Shamrock Green (29 page)

Turk withdrew the revolver, holstered it, and unlocked the gate. He opened it a little, drawing it inward. Maeve pushed her shoulder against the ironwork but Turk refused to let her enter. He took the sack from her and passed it back to Kevin who carried it into the building.

Maeve said, ‘Let me stay, Turk. Please let me stay.'

‘That I cannot do,' said Turk.

‘Please.'

He was already linking the gates, dropping the vertical bolt, reaching for the shiny new padlock. Maeve put her hand on his wrist. He glanced down at her. He did not seem hard now or military. He looked like a big soft Wexford farmer even with a sombrero on his head and bandoliers crossed over his chest. He stopped fiddling with the padlock and reached through the ironwork and caught a strand of her hair between his finger and thumb. He tugged gently until her brow was pressed against the cold iron then he kissed her brow and said, ‘Don't forget to bring us our dinner, now.'

‘I won't, Turk,' Maeve said, meek at last.

‘Off you go then, my sweetheart, off you go.'

She left the gates of the warehouse and went away, drifting up Sutter Street in the wake of the crowd, drifting towards the sound of the guns.

*   *   *

Up in the vicinity of Sackville Street a candy shop had been broken into and the pavements were littered with barley sticks, peppermints and liquorice straps. On the steps in Magellan Lane the young citizens of Dublin were gorging themselves on midget gems and red jelly eels, comfits and Empire creams or fought over chocolate bars and boxes or scratched in the carpet of broken glass for a toffee or a marzipan that had somehow escaped.

In Brower Street shoes, hats, stockings and ribbons trailed sadly away from looted shops, and a woman told her that the volunteers had shot twenty looters and Patrick Pearse himself had signed an order saying that all looters were to be shot. Maeve had seen a man shot yesterday and had not been much affected but at the tail end of Brower Street she saw a dead horse, a fine handsome stallion with its legs sticking up in the air and a huge reddish-blue pool of blood around it, and before she knew what she was doing she was running for the shelter of the Sperryhead Road.

She slipped down the lane and in by the kitchen door and, tugged by a familiar voice, went along the corridor into the dining-room.

Two men were seated at the table. The polished surface was protected by oilcloth and a vase of flowers, withered now, had been pushed to one side to make way for plates, cups, a teapot, and a bottle of Powers and two glasses. The men were hunched over the table, laughing tipsily. One of them was Fran. She had seen his back often enough to recognise the tight old suit he wore. The other man was a stranger to her, a round jolly fellow sucking on the short end of a cigar and sipping whiskey from a glass. Mam sat with the baby on her lap as if she were just another wife entertaining her husband and his friend and there was no rumble of gunfire loud in the air outside.

‘Now here's a young lass who's just been up town by the look of her,' the stranger said. ‘She'll give us all the news, won't you, chicken?'

‘Ah, Kaygan, let the girl alone.' Fran glanced over his shoulder and winked at Maeve. ‘Come here, darlin', come and give old Fran a kiss.'

Fran had never asked her for a kiss before. She had kissed him only when she felt like it. She had sat on his knee once or twice but it was not the same as sitting on Turk's knee or, as far as she could recall, on Daddy's knee. She was relieved to see Fran, however, and went to him and kissed him on the lips because she knew he was showing off to his friend Kaygan how good a father he could be when he tried.

Mr Kaygan said, ‘Would it be unpardonably forward of me to ask the young lady for a kiss too, even though we are of but slight acquaintance and I'm not inclined to class myself as a relative, blood or otherwise?'

Maeve ignored the stranger's request and leaned against Fran. She could smell strong whiskey off him and knew that he had been a while at the bottle.

‘Have you been at the fighting, sir?' she said.

‘I have been fighting with your father – Francis, I mean – to ensure that news of this great adventure of ours reaches the enemy's ears and the ears of the world at large. And' – Mr Kaygan held up the cigar and waved it about – ‘
and
to make sure that our brave volunteers are armed, not with sword and buckler, not with hayfork and hoe but with the best weapons that dollar money can buy. We have, in a word, been distributing arms.'

‘Aren't you going to the warehouse?' Maeve asked.

‘Fran's exhausted,' her mother said. ‘He needs sleep.'

‘Oh!' Maeve said. ‘What's in the case?'

‘Case?' Fran said.

‘In the case between your knees?'

‘Oh that!' Fran said. ‘Nothing for Nosey Parkers.'

‘Is it a revolver?'

‘What a girl!' Mr Kaygan said. ‘By gum, Francis, what a girl! Tell me, lass, would you like a revolver? Would you like to go shoot a few British soldiers, is that why you put the question with such fervour?'

‘It's not, is it?' Maeve said.

‘No,' Fran said. ‘It's not.'

Sean looked like a little papoose all wrapped up in wool and lace, Maeve thought, but a bubble of milk clung to his lips and she left Fran's side, went around the table and daintily wiped it away with a corner of her sleeve. She kissed her tiny brother on the brow.

‘Ah well.' Mr Kaygan put the cigar back into his mouth. ‘I see that kisses in this household are reserved for those and such as those. I'll just have wait until I get home to claim my rightful dues.'

Maeve drew out a chair and seated herself close to her mother.

She felt that she had earned the right to sit with the adults now. She had seen a man shot and a dead horse, had been close to the fighting and had not been afraid. Thanks to her uncles and granddad, to Turk and Fran, she had been in this thing from the beginning and would be in at the end, even with the British moving through the streets with all the cunning of wolves. Who had said that about wolves? Mr Whiteside. Mr Whiteside was up at the Green with the Citizen Army. She wished she could be at her teacher's side right now, the whole class lined up at the gates of the Green, chewing on their looted toffees or sucking their liquorice straps and chanting like the twelve times table,
‘Shoot us. Shoot us if you dare.'

She said, ‘I promised Turk I'd take more food.'

‘Is it safe?' Mam said. ‘Are there no troops in Sutter Street?'

‘If there aren't,' said Mr Kaygan, ‘there soon will be. Martial law will prevail tonight or if not tonight by tomorrow, and that will surely wipe the smile from the face of the populace.'

‘What's martial law?' Maeve said.

‘The law of the gun,' said Fran, wearily.

‘Our law?' said Maeve.

‘Military law, the right to do wicked things with government approval.'

‘Mr Pearse won't stand for that,' Maeve said; then added, ‘Will he?'

‘Mr Pearse, little lady, can only hold out so long.'

‘What about the reinforcements?'

Mr Kaygan and Fran exchanged a glance that she could not interpret. They had been laughing together when she had entered the room but they were not laughing now. They were not so much sober as resigned. The abrupt change in mood troubled her.

Her mother said, ‘Jansis has bread, cheese and boiled eggs ready in the kitchen but you've not to go round to Sutter Street, Maeve. You can toss it over the wall. Charlie will know where to look for it.'

‘I'm not afraid. I'll take it right round to the gate.'

‘No,' Fran said. ‘It isn't safe.' He dribbled whiskey into his glass and into Mr Kaygan's. ‘Drink up, Kay,' he said, ‘then you'd better be on your way.'

‘I better had, yes,' Mr Kaygan said. ‘Will I take the Hudson, and if so, when will I call back for you?'

‘Leave the car behind the house,' Fran said. ‘You can walk, can't you?'

‘I suppose I can,' said Mr Kaygan. ‘Are you endeavouring to indicate that you no longer require my assistance?'

Fran pushed himself back from the table. He seemed weary and rather sad. Maeve could not fathom why. He had planned for this day of triumph but now it had finally arrived he seemed to have lost all interest. She felt a vague sense of unease, a suspicion that many of the things Fran had told her had not been exactly the truth.

He offered Mr Kaygan his hand. It stuck out pale and bony from a threadbare sleeve. ‘My thanks for all you've done.'

‘It was nothing, Francis, nothing at all. The likes of you and I will really come into our own in the glorious years ahead, will we not?'

‘We will,' Fran said. ‘I'm sure we will.'

Mr Kaygan let himself out by the front door, and Fran sat down again. He looked across the table at Mam and at the baby and gave a little jerk of the head, almost, Maeve thought, a twitch.

‘He's been fed and changed,' Mam said. ‘Will you take him, Maeve, and put him in his crib in the parlour.'

‘Where are you going?'

‘Upstairs to make up the beds.'

‘I have to catch some sleep,' Fran said. ‘A couple of hours will do.'

Maeve lifted her half-brother, snuggled him against her shoulder and stroked his back to help him bring up wind. She rocked one side to the other while Fran, bottle and glass in one hand, reached between his feet and fished out the strange black leather bag. He hoisted it up and tucked it under his arm, and carried it along the corridor to the stairs.

‘Are you goin' to take a rest too, Mam?' Maeve said.

‘Yes, I think I am,' Sylvie answered and, leaving the baby in Maeve's care, followed Fran upstairs.

*   *   *

Jansis was not in the kitchen. A big wicker basket packed with tea, sugar and bottled milk, bread loaves, boiled eggs and slabs of cheese stood on the table. The provisions had been bought with Fran's money. Since the Shamrock had closed its doors they were dependent on Fran to pay the bills, though a postal order for half her father's army pay arrived through the mail every other Thursday.

Hardship had many faces, Mr Whiteside had told her but she hadn't known what he'd meant at the time.

Now, as she stood in the kitchen of the deserted hotel with the baby against her shoulder, it dawned on Maeve that people who thought feeding their children more worth while than fighting for freedom might have a point.

She had never gone hungry. She had always had a warm coat to wear in winter and boots for her feet and had never been obliged to sleep with five or six others in the bed, like some of her schoolmates. There had always been money in the family. Gran McCulloch's relatives in Glasgow lived in big houses and had lots of servants and owned motor-cars, but she had never had ambition foisted upon her and had come to believe that oppression and poverty were all the fault of the Westminster government.

Cuddling her half-brother, she contemplated the basket of food, the length of rope, and the shamrock flag that was tied to a broom handle. The basket reminded her of an illustration in her Old Testament, and she knew what the rope and flag were for: she had overheard Fran tell Charlie that the Shamrock was the back door to the warehouse.

She moved to the stairs that led to the basement. ‘Jansis, are you there?'

‘Here I am.'

Jansis appeared in the kitchen doorway. She had thrown off her mobcap and apron and put on her Sunday-best overcoat, the dark green one with the buttons on the breast. The coat went well with the dark green beret that Charlie had left in the bar and never reclaimed.

She wore gloves too, gauntlet-style gloves borrowed from Mam's bottom drawer. They were tight on Jansis's big muscular hands and the stitching stood out like veins. Her face was white as flour, her eyes dark-circled. She held a rifle in one hand and a box of cartridges in the other.

‘I have to go now, dear,' she said.

‘Where did you get the rifle?'

‘Stole it.'

‘From the lot that Fran brought here and Daddy took away?'

‘Aye, I hid it where the peelers couldn't find it.' Jansis gave a little grunt of satisfaction. ‘The bullets too.'

‘But why?'

‘Just in case this day ever came.'

‘Where are you going?'

‘Over the wall.'

‘Jansis!'

‘There are soldiers down the road, more at the end of Sutter Street.'

‘Does Turk know they're there?'

‘I'll tell him when I get over there.'

‘What are they doing, the soldiers?'

‘Waitin' for artillery.'

‘Do they know the warehouse is occupied?'

‘Sure an' they do,' Jansis said, ‘but they'll not know how many men are inside. Well, there'll be one more in a minute.' She smiled. ‘Me.'

‘Oh, Jansis!' Maeve said. ‘Oh, Jansis!'

‘No tears, dearest. You're my big girl. Look after the wee fellah. Come on now, put him in his basket in the parlour an' help me over the wall. Turk will be dyin' for his dinner.'

Maeve went into the parlour, put the baby into the crib on the carpet and placed a cushion top and bottom to hold the cradle steady. Sean lay on his back, eyes closed, lips pursed, a little frown creasing his brow. His tiny pink fists were raised like a man enraged but when Maeve kissed him he gave a snuffle and a sigh and did not wake up. It was quiet in the house, uncannily quiet, but far away in the distance she could hear the chatter of a machine-gun. She returned to the kitchen and Jansis opened the back door and went out on to the worn step with the cartridge box in her pocket and the rifle across both shoulders.

‘On to the top of the motor-car,' she said, ‘then on to the top of the chicken coop. We'll show them the flag so they'll know we're friends. After I'm over, tie the rope to the basket handle an' lower it down to me. Bring the rope up after, in case you need it again.'