Читать книгу After the Lockout - Darran McCann - Страница 6

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 on the Green. Thank God our army had a few actual soldiers as well as bad poets.

‘I saw you got your photograph taken there. That was careless, boy,’ says Mick in that sing-song accent of his.

‘That fellow from the press? He said he was a reporter from The Times.’

‘It just so happens he was telling the truth, but you didn’t know that. The one with the camera was a G-man, down from the Castle. Fuckers stand out like blood in the snow. You shouldn’t be letting anyone take your picture.’

I’ve better things to do than stand here being lectured by some lilting sleveen from West Cork. He’s younger than me for Christ’s sake. I always pegged him for an eejit to be honest. But he cleaned up at cards in Fron Goch. Maybe that was his secret. Six foot plus and you never saw him coming.

‘We need you to go on a trip for a few days. But we need to be sure you’re committed,’ he says.

‘I’m committed to a Marxian republic, not some Fenian gombeen version of what we have already.’

‘Victor, you’ve been letting that mouth of yours run away with you too much lately. You’ve been drawing attention to yourself. It has to stop,’ says Dick Mulcahy.

‘Don’t give me orders, Dick, I’m Citizen Army, not a Volunteer.’

‘I’m Citizen Army and I say that’s no longer a meaningful distinction,’ says Arthur.

‘Arthur, these altar boys want to change the flag and nothing else and you know it.’

‘Jesus, but youse socialists are a barrel of laughs,’ says Mick, with all the usual aggressive collegiality, but Dick Mulcahy grabs me roughly.

‘Damnit, Lennon, if we want freedom we need a revolution and for revolution we need bloody fierce-minded men who don’t care a scrap for death or bloodshed. A real revolution is not a job for children or for saints or scholars.’ He lets go of me. ‘Like I keep saying, in a revolution any man, woman or child who is not with you is against you. Shoot them and damned to them,’ he says to Mick. ‘This fellow is too soft for our purposes.’

‘You’re being too hard on him, Dick,’ says Mick. He’s watching me closely, reading me. I keep looking at Arthur. Yes, it’s him I’m surprised at.

‘Connolly himself said there’s no more Irish Volunteers, no more Irish Citizen Army, only the Irish Republican Army. I’m sick of losing. These lads have a plan that might work,’ Arthur says.

‘Can you be trusted to follow orders?’ says Mick. He knows Bat has already approached me. He knows I’ve already wriggled out of taking the secret oath of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. They only want political revolution, but I’ve been shouting from the rooftops that without social and economic revolution, it’s a waste of time. I don’t suppose they like it. Besides, virtually every IRB man I know is a fucking prick. But I can’t really say that to these lads.

The train is slowing, I’m guessing we’re approaching Harcourt Street. Mick peeks out under the bottom of the drawn blind, and seems suddenly impatient. ‘You were at the GPO and Fron Goch, fair enough, but that isn’t enough any more. Go to Phil Shanahan’s and wait, there’ll be someone to meet you there later. Go straight there now, no detours.’

‘I’ll need to go home and change out of the uniform.’

Bat pulls down a suitcase from the overhead compartment. It’s my suitcase. He tells me he stopped by my room earlier and picked up some things. ‘Sorry about your door.’

‘You’ll be at Shanahan’s,’ says Dick, wearing a look that makes clear it’s not a question. For now, it’s easier just to agree with them. I nod.

‘Good man,’ says Mick.

Dick Mulcahy shows me out onto the marbled platform of Harcourt Street station. I’m on the plush, loyalist south-side now. Not such a smart place to be wearing this damn uniform. I straighten my sloped green hat, keep an eye out for peelers, and make for the nearest public toilets to get changed. Back in the civvies, I’m stepping out of the jacks when I hear someone shout my name. I turn and I see a face from another lifetime.

Charlie Quinn.

He’s older. Skinnier. His hair used to be an auburn thatch but it’s thinner and greyer now. He’s still handsome in a country sort of way. He sports a Kitchener moustache and he’s walking with a hell of a limp. He lurches forward and throws his arms around me. ‘I’ve been in Dublin for days looking for you,’ he says. ‘I knew you’d be at the funeral.’

He feels slight and bony. Charlie comes from shopkeepers, he should be pink and fat and boyish like his da, but he looks older than a docker of his age, and dockers age the quickest. ‘Was that you shouting my name back in Amiens Street?’

‘I followed you onto the train. I didn’t think you’d heard me.’

‘I wasn’t sure I did.’

He smells of ointment but beneath that there’s something else, something like you’d smell in a butcher’s specialising in offal on the turn. It’s like the smell of Connolly in those last hours at our little Alamo on Moore Street, when there was nothing left to do but ensure the surrender was worded properly before the ceiling came in around us. Two days after a ricochet ripped into his ankle. Two full days of agony and morphine, and he was laughing and crying at the same time, like only someone hopped-up to the eyeballs can. Charlie is holding a thin wooden cane against his left leg; he lifts the cane and gives it a little tap against his left shin. The sound of wood on wood. He smiles bravely.

‘The doctors tell me I should wear this prosthetic all the time, but to tell you the truth, I hardly ever do. It chafes something terrible. Could have been worse. At least I kept the knee.’

‘What happened?’ I say, but I see his greatcoat and the little patches of wool darker than the rest, where regimental insignia have been stripped off.

‘Shell fell right on top of us. I was lucky, really.’

‘King and fucken country, Charlie? How could you be so stupid?’

He waits till I exhale, so he knows I’m finished. Not the best way to start a conversation with an old friend, I confess. ‘I’ve come to bring you home,’ he says. ‘It’s your da, Victor, he needs you.’ Charlie lifts his hand in a drinking gesture. ‘Worst I ever seen.’

‘My da isn’t the sort of man would be taking advice from me,’ I say. It’s the most unexpected thing, and I’m trying not to show it, but I feel like I’ve been waiting a long time for this invitation.

‘Och, Victor, don’t be like that. Everything is forgot about now.’

‘I haven’t forgot nothing.’

Stanislaus let himself in the front door and found Mrs Geraghty waiting in the hall, clutching a telegram in her fist. ‘Jeremiah just delivered it. It’s from Dublin, Father,’ she said, half breathless.

‘Thank you, Mrs Geraghty,’ he said, and started up to his study, leaving her disappointed at the bottom of the stairs. He stopped halfway up. ‘I’m sorry to keep repeating myself, but the correct form of address for a bishop is Your Grace.’

‘I thought that was only for proper bishops?’

‘An auxiliary bishop is a proper bishop.’

In his study Stanislaus set the little post-office envelope on his desk beside the newspaper he hadn’t yet read and sat down. He picked up the telegram, sliced it open, then set it down again. Unready. He looked around the bulging bookshelves that lined three walls of the room. They made the place claustrophobic. He turned the chair around, as he always did, to the window, which commanded a view straight down the middle of Madden village. The chapel, the graveyard, National School, Parochial Hall, post office and Poor Ground; all the comings and goings were under his gaze. He could almost see into the terraced homes of his parishioners. The women were indoors, the men were in the fields, the children were at school. Red flags fluttered from homes and telegraph posts, and bunting crisscrossed the street, but aside from that, things were mostly right with Madden. He looked again at the telegram. Whatever it contained, it was bound to vex him. He picked up the newspaper instead.

ULYANOV ‘LENIN’ DECLARES RUSSIA ‘WORKERS’ STATE’

He threw it down again. Once, this had been his favourite time of day. Morning mass finished, pastoral visits done, he’d have an hour to look out the window and read the paper. The symmetry of keeping one eye on his parish and the other on the events of the world pleased him. But since the war, there had been nothing but bad news, and it was all Russia these days. There was no pleasure left in his ritual. He was no monarchist and did not miss the tsar – a king who couldn’t feed his people didn’t deserve to be a king – but these Bolshevists … Ulyanov had said the events last Easter gave an example to be followed and it seemed Dublin last year had its sequel in Petrograd this year.

The clock chimed four. Father Daly, the curate, came in the door like an unbroken colt and said Mrs Geraghty had told him of the telegram. Stanislaus nodded and the curate picked it up, his fringe flopping over his forehead as he opened it. He set it back on the desk, text facing up. Stanislaus couldn’t help but see it now.

VL arrive 10 o’clock train STOP

Need transport from station CQ STOP

‘So he’s coming then,’ said Father Daly. ‘Do you think he’ll be able to get his father back on the straight and narrow?’

‘We must hope so.’

They had given up any hope that Pius Lennon might sort himself out. Stanislaus called often but the door was never answered. Pius’s life seemed to revolve entirely around poteen; a lamentable state for a man formerly so substantial. He had taken to wandering the parish at all hours of day and night, flaming drunk, with a bottle in one hand and a loaded shotgun in the other. Not long ago he wandered up the street while the school-children were on their break, scattering them in terror. The postman Jeremiah McGrath said he remembered when Pius Lennon first came to the parish to marry his Deirdre, before he became the respected pillar that Stanislaus knew. Jeremiah said people were right to be terrified of Pius.

‘His method is different but I fear Pius is going the same way as his wife,’ said Stanislaus.

Pius owned several hundred acres in the east of the parish and Madden’s economy had long depended on the Lennon land. Pius had started his drinking after his Deirdre’s death. They said Deirdre had been the belle of the county in her day, but when Stanislaus knew her, that had been hard to credit. He’d had no choice in refusing her a funeral or burial. Church teaching was clear and unequivocal. The drinking accelerated as each of Pius’s children left, one by one, till they were all gone. Now he lived reclusively, letting his land go to ruin, and no longer offered work to anyone. So Stanislaus had compiled a list of the Lennon children and all the places to which they had emigrated, and wrote to the Cardinal’s office for church contacts in each place. The reply came quickly. It seemed he still drew some water in Armagh. He wrote to parishes and dioceses around the world and, over several months, the replies came. Stanislaus was flattered that some of his colleagues in far-flung places had heard of him and were familiar with his work. They were keen to assist. He got addresses for all but one of the fifteen Lennon children. Of the fourteen, he knew the Sarah girl was only thirty miles away at the Monastery of St Catherine of Siena, but he would not interfere with her vocation. The fifteenth name he circled in red ink. He had no address for that one. It would be a last resort even if he did have one. He sent out thirteen letters.

Dear Mr/Miss Lennon,

I write out of concern for your father, Pius, who I must inform you, has succumbed to the evil of drink. His maintenance of the land and his spiritual and physical wellbeing are of concern to all in the parish, and though we have attempted to divert the self-destructive course on which he is set, it is my pastoral experience that only family can save a man in times of moral despond.

I beg that you return home and care for your father, or failing this, that you ensure another of your siblings can do so.

Yours in Christ,

Most Rev S. Benedict, Bishop Emeritus

Six, seven, eight months passed. Jeremiah McGrath assured him nothing was wrong with the long-distance mail, even with the war, and slowly Stanislaus came to accept that there would be no replies. The name circled in red ink rebuked him. The Victor fellow had left Madden boasting of Brooklyn or Botany Bay, but everyone knew he was in Dublin since his name had appeared in the margins of the press during the industrial unrest. He had been a minor figure, not a Larkin or a Countess Markievicz, and Stanislaus had denounced Larkin’s union from the pulpit, as per the Cardinal’s policy, but he knew the parishioners had a sneaking regard for ‘their’ Victor. When their Victor joined the insane adventure of Easter week, sneaking regard flowered into strident pride. No-one from Madden had ever been famous before.

Victor’s best friend Charlie Quinn had volunteered to go to Dublin to find him. Stanislaus asked Charlie whether he thought Victor would agree to come home. Charlie said he didn’t know. What he was willing to predict, though, was that Victor would still be every bit as angry as he was the day he left Madden. Stanislaus was discomfited to think of the rage-filled boy coming back into his life a full-grown man. He pushed the newspaper across the desk under Father Daly’s nose and pointed to the Ulyanov headline.

‘This is the kind of man we’re talking about. A bolshevist, you know,’ he snapped.

‘He can’t be that bad if he was with Connolly, God rest him,’ said Father Daly.

‘Connolly was a communist.’

‘Only in life. No-one will remember that whole communist thing in the long run.’

Stanislaus got up from his desk. He had no intention of debating with a guileless liberal not five minutes out of the seminary. ‘I’m going for a walk,’ he said. He went downstairs, opened the door and pulled on his coat as he strode out the gate into the street. He grimaced at the red bunting and flags as he passed under them. Otherwise good parishioners openly disobeying his injunction – and the Cardinal’s – against Gaelic games. They’ll all be thrilled when they hear of their Victor Lennon’s return, he thought. He whispered a prayer for the peace of the parish.

It’s your stick. You found it. It’s the best stick you’ve ever seen: three feet long, thick but pliable enough to bend double without cracking. Your brothers are jealous of it. Charlie’s jealous of it. Even Maggie’s jealous of it, and she’s a girl. You use it to hunt, to fish and a hundred other things. It’s yours, and the bastard thinks he can just take it. Phelim Cullen. You know the name. Everyone does. He’s three years older than you, looks like he’s nearly six foot, fifteen and out of school with the cigarette to prove it. He tells you to go away, stop pestering him. You are far from home, five or six miles at least, in his parish to watch the Madden footballers take another hammering. It’s his parish and he says he’s keeping your stick. He’s laughing but he’s threatening to lose his good humour any second. But it’s your stick and he can’t have it, no matter what.

‘You rotten thieving bastard.’

His expression darkens and he swings the stick at you with a terrifying whoosh. Last warning. Christ but he’s a vicious bastard. Charlie and Maggie are looking at you with pleading, terrified eyes.

‘If you don’t hand over the stick I won’t be responsible for what happens to you.’

The crowd gathered around winces as his open palm cracks loudly against your cheek. A slap in the face. Wouldn’t even dignify you with a closed fist.

Well, you’ll dignify him with one.

He doesn’t see it coming. Not in a million years did he think you’d do it. He’s stunned, and he’s not the only one. Your fist opens his nose like a knife through a feed sack. You swing again and again and the blows land again and again, till he drops your stick and flees like a beaten dog. You pick up your stick, gingerly, since your knuckles are bruised and bloodied. But it’s not your blood.

Charlie and Maggie look at you differently now. It’s like they’re scared. You’re a little scared yourself.

Charlie follows me onto the Number 14 tram. My old route. Once upon a time I knew every tram driver in Dublin but I don’t recognise this young, ignorant-looking fellow with the shirt collar too small on him. He yanks the handbrake too sharply and rings the bells like he’s Quasimodo. Everything about him screams non-union. A bastard scab. We sit down among the well-heeled, law-abiding south-siders and trundle past Carson’s house, the Stephen’s Green and the College of Surgeons, still pocked and scorched by bullet and fire. Ladies in expensive fabrics promenade prettily beneath the awnings of Grafton Street. They’re carrying parasols. In Ireland. In November. Businessmen, bankers, professionals in starched collars walk stiffly around College Green, Trinity College, Westmoreland Street. Little boys and girls strut after their parents in collars and jackets and short pants, and there’s a fat Metropolitan peeler on every corner watching protectively over the oppressing class. We cross the Liffey to the north side, where the oppressed live. The Kapp and Peterson building stands on the corner of Bachelor’s Walk and the street they call Sackville and we call O’Connell, unscathed and alone like a cigar stump in an ashtray. Further up, the shell of the General Post Office stands at the centre of a square half-mile of rubble. I look at Charlie. At where his leg used to be. I shake my head. ‘What possessed you? Home Rule? Rights of Small Nations?’

‘Can’t say it was. Can’t say I even understand what any of that stuff means.’

‘Little Catholic Belgium then, being raped by the Protestant Hun?’

‘I didn’t give a damn about Belgium nor about the Hun either. I just wanted to see what this Great War was like. I wanted to get a gun, see a bit of the world, and feel like a grown man.’

The bastard scab announces the Nelson Pillar and we hop off, electric cables crackling overhead. We reach Montgomery Street. Canvas awnings promising Meats, Drugs, Tobacco or News shade the broad pavements of Monto and gentlemen in fine suits walk quickly with their heads down, hoping not to be seen. A gang of malnourished, barefooted gurriers, none more than ten or eleven, idle by the corner and eye us suspiciously. There’s an army of gurriers in this city, I see them all the time, trying to huckster a living either side of the tram line. Some beg, some pick pockets, some shine shoes or hawk early editions of The Herald. These lads are typical: bony and dirt-caked with narrow, cynical slits for eyes and cigarettes clamped between black teeth. ‘Have you a penny to give these lads?’ I say, and Charlie stops to rummage in his tunic. I take a couple of pence from my pocket.

‘Ah, keep your money, mister. You’re Citizen Army, aren’t ye?’ says one of the gurriers. I nod. ‘We’ll not take an’ting off you, but we’ll take it off your man.’ He points to Charlie, ‘John fucken Bull, wha?’

Further up the street two women lean out of a ground-floor window of a tenement. One of the women is big and brassy and could be anywhere between thirty and sixty. Her face is painted white, her lips are scarlet and her head is covered by a raven-black wig, stacked high and precarious. The other one is only a young thing. She’s painted and dressed up the same but that only makes the contrast all the more obvious. The usual combination: an old whore for the young lads fresh up from the country with dreams and virginities intact, and a young floozy for the older men. Working girls festoon most of the windows around here.

‘Come on in till I wet yer willy mister,’ jeers the old whore, cupping her hands around her chest. We walk on. The young floozy catcalls after us, are we men at all at all. Peggy O’Hara is leaning out the bottom window of the tenement I live in. Peggy is our tenement’s old whore. Charlie’s appalled that I live here, he can’t hide it.

‘Howya, Victor. Who’s your friend?’ says Peggy, pushing forward her young floozy, a pretty wee thing, perhaps fifteen with big, bewildered brown eyes and cheeks plastered preposterously in rouge. ‘Dolores here’s a real patriot. If he’s a friend of yours, she might do him a discount.’

‘Only a discount, not a free go, for a national hero?’

‘Look around you, Victor. Youse heroes have damn near put us out of business.’

She’s right. This place used to be black with soldiers, all loose change and aggression, looking for a good time in the red-lit windows of the Second City of the Empire. But the soldiers are confined to barracks now. Of course the high-end houses for the rich are still here, and go out the back of any pub on a Friday night, you’ll see the bottom end of the market relieving careless working men of their pay packets; but the servicemen were always Monto’s bread and butter. The Monto girls have cut down more British soldiers with knob rot than all the generations of rebels ever managed with muskets and pikes.

‘Better to die on your feet than live on your knees,’ I say.

‘I make my living on my knees.’

I have to laugh. Whores are my favourite capitalists. They’re the most honest, and often among the smartest. Every smart whore I’ve ever met has the same dream: to own her own place and run her own girls. Peggy O’Hara’s only complaint about the grinding boot of capital is that she’s not wearing it.

We don’t go inside. No detours, Mick said. ‘It’s an eye-opener around here, isn’t it?’ I say.

‘I’ve been here before,’ Charlie replies. ‘I was billeted at Beggar’s Bush before they sent us to France. We spent a lot of time up here. They were giving free ones to boys in British uniforms that time.’

‘Whores and armies are well met,’ I say.

I wonder what I’d have said if we’d met then, as he was getting ready to go and fight for the king. I don’t think I’d have been able to look past the uniform. Soldiers are fucken pigs. I think I’d have spat in his face. ‘That coat of yours sticks out like a sore fucken thumb so it does.’

‘I took off the epaulettes,’ Charlie protests.

‘You don’t think people know what it is?’

There’s a time and a place, Victor, let it go. Life is in the letting go.

The doors of P. Shanahan Wines Spirits Ales Licensed Imbibing Emporium are locked and a large billboard announces the premises are Closed By Order Of The Lord Lieutenant Until Further Notice. Beige blinds bearing the legend Select Bar are pulled down over the windows. I knock till a voice from inside asks who it is.

‘Fron Goch prisoner 19531977.’

The door opens a few inches and Phil Shanahan ushers us in fussily. ‘Who’s this with you?’ he asks.

‘Friend of mine. He’s all right. Is it all right if I wait here? There’s supposed to be somebody coming to meet me here later on. I was told to wait.’

Phil waves around the empty room in agreement. The room is long and narrow and the bar runs its full length. It’s all dark corners. It used to be full of people like me talking politics, or naïve country lads newly arrived in the big smoke; desperate for anything familiar, they’d make straight for the premises of Phil Shanahan, the famous hurler. There’s someone in the snug down at the bottom, I can just about see movement through a gap in the snug door. I pull up a high stool so Charlie can sit down, plant my elbows on the bar and duck my head under the window. Phil stands squarely across the bar from me with his thumbs looped in his waistcoat pockets. ‘What’ll it be, men?’

‘Bushmills.’

‘Oul Protestant whiskey.’

‘Good Ulster whiskey.’

Phil smiles and sets up the bottle and three glasses. He leaves me to pour while he reaches under the bar and produces a dog-eared newspaper page that looks like it has passed through many hands. He sets it down in front of me and smirks. ‘Did you see this? I’ve been showing it to all you socialist lads.’ I finish pouring the whiskey and take the paper from him. It’s from the Freeman’s Journal, couple of months back. Yes, of course I fucken saw it. Down in the bottom left corner. Our glorious leader.

LARKIN MAROONED

The Sydney New South Wales Correspondent of the ‘Daily Mail’ cables: – Jim Larkin, the Irish Labour leader, left the United States for Australia in a steamer which was to make its first call at Auckland, New Zealand, but the captain, according to instructions, landed Larkin at Pago-Pago in American Samoa. Larkin indignantly protested to the American Administrator, who replied that he had no power in the matter. Larkin is virtually marooned in the middle of the Pacific.

Phil roars laughing as he lifts his glass. ‘Up the Republic!’

‘God save Ireland,’ says Charlie.

‘All power to the soviets,’ I say.

The first drink of the day rasps against my throat. I light a cigarette and pour another drink. Phil excuses himself and goes back to the snug.

‘How come the place is empty?’ says Charlie.

‘They took Phil’s licence after the Rising.’

‘He doesn’t seem the sort to be mixed up in that sort of thing.’

True, Phil’s idea of a political opinion is to moan about how hard it is for an honest publican like himself to make a living. If I’ve heard his joke about his membership of the Irish Publican Brotherhood once, I’ve heard it a thousand times. Yet there he was on Easter Monday morning, walking across the deserted street toward the barricade outside the GPO where I stood guard, a rifle strapped across his back and a toolbox full of ammunition in his hand.

‘Is it yourself, Victor? Is it the socialists are rising out? I heard ye were having a crack at the English.’

‘Go on home, Phil. We haven’t a chance of winning.’

‘I’m not in the least bit concerned whether we do or not.’

I remember thinking for a moment that if a man like Phil Shanahan was with us, maybe we had a chance after all. Charlie asks for a cigarette. He inhales and splutters. ‘You should smoke more,’ I tell him.

‘I know. Did you keep the card?’

I hand it over. Cigarette cards don’t interest me, but people are religious about them. ‘What are they, Navy Cut?’

‘Gallaher’s.’

He’s disappointed. ‘I’ve nearly got the full Player’s collection: the Large Trench Mortar, the Stokes Trench Mortar, the Vickers Field Artillery Piece. I only need the Lewis Automatic Gun.’ The card read Plants Of Commercial Value. Charlie’s face squirrelled up with distaste. ‘Flowers, like. Papaver rhoeas is a variable annual wild flower of agricultural cultivation. The four petals are vivid red, most commonly with a black spot at their base. Blah blah blah. Who gives a damn?’

I down the whiskey and pour another. Through the gap in the door of the snug I see one of the fellows with Phil take out a shiny gold pocket watch and fidget with the chain. I recognise that fidget. Alfie Byrne, the Shaking Hand of Dublin himself. Such a nervous fellow, if he didn’t have someone’s palm to pump, he would take out that bloody watch chain and fidget with it. Couldn’t sit still for a moment. He had shaken hands all the way to the House of Commons. I down the whiskey.

‘You have to come home, Victor. Your da isn’t the man he was. The drink has him.’

‘A man with fifteen children can afford to lose one son.’

‘He has nobody.’

Nobody? The Lord said Go Forth and Multiply, and by God Pius Lennon took him up on it. He made my ma into a production line.

‘They’ve all left. Everybody’s gone. Pius is alone.’

Most of my brothers would knife the old man in the guts if they thought it’d get them their inheritance a day sooner. The Lennon land is worth a lot, at least in the conception of Madden people. ‘What d’you mean gone? Gone where?’

‘The four winds. We’ve tried everyone else. You’re our last hope.’

I get up and knock on the door of the snug. I ask Phil to lend me pencil and paper. He goes behind the bar to see if he can find anything, and as he rummages, I wave to Alfie Byrne. Alfie looks well, with his crisp moustache and stiff collar and expensive shoes. He waves back. Is he starting to lose the hair? He won’t like that, the vain bastard. I can only see the knees of the third man, who stays seated in the snug. Phil hands me a pencil and a copy of the Picturegoer magazine.

‘It’s all the paper I can find.’

‘Do rightly.’

According to the Picturegoer there’s a new five-reeler coming soon starring Kitty Gordon. Don’t think much of her to be honest, but apparently she’s the Most Magnificently Gowned Woman On The Screen. I thumb through the pages quickly to see if there’s a picture anywhere of Mildred Harris. I like Mildred Harris. Don’t see one. I throw the magazine down in front of Charlie. ‘Fifteen is a lot to keep track of. Write on this.’

Charlie opens the Picturegoer at a random page and glances at the picture. ‘There’s a new picture palace only after opening in Armagh,’ he says.

‘Is that a fact?’ I say as I take it back from him. If you want something doing, honest to God. ‘I’ll write. Let’s start with Seamus. Where’d he go?’

‘Boston.’

I scribble it down. ‘Emily?’

‘Manchester.’

‘England or New England?’

‘England. Mary’s in Cape Town. Anthony’s in Wellington, Thomas is in Sydney.’

‘Fucken empire-builders.’ I down my whiskey and pour another.

‘Oliver is in Buenos Aires. Maybe you should slow down, Victor.’

‘Bonus what?’

‘Buenos Aires. In the Argentine.’

‘Jesus. What about Patsy?’

‘Melbourne. Theresa, eh …’ Charlie thinks about it for a second: ‘Glasgow. Johnny is in Chicago. Agnes is in New York.’

‘Wee Aggie? She’s only a child.’

‘She’s twenty-two. She’s married over there, I think. Rosemary’s in Toronto. Who am I forgetting?’

I tot up the numbers quickly. ‘We’re missing four.’

‘Including yourself.’

‘Three then. Brigid?’

‘Philadelphia. Peter went to London. He got conscripted. He’s in France now.’

I pour another whiskey. ‘Fucken eejit.’

‘I met him out there. In Paris. Small world, eh? Two Madden boys meeting away on the other side of the world. Him and a few of his cockney pals were paralytic. They were asking me did I know where was the Moulin Rouge.’

I smile. Peter’s the youngest, he was eight the last time I saw him. ‘Dirty wee bastard. I’m sure you told him off.’

‘Sure I was on my way there myself.’

I laugh loudly and take a long slurp. There’s a name missing from the list. ‘What about Sarah?’

‘Sister Concepta. She’s been with the Dominicans in Drogheda these last five or six years.’

‘You must be fucking joking me?’ I’m off again, laughing like I haven’t laughed in years. Fifteen Lennons and not one single city big enough for two of them. Pius has scattered the family like I said he would. My sides hurt.

‘Keep it civil down there,’ Phil shouts across the room.

‘Is she married?’ I ask Charlie. ‘You know damn well who I mean.’

‘No, she’s not. She’s the schoolteacher.’

‘Did she send you to come and get me?’

‘Jesus but you’re full of yourself.’

‘Then who’s we? You said we wrote to all our ones.’

‘Bishop Benedict.’

The name is like a nail on a blackboard to my ears. I presumed he’d be dead by now.

‘Pius needs help, Victor, he’ll die if he doesn’t get it. The property is gone to hell. There’s cows dying of old age, Victor.’

I pour another drink hoping it’ll settle my head but it does no good. The room is spinning on me. I hear a voice – not Phil’s, not Alfie’s – pronounce in a stentorian Cork accent: ‘Alfred, the Irish Party is finished, Mr Shanahan and his friends have made sure of that. My little party is certainly a spent force. We must all now make our peace with Sinn Féin.’ I know the voice but can’t quite place it. I open the door of the snug to return Phil’s pencil. Phil looks up watchfully.

‘Just leave it on the bar there, Victor.’

Alfie looks up and fidgets.

‘Ask him, Phil. Ask Alfie where was he when he heard they’d shot Connolly.’

‘Take it easy now, Victor,’ says Phil.

‘He was in the House of Commons cheering and singing God Save the fucking King when he heard, weren’t you, Alfie?’

‘I was on me holyers at the time,’ Alfie protests.

Phil stands up. ‘Right, Victor, that’s enough. Alfie and Mr Healy are here to try and help me get my licence back, so sit down and calm yourself. You’re drinking too fast.’

The third man sticks his fat head out from behind the door, his face all whiskey and sirloin and silver service and gout. Timothy Michael Healy, Member of Parliament, King’s Counsel. As Murder Murphy’s thug in the Four Courts, he was one of the bosses’ bluntest instruments during the lockout. Healy looks like dead king Edward, with his full white beard and his big, fat, balding head. ‘Healy. I’m sure you cheered the loudest when you heard.’

‘I wasn’t even in the House that day. Victor, whatever our differences, Connolly’s execution offended every drop of Catholic blood in me.’

‘Every one of your boss’s newspapers was baying for blood. Well, by God your boss got what he wanted.’

‘Mr Murphy isn’t my boss. I’m just a lawyer.’

‘Mr Healy’s trying to help me get back my licence,’ says Phil. ‘He’s representing Tom Ashe’s family at the inquest too. Leave him alone.’

Charlie is beside me now, trying to coax me away. ‘Where did that happen?’ Healy asks him.

‘Messines.’

Healy gets up and shakes Charlie’s hand. ‘My boy was in the Dardanelles. People say Irishmen shouldn’t be fighting for England, and maybe they’re right, but there are many good and patriotic Irishmen in the trenches.’

Charlie directs me halfway back across the room but I’m still looking at Healy, standing at the door of the snug with smugness splayed across his big, blotchy face.

‘You were his right-hand during the lockout. I haven’t forgot what you did, you and the rest of them. I haven’t forgot the lockout,’ I cry.

‘Oh, for goodness sake, nobody gives a damn about the lockout any more,’ he says.

I shrug Charlie off and fling a whiskey tumbler as forcefully as I can towards Healy, but I stumble and my aim is off. The tumbler crashes into the window above the bar. Shards of smoked glass fly everywhere. I move towards Healy with every intention of ramming his head into the wall but before my third step Phil is standing before me with hurl in hand. He pulls hard and I feel the warm smack of the ash against my shoulder. I topple sideways and collapse in a corner, but in a flash Phil wrenches me powerfully to my feet and pushes me towards the exit. He’s still the right side of forty and built like the athlete he is. He holds me with one arm and opens the door with the other before propelling me onto the pavement outside with a mighty push. There’s a good reason why Phil’s pub is the cleanest and safest in Monto. I crawl to the gutter and empty my guts of all the spuds and bacon and whiskey in me. Behind me, far away, a voice barks bitterly and a door slams. Lying on my back, I look up and see Charlie hovering.

‘All right, I’m ready to go home now,’ I say.

It’s been so long since she last even left the house you doubt your own sight. She’s standing at the edge of the lake like a will o’ the wisp, looking like she might blow away. You reach the spot, your spot, where you and Maggie meet, and look up at her in her billowing white robes. She doesn’t seem to see you. The sun is melting like it does in autumn, and the wind gusts. You shout out and she turns to face you, an old woman at forty-five. She smiles beatifically, and you glimpse your mother, not the banshee she has become.

‘Victor, son: life is in the letting go,’ she says.

She turns away and steps off the high edge of the lake. You watch her fall, serene as a snowflake.

Stanislaus felt not a day over sixty-five as he reached the crossroads, a mile and a half’s walk from Madden, mostly uphill. Not bad for a man passed over on health grounds ten years before. He turned back and kept a good, even pace, his footsteps ticking like a metronome. Walking was always good for clearing the head. He thought about full bishops promoted since his retirement, all of whom Cardinal Logue, in his vast wisdom, had recommended. He knew of four who were not well and three more who frankly were incapacitated. Soon Madden was in sight, nestling in the gentle hollow. The street lamps flickered against the failing light. From up ahead, just outside the village, came bad singing and laughter, and Stanislaus saw two lads of perhaps eighteen horsing around. Stanislaus’s knuckles whitened on his stick. ‘John McGrath and Aidan Cavanagh,’ he cried. They stopped dead and straightened up in exaggerated protestations of sobriety. Eyes red like diseased rabbits. The stench of cheap spirit damned them. ‘It’s not even six o’clock and you boys are drunk as lords. Have you no work to be at today?’

‘Everybody quit early the day, Father,’ said McGrath, the post-master’s son.

‘Where did you get the drink?’ Stanislaus demanded.

‘I don’t know, Fa’er,’ said young Cavanagh, the schoolteacher’s brother. Stanislaus slapped the blackthorn stick against the boy’s thigh. ‘Pius, we got it off Pius!’

‘Is this. How you. Behave. When your families. At home. Haven’t even. A spare penny. To waste?’ Stanislaus uttered bitterly, punctuating his speech with slaps to their legs. They yelped like puppies. ‘You should be ashamed of yourselves.’

This business of Pius Lennon and the poteen was getting out of hand. He was making the stuff in such prodigious quantities and selling it so cheaply that he was bringing many others to ruin with him. Nevertheless Stanislaus was troubled by the thought of the Victor fellow as the correcting influence, to Pius and to the wider problems connected to Pius’s dissolution. That such a person would be anyone’s idea of salvation! Obedience and discipline were the answers to vice, indolence and dissolution. People needed leadership from the cloth, not from radical politicals. Stanislaus had read many of the socialistic texts. Mostly screeds written by palpably troubled souls. He found most striking the universal rage and the rejection of authority – the former a consequence of the latter, he believed. Marxians said the meaning of life was struggle, but Stanislaus knew that grace required acceptance. True freedom came through surrender. Only rage was possible where grace was not. In lands where grace was banished, no depravity was unthinkable. The Russian experiment, for example, was sure to end in horror. He hung up his overcoat in the kitchen and opened the range door. As he poked at the fire and watched the flames rise higher, he wondered if he might work up his ruminations into a paper.

‘It’s after a quarter past six. I wish you would tell me where you’re going out and didn’t keep me late, Father,’ said Mrs Geraghty, standing behind him with her cloth coat pulled tight around her.

‘Your Grace,’ Stanislaus muttered, but knew it was pointless to keep correcting her. She’d never learn to address him correctly. At her age and station, she was disinclined to take in anything new. ‘Dinner smells wonderful,’ he said.

‘It’s been in the oven so long it’ll be dry as communion,’ she said with a bitterness he knew was affected. ‘Oh, and Father,’ she went on, softer now.

She gently removed a letter from her coat pocket and held it up. ‘There’s a letter for you, Jeremiah McGrath brought it special delivery. It looks very official, Father.’

Stanislaus reached for it but Mrs Geraghty seemed reluctant to let it go. She recognised the seal as well as he did.

‘Thank you, Mrs Geraghty, I’ll be fine from here on,’ he said.

‘If you’re sure there’s nothing else you need,’ she said, at length letting go.

‘Quite sure, thank you,’ said Stanislaus, nodding to the clock.

‘I’ll say good evening then,’ she snorted. She raised her chin and eventually took herself out the door. Stanislaus sliced the envelope open, relishing the crisp rasp of the water-marked paper coming apart. The handwriting was unmistakable. Only close friends and colleagues got handwritten letters.

My old friend Stanislaus,

I have this morning returned from Rome where the Holy Father has briefed the Conclave on a crisis of the gravest urgency. In accordance with the Holy Father’s instructions I am gathering together the most senior principals of the Church in Ireland to discuss the emerging crisis. I expect to see you at the Synod Hall in Armagh this coming Sunday at three o’clock.

I pray this letter finds you well and fully restored from your illness.

Your Brother in Christ,

Michael Cardinal Logue + +

Stanislaus read and reread the letter. The most senior principals of the Church in Ireland. Ten years had passed since Stanislaus had risen from his sickbed to be told he wasn’t getting the Bishopric of Derry. It was no reflection on his abilities of course, everyone thought the world of him of course, his counsel would still be invaluable of course. But His Eminence the Cardinal, the Archbishop, the Primate, had never sought the counsel of the parish priest of Madden. Not till now. In time of crisis though, the Cardinal wanted his old friend at his side. Poor old, sick old, pensioned-off old Stanislaus Benedict. The old enforcer. The man who made enemies so Mick Logue, the Northern Star himself, didn’t have to. Father Daly came bounding down the stairs and into the kitchen. He opened the oven door and reached for the plates, then withdrew his hand quickly and waved around chastened fingers. He bit his lip so as not to swear, then made a glove of a dish cloth and lifted the hot plates from the oven.

‘You’re ready for your tea, Your Grace?’

Stanislaus nodded and sat at the head of the table. The curate set out forks, knives, a jug of water and two glasses on the table and when he sat down, they bowed their heads. In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Benedic, Domine, nos et haec tua dona quae de tua largitate sumus sumpturi per Christum Dominum nostrum, Amen. Stanislaus chewed slowly. It wasn’t quite as dry as communion wafer but it was overdone. He put some of his food onto Father Daly’s plate – it seemed that, no matter how often she was told, Mrs Geraghty would not accept that a man’s appetite shrivels with the years – and the curate nodded appreciatively. Stanislaus set the Cardinal’s letter on the table. Father Daly stopped chewing. He swallowed and picked up the letter. He read it quickly, then seemed to read it again. ‘It sounds serious, Your Grace. I can drive you to Armagh in my motorcar if you wish?’ he said.

‘Yes, I’d appreciate that. After the last mass.’ Stanislaus paused. ‘Have you any thoughts on what it might be about?’

‘Well, the fact that the Holy Father called together the Conclave … it’s not a local matter. And this talk of urgency … probably a temporal issue. The war, maybe? Perhaps there’s a peace treaty in the offing.’

‘Or perhaps things are about to get worse.’

Father Daly finished his dinner and Stanislaus permitted him to smoke. ‘There was something I meant to say to you,’ the curate said as he exhaled. ‘Some of the parishioners want to use the Parochial Hall tonight.’

‘What for?’

‘They’re holding a homecoming dance for Victor Lennon.’

Aidan Cavanagh and John McGrath had said everyone in Madden finished work early today. Stanislaus hadn’t thought to ask anything further, but now here was the explanation.

‘I thought it was an innocent enough request,’ Father Daly began falteringly, as though realising he might have overstepped his authority. ‘Everyone seems so excited about this fellow coming home.’

‘Who gave you the right to make that decision?’

‘Your Grace, I …’

‘What sort of man do you think this Victor Lennon is?’

‘Your Grace, I hardly think …’

‘He’s a communist and a bolshevist and he has been up to his eyes in every kind of radicalism. Tim, people idolise this Lennon fellow, and we don’t know what he’s planning.’

‘Will we cancel the dance?’ said Father Daly.

Stanislaus sighed. Father Daly and young priests like him would be responsible for the future of the Faith. Stanislaus feared they lacked the necessary toughness for dealing with the threats arrayed against it. ‘It’s too late for that if you’ve already said yes. The dance may go ahead. But it must be strictly teetotal. I met youngsters on the road and they were full drunk. And I want everyone out by eleven.’

‘Victor and Charlie probably won’t have arrived by eleven.’

‘Those are the conditions. And Father: this is not to happen again. The use of parish property is in my authority and mine alone. Is that understood?’

Pius is still apologising extravagantly as he closes the door on Benedict. You hadn’t planned it, it was an unconscious reflex. You look to your big brother Seamus but he turns his eyes to the floor. You look to Anthony, second eldest, your favourite. To Mary. To Sarah. To little Agnes. They all turn their faces away. Perhaps spitting at the bishop was too much, but at least it was unequivocal. The spit will wash away but the act won’t. You look at your mother, shrouded in white on a table in the corner, unmoved. The gesture means nothing to her. Pius unbuckles his belt.

‘Da, please …’

‘Don’t you Da me,’ he hisses, pulling the belt from his waist, loop by loop. ‘You do that to a priest? You do that to a bishop?’ He wraps the belt round his knuckles, doubling the leather. Nausea rises in your nostrils, hot and horrible. The room is dark, with only the hearth’s dying embers giving light; Pius’s face is half red, half shadow, the margin flickering down the middle. You can smell his hot breath. He never drinks, but there’s poteen there, the wildness in his eyes confirms it. The belt lashes across your face. You don’t feel anything yet.

‘He comes over here and tells us Ma is going to hell? The bishop can go to hell and so can you,’ you cry. Defiance is all that is left to you. His fist connects with your jaw and the pain is such that for the briefest of seconds it feels like you have departed this life. You’re crumpled on the floor absorbing the blows as Pius swings and swipes and the belt leather cuts deep into your arms and back and head.

‘I’m going to kill you,’ Pius cries, and it sounds like the most absolutely truthful statement he’s ever made in his life. You hear women scream and they’re all telling him to stop but they’re all too spineless to make him. You peek from your foetal position and, seeing a lull, launch yourself at him. You clatter into his midriff and crash over the table. Tea and wake sandwiches go flying. Back on your feet, you see your mother through eyes bathed in blood and tears. A slice of ham has landed on her cheek. Pius puffs desperately for air, his face is purple. Your mother is dead and this yellow-belly runs away into a bottle just when you need him most.

‘You’re nothing but a drunken coward,’ you say as you run out the door.

We have the compartment to ourselves. Not many heading north at this time of night. I pull down the blinds and scrape the flecks of bacon and carrot off the lapels of my suit. Charlie’s too civilised and conscientious to put his feet up on the empty chairs beside him but I’m not. I pull the trilby hat down over my face and make myself comfortable. It’s a rickety old bone shaker but I’m soon nodding off. One minute we’re between Clontarf and Sutton and Charlie is saying something about how the Madden footballers have reached the county final; the next he’s poking me with his cane and telling me to wake up, we’re near Armagh. The train is stopped. I see lights further up the line, but outside it’s darkness.

‘This isn’t a scheduled stop,’ Charlie says.

The train starts moving again, chugging its last mile or two, and I hear compartment doors being slid open up the hallway. I peek out. Two soldiers stand in the hallway a few compartments down smoking cigarettes and pointing their rifles to the ground. A third soldier, tall and slender and wearing an eye-patch, comes out of the compartment, and they move on to the next one. They’ll be in on top of us in a moment.

‘I’m not even home yet and already the harassment starts.’

‘I’m sure they’re not looking for you, Victor.’

‘When you’ve been lifted as many times as I have, Charlie, you know fucken tyranny when you see it.’

‘Don’t start now.’

‘I bet you the officer puts on an English accent. Wait till you see.’

‘Victor, please.’

There’s no way the train will get to the station before they get to us, snailing along like this. I lie back on the seat and pull the hat down over my face and a moment later, I hear the compartment door slide open.

‘Right, wake up, we need to take a look at your …’ the officer begins – he is putting on a sort-of English accent – ‘Charlie Quinn! Get up and let me shake your hand,’ he cries, sounding fit to burst.

‘I’d like to, Hugh, but’ – Charlie makes a tap, tap, tap – ‘I’m not as good on my feet as I used to be.’

‘Oh. Of course, I’m sorry.’ Hugh slumps down into a seat and sighs. I’d love to get a look at this fellow, but I stay hidden beneath the hat.

‘How’s the eye?’

‘Doesn’t bother me at all. I got away very lightly compared to some.’

‘True enough. Poor old Frank Jennings lost half his face. And you heard about Bob Morrow?’

‘No justice, is there?’ Hugh rises and stands over me, close enough that I can smell the tobacco off him. I fidget. ‘This fellow with you?’

‘Cousin of mine. Name of John Swift. Why, who are you looking for?’

‘Just keeping our eyes open.’

‘I’ll wake him up and check him,’ says another voice, a Scottish accent this time.

‘Let him be, Hugh,’ Charlie says calmly, ‘he had a lot to drink earlier.’

‘Shut it, you,’ the Scottish accent snaps.

‘Stand down, Campbell,’ Hugh barks. ‘This man deserves your respect and with God as my witness, he will have it.’ The train hits the buffers with a jolt of sufficient violence to wake any man except John Swift. I tense up, waiting to be unmasked. But instead I hear first Campbell, then Hugh, apologise to Charlie. They leave.

‘Jesus Christ, Charlie,’ I say when I come out from under my hat.

We disembark the train. Not more than a handful of people are in the station, so there would be nowhere for us to hide, but the soldiers aren’t on the platform yet. We move as quickly as we can out of the station and into the refuge of the shadows. The night is still and calm and the full moon lights up the empty street. It’s late. In a few hours the mills around here will be thronged. Up ahead, lights flash and an automobile splutters beneath a street light. A military vehicle. Behind us Hugh and his men exit the station. I drag Charlie into the shadow of the arches at the front of the station and we watch the soldiers pass by, no more than a few yards from us. Hugh talks to the driver of the truck, and they climb into the back. The truck retreats into the distance and I breathe again.

It’s quiet now. I see a horse and buggy idling outside a large red-brick house at the top of the street, and as we move cautiously in that direction I pull the hat down across my face and try to make out the features of the man sitting on the trap. When we get close, the faceless horseman says: ‘Is it him?’

Alarmed, I look to Charlie. He nods. ‘You got my telegram.’

The horseman claps his hands together and cries gleefully: ‘Welcome home, Victor. Erin go fucken bragh!’

‘Ssssshhh! Keep it down, will you? The Baptist minister lives in there,’ says Charlie, pointing to the red-bricked house. Curtains twitch in the upstairs window. The horseman giggles and tells me to throw my suitcase on board. I hesitate. He’s late thirties, tall and strong-looking, with the floury face of a man too fond of the drink. He’s familiar. A Madden man presumably. Damned if I can place him. Charlie senses my confusion.

‘I sent a telegram ahead asking for Turlough to come and pick us up,’ he says.

Of course. Turlough Moriarty. I was in school with his younger brother Sean. Big, strong fellow too, Sean was, if a bit soft in the head. Turlough was the smarter of the two, relatively speaking. All dead-on people, the Moriartys. I climb onto the buggy and thank Turlough for coming. He gives the horse a light lick of the whip and we’re on our way. We go up over Banbrook hill past the pubs at the Shambles, up English Street with its proud, polished shop fronts, the gleaming terraces of Market Square and Thomas Street, the huckster shops of Ogle Street and onto poor Irish Street. Not a sinner to be seen. We cut through the slums of Culdee and pass the long sail-less windmill of Windmill Hill, and soon reach Droim Gabhla at the edge of the town. I tell the lads about something a great, wise and knowledgeable man once told me: how the official name for this little hamlet is not Drumgola, as would have been the logical Anglicisation, but Umgola, because some careless clerk somewhere made a balls of it and left out the ‘Dr’. This little Irish townland has a name straight out of deepest, darkest Africa because of the tin-eared ignorance of the foreigners who took it upon themselves to rename our country. We share a bitter laugh. I look back to the little town, the tiny city of Armagh, lit by a moon bright as a cool blue sun. ‘Crazy place to build a town, the whole place is hills,’ I say.

‘Built on seven hills,’ Turlough sings, beginning the chorus to the old Armagh song.

‘Like a little Rome.’

After a few miles we turn left and the lights of Madden village glow softly, down below us in a hollow. The horse snorts tiredly. Somewhere in the distance is a fast, throbbing hum, faint but growing louder, like it’s coming from under the ground. Madden looms. I make out the chapel spire first. Then the Parochial Hall. A handsome if not beautiful façade of plain rose window above double doors. At the top of the town, the Parochial House, proud and immoveable as a Papal Bull. The three Church buildings all sit on slightly higher ground than the rest of the village, which is why they’re the only buildings in Madden that have never flooded. The National School is the only other building in town worth a damn, and it too is controlled, if not owned, by the dog-collars. Same story in every town in Ireland. But I see in the gaslight that flags, yes, red flags, are draped from every window, and bunting stretches across the street. Everything red, red is the colour. My God, Charlie said I was a hero, but the place looks like Paris in ’48! The subterranean throbbing is identifiable now. It’s a drum. There’s fiddles and accordions too, coming from the Parochial Hall. We move towards the music.

‘They’re holding a dance in your honour,’ Charlie says.

‘People’s awful proud of you, Victor,’ says Turlough. We stop outside the Parochial Hall, its grey façade is broken by splashes of frenetic colour behind the steamed-up windows. The noise is cacophonous. ‘Come on, we’re very late.’

A young priest with a mop of blond hair emerges from the Hall. He nods and hails me with a toothy smile. ‘You must be Victor?’ I nod. He takes his watch from his pocket and fidgets with it in a way that reminds me of Alfie Byrne, then looks distractedly up the street towards the Parochial House. ‘Thank goodness you’re here, we’re supposed to finish up at eleven and it’s past that now.’

‘Gone half past, I make it,’ I say, glancing at my watch. The others look at theirs, then back at me confusedly.

Of course, they’re all twenty-five minutes behind me, I keep forgetting. They didn’t bother to tell us in Fron Goch about the so-called Daylight Saving Hours. Apparently we’re in line with Greenwich now. After being released I walked around for weeks not knowing about it.

‘I seem to be ahead of everyone. My watch still gives Dublin Mean Time,’ I say.

When we get the Republic we’ll fix the clocks, and no more of this Greenwich nonsense. How supine are people who allow the government to overrule the clock – the clock? It’s frustrating, though, that everyone else’s watch is slow. Being right is cold comfort when the whole world is wrong. ‘I’ll be in directly,’ I tell the priest.

He nods and turns but as he opens the door he is almost knocked over by a boy of maybe seventeen, who staggers out and around the side of the building. Out of sight, he retches violently. The priest shakes his head and goes inside. I take my suitcase around to the other side of the building, looking for a shadow so I can change back into my uniform. When I’m changed, I spit on my hands and pat down my hair. A shave would be good, a bit of soap could do wonders, but perching the sloped hat on my head, I suppose I probably look all right.

‘Come on, you’re gorgeous,’ Charlie calls, and I step into the light just as a tall figure all in black strides past Charlie and Turlough, ignoring them as they call out their salutes. He walks with an impressive sprightliness, gripping his cane like Phil Shanahan grips a hurl, and throws open the door of the Parochial Hall without breaking his stride. The old bastard looks like he hasn’t aged a day.

Maggie answers the door with a grimace of condolence but her expression gives way to horror when she sees the battering you have taken. She rushes you inside the house, scattering her younger brothers and sisters with matriarchal authority, and lies you down on the sofa by the range. It’s warm and smells of baking bread. Maggie’s father is perched in his usual armchair. God knows what he makes of you; one eye lolling madly is the only sign he’s alive at all. Maggie goes out into the scullery and comes back with her father’s old leather medical bag, towels and two bowls of water. She puts one bowl on the range and heats it.

‘Look up at the ceiling, we have to keep the wound elevated. If we can’t stop the bleeding you’ll have to go and see a proper doctor.’ She immerses a towel in hot water, wrings it out and sets it against your eyebrow. ‘Help me apply pressure to the wound.’

From your good eye you look at the graceful curve of her neck and want to take a bite out of it. She’s wearing a red and brown dress with little lace frills at the edges. She’s close enough that you can smell her distinctive smell.

‘I told you to look at the ceiling,’ she says. Her father’s daughter.

When the bleeding stops she washes the wound with a soft wash-cloth. You grip the sofa tightly and grit your teeth while she pours liquid from the spirit bottle over the cut – ‘Isopropyl. It’ll prevent infection,’ she says – and uses tweezers to remove what she calls debris. She makes up a dressing with surgical adhesive tape and gauze. ‘But it won’t be enough,’ she says. ‘The broken skin won’t knit together on its own. You need stitches.’

You nod quiescently. You’re so tired. You ask if you can sleep in her shed. You are grateful she doesn’t ask for an explanation.

‘What will you do tomorrow?’ she asks.

‘I’ll bury my mother.’

‘Afterwards?’

You’re too tired to think. ‘I know if I stay here I’ll kill him.’

From his window Stanislaus watched everyone arrive. He had a dusty volume of theology in his lap, lit by a single candle, but it was a mere prop. It took two hundred people to fill the Parochial Hall and from early on, the place was full. The cheering and clapping from the Parochial Hall grew louder and rougher as the night got later, and Stanislaus was relieved as eleven o’clock approached and the guest of honour hadn’t appeared. The moon, full and large in the cloudless sky, shone across all but the darkest corners of the parish, so Stanislaus would have seen him. But eleven o’clock came and went and there was still no sign of things winding up. Eventually Stanislaus rose and readied himself to intervene, but he wobbled and sat back down. He gripped the arms of the chair. His vision swirled before him. He held his face in his hands and felt the cold sweat on his brow. But this was not a stroke and it soon passed. He looked at the bottle. It didn’t seem like he’d had all that much to drink. He had gone for years of his life without a drink, it wasn’t something he was a slave to, but it was true that he had acquired a taste for brandy in his old age.

Outside in the distance the light of a lantern appeared and as it grew bigger Stanislaus made out three figures atop a buggy, drawing closer. Charlie Quinn’s leg stuck out in silhouette. Hulking Turlough Moriarty drove the buggy. Typical. The Moriarty boys were perennial foot-soldiers, from their grandfather, a locally famous Fenian of the sixties, on down. It was no surprise that they would regard Victor Lennon as a great fellow altogether. The third man sat between Charlie and Turlough with the brim of his hat pulled low over his face. It had to be him. He watched Father Daly emerge from the Parochial Hall and speak to the men on the buggy. They spent a moment looking at their watches. Obviously Father Daly was explaining the time, and that the dance was over. The third man got down from the buggy. Father Daly made to go back inside but as he opened the door he was almost knocked aside by Aidan Cavanagh, who dashed round the corner and heaved up his guts on the wall of the Parochial Hall. Stanislaus gripped his stick in his fist and bounded furiously down the stairs. By the time he reached the Parochial Hall Aidan was gone and only Charlie and Turlough sat on the buggy. They called their greetings but he didn’t stop to acknowledge them.

Inside, smoke, sweat, music and colour blasted Stanislaus’s senses. Musicians clattered ever faster, all aggression and artless volume, and the wood floor vibrated like the skin of a drum under thudding feet and bodies crashing to and fro. It barely passed as dancing, this hauling and mauling. Overhead was a banner fashioned from an old green tablecloth that read Erin Go Bragh Welcome Home Victor. Stanislaus felt suddenly vertiginous. Standing near the door, tapping his foot and observing passively, was Father Daly. He turned white when he saw Stanislaus.

‘Is this how you supervise an event? I said teetotal,’ Stanislaus seethed.

‘I haven’t seen anyone taking drink.’

‘Open your eyes, man.’ People would always come up with schemes for concealing liquor but a good priest would be wise to them. Stanislaus tutted disgustedly at the curate’s failure. ‘It’s well past eleven.’

‘Victor has just arrived. I thought another few minutes wouldn’t be any harm.’

Stanislaus stalked away. Further discussion would only aggravate him. He moved towards the stage at the top of the hall, and word of his arrival spread perceptibly as he moved through the crowd. The dancers became less frenetic, then stopped altogether. It was like water dousing a flame. As Stanislaus ascended the stage, the musicians stopped playing and held their silent fiddles and banjos and bodhrans guiltily. Standing centre stage, he didn’t have to wait long for silence.

‘It’s very late. The dance is over. Don’t anyone make any noise on your way home,’ he said. The crowd looked back dumbly. ‘I said this dance is over. Good night to you all.’

‘Victor is here!’ cried a voice from the back of the hall.

Everyone turned. The hall seemed suddenly bigger with two hundred people facing away rather than towards him. Men wrestled past each other, women too, to converge on the doorway, where Victor Lennon now stood. He wore a tattered military uniform, bandolier and big sloped hat. Had he changed his clothes? Shrewd. He was a striking sight in the uniform.

‘I’m sure the bishop won’t object to another few reels, since I’ve just arrived,’ Victor called out, crisp and clear, the voice of a man who knew how to project. A musician ran a bow across fiddle strings and waited to see what would happen. Stanislaus and Victor locked eyes on one another over the heads of the people. ‘Sure you wouldn’t, Your Grace?’ said Victor, jabbing the words mercilessly precisely. The dizziness was returning to Stanislaus. The fiddler scratched the opening notes of some fast reel, and the other musicians joined in. People clapped the rhythm and quickly the floor filled with dancers. It was as though Stanislaus wasn’t there. People queued up to shake Victor’s hand and shower him with kisses.

‘Are you all right, Your Grace?’ whispered Father Daly, climbing onto the stage.

‘For all you care, seminarian,’ said Stanislaus, mustering his strength to walk off the stage, beating a path through the people with his stick. Father Daly took hold of his elbow, and though he tried to shrug him off, there was little force in his protest.

‘You don’t look well, Your Grace.’

As they passed him in the doorway Victor Lennon nodded, smiled and gulped heartily from a huge bottle. He laughed as he looked at the bishop. Stanislaus wanted to stop him, to insist that the event was teetotal, but his knees buckled beneath him. Had Father Daly not held him up, he’d have crumpled.

‘Are you all right, Father?’ said Charlie Quinn, smoking a cigarette with Turlough Moriarty by the door.

‘I’m surprised at you, Charlie Quinn, I’d have expected better,’ Stanislaus wheezed as Father Daly helped him into the street. ‘There would’ve been no problem if you’d ended proceedings when you were supposed to. If you only …’ Stanislaus said to Father Daly, but hadn’t the breath to finish.

‘You just need rest, Your Grace, you’ve been overdoing it lately,’ said the curate.

‘If you’d made sure it was over by eleven like you were supposed to,’ Stanislaus said again as they arrived at the Parochial House, suddenly more weary than angry now that he was inside his own front door. Almost immediately, his eyelids started to droop. ‘Victor Lennon may be the only layman in the parish who knows how to address me correctly. Isn’t that funny? Isn’t that awful?’ he said.

Stanislaus’s last thought before he fell asleep that night was the look on Charlie Quinn’s face as he’d chastised him. The young man had seemed genuinely distraught.

People are cheering for me and shaking my hand. Benedict looked so strong and unyielding up there on stage, laying down the law, but I knew the people were with me. There’s a huge banner draped from the ceiling, and yes, it’s green when it should be red, but it is a tribute to me. He looked around the packed hall, five hundred people here at least, and saw sheep in need of a shepherd. I saw comrades in need of example. The young priest with the blond hair has to drag the old bastard off the stage and out the door after the musicians and the dancing start up again. Some ruddy-faced fellow thrusts a bottle into my hand just as Benedict is passing me at the door, and I take a drink, assuming the clear liquid inside is water. Come to think of it, a stupid assumption. It tastes of nothing but pain, and my face screws up as the poteen goes down. The young priest steers Benedict to the door and he’s gone before I get my breath back. I feel like I’ve been punched in the windpipe at the very moment I should be enjoying my victory, Benedict’s defeat. He was so very white-looking! So beaten-looking. Like a prize-fighter being helped from the ring after being knocked out. I remember a couple of years ago how the audience in the Volta Picture Palace tore the place apart with excitement after the newsreel showed Jack Johnson getting his comeuppance. As they all line up to talk to me, to shake my hand, to pay tribute, I feel how Jess Willard must have felt after he knocked the big nigger out. Champion of the bloody world.

I know a lot of faces but I’m struggling with names. ‘Stay close to me and drop people’s names into conversation in case I forget,’ I say quietly into Charlie’s ear. ‘Try and not make it too obvious.’

‘Hello, Colm, how are all the McDermotts this evening?’ says Charlie to a man of fifty who comes up to me, and a matronly woman beside him.

‘Welcome home, lad, welcome home,’ says Colm McDermott, shaking my hand like he’s trying to wring something out of it.

I tell him it’s great to see him again, and take a punt on the woman beside him. ‘And how are you, Mrs McDermott?’

‘Ah, Victor, I see you didn’t lose your manners away in Dublin. But sure you know to call me Kate.’ She pushes grey wisps of hair behind her ears, grabs me and kisses me on the lips. ‘God bless you, Victor Lennon, and God bless Ireland.’ She’s drunk, like most of the men who shake my hand and the women who slobber my cheeks and lips. Charlie keeps me right with the names. The Kellys, the McCabes, the Gambles, the Murphys, the Sweeneys, the O’Kanes, the other Murphys, the Vallelys, the Campbells. The music is loud, the dancing raucous. The place stinks of sweat and smoke and hooch with a thin sliver of Lifebuoy in the mix. Youngsters who should be in bed are still running around. Old-timers are falling asleep in corners. All in tribute to me.

‘Did they do anything like this for you when you came back from France?’ I ask Charlie. He makes an effort to smile. Barely perceptibly, he shakes his head. Sean Moriarty, Turlough’s brother, comes over and lifts me off my feet in a bear hug. He nearly squeezes the puff out of me. Strong as an ox, he is. They all have questions, crowding around me like I’m a famous tenor or something. What’s it like being a national hero? Did they really shoot Connolly, and him strapped to a chair? Who was the best fighter? How do you say that name, Dee Valeera? And what’s a Spaniard doing fighting for Ireland anyway? Sean, though, is only interested in the football.

‘I heard Dick Fitzgerald was at Fron Goch, and all the prisoners played football every day. Dick Fitzgerald! The man has three All Ireland medals,’ says Sean, as if anyone didn’t know who Dick Fitzgerald was.

‘Ah well now, there was a lot of hours to fill and we wanted to stay fit.’

‘So you did play?’

‘Every day.’

‘And was Fitzgerald there or was he not?’

‘You couldn’t throw a stone in Fron Goch without hitting a county man. Frank Burke. Paddy Cahill. Brian Joyce, boys like that. Frank Shouldice, he was in the Four Courts garrison. And you had Phil Shanahan, Seamus Dobbyn. Hurlers, like, but they wouldn’t let us have hurls in the camp. Good footballers all the same. And aye, if I recall, Dick was there too,’ I say coyly.

‘If you were playing with Fitzgerald and them boys every day for a year, you must have got good enough yourself. Maybe you’ll turn out for Madden in the county final?’

I am fit, I will say that. That was one good thing about Fron Goch – it was ten months off work. Circuit training beats shovelling coal or digging ditches. Of course, I’m nowhere near the class of Fitzgerald and the rest, but as time went on, my presence on the same field as those lads became less and less absurd. ‘Och, I’m all right I suppose,’ I shrug. They’re rapt, watching me. There’s children here weren’t born when I was last home. Young fellows who were wearing short trousers when I left. They’ve heard of me like they’ve heard of Redmond O’Hanlon, the bould Robert Emmett and the gallant Henry Joy. I feel like Robin Hood. They crowd me, press up against me, everyone wants to touch me. I feel like the Pope. ‘Tell us a story, Victor,’ they say.

‘I’ll tell you one about the lockout.’

‘Tell us one about the Rising.’

‘I said I’ll tell you one about the lockout.’

I’m about to start when I see her across the room. I don’t suppose she wants to approach me first. Fair enough, I’ll approach her. Let them wait for my story. She’s wearing a pretty white dress. Shows that seeing me is important to her. Her brown curls are all tied up save for a few that refuse to be bridled, that cascade across caramel skin into hazel eyes. Her mouth is fixed in a polite smile. She’s trying to look like she’s surprised or something, though like everyone else, she’s come here to see me. I know it and she knows it and she knows I know it and she knows I know she knows it. Her lips are pink and full and oh my sweet God she’s more gorgeous even than I remembered. To think I might’ve been master of this. ‘Are you dancing?’ I say, as if not a day has passed, and I can’t read her expression, I don’t know whether she wants to kiss me or box me, but she takes the offer of my arm and follows me into the body of the hall. People cheer and slap me on the back as we set ourselves to dance but in this moment they’re not important. The musicians start a slow ballad, thank God. I take Maggie’s hands and hold her up close to me, and look from her eyes down to her neck, graceful as a swan, and down to the triangle between her throat and the undone top button of her blouse. She takes quick, short breaths. I tingle. We shuffle together slowly and the smell of the sweet perfume on her skin comes drifting into my senses, gentle and lemony. I inhale her.

‘You never got that wound looked at,’ she says at last, her voice warm and melodious. I put my hand up to the weak skin above my eye and feel a piquant twinge. Maggie looks like Mildred Harris. I love Mildred Harris. Although Mildred’s only a skinny wee girl. Maggie is a proper woman. Like Florence La Badie. I love Florence La Badie. Maggie’s lips. Let me choose, in this very moment, and I’ll choose those lips over revolution.

‘It’s good to see you,’ I say. She smiles and glances down to where I’m sticking into her. I blush as the dance takes us away from each other and into a quick spin with other partners. Maggie pairs up with a gangly young lad with boils on his neck who looks totally smashed. I’m with a toothy girl with dark hair and dark eyes and I’m trying to be polite and distant but the toothy girl doesn’t seem to want to let me go. When eventually I get Maggie back in my arms, I say: ‘So Charlie tells me you never married.’

I shouldn’t have said that. Jesus Christ, Victor, you haven’t seen the girl in ten years. Stupid bastard. Always the young bull, never the old. Her shoulders shoot up. She pushes away my hands and gives me a look that says I have a bloody nerve, and she’s at the door by the time I catch up with her. I put my hand on her shoulder out on the steps of the Parochial Hall, and I try to look as plaintive as I can. The cool night air is a relief. She waits, her patience dwindling.

‘I had to leave my mark on the world,’ I say.

She blinks and her lips curve softly. ‘I know, Victor.’

She turns and walks away and I watch, thrilled by the swing of her hips. She’s halfway down the street before I think to ask if I can walk her home. She pauses a second and without turning, says over her shoulder: ‘No.’

I keep staring up the street long after she has disappeared out of sight. When at last I turn back to the Parochial Hall Charlie is waiting in the doorway. He’s giving me a look. I ignore him and go back inside. I approach the ruddy-faced fellow with the poteen and ask him has he any more. Surreptitiously he takes the bottle out from his inside pocket – no mean feat to conceal such a large bottle there. Charlie’s in a huff about something and stays silent instead of helping me identify the fellow. I smile and nod like a simpleton as I drink the man’s poteen and tell him what good stuff it is. It definitely goes down easier second time around.

‘From your own da’s own still,’ he says.

He’s tall and rangy with teeth like an old graveyard and eyes that shift here and there. I have him now: TP McGahan. We were in school together. I take another sip. It is good stuff. Should’ve walked Maggie home regardless. She was glad to see me, no matter what she said, she was glad to see me. Who knows, might’ve even marked my first night back home. It’s been a while and a man has needs.

‘Take it handy with the drink, Victor,’ says Charlie.

‘I’m all right, Charlie, sure I used to be in the Pioneers,’ I say. He laughs, but I’m serious. ‘It was the Pioneers that drove me to drink in the first place.’ It was true, I had been secretary of the Monto branch. I fell out with the rest of them the time Findlater’s gave us a donation of ten pounds. It was ridiculous for a temperance movement to take money from a wine merchant, but the rest of them said I was right in theory but I had to be realistic. ‘There was a priest on the committee said I was being dogmatic. Can you believe the neck on him? A bloody priest!’

‘So what did you do?’ says Charlie.

‘I flung my Pioneer pin at the chairman, the fat, red-faced bollix, and went straight to the nearest pub away from the fucken hypocrite gombeen bastards.’

I take another drink. Charlie’s right, I’d better slow down. It takes a lot less poteen than whiskey to reduce a man to his hands and knees. There’s a bit of a spin to the room. TP McGahan has a notebook and pencil in his hands. ‘How about a few quotes for next week’s paper? I work for the Armagh Guardian.’

‘You don’t have a camera? I don’t want no photographs.’

‘Go away and leave him alone, he’s giving me a dance,’ says the toothy girl with the dark hair and dark eyes I danced with before. She grabs my hand and leads me through the crowd before I can protest. We line up alongside three other couples and start into a lively reel, and though I’m supposed to dance with everyone in turn, my partner, whoever she is, keeps seizing me back. Her arms are surprisingly strong. Eyes dark and wild. Thick, black, black hair. White skin. Red lips curled in a pout like a spoonful of jam in a glass of milk. She’s probably about twenty-one and looks like Theda Bara. She could be gorgeous or she could be hideous. She smacks against me violently and I notice the other dancers stand back and give us plenty of room. I’m not sure if I want to hop on her or run for my life. ‘What’s my name?’ she says.

I grope around for the faintest memory of this primal, kinetic creature, but there’s nothing. ‘Of course, I know you surely.’

She laughs and throws her head about, sending her hair flailing, but her eyes, spread wide, never seem to waver from me. ‘Have I changed a lot?’

‘Not a bit.’

She’s strange. The dance ends and I’m glad to retreat from her. Charlie, Turlough, Sean and TP are standing by the door sipping poteen and watching me. Charlie shakes his head. TP still has his notebook out. He asks again if I have any quotes for him.

‘I don’t think Victor wants his name going in the paper,’ says Charlie.

‘Fire away, TP,’ I say.

‘Why are you home?’

‘To see my family. And I’m delighted to be back among my own people.’

‘Is it true that you want Ireland to become communistic?’

His eyes shift in his beak-nosed face. I shouldn’t indulge him, I really shouldn’t. Journalists are all the same. Weasels. Sometimes they can be harnessed and directed towards some useful work, but they’re no less verminous for that. ‘Are you going to stitch me up, TP?’

‘Och, Victor, I’m just an old friend writing a puff piece for the local paper. I’m just wondering if you think people in County Armagh are ready for communism? Cardinal Logue in particular has taken a very strong line against it.’

The girl, the one looks like Theda Bara, reappears and thrusts a bottle into my hand. Her eyes sparkle like the Liffey under gaslight, all treacherous depth. I sense, vaguely, that the lads around me are uncomfortable. I screw the cork from the neck and take a glug. I see Theda’s luxurious lips make an open-mouthed smile and I want them. The room sways. There was something I wanted to say.

‘Victor? Cardinal Logue has taken a very strong line against communism,’ says TP, face expectant, pencil poised. There’s a bit of a crowd around us now.

‘Let me tell you something about Cardinal fucken Logue,’ I begin.