At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [242]
He heard their voices now, the more likely lads calling out Parleyvoo or Bonjour mamselle to the feminine gender that gathered to look, the way they had it mistook for some place foreign where they’d landed: their accents of the English Midlands queer as Russian in this fashionable town. He saw their faces, haggard and sicklooking some of them, after the crossing they had of it, young fellows of Gordie’s age, no more, all weighed down with equipment, with rifle and pack and the accoutrements of war, their officers looking warily about them, distrusting. Though the populace was doing its best now, with cups of tea and plates of bread, distributing them, and a school had opened its gates for a billet.
Up the rebels! some fool of a youngster was heard to cry, but the crowd descended so quick, Mr. Mack could see no face, only the boots kicking before the lad was trundled away. Holy Mother of God, he thought to himself. And this is only the beginning of it. This is only the very beginning.
The traffic had been stopped this while, and Mr. Mack had grown aware, on the back of his head, of the intimidation of unfriendly stares. He turned to catch a young Baden-Poweller watching from under his Boy Scout hat. Now he heard this pipsqueak say, “Granddadda,” pulling on a gentleman’s sleeve, “he’s one of them, I’m sure of it, Granddadda.”
“What’s this now?” said Mr. Mack.
“Glasthule, Granddadda, remember? He was in the papers about it. The recruitment posters.”
“Now now,” said Mr. Mack sternly, “don’t you be talking things you know nothing about. Now look here,” he added to the men who closed about him, “will you have the goodness to take your hands off of me?”
“Fetch a constable,” said a gentlemen.
“Put him in charge,” said another.
Mr. Mack shrugged his arms but the grip of the men, for all their respectability, was surprising tight. One had produced a musket even. Some of the folks watching made mutter about the King’s Highway and the liberty to walk thereon, but most said nothing at all, only the louts in the crowd who set up that curious Irish jeer of a cheer while they waited on the peelers’ coming. But Mr. Mack did not think of the crowd while he stood there in the gentlemen’s grip; not of the crowd, nor of the papers nor his customers nor shop. When the constables came, all six of them, wiping their bakes of their grinny breakfasts, he gave them no thought, whoreson oafs though they were who, given their day, would drive the entire nation into the arms of the Fenians. No thought to the constables nor any to the Georgius Rex: the people had the right of that, gentlemen my backside, gorgeous wrecks was all they were. He did not think of canon nor curate, of doors, tuppenny nor sixpenny. Not of Ireland nor Dublin, which both must surely be brought to ruin. His years with the Colors were nothing to him, his regiment might never have been. While the constables marched him away, he stared back up the road where the soldiers had gone, the first of thousands to come, thinking only, helplessly, Jim, my son James, my son, my Jim.
* * *
The rebel officer—though they were not to be called rebels: this was a rising, not a rebellion and the officer stickled for the distinction—pointed out the areas of interest. “We have posts in Leeson Street and Harcourt Street. We had the railway station too, but with so few turned out, that was more a liability than much else. We hold the Green itself, or we did hold it till this morning. Headquarters is currently removing to the College of Surgeons.” He indicated a grey façade across the far western end of the park, just visible through a tracery of elms, where the Republican flag breezed above.
“Commandant MacDonagh holds