At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [244]
Of course Jim’s all right. I should know, the world should blast it, were anything the slightest wrong.
“No,” the officer expanded, “this side of the Green we have little to fear of the British. It’s them hussies behind are the menace here.”
Yes, they were trailing something of a mêlée in their wake. Fishwives, slatterns, the usual Dublin viragos, hurled abuse at their backs for filthy rebels, dirty Sinn Feiners, fly-boys, fire-siders, pop gunners, together with some general remarks touching the male anatomy. Their leader and sense-carrier, a stout specimen with a wonderful, though perhaps accidental, décolletage, carried the handle of a pick which she slapped in her hand in a manner that quite overthreatened the meager elephant-guns of the insurgents. She took notice of MacMurrough’s admiring look and unleashed a stream of invective that cast his ancestry, vaunted these centuries, in a wholly new and uncertain light.
“Separation women,” the officer said, “paid off by the British.” He turned of a sudden and boomed, “If you are Irish women at all, you will return to your kitchens and mind your spinning.”
An utterance nicely gauged to disperse the viraginous mob. Even his companions raised eyebrows. “Spinning,” said Doyler in MacMurrough’s ear, “where does he think they’re out of?”
“Tell him about Baggot Street, the soldiers.”
“There’s military round the corner in Baggot Street, sir,” Doyler said. “Maybe three or four hundred. We cycled straight into them.”
“What are they at?”
“Drinking tea mostly. People in the houses is bringing it out to them.”
“Devil the tea they’d bring us.”
There had been a traffic accident at the end of the street which closer inspection proved a barricade. They passed through and of a sudden, there they were, behind the rebel line. Some few rebels were ranged upon a shady hump inside the Green, sprawled in regulation firing-pose; others sat on the slope behind, break fasting it seemed. Whistles blew; and every so often a party jumped the park railings and dashed the street to the College of Surgeons, a grim cold columned edifice whose pavement and roof were periodically swept by machine-gunfire from the Shelbourne. Rifle-shots skipped off the far cobbles, twanged off the bollards. How very differently, MacMurrough noted, a bullet sounded at the unfavorable end of the barrel. Saving ricochets, they were safe enough on this side of the street. But who were these others—“Who are those people there supposed to be?” he asked.
“Them?” said the officer. “That’s the gallery.”
Citizens, for the most part men, in doorways, on the steps of a church, in the maws of alleys and lanes, in far more obvious danger than any of the rebels, spectating. Here was that quintessence of Dublin, the epitome of the quidnunc, that quarter-moon, man-in-the-moon face, with the chin jutting to meet the nose and the mouth slanting some neat aperçu to its neighbor, cheekiest face in Europe, and the nosiest. MacMurrough heard, or fancied he heard, the commentary kept up: the accuracy of fire debated, the different weaponry compared, alternative venues cried up or down, the better vantages disputed.
The disappointment, which had swelled all during their walk by the Green, now lumped in MacMurrough’s throat. There was nothing going to be splendid here. The stupid wonder of these people, their excitable unconcern when—ooh!—a rebel was nearly downed crossing the street, it really was too much. It was unconscionable. And now, it wanted but this, here came the fishwives again, and wouldn’t you know, with cabbages this time to hurl with their abuse. He hurried out of range and there was some small stir when a rebel lad aimed his rifle at their ringleader. Shoot her by all means, MacMurrough enjoined, flicking bloody filth from his trousers, but don’t let’s spare the men with their mealy-mouthed mean-eyed gawping and never a one with the courage of his derision.
He felt a nudge from Doyler. He followed his nod. And there he was, Jim Mack.
He was acting as a kind of rebel policeman, standing in the street, waving the groups