At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [182]
“Sure we are talking.”
“I suppose we are.”
“Lookat, maybe we’ll go for a ramble. I don’t know when I’ll have time, but I’ll call on you. That do you?”
“I’d like that.”
“Back with you now, while I finish what I’m at.”
“Is it work for the Citizen Army?”
“What do you know about the Citizen Army?”
“I often seen you in your uniform. Up in O’Connell Street and outside of Liberty Hall.”
“You haven’t been following me about?”
“No. No. And all my family is buttonmen. You’ve nothing to fear from me.”
Doyler looked into his face. He wished to God if he might find a rag to blow his nose. “I better not have,” he said. “Go on.”
Back at the Hall Doyler wandered along the corridors. He was hungry, he didn’t know was he feeding at all. His feet were bealing from chilblains he had on his heels. He had chilblains on his fingers too.
They were rehearsing a play in the concert room. He watched a while. Connolly had written this play. It had a young fellow, he didn’t know to fight for Ireland or take his shilling with the British Army. In the end he joined the Volunteers. Doyler walked out, stomping on the boards and letting the doors clatter behind him. If Connolly wanted to be writing plays, why wouldn’t he have the fellow join the Citizen Army? He left the Hall, shaking his head. He couldn’t work out what had happened with Connolly.
At drill now there were Volunteer officers let watch their evolutions. They were let sit in on their talks and demonstrations. One time after drill, his captain called him out. He wasn’t satisfied with Doyler’s attitude. Did Doyler think himself above army discipline? Did he think it hilarious to go whacking Volunteer officers on the head?
“I was at me drill. He was in the way.”
His captain gave him the speech on the Volunteers. On true nationalist movements, on working in harmony, on common purposes. Doyler wanted to spit. The Volunteers were a contamination. What did they care for the rights of labor? Was they born Englishmen, they’d be all for King and Empire. Their thinking was wool and dreams, whereas his was hard and severe, hard and severe as the lives of the people.
“You’re getting above yourself, Doyle,” his captain told him. He told him go careful, he had his eye on him now.
Doyler walked along the river, past the Customs House, and along the docks where men were hard at their work still. He nodded to some he knew. One asked was he looking for work, there was something going by the canal he’d heard. Doyler said no, he wasn’t interested tonight.
How many ships had docked at the Liffey? Thousands, he supposed, sure hundreds of thousands, countless. Only one had docked that signified anything to him. That was the foodship Hare that had carried food from the workers of England to the starved and locked-out workers of Dublin. That was a day all right, when she pulled into the quay, all decked with flags and her siren whooping. He could see the crowds so clearly, the faces laughing and cheering and the little children clapping their hands for food. He could not pass along the Dublin quays without thinking of that ship. Imagine it, a ship to bring food where families was starving. Was ever there such a thing? He felt a great tearful love for the people of England that they’d defy everyone, their union bosses even, and come to the aid of their Irish fellows. He would give ten years of his life and gladly to be here that day. Anything at all to be in Dublin for the Lock-out.
But he was already down in Clare that time. Sometimes he would day-dream that he wasn’t in Clare, was a newsboy still. He’d let on he got the bad of a leg that way, out of a baton charge of the peelers. He wouldn’t mind an odd limp getting it some way useful like that. Instead of himself at home beating the leg from under him with the leg of a chair he broke in his temper. And all for the price of him wanting to go to the college. That night he crept out the Banks and he never looked back till he came to Clare. They said then the leg would never mend. They were right too.
He wandered along till it was gone dark.