At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [180]
Days hurtled one into the next. He didn’t lie down but he was fast asleep. He didn’t wake but he was down to the Hall. He had never imagined a time like it. The world was made a wind to rush him. His hair flew in that wind when he took at a leap the steps to the Hall. Its roar was in his ears when he sang with the men, the words that Connolly had penned for them,
Send it aloft on the breeze, boys
That watchword the grandest known
That Labor will rise from its knees, boys
And claim the earth for its own.
Some weeks he earned enough out of carting to send a little home to his mother. Most weeks he went hungry. It was so cold that winter, in the widow’s garret they took it in turns to sleep in the middle of the bed. They had to take their boots in under the blanket with them, for fear the rats would get at them. One night they got the knock. They scrambled into their clothes, which had been their pillows, stumbling into each other in their hurry. They were down at the Hall at the kick of time, the widow woman hobbling after with a can of tea. Doyler grabbed his sheaf of mobilization orders, biked like a maniac to the cottages and tenements that were his watch. They were a muddled and edgy army that formed in the dark before the Hall. Then Connolly came down the steps. “City Battalion of the Irish Citizen Army, by the right, quick march!”
They marched that night on Dublin Castle. “We’ll be back,” said Connolly to the startled peeler on point behind the gates.
Shortly after this, each man was called individually into Connolly’s office. When it came Doyler’s turn, he saluted his commandant and stood at ease.
“I want to know this,” said Mr. Connolly. “If it comes to a fight, and we know it will, sooner than later: if the Volunteers won’t fight, are you willing to go on without them?”
Doyler had no trouble answering that. “I’d prefer it even.”
When you got to know him, you could tell from his eyes when Mr. Connolly would be smiling. “I liked you. I liked you the first I saw you. Doyle, isn’t it?”
“Yes sir.”
“Did the night maneuver alarm you, son?”
“I’d better have liked it with a gun.”
Mr. Connolly nodded. “Dismissed, Private Doyle.”
He had a problem with his Ss. Dih-mit, it sounded like.
Doyler had his uniform then. It had belonged to another man who had died or dropped out. He would have to sew it and fit it himself. But he was proud to stand in the army hall, with the dark green on him, and the Red Hand in his hat, standing before the Plough and the Stars. He was a Citizen soldier. The Citizen Army was the guard and guide of labor. It was an arm round labor’s shoulder, you could say. The workers were with them. They could not fail. He lifted his hand and saluted his flag.
Afterwards, this was a moment he kept deep in his heart, for it was the last of his undisturbed love for Liberty Hall.
He was back again at the Russell Hotel the next day after St. Patrick’s. He sent a note for the boots and soon enough he was up on the roof. This time he worked his way towards Earlsfort Terrace, noting as before the skylights, drainpipes, the sneak-ups and grease-downs.
He enjoyed this kind of work. It made sense to him. The kind of fighting it supposed made sense too. Snipe from the rooftops, a round or two, then powder away to be lost in the crowds. Drilling and parading was well and good, but column advance, feint, enfilade and defilade—lot of use was that against