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Darran McCann
After the Lockout
Dedication
For my parents, whose love, support and example made
possible the writing of this book, and so much else.
Epigraph
… I inclined
To lose my faith in Ballyrush and Gortin
Till Homer’s ghost came whispering to my mind.
He said: I made the Iliad from such
A local row. Gods make their own importance.
– Patrick Kavanagh, from ‘Epic’
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
One
Two steps before me in the procession, the Countess swings…
Two
Stanislaus sorted through the great ring of keys to the…
Three
Stanislaus stood in the deserted street and looked up at…
Four
By the time the light fails on Thursday, no more…
Five
When we get to the house Pius is suspicious. Bat…
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Copyright
About the Publisher
ONE
Two steps before me in the procession, the Countess swings her hips like she knows I’m watching, her arse bobbing like a Halloween apple begging me to take a bite out of it. She and I are the only ones here in the full uniform of the Irish Citizen Army, and we look splendid. Most of our lads make do with a scrawny red sash because they’re too dirt poor to afford a uniform, or because there are men with guns in this town who’d shoot them for wearing one, but we can afford it and we’re safe here, now, in this admiring crowd. Up ahead the Volunteers are singing God Save Ireland said the herooooooes, God Save Ireland said they all, and beside me Bob Sweeney roars out our own version about God doing the same for Big Jim Larkin.
‘There must be quarter of a million here,’ says Bob between choruses. They’re saying the back of the funeral was still at O’Connell Bridge while we were at Glasnevin for the burial, three miles away.
‘Half a million. Or a million. Always revise numbers up. Be sure the peelers will revise them down,’ I say.
He rolls his eyes, but who knows how many people are here? There are flags everywhere. Golden harps on emerald green. Green, white and orange tricolours. Eamonn Carr with our Starry Plough. One stalwart fellow with a banner of deepest red in his clenched fist. All the unions are here. The Gaelic Leaguers. Sinn Féin. The women’s leagues. Jesus, the Boy Scouts. The Dublin Fire Brigade: engines and carriages and blue-coated firemen. The bloody Lord Mayor of Dublin. How many of them had even heard of Tom Ashe eighteen months ago? They all want a piece of his martyr’s bones now. Look at them all, snaking piously along the streets behind the mournful musicians and a hundred fucking priests. I spit.
‘We’re going up to Monto later, all the unmarried boys. You coming?’ says Bob. Eamonn Carr nods enthusiastically.
Pair of jackeens, all bluff and bluster. The Countess glances over her shoulder and catches me looking at her arse again. Her so-called husband away in Bohemia or wherever the hell these past five years while she’s slumming it with the socialists. She must be nearly fifty but I definitely still would. The Monto whores have nothing to teach posh girls, honest to God they don’t. ‘What sort of a socialist colludes in the exploitation of working-class women?’ I say.
‘All right, misery guts, just trying to be friendly.’
I see a flash and I’m blind. ‘Mr Lennon, Edgar Andrews, Irish Times. Does your presence here today indicate the Irish Citizen Army and the labour movement generally supports the prisoners’ campaign for political status?’ asks some beanpole. ‘What do you make of reports from Dublin Castle this afternoon that the Executive is to concede the demands of the Sinn Féin prisoners?’ I’m just trying to get my vision back. I see his starched white shirt, boater hat, bright white rose on a tailored lapel. Another fellow, with him, more throughother-looking, shouldering a portable camera. Smoke rises from the light bulb.
‘You nearly blinded me with that thing, pal.’
But he’s all persistence. ‘What do you make of the force-feeding of the hunger strikers, Mr Lennon?’
‘You’ve got the wrong man.’
He retreats looking sceptical, but we’re at Amiens Street, within staggering distance of the pubs the journos live in, the lazy toadies, so they’re coming like locusts now. There’s a fellow talking to the Countess. Indo, probably – not as well turned-out as the fellow from The Times. No white rose. Another fellow confers with the photographer who almost blinded me. That suit was probably decent in its day. A Freeman’s Journal suit, I’d say.
‘What’s your name, sir?’ asks another fellow in a soft felt hat with a press card in the ribbon. Looks like he slept last night in a pub or a brothel or the street. Or all three. Herald, no question.
‘You can fuck off and tell your boss he can fuck away off too.’
I don’t suppose he’ll pass the message on to Mr William Martin ‘Murder’ Murphy but it feels good to say it.
As we pass Amiens Street station I feel a hand squeeze my shoulder and turn to see Dick Mulcahy, the wiry bastard. An hour ago he was in uniform firing the graveside salute but he’s back in his civvies now.
‘Come with me, there’s a man wants to talk to you.’
Just as perfunctory as that. I haven’t seen him in ten months, since they released us from Fron Goch, and not even a hello. I haven’t missed those dead eyes.
We slip out of the procession, unnoticed in the clamour, and climb the steps into the station, beneath the great clock on the wall showing five bells. Up the platform, Dick exchanges nods with a porter who doesn’t ask for tickets, and another uniformed railwayman turns away and pretends to see nothing as we slip into the first-class carriage. Someone in the distance shouts my name but Dick pushes me aboard the train before I can look around. There’s a man in the hallway with his hand inside his coat. He sees Dick and nods. He opens the door behind him. Leather upholstered seats, silk curtains, deep-pile carpet, mahogany and brass everywhere, every man with his own ashtray. The train starts its click-clacking way. Arthur Fox and Mick Collins and Bat McClatchey look up.
‘First Class? Some revolutionaries you are.’
Mick smiles. ‘We meet wherever we can. There aren’t many safe places to meet these days, Victor.’
Bat McClatchey I’m not surprised at. We’re from the same county, he and I, and I have to say I like him, mainly for that reason, but politically, well: I expect to be fighting against him in the real revolution to come after this one. Big nationalist, big Catholic and every bit as reactionary as all that sounds. But Arthur Fox I am surprised at. Arthur’s one of us. He’s one of the Gardiner Street silk weavers, one of the men who helped organise the Citizen Army. Arthur saw real action in South Africa and he flattened more peelers during the lockout. Thank God for him during the Rising, telling Mike Mallin to retreat to the College of Surgeons away from the turkey-shoot