The Guns of Easter (6 page)

WHEN JIMMY REACHED SACKVILLE STREET AGAIN
he saw that crowds were gathering. People stood and watched the Post Office as though the building itself were going to do something. They looked like people at a pantomime or a play. Many cursed the Volunteers, but they did it quietly, in worried voices. There were no soldiers or policemen to
be seen. Even the dead Lancers had been taken away. Only the Volunteers were on the street in uniform, coming and going on mysterious errands or making barricades on sidestreets.

Jimmy saw a large group of people standing at Nelson’s Pillar looking at a notice that was posted there. He hesitated, then went over to see what it was. He pushed to the front of the crowd and looked; it was a poster the rebels had put up.

At the top were some words in Irish. Beneath them was written, in large letters:
THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT OF THE IRISH REPUBLIC – TO THE PEOPLE OF IRELAND
. Jimmy didn’t know what ‘provisional’ meant, and many of the words that followed were strange too.

‘What does it mean?’ he asked a man with a moustache.

The man looked down at him haughtily and answered with an English accent.

‘It means nothing at all,’ he said, ‘except that you’re all mad here.’

Another man told Jimmy that the Volunteers had declared Ireland an independent country – a republic, whatever that was.

At the bottom of the declaration were the names of the new government’s members; among them was Thomas Clarke, the old shopkeeper. Mr Pearse and Mr Connolly’s names were there too.

When Jimmy finally reached home little had changed.
Sarah was delirious, burning with fever and Ma looked even more exhausted; she’d been awake now for the better part of two days and two nights. She took Jimmy’s bad news well, almost as though she’d expected it. When he gave her Mick’s parcel she held it in her hand, looking at it, and said nothing.

Jimmy was going to suggest that he should now go over to Ella’s to try and get the money, but something told him not to mention the idea. He was sure Ma would forbid it, and if she did then he’d have to obey her. If he didn’t mention the subject he could always go later if he had to. And there was always the chance – a small chance – that Ella had just been delayed. Jimmy didn’t believe it, but it was only fair to wait. Everyone deserved a chance.

Meanwhile there was not much he could do to help Ma except to stay out of her way. She’d arranged that Josie should stay up in Doyles’ for a couple of days. It would be terrible if she caught the fever too. As for Jimmy, he would just have to take his chances. He wouldn’t leave Ma to cope alone. When he told her this, she hugged him.

‘God bless you, son,’ she said.

Jimmy spent the rest of the morning prowling the room like a caged animal. He was bursting with curiosity, but Ma wouldn’t let him out again.

‘You can go out later,’ she said, ‘if it stays quiet.’

In the afternoon Sarah seemed to sleep naturally. Her breathing got quieter. Ma let Jimmy persuade her to lie
down too. ‘I’ll call you if anything happens,’ he assured her.

Ma was asleep almost as soon as she lay down. Jimmy made himself sit quietly in her chair, though it was torture for him. He kept imagining what might be happening in Sackville Street.

It was late afternoon when Ma woke. She looked over at Sarah. ‘Any change?’ she asked.

‘She snored a bit,’ said Jimmy. ‘But that’s all.’

There was a knock on the door. It was Tommy Doyle. He was wild with excitement. ‘Hello, Mrs Conway,’ he shouted. ‘It’s a great day for Ireland!’

‘Do you think so, Tommy?’ asked Ma. ‘Is your Ma all right? I hope our Josie’s not giving her any trouble.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Tommy. ‘I was out all day watching the Rising.’

While I’ve been sitting here, thought Jimmy.

‘Were you in Sackville Street?’ Ma asked.

‘I just came from there now, to see is Jimmy coming out.’

‘What’s that noise I hear?’ asked Ma. ‘It sounds like it’s coming from there.’

Jimmy had been hearing noises for some time, a growling sound like a lot of voices together. It wasn’t the sound of fighting, but a strange seething sound he’d never heard before.

‘It’s only people,’ said Tommy. ‘Sackville Street is packed.’

This was too much for Jimmy.

‘Please, Ma, can I go and look?’ he pleaded. ‘It can’t be dangerous.’

Ma thought for a minute. ‘Oh, all right,’ she said at last. ‘But come back at the first sign of trouble.’

Jimmy raced down the stairs. Tommy could hardly keep up with him.

‘What’s it like?’ Jimmy asked when they got to the street.

Tommy looked at him with a grin. ‘It’s better nor Christmas!’ he said. He reached into his pocket and took out a handful of sweets. ‘Here! Have them. I’ve loads more.’

‘Who gave you the money?’ Jimmy asked.

Tommy laughed. ‘Money?’ he said. ‘What money?’

Jimmy gaped. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Come and see,’ Tommy said, and he took off down the street with Jimmy following.

Just before they reached Sackville Street Tommy stopped. He turned to Jimmy, grinning wildly, and threw his sweets in the air. ‘Hurray!’ he yelled, as the sweets rained down on him.

Jimmy stared. ‘Are you gone mad or what?’ he asked.

‘Ireland is free!’ Tommy said. ‘And Irish sweets are free too!’

He led Jimmy around the corner. Sackville Street looked as if a herd of elephants had trampled through it. It had been ransacked by a marauding host, out for loot. The host was still there, and it was still looting. This was
the source of the strange seething sound. It was the great hungry horde of Dublin’s poor.

Wherever Jimmy looked he saw smashed windows: Noblett’s and Lemon’s sweetshops, Dunn’s the hatters, Frewen and Ryan’s, the Cable bootshop – everywhere.

The wide street was strewn with abandoned packaging and bits of glass. Jimmy saw dumped hats, boots, underwear, toys and cakes – a huge litter of expensive things. A street paved with luxury goods, like something from a dream. There seemed to be thousands of people moving restlessly through the street in unruly surges. They must have looted the pubs too because a great many of them were very drunk.

‘It’s great!’ shouted Tommy. ‘You can take anything you like.’

And that’s exactly what people had done. They were wandering around with strange luxury items that would never be of any use to them. Jimmy saw a boy hardly older than himself playing with a set of golf clubs. As each ball arched off down the street he would follow it through a pair of expensive binoculars that were hanging round his neck.

‘That’s Jimmy Murphy. His Da will kill him if he sees them clubs. He’s a mad Gaelic games man,’ Tommy said.

Like many people on the street Jimmy Murphy was wearing a new hat. Others wore two or three different hats at the same time, all crammed on top of each other on their heads.

One boy, a few years younger than Jimmy, was helping a woman who might have been his grandmother to carry big piles of clothes. They’d emerge from the crowd, staggering under huge loads and put them down at a spot in the road close to where Jimmy stood. Then they’d go back for another load. Every time they left, other people would wander over and take most of the things from the pile they’d just brought. Then the boy and the old woman would come back with more clothes. They didn’t seem to notice that the pile wasn’t growing any bigger.

There was an odd fixed look on the faces of most of the looters, almost a crazy look. It was a look that frightened Jimmy. It was as if a kind of madness had come down and struck hundreds of people at the same time.

Beside Jimmy, Tommy was taking fresh handfuls of sweets from his pockets. ‘Have some,’ he offered.

But Jimmy shook his head. He was so stunned by what he was seeing that he’d almost forgotten Tommy was there.

The dead horses of the Lancers were still lying in the road and a woman was using one of them as a seat. She was young and pretty, but she was drinking from a bottle and was obviously quite drunk. As Jimmy watched, she tried to stand up but fell back down in a flurry of petticoats. She began to sing something, though he couldn’t hear her words above the rumble of the crowd. A big man went over and touched the girl’s shoulder, and she swung at him
drunkenly with the bottle. Then a surge of the crowd hid both of them from Jimmy’s view, and instead he watched two other drunken young women fighting.

‘Look at them mots!’ said Tommy.

The women were both dressed in rags, and they were fighting over a silk dress. Each of them had a grip on one end of it, and was pulling frantically with the gripping hand. At the same time they were both scratching and clawing at each other’s faces with the free hand. Their faces were bloody, and the dress they fought over had been torn and dirtied by their struggle. It was hardly better now than the rags that they were already wearing.

Jimmy saw so many strange and terrible things that he couldn’t take all of them in. In the crowd he saw people he knew, but they seemed completely changed. Their faces wore a look of awful hunger. It was the look of people who’d never in their lives had anything at all and are suddenly free to have everything they want. It was a look of pure hunger let loose. It frightened and disgusted Jimmy, but he couldn’t find it in himself to blame them or feel that they were evil. The real evil, the evil that made it possible for them to have such savage hunger, was the way that they were forced to live in total poverty every day.

But Jimmy wouldn’t venture out into Sackville Street; he was afraid that if he went among the crowds their madness would take him over too. He just stood at the corner and watched the incredible scenes.

‘Janey mack, Jimmy! You’re gettin’ to be a right softie!’ said Tommy. ‘I’m going. Are you coming or not?’

Jimmy shook his head and Tommy was gone in a flash.

Two Volunteers appeared near Jimmy. They’d obviously been trying to control the crowd, and they’d just as obviously failed. They were both in uniform, but instead of guns they carried long wooden clubs like police batons. One of them was a middle-aged man with a thick grey moustache and a hard, grave face. His companion was much younger, maybe Mick’s age. At first Jimmy thought that the younger man was hurt, because he was leaning heavily on the older one. Then Jimmy realised that he was crying.

The two stopped close to where Jimmy stood, and he made out the words that the younger one was saying. ‘They don’t understand,’ he sobbed, over and over. ‘They don’t understand.’

Jimmy understood, though; and he knew what was wrong with the young Volunteer too. The man was disappointed that the crowds were not living up to his ideals. He looked healthy and well fed, as though he came from a comfortable home. He would know nothing about real hunger and want. Jimmy understood the looting. He didn’t like it, but he did understand it. It was the Volunteer, he thought, who didn’t have a clue.

WHEN JIMMY GOT HOME
, Ma knew at once that he was upset about something. He tried to tell her about the terrible things he’d seen in Sackville Street and about the strange, mad atmosphere. He couldn’t explain it properly, but she seemed to understand. She hugged him tightly.

‘There’s nothing we can do about that, Jimmy,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing we can do about anything now. All we can do is survive and hope.’

Jimmy found himself crying in her arms. Normally he was ashamed of crying, but now the whole world seemed suddenly so strange that he didn’t mind. There was nothing normal left anyway. He felt very tired – exhaustion seemed to come from deep inside him. It was as if he’d gone through too many emotions today; he was used up.

Lily Conway felt him slump in her arms. She looked at him carefully, and felt his forehead.

‘You must go to bed, Jimmy,’ she said. ‘You’ve had a long day. I don’t want you getting sick too. Your forehead is hot.’

Reluctantly, Jimmy went to bed, and as soon as he lay down he fell asleep, and spent a restless night dreaming
of war. The people in his dreams were all people he knew, but in the dreams they had become sinister and threatening. His sleep was long, but it was not peaceful.

He woke as it was getting light on Tuesday morning. On the big bed in the far corner his Ma slept fully dressed beside Sarah. She must have tried to stay up all night again, but she’d been too tired. Sarah looked pale, but her breathing was easier and she was no longer tossing in her sleep.

It was quiet outside. In the distance now and then Jimmy heard something that might have been shooting. Memories of last night’s scenes in Sackville Street came back to him, mixed up with bits of his dreams. Had he really seen all those things? He decided to take a quick look at the streets today, before anyone woke up.

He slipped quietly out of the house. Outside the sky was cloudy, and it looked as though it might rain. On the short journey he saw nobody move. He did, though, pass several people lying in the streets. At first he thought they must be dead, but then he realised that they had got blind drunk on stolen liquor and had passed out in the streets. They were the dregs of last night’s marauding crowd.

Sackville Street was desolate. The roadway was covered with a litter of abandoned loot, much of it trampled to pieces by the mob. Now the mob was gone, for the time being at least, but the gutted shops and ruined merchandise were proof that they’d been here. That much at least had been no dream, whatever Jimmy might prefer to believe.

Jimmy turned and started for home, climbing over a pile of loot that someone had abandoned. There were new shoes and clothes, broken boxes, even a big chair from one of the furniture stores. A toy baby-carriage had been filled with bottles of rum and brandy, but it had overturned and the bottles were all smashed. Jimmy eyed the assortment of articles. They looked like the senseless mixture of things that you might see in dreams.

A basket lying at the edge of the pile caught his eye. It was closed, but he had seen baskets like it before; some of the department stores displayed them in their windows. They were picnic baskets, filled with food – tins of cooked meat and biscuits and bottles of wine. Jimmy had seen toffs and army officers carrying them on summer days as they set off for the seaside with their ladies.

Jimmy stood looking down at the basket. He didn’t even want to touch it. The looting was a part of the rebellion he didn’t want to be involved in. But what if the basket was full of food? Even if Ma did get money, the shops would stay closed because of the fighting. Most of them here were looted anyway. And somebody had already stolen this basket from one of them; if Jimmy didn’t take it, it might just be left here to rot.

He took a quick look around him. Apart from a drunken young woman who was sleeping half-dressed in a shop doorway nearby there was no-one around. With a quick, furtive movement Jimmy bent and scooped up the
picnic basket by its metal handle. He hurried away with it, blushing.

The basket felt light – it wasn’t full. Jimmy stopped and raised one side of the hinged lid and looked inside. He saw a jumble of tin cans.
FRUIT PUDDING
, said one; another had
EXCELLENT PRESSED TONGUE
written on it in fancy letters. They weren’t foods that Jimmy knew, but at least they were foods. There were only six tins left in the basket; the rest must have fallen out.

Sarah and Ma were still asleep when Jimmy got back to the house. He lit a fire in the grate and put water on to boil. He took the tins from the basket and put them on the table. Then, struck by an idea, he chopped the wicker basket roughly into pieces with the kitchen knife and fed the pieces to the fire. Nobody could accuse him of stealing if there was no evidence. The food, of course, was still here, but not for long.

When the water boiled Jimmy put some tea-leaves into the blackened teapot and poured boiling water over them. Then he put the teapot and the two cracked mugs on the table beside the tins of food. He went over and woke his mother.

‘I’m after making tea, Ma,’ he said softly in her ear.

Ma started guiltily and sat up. ‘I fell asleep!’ she said. She turned to check on Sarah.

‘How is she?’ Jimmy asked.

‘Still feverish, but I think it’s gone down a bit.’

‘Maybe she’d like some tea?’

‘Let her sleep,’ Ma said. ‘I’ll give her something later.’

She stood up and rubbed her eyes. She still looked tired. She went over to the table to pour some tea, and then she saw the tins.

‘Jimmy!’ she said. ‘Where did these come from?’ Her voice wasn’t sharp or suspicious, only surprised. Faltering, Jimmy explained. His face grew red, and he stopped several times during the story. But Ma didn’t give out to him when she heard it; instead, she hugged him close. ‘Oh, Jimmy!’ she said, ‘you’re a brave lad and a good one.’

‘I didn’t know what to do,’ he said. ‘I knew it was wrong to take it, but it was wrong to leave you here with no food too.’

‘Hush!’ Ma said, hugging him tighter. ‘You were brave, Jimmy. Brave and good.’ She tried to explain. ‘Jimmy,’ she said, ‘you know it’s wrong to shoot at people.’

Jimmy was puzzled. ‘Yeh,’ he said.

‘But your father is in the army, and he shoots at people. And now Mick is out fighting, and maybe he’ll have to shoot at people too.’

‘But that’s different …’ He stopped. It was a complicated matter. He didn’t have the words to express himself.

‘Sometimes,’ his mother said, ‘taking things that aren’t yours is the same. It’s wrong. But you knew it would be more wrong to leave us with no food while this lay thrown away in the street.’

Jimmy saw that she understood. He nodded enthusiastically. Ma stood up, laughing almost gaily. Jimmy knew that she was doing it to reassure him. She made a great show of reading the labels on the cans.

‘Excellent pressed tongue, indeed! Maybe we won’t be eating much for the next few days, Jimmy,’ she said, ‘but we’ll be eating very fancy stuff.’

‘I’ll bring one of these tins up to Mrs Doyle,’ she went on. ‘She has a bit more food than we do, but she has our Josie up there as well as her own.’ She examined the tinned food again. ‘We’re not too badly off at all.’ It was a lie, but Jimmy knew that Ma thought keeping his spirits up was more important.

Jimmy, though, wasn’t cheered. A few cans of food and a couple of stale sandwiches from Mick wouldn’t last long, and there was no way of knowing how long it would be before they would get anything else.

So far the British had made no serious effort to force the Volunteers out of Sackville Street, but that wouldn’t last. The army would attack and the rebels would fight. When that happened, Jimmy and his family would be in the middle of a battlefield.

Things couldn’t be like this all over the city. He was sure of that. There didn’t seem to be a huge number of rebels. They would defend the places they’d taken over, but other parts of Dublin might be calm. Shops might be open and people able to move around in safety.

Jimmy thought about his aunt Ella. He would bet on it that there’d be food in Ella’s house. But Mick had warned him not to go there. If the rebels did attack the barracks at Beggar’s Bush, then Northumberland Road where Ella lived would indeed be dangerous. But thinking about Ella, about the four pounds that she had kept, made Jimmy angry. It made him so angry that danger didn’t seem to matter very much. It would be dangerous here too, when the army finally attacked the Post Office.

There were only two things that could be done, Jimmy thought. Either his family must get away from here, or they must get money or food from Ella. Getting away was impossible: Sarah couldn’t be moved. Besides, they’d nowhere to go. With money they might find lodgings in some safer part of the city, but without money it would be hopeless. Certainly there was no question of them going to Ella: Charlie Fox would have no pity on them. Ella would hardly welcome them either – she’d never even asked them to tea.

The only thing to do was to go to Ella’s for money or food, and if someone had to go to Ella’s, then that someone must be Jimmy. But Ma would never agree. There was only one thing for it. He’d have to deceive her. Nothing could be worse than the position that his family was in now. Anything that helped them had to be right.

Jimmy’s mind was made up.