eva more than anyone in his family, she was too vague to fully understand what was happening.
He finished his stout and rose to leave, glad to descend into the night air. Collins had been a strong man, a Catholic reactionary, yes, but still a man of both action and thought and he was to be admired. Crossing Queen Victoria Street, Art found himself humming The Soldier’s Song, the illicit anthem sung by rebels during the Easter Rising. The tune attracted a policeman’s attention. He approached Art, then took one look at his expensive clothes and passed by with a surprised nod.
Art knew that if he had been poorly dressed it might have been a different story. He cut down sidestreets, being well-versed in long night walks from Donegal, heading towards Wapping where there were early morning pubs for dockers. Other Irish people might be there, fellow countrymen with whom he could discuss the news. The first pub door he tried was locked, although lights were on inside. He knocked but the drinkers ignored him. It was the same at the next one but when he reached the Thames he fell into step with two young Mayo men, Liam and Tomas, near Tower Bridge Wharf. When he offered to buy them a drink they laughed, claiming that he must be desperate for a cure. Still they knew exactly where to go.
The pub shutters were down to keep out the night. Casual dockers inside were having a pint to steady their nerves before commencing the struggle to find work. More afflicted drinkers sat among them, crippled by alcohol, hands shaking so badly that they could barely lift a glass to their lips. Art bought drinks and then a second round as the three Irishmen discussed Collins’s death and the grip that his new Free State army was gradually gaining over the country. Neither Liam nor Tomas was educated, yet Art felt happier in their company than with the students in Fletcher’s room. Here there was a sense of real life being lived. More Irishmen joined them, distraught at the news, glad of Art’s company and opinions. He bought a final round of drinks, including a whiskey for an elderly English carpenter who initially refused Art’s offer because he had not eaten a meal for several days. The man was seventy-four and told Art he had always found work until his health recently began to fade. Some older stevedores still took him on, knowing that he was a good worker, but most were scared of having a dead weight on their hands. He was a veteran of the 1889 Dockers’ Tanner strike and had been among the first crew two years ago who refused to load coal onto the Jolly George when that ship was due to sail with arms against the Bolsheviks in Russia.
The group drank up, hurrying out from the pub now onto the dark quayside where the casual hiring was about to commence in a large iron-barred shed. Dockers permanently employed by the big firms brushed past them, knowing that they were guaranteed work. But for the men around Art it was a case of hoping that smaller ships had docked in the night and needed casual workers to unload them. Men emerged from other pubs and nearby streets, a swarm pressing into the shed where stevedores selected workers from the crowd. Art stood beside Liam and Tomas who didn’t know the stevedores and so found it hard to get noticed. This was capitalism at its most ruthless – men reduced to units of labour, hired for the shortest time then discarded when they grew old. Repeatedly the old carpenter pleaded with the stevedores who shook their heads. Art was impressed at how the other hungry men, while focused on their own plight, sympathised with him. This was a world Art knew little about, but he might learn more here than from a day in university.
He began to raise his hand amongst the clamouring