At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [177]
After the Glasthule feis, back last year, after he had packed his parcel and made his goodbye to his mother, and to Jim, Doyler had walked to Dublin of course. It was a Sunday morning and very quiet. Dawn was only breaking when he came into town. Not anything moved save the murk of the river. He sat against one of the supports of the Loop Line bridge, gazing at the grey drab building opposite. The windows were blinded and a lantern hung outside like it might be a kip or a police station. A band along the front read, Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union. The letters above the fanlight said, Liberty Hall.
He had closed his eyes a while, when the high double doors opened and a man was sweeping dust from the lobby inside. He started to sweep the steps. He swept away while Doyler watched, then he leant on his broom. “Busy?” he asked.
He was a Scotchman. Doyler gave a shrug.
“There you go,” he said, holding the broom in Doyler’s direction. Doyler spat in a circumspect way. He left his parcel down and took the broom. He supposed it was the bruises on his face, for the caretaker said, “You were fighting.”
Doyler answered, “Not much.”
“He was a sight bigger than you.”
“Him and the other. Wasn’t that but they had a priest for bottle-holder.”
“Foolhardy.” The man’s mustache was thick and combed down over his mouth so you wouldn’t know for sure was he smiling. “What brings you here then?”
“I’m to join the Citizen Army.” Doyler was tired after his walk and no sleep that night, and he hadn’t announced this with quite the dash he’d intended.
“You maybe like a fight so. You’ll be a member of a union anyway?”
Doyler told him no—though he had wanted to be. He had a Red Hand badge that they wouldn’t let him wear, but he wore it all the same inside of his collar.
“What work was that?” Doyler told him, adding that it didn’t matter anyway, for he’d lost that work now. The priest had got him that work and the priest had told him he’d get him the kick too.
The caretaker wasn’t so sure it didn’t matter. “Maybe there’s others there looking to join the union.”
But Doyler could put the caretaker right about that. “They’re all of them yellow. Yellow to the last boy.”
“Yet you didn’t join neither.”
“What does it matter if I joined? I put the badge on me once, which is the same thing, and the priest had the clothes ripped off of me. I knew he would and all, but I couldn’t bear it any longer, hiding it.”
“If you were in the union, but, you might have fared different.”
“I’d have lost me job, man, amn’t I after telling you?”
“But you did lose your job.”
Doyler frowned. “I suppose if you wanted to look at it that way, you could.” He was irritable with his lack of sleep, and this caretaker irritated him too, hiding behind his mustache. “I was a newsboy a long time in Kingstown,” he said. “In the Lock-out the newsboys was the first to strike.”
“You were out in the Lock-out then?”
“No,” he said glumly. “I was down in County Clare. But I would have been out, God’s oath on that. I would have been proud to be out.”
“You’d have been hungry, son,” said the caretaker. Again Doyler couldn’t tell was he laughing or what. “You’ll want a cup of tea?”
“If you’re making it, I will.”
“If I’m making it,” repeated the caretaker, shaking his head. He was a short thickset man with bandy legs. Doyler followed him into an office. “Milk and sugar?” he asked.
“What about them?” said Doyler.
“What about them,” he repeated and he stamped off down a corridor, making noisy creaks on the boards.
Doyler looked round the room. There were maps on the wall. Paris, he read, Moscow, Cuba in the civil war. The building was startlingly quiet so that any little noise he made sounded grossly out of place. The caretaker returned with the tea. Doyler, looking at the maps still, said, “Paris Commune.”
“You know of the Paris Commune then?”
“1871, aye. Sure they have