‘Now, see, you were missing the sights,’ he said.
‘I was, boy. How are you, girls?’ Jesse Kirwan called out. ‘Never mind these Jackeens! Don’t you know the better thing when you see it? Up Cork!’
But there was little chance such raillery could be heard above the engines of the transports. Black smoke as ugly as death belched from the fretting engines. The transport boys were notorious for letting any type of engine out of the garages.
Well, Willie saw no one he knew. Of course, his father had told his sisters not to risk coming down to see him off. These were different days, he said. The spring sun ran along the river like a million skipping stones.
Then he saw her, just where she had said, on the steps that led down to the ferryboats. Gretta, Gretta! He waved like a maniac now, screaming her name, Gretta, Gretta. My God, she looked everywhere but at his transport, everywhere, and he was sick at heart suddenly to think she wouldn’t spot him.
‘Look, look,’ he said to Jesse Kirwan, ‘there’s my girl!’
‘Where, where?’ said Jesse. ‘Give us a look, boy!’
‘There,’ he said, ‘there, your one there with the yellow hair!’
But it was no damn good, they were past, she hadn’t seen him, and Jesse hadn’t seen her either. Oh Jesus, he thought, strike him dead. But just as she nearly vanished from sight, she saw him, and jumped up and down in her drab blue coat, maybe calling, he couldn’t tell, but he waved again, he waved and he waved.
But happiness was general. There was a happiness in the new men, who had been released from what were truly the dull repetitions of the camps. Now they had the elation of actors on a first night, all hope and effort in their faces. Willie Dunne smelled the spit and polish on their boots, their uniforms in many cases just cleaned and ironed by careful mothers, their chins shaved whether requiring shaving or not, their different-coloured hair all sleeked and ready for the adventure. Many of these men had been born and raised in these very streets, played marbles along these very gutters, kissed those very girls maybe.
Gretta had come out to see him go, and that was as good as a letter - as good as ten letters.
‘I’ll tell you something, Willie Dunne, you have beautiful girls in Dublin.’
‘They’re famous for it,’ said Willie.
‘They ought to be,’ said Jesse Kirwan. ‘Lord above, they’re beauties. Euterpasia or Venus bright,’ he sang briefly. ‘You know that one?’
‘I don’t,‘ said Willie, ’and I know a powerful lot of songs.‘
‘Or Helen fair, beyond compare, that Paris stole from her Grecian’s sight ...’
‘It’s a good one,’ said Willie.
‘I don’t know, boy, it’s just a song that my father sang.’
‘Well, you must teach it to me some time. Some of the old songs have very complicated words, that’s true enough.’
‘Ah, it’s not a singing song, not a singing song for soldiers, I’d say.’
‘What does your old fella do, Jesse?’ It was very hard to hold a conversation over the noise, but Willie was intrigued by the man who was almost the size of himself.
‘Well, what does your old fella do?’ said Jesse, countering, and the transport swayed them both, making Willie bite his tongue from the crazy swaying.
‘Policeman,’ said Willie, through the pain.
‘That’s a queer sort of a job,’ shouted Jesse Kirwan.
‘What’s queer about it?’
‘My father wouldn’t think much of that. My father doesn’t hold much with laws and policemen and the like.’
‘What the bugger is he then, a robber?’
‘A lithographer.’
‘And what in the name of God is that?’ shouted Willie.
Jesse Kirwan slapped him on the shoulder then and they laughed like proper eejits, enjoying the general mayhem.
The open sea showed its dancing vistas, the wooden lighthouse in the sound of the river, the drowned man all swollen with salt water that was the peninsula of Howth. Willie could well-nigh feel pity for Jesse Kirwan, coming from mere Cork.
But in the next second Willie’s head was banging. He feared, he feared to tell Jesse Kirwan what awaited him. He feared to tell himself.
The officer in charge, a florid-faced captain with a patch on one eye, lined them up, ready to embark.
Willie remembered he used to be down here as a little fella with his father, to watch the Irish lambs being loaded on, for the English trade, his father checking the manifests so that the numbers tallied. It was a caution against smuggling.
The one-eyed officer was very dissatisfied. He was shouting now at the corporals and the sergeants as if it was all their fault. The boys of Ireland were willing to embark, but it was mighty awkward hauling everything up the gangplanks. There were whistles and shouts and the civvy dockers were putting their hands to the ropes suggestively, and the engine-room was thrumming as if a thousand giant bees were milling there.
Suddenly Willie didn’t feel so bad. Things were as they were; if you couldn’t change a thing you had better lump it. All the din and to-do was strangely cheering. The sea air filled his lungs and unexpectedly he found himself ready enough to go.
Then an army messenger came up on horseback, from the city itself it looked like. His horse made a noise on the wharf like shipbuilders working at rivets. Eyes fell on this flustered soldier, with his air of urgency and a dispatch bag flapping on his leather coat.
Then soon there were officers re-emerging from the ship’s bowels, and the soldiers were ordered back out onto the dockside. Had they been rejected at the last minute? Was the war over maybe?
‘What’s going on?’ said Willie to another baffled private, one of the older men, his head as bald as a spoon — he had knocked his helmet back to scratch it.
‘Don’t know, bless me,’ said the man.
In minutes there was a haphazard, thrown-together column marshalled on the dock.
Suddenly Willie got an elbow in the ribs, but it was only Jesse Kirwan, appeared out of nowhere, and put in to make four.
Now here were the soldiers, marching back! You might think they were arrived at last in France, thought Willie, with a sad laugh, as he marched along himself.
They approached the city like very ghosts. Few citizens could be seen and the crowd that had cheered their passing had melted away.
‘What’s afoot?’ said Private Kirwan, as if Willie Dunne, being not a recruit but an experienced man, might know.
‘I haven’t a notion,’ said Willie.
‘Do you think they’re to disband us or what?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I’m one of Redmond’s men, the Volunteers. You know?’ he said, as if maybe this was something else that Willie wouldn’t understand, something in the line of lithography.
‘What’s that got to do with the price of bacon?’ said Willie.
‘If the war’s over, I’m not staying in the army,’ said Jesse Kirwan. He sounded quite angry. ‘I only came in as a Volunteer.’
‘Sure we’re all volunteers,’ said Willie, a touch sardonically.
There was the O‘Connell Monument now where his father paused just three years ago, ready to charge the mob. The bank-holiday crowd looked something similar to the crowd that had come out for Larkin. It was very peculiar, anyhow. Some of them were actually running from the direction of the Rotunda Hospital. At the same time there were groups of a dozen or so gathered in spots, looking back up the street.
Their column was fiercely halted and things took place now that no one could understand the purpose of.
For here now, as real as a dream as one might say, a little contingent of cavalry was drawn up just under the awnings of the Imperial Hotel, and at a shout from the officer in front, they drew their swords, pointed them forward, and went clattering and hallooing up Sackville Street.
It was the most astonishing thing Willie Dunne ever thought he would see in his native place. It was one of those dragoon re
giments, with all the old plumage of the last century in place. But this was just Dublin in the modern day with all of modernity raging peaceably there in the principal street of the country, the second most important street in the entire three kingdoms. The wonderful short jackets of the dragoons clasped their waists, the dark black plumes streamed from their polished helmets, they looked like old Greeks, they were shouting now their calls of battle, the officer in front, who had the bent aspect of a heron about him, by far the loudest.
The groups of Dublin citizens suddenly broke out into cheers, as if moved beyond silence by being spectators in a battle. On they galloped like heroic figures in a vast painting.
Then, even more bizarrely, rifle shots crackled out from the General Post Office, in a most queer moment of ill-fitting likelihood, and then horses and riders started to go down, just as if it were some old battlefield, and there were Turks or Russians in the portals of the Post Office. With roars of pain from the riders and strange shrieks from the wounded horses, which hit the cobblestones with that shocking implication of bruise and broken bone, the charge broke up, and the surviving riders careered away down Henry Street or crossed back madly into Abbey Street, presumably to take their horses and themselves out of the range of fire.
The officer himself rode on regardless, never looking back, and it must have been three or four bullets were needed to bring him down, the skittering horse shot out from under him.
‘Jesus, are there Germans in that big place, or what?’ said Jesse Kirwan.
‘I don’t know,’ said Willie Dunne. ‘I suppose there must be.’
Now Willie Dunne saw some Dublin Metropolitan Police men here and there, and he called out to one he knew.
‘Here, Sergeant, hello!’
And the sergeant wheeled about and stared at Willie Dunne.
‘Ah, Willie,’ he said. ‘Little Willie.’
‘What’s going on?’ said Willie. ‘Is my da anywhere around?’
‘I haven’t seen the chief at all,’ said the policeman.
‘And is it the Germans have invaded us?’ he said.
‘I don’t know, Willie.’
‘Look it here,’ said another man, a mere citizen, proffering a printed sheet to Willie.
Willie took a step towards him, which seemed to excite the captain leading the column.
‘Step back in, Private,’ called the captain. ‘Don’t parley with the enemy.’
‘What enemy?’ said Willie Dunne. ‘What enemy, sir?’
‘Keep back away, or I will shoot him.’
And the captain hurried down and put his Webley against the poor man’s temple, a very grievous thing, it appeared, because a horrible rank sweat broke out on the civilian’s forehead. But the captain was content when Willie stepped smartly back.
The column was told to go on then, and they wheeled about across Sackville Street Bridge and on towards Nassau Street. They were hearing shots now in other sections of the city. Willie Dunne could not bring himself over the strangeness of it.
In proper order they were marched right through Trinity College, where there were students hanging from the windows, cheering them. But that mystery was ignored also, and on they went, out onto the lower corner of Merrion Square, then away along the swanky square towards Mount Street Bridge.
Here for the first time the familiar noise of rifle bullets passed overhead, and skipped up from the cobblestones, and as far as Willie Dunne could see they were being fired on from a premises just to the left of the bridge. They could see now others of their own troops coming up from Ballsbridge direction, marching.
His column was instructed to build a barricade across the street, and men smashed their way into the dwellings and pulled out nice sofas and hall tables, perambulators, mattresses. They made themselves as safe as they could behind these objects. Then they knelt to the gaps and were told to commence firing.
Meanwhile, the troops on the other side of the bridge continued to advance, line after line, and a machine-gun opened up from the premises and began to mow down the soldiers.
Willie Dunne could clearly see two second lieutenants urging them on from the front, and they were the first to go. Willie stood up now with open mouth. His own companions were firing as they had been bidden, and he was certain that some of the fire was going straight on over the bridge and adding to the murderous business afoot on the other side. The captain ordered them to stop firing.
Now they crouched among the furniture. ‘Made in Navan’, Willie Dunne read on the underside of a chair. Navan right enough was well known for its furniture making. Whose bottom sat there usually, he wondered? Private Kirwan was just beside Willie, sheltering behind a plump cushion wrapped in an antimacassar, probably not made in Navan, Willie thought. Somehow or other Private Kirwan had got hold of one of those pieces of printed paper blowing about here and there and was intently reading.
Actually he was intently weeping.
‘ Are you hit?‘ said Willie.
The little Cork man looked up at him. He didn’t say anything immediately.
‘ Are you hit, are you wounded? Will I call out for the stretcher bearers?‘
‘No,’ said Private Kirwan. ‘Oh, Jesus, Jesus.’
‘What is it?’ said Willie.
‘It’s our lot,’ said Private Kirwan.
‘How do you mean?’
‘It’s our fellas. James Connolly is out. And Pearse the schoolmaster.’
‘I don’t follow you. Who are they?’
‘It’s here,’ he said, rattling the sheet, ‘it says it here, you poor gobshite. What sort of a man are you? It’s a notice. To tell the people.’
‘What people?’ said Willie. About forty more soldiers across the bridge were added to the dead or wounded, and the rest were now lying in among the gardens of the huge houses on that side of the canal.
‘Here, give us a look at that,’ said another soldier, with a raw Dublin accent himself. And he started to scan it quickly. ‘Our gallant allies in Europe,’ the man read. ‘Who the fuck are they? Is it us against us? What in the name of Jaysus is going on?’
Now a sort of noisy silence descended, and Willie heard the groans and distant screaming of wounded men.
‘What’s going on, for the love of God?’ said Willie Dunne. ‘I have three sisters up at home.’
They were told to be ready now to charge, to relieve the men the other side.
‘ All right, boys,‘ said the captain. ’We won’t be long mopping these lads up.‘
Willie’s arms were weak and his rifle felt like an iron girder for some enormous roofspan. He lifted it painfully. They were poised to go, and Willie chose a convenient enough footstool to clamber over.
‘All right, boys, advancing now. Pick your targets. Watch out for the men on the other side. Fire at the building only.’
A machine-gun, which had been brought up unnoticed by Willie and positioned in a house on his right, started firing into the building some hundred yards away, as covering fire.
Just as they were all ready to go and in fact some strength was returning to his arms, suddenly from Warrington Place appeared six horses being led by a groom. They were beautiful horses, Willie could see, and he could also see the horror on the face of the groom who, whatever his mission was, was not expecting a war at the intersection of the canal and the Ballsbridge road.
The two horses in front reared up. For some reason the machine-gun started firing on the group. The groom went down immediately, his golden outfit blooming with red, and his horses in their panic started galloping up towards Willie and his fellows. Their order to advance was repeated, and over they went, running now towards the building, which was itself all bullets vomiting out of the windows.
Men were going down all around him. He had to dive into a doorway halfway down, and others were doing likewise. Of the hundred men who had come out with him there were three just at his boots lying dead almost on top of each other, their faces bizarrely staring at him. It was hopeless. T
he officer himself had been wounded in the shoulder. There was a little pipe of bone sticking out through his jacket. The charge broke up entirely.
He was standing there in the portico straining his eyes to the building. They would need guns bigger than machine-guns to get them out. He knew intimately the secret nature of that building, the two layers of granite in the walls, the brick facing, it was like a medieval tower for strength.
He heard something behind him, a clicking. Someone had come up behind him in the gloom. He turned about with his rifle raised and found he was facing a shivering man, a very young shivering man in a Sunday suit and a sort of military hat, and an ancient-looking revolver held in both his hands, raised towards Willie’s chest.
‘You’re my prisoner,’ said a trembling voice.
‘I’m not,’ said Willie Dunne.
‘I need you for a prisoner, Tommy,’ said the youngster.
‘No,’ said Willie.
The wounded captain behind Willie sort of reached in over Willie’s shoulder and fired his pistol. The bullet tore into the young man’s neck, and he fell to the marble floor.
‘Rifle jammed, Private?’ said the captain.
Willie stared at him a few moments. ‘No, sir. Yes, sir. No, sir.’
The captain issued a sardonic laugh and pulled away again.
‘Oh, God,’ said the man on the ground. It was a definite wonder he could speak still. There was a huge hole in his throat where Willie imagined his speaking equipment would be.
Willie thought it would be heartless not to attend to the man in some fashion. The old revolver had slipped from the man’s hands and had slithered along the floor, and the fellow was eyeing it hopelessly.
Willie knelt down to him.
‘I’m not going to shoot you,’ he said. ‘Are you a German?’
‘German?’ said the man. ‘German? What are you talking about? I’m an Irishman. We’re all Irishmen in here, fighting for Ireland.’
There was dark red blood leaking from the terrible hole, it was pouring onto the flagstones and soon it would be running out of the door and down the granite steps. It would cross the pavement, thought Willie, of Wicklow granite, and sneak along the cobbled gutter, and into the dark drain. It would leak down into the great Victorian conduit and go away and away to the river and the sea. It was his life’s blood, Willie knew, well he knew it. The young man gripped Willie’s arm nearest him through the khaki sleeve, but it was pain that drove him to it, animal pain.