At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [178]
“You can read and write then?”
Doyler took a step back and said scoffing, “Can you?”
“Read I can, but there’s many have doubts can I write.” It was confusing really, like talking with a ventriloquist, for under his mustache you couldn’t see his mouth move hardly at all. He had a big round face above a neat collar and tie. “So you think to join the Citizen Army. Wouldn’t the boy scouts be better, young fellow like yourself?”
Doyler corrected him. “It’s not the boy scouts. It’s na Fianna …ireann you mean.”
“You speak Irish?”
“Enough of it.”
The man sat down on the chair. There was a bed by the wall, neatly made. Doyler wondered was this where he slept. He had a queer relaxed way for a caretaker. “I’ll tell you now,” he said, “they had me locked up, a year since. They had me thinking I was there for a good long stretch, so I asked for an Irish grammar to be sent in. I hadn’t the cover opened before the authorities had me out. They’re a way feared of me learning Irish, I thought. But I hadn’t the opportunity since.”
“What was you locked up for?”
“Sedition.”
Another man came down the corridor. He stopped at the door and the two men were talking. The door across was half ajar and Doyler ambled over with his tea. It looked like a meeting-hall inside. He peeked round the jamb. And there it was. It was hanging on the wall. He just stopped in the door staring at it. The truest blue he had ever seen, like the bluest deepest calmest ocean. The plough wasn’t at all how he had imagined, something you would have to guess at, like the shapes in the sky, but it was a real plough, a manifest thing, you might nearly step up to the flag and pull it away to do work in a field. The stars were done in silver and the plough was done in gold. The gold and silver had a motion, they seemed to swish with movement, like a breeze through the blue. It was surely the most beautiful thing in the world.
He said, hardly aware if he was speaking, “The Plough and the Stars. It’s the Starry Plough of the Citizen Army.”
The man had come behind. “What’re you here for, son?”
“I want to serve my country.”
“How’ll you serve your country in Liberty Hall?”
“The working class is the only class that never betrayed Ireland.”
“Did you hear that, Bill? We have a theoretician with us.”
“No,” said Doyler. “But I’ve read Labor in Irish History, by Mr. James Connolly. And if I wasn’t such a ludamawn, I’d have known all along it was Mr. Connolly I was speaking with.”
That day Doyler joined the crowds that trooped behind the coffin of O’Donovan Rossa, the dead Fenian. He was told afterwards that a fine speech was given at the graveside, but back where he was standing he could hear nothing. What was the use of fine speeches when the thousands who were there wouldn’t catch a word? He didn’t give a curse for speeches anyway, nor for dead Fenians, come to that. He slept a few hours under a hedge in Glasnevin. The evening then he was back at Liberty Hall. He asked could he see Mr. Connolly, and after a deal of waiting he was shown to a door where he knocked.
“Here he is,” said Mr. Connolly when he entered. “Do you know at all where South Lotts is?”
“I can find out for you.”
“He’s a comedian this one,” he said to the other man who was with him at the table. “I know where South Lotts is. Do you, is the question. You’ll never be much use for a messenger if you can’t find your way about Dublin.”
“I can learn it. I’ll learn it tomorrow. I won’t stop till I know.”
“He’s willing anyway,” said the other man.
“You have no work?” said Mr. Connolly.
“Not yet I haven’t. I’ll try for hand-carting tomorrow.”
“You have a busy day. You’ll join the union?”
“I’ll be proud to.”
“That’s one and thruppence. You think to be a Citizen soldier? That’s sixpence a week for the uniform fund. You’re in debt to one and ninepence already and you haven’t a stroke of work done.”
“I have a suit I’m to pawn. It’s nearly new.”
Mr. Connolly laughed and the other man laughed, then Mr. Connolly said to the other man, “Well, Kane, is he any use to you?”