At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [243]
Post office! MacMurrough repeated to himself. At last, the Republic of Letters!
“The British,” the young man continued, “insofar as they bear on our forces in the Green, hold the Shelbourne Hotel with, we believe, two machine-gun crews, any number of sharp-shooters and they have a barricade manned in Merrion Row. Portobello barracks is kept pretty brisk and Beggars Bush too. The Castle, there’s fighting still. If you listen you can hear it. That other you can hear is Trinity where the West Brits is playing Old Harry with our communications.”
The Green was laid out as a rectangle with broad avenues running the length of each side, these then terraced with banks, hotels, gentlemen’s clubs, meeting-houses, more hotels, one or two churches to relieve the eye, the like. They had cycled slap bang into the military at the Baggott Street end, so MacMurrough had doubled round to the Leeson Street entry, where Doyler had hailed this rebel officer. He had been on a scouting mission and was now returning, with his two companions, to rejoin the main rebel force. The Shelbourne rose just across the park from them, a matter of three hundred yards, and they were strolling, this officer in full rebel rig plus somberro, in blatant view of its serried windows.
“I don’t mind now,” said Doyler, in a carefully neutral tone, “but is it supposed to be safe walking here?”
“From the British? Safe enough. For the moment they have game in plenty with our men retreating to the Surgeons. You’ll see it now in a minute. It sounds to me there’s one of their machine guns down. That’ll be only temporary, of course. Madame got one of them earlier.”
“Did she too?”
“Stepped out calm as a clock, and as cold.”
MacMurrough said, “What about casualties?”
“Ask yourself this,” the officer replied: “three-foot trenches and the crack of dawn machine-guns spewing from above.”
MacMurrough exchanged glances with Doyler, each asking of the other the solution to this conundrum. “Have you heard tell at all,” said Doyler, “of a young chap, name of Jim Mack?”
“Not I,” said the officer. “Volunteer, is he?”
“Don’t know rightly what he’d be.”
“You can make all the inquiries you want, Doyle, after you report to Section. You missed parade on Sunday. You skipped your guard detail too. Now you’re telling me another man has your rifle. By rights, you’d be thrown in the guardhouse.”
“Is it Connolly in charge here?”
“Commandant-General Connolly is at the GPO. Commandant-General Connolly has been promoted commander-in-chief of all Republican forces in Dublin.”
Doyler whistled between his teeth. “So that’s what they gave him. Command of the Volunteers.”
“You know I don’t like you, Doyle, so you can button your lip. There are no Volunteers any more, nor Citizen soldiers. There is only the Irish Republican Army now.”
“Who’s in charge here, so?—sir,” he added.
“Commandant Mallin.”
How many commandants did they need? MacMurrough wondered. He wondered too what might be his station in life, this satisfied Republican soldier. Clerk, copyist, pen-repairer, some blind alley his talents would never be recognized. One saw it best at country fairs: the organizational zeal of stewards who the remainder of the year busheled along as grocer’s assistants, sacristans, the like. Or am I being a scintilla unfair? Who am I, MacMurrough, to impugn another man’s motives?
The wind of their bike-ride had flagged. A shame, but they walked again deadly-lively with the crowd. That bloody machine gun—like a very loud typewriter. Some old bugger in the Shelbourne firing off a complaint to the manager. He listened to the distinctive report of the rebels’ Mausers. He had shot Mausers himself, and he knew them for good guns, even these vintage single loaders. Shot straight, shot far, shot hard—just didn’t shoot very often.