That was in March, 1915. In memory the year is strewn with fragments like bits of wreckage seen on a beach long ago. The Dardanelles, Tipperary, Rupert Brooke, go easy with the matches, S.S. Clyde, Keep the Home Fires Burning, put one of these saccharine tablets in your coffee, it’s as good as sugar, we’re lucky to get coffee, anyway. When it’s with You it’s Wonderful, It’s a bit thick: if you work in an office everything’s gone from the shops by the time you get home, we’ll have rationing soon, I suppose, If you were the Only Girl in the World, Defence of the Realm Act, Let the great big World keep turning, put that light out, George Robey, Violet Lorraine, Maeve O’Riorden, When it’s with You it’s Wonderful, casualties, shells, casualties, Lusitania, white feather, if a German raped your sister, PUT THAT LIGHT OUT, casualties, casualties, blessed was it in that dawn to be alive, no fraternising this Christmas, some say Good Old Jerry, CASUALTIES, men in bright blue suits and red scarves hobbling through the parks, being led through the parks, being wheeled through the parks, It’s the blind ones I can’t stand seeing; My dear, you don’t have to look at them, PUT THAT LIGHT OUT!...
We had got used to everything. We had got used to the ambulances, to the men in blue, to gas warfare, to the trains departing full of spick and span youngsters with polished buttons and the trains arriving full of men caked with mud, cluttered with uncouth accoutrements, who rushed from the stations as though rushing upon life, to seize it frantically for their few permitted days. There’s nothing you can’t get used to. It’s the new thing that shakes you up. And the new thing came.
Dermot rang me up on Monday, the 17th of April, 1916, and said he was coming round to have lunch with me and Maeve. Maeve, for once, had not intended to have lunch. She had been out in the country on the Sunday, had come home early, and gone to bed, complaining of being tired. Annie Suthurst had brought me a message in the morning saying that I must lunch alone, as Maeve wanted to spend the day in bed. But when she heard that her father was coming, she got up and came down to my flat. “Don’t ask me how I am, Dutch uncle,” she exclaimed defensively as she came through the door. “I’m just suffering from ten years of overwork. That’s all. I shall get over it.”
She sat sideways in the window-seat, so that she could get a squint into Berkeley Square, where the leaves were unfolding on the plane trees, delicate and beautiful against the brown prickly maces of last year’s fruit. Those leaves outside, and on the round polished table in the middle of the room, a cut-glass bowl full of daffodils, reflected as if in a peat-dark stream.
“Leaves,” said Maeve, “and flowers; and yesterday there were lambs—white tottery things—so lovely. We saw them in a meadow that went down to the Thames.”
“Who were we this time?” I asked.
“Oh, you wouldn’t know,” she said wearily. “I only met him myself on Saturday night. Someone brought him round to my dressing-room, and he besought me to come out with him on Sunday.” She got off the seat and stood up, looking out of the window. “You never saw such a boy,” she spoke over her shoulder. “He looked about sixteen, with blue eyes and smooth round cheeks. He’s been out once, and he’s going again today. In the Air Force. I wished him luck, and d’you know what he said?”
I shook my head.
“He said: ‘I’ve lasted longer than Freddie and Bunnie, anyway, so I feel lucky.’ Freddie and Bunnie lasted a week. They were at school with him a few months ago.”
I almost wished she would cry, or show some emotion. But she went on in a flat voice: “When he saw those lambs, he said: ‘Christ! Isn’t that pretty? My mother’d like to see that.’ He’d borrowed someone’s car for the day and was awfully proud of his driving. He insisted on a big hotel for lunch and ordered champagne. He wasn’t very used to it. It made him talk about Bunnie again. He said: ‘Those lambs made me think of something Bunnie said. It was the first time we ever saw anti-aircraft shells bursting. Bunnie said: “That’s a pretty sight—like white lambs in a blue field.” Old Bunnie was a bit of a poet. Or d’you think that was a dappy thing to say?’”
Suddenly I stopped her. “For God’s sake, Maeve, shut up,” I shouted. I hoped it would be like a slap in the face. It was. She spun round in surprise, looked at me for a moment dreadfully hurt, then collapsed into my arms and cried. I let her have it out, then led her back to the window-seat and sat her down. Presently she became calmer.
“Look, my dear,” I said, taking her hand and fondling it, “d’you think you ought to do all this promiscuous going about with men? It’s such a strain. I know how you feel, and what you hope to do for them; but you can’t go on being the pillow for everyone’s sorrowing head. Your work’s enough.”
“The work’s a fraud, a swindle,” she said sadly. “Oh, Man! You don’t know how I feel standing there singing that song that makes me everybody’s woman. Because, you know, that’s what it comes to. They think I look so marvellous—oh, God knows what they think and dream about me. And then you can’t avoid meeting some of them. And what are you to do? What are you to do?”
What could she do? I knew she was living as she would never have wished to live. Her life was being fevered by a hundred casual contacts that could mean nothing for her but wear of nerve and body. No comfort, no tranquillity. She was racketing about: suppers after the theatre, dances, lunches, dinners, week-end jaunts like the one from which she had just returned, giving bits of herself, tearing herself to tatters for strangers, because they were strangers, who lived in the shadow of death.
Presently she smiled and patted my hand in the old affectionate way. “Don’t worry, Bill,” she said. “It’s the penalty of being a famous woman. It’s the penalty of having a Bill Essex at my side making me a grand actress through all these years. You see, the poor boys are bucked to pieces at having personally met Maeve O’Riorden. It’s something for them to swank about. And you needn’t worry about my virginity. I can look after that, for what it’s worth.”
I had not heard her talk so recklessly, thoughtlessly, before. It was the back-kick of her stifled emotion. There was nothing more I could say. I could only think; and as we sat there in the window-seat waiting for Dermot to come, my thoughts were just two words: “Dear Maeve! Dear Maeve!”
*
Annie Suthurst put the coffee on a table in front of the window-seat. It was a big seat—room for us all. When Annie was gone Dermot put on his spectacles and took a letter from his pocket. “I haven’t shown this to Sheila,” he said. “She’ll know soon enough.”
He unfolded the letter and handed it to me. Maeve hitched herself up close to my side and read with her chin resting on my shoulder. The letter was from Rory.
“MY DEAR FATHER,—I wouldn’t be such a fool as to post this to you in the ordinary way here in Dublin. We don’t trust the Castle, you know, and just now, I think, they’re particularly busy steaming open letters. A friend I can trust is crossing to England and will drop this into some inconspicuous letter-box.
Well, I think I ought to let you know that before long now anything may happen. I’m only having a guess. I know you think I’m no end of a person in the movement, but I’m small beer really, and I’m kept pretty much in the dark. But there’s something in the air, more marching in uniform than usual, more attacks on public buildings. You know we do that as an exercise, everything except the actual shooting and rushing the buildings. In that way, we’ve taken half Dublin over and over again! The Castle does nothing about it. One of these days the fools will be surprised.
Well, there’s so much of this sort of activity, we’re being keyed up so keenly to concert pitch, that I reckon they’re going to use us soon. There’s plenty of ammunition flowing in. I know that.
Another thing that makes me feel we are on the verge of something is this. Donnelly is so gay and yet so secretive. Of course, he’s at the heart of things. He’s away attending conferences all day and half the night, and he’s singing at the top of his voice. But not a word out of him. I’ve tried to get a hint, without being insubordinate or impertinent, but he won’t give me a word. Except once. He said: ‘Rory, my lad, there was a damned good English soldier called Julian Grenfell. He was killed, and he left a poem that’s a glory.’ Then he recited the poem right through. It ended: ‘If this be the last song you sing, sing well, you may not sing another, Brother, sing!’ Then he said: ‘Remember that, Rory, and keep your rifle clean.’
You know, my dear Father, last August I was with the multitude that followed the body of O’Donovan Rossa to his grave at Glasnevin. I was one of those who fired the volley over his grave—the grave of a martyr. It was a scene I shall never forget. Padraic Pearse was there, wearing his uniform, and he spoke with his hand on the hilt of his sword. He said: ‘I hold it a Christian thing, as O’Donovan Rossa held it, to hate evil, to hate untruth, to hate oppression, and, hating them to strive to overthrow them.’
I thought, as I heard those words, that they were the very heart and soul of all that you yourself have ever taught me. I shall go into battle remembering them and remembering you.
One thing more. I hope to come out of this alive. The chances that Donnelly will do so are slenderer than mine. If our attempt is made, and if it should fail, no mercy would be shown to Donnelly. I have learned to love him, Father, and I wonder if you know that I love Maggie, too? She is so brave and patient and uncomplaining. I shall marry her some day however this matter turn out, but if Donnelly should be taken from us I shall marry her at once.
Give my love to my Mother. Kiss Eileen. Kiss Maeve.
RORY.”
The sheet trembled in my hand as I put it down on the coffee table. For a moment no one spoke. Then Maeve said to Dermot: “Well?”
He sat still, looking straight before him, one hand outspread on each knee.
“Well—are you happy?” Maeve demanded more sharply.
Still Dermot did not move. She got up and moved across the room till she faced him. “I ask you,” she said, her voice rising shrilly, “are you happy now? You’ve got what you worked for. Does it please you? You—you bogus creature! You’re on a level with the white feather girls who hound other people on to satisfy their bloody instincts. Two generations of you—your precious Uncle Con living in luxury five thousand miles away, and you—you— And what does it come to, all you’ve done between you? You’ve killed Rory, that’s all. You’ve killed Rory! You’ve killed Rory...”
She broke down hysterically. Dermot put his hands before his face and murmured weakly: “Don’t, Maeve, don’t!”
I got my arms round her shoulders and led her, weeping, upstairs to her own flat. When I came down again Dermot was gone. Rory’s letter lay on the floor. I picked it up and put it into a drawer of my desk.
*
So you see, when the new thing came—that Easter Monday rebellion in Dublin—Dermot and I were not surprised. It flamed into the headlines of the newspapers, it staggered the unsuspecting English public; and few people knew what a pitiful, bungled, lamentable affair it was. Few guessed that a little group of professors and aspirant politicians and poets had been haggling and chaffering, ordering and countermanding orders, deciding to proceed, deciding to withdraw, for a week before the outbreak, and that when at last some sort of decision came to their vacillating minds, it was too late. The heart was gone out of an army that had been ready to spring; and only a remnant paraded on the fatal morning when the visionaries at last set out on their brief pilgrimage to the grave.
One of the remnant was Michael Collins, a thick-set play-boy with a wing of black hair tumbling over his brow, almost unknown, but destined to learn that day and in the few days that intervened before Padraic Pearse handed in his sword that not thus must Ireland be fought for. Not with windy proclamations and the pretence of uniformed might. No more marching save the stealthy march at night of two or three; no more parades save the parade of the faithful few rendering account in secret; no more uniforms save the pulled-down brim of the black felt hat and the uniform steel of eyes that looked along the barrels of trusty guns. Get out of the daylight, burrow, get underground. All this became clear to Collins and to one other of the remnant who paraded on Easter Monday—Rory O’Riorden.
On Monday, May 1st, Dermot brought me the letter that had come from Rory. It had been written on the Wednesday night of the rebellion week.
“MY DEAR FATHER,—This has been a great and terrible day. On Sunday we were all at sixes and sevens. A parade had been ordered, and was countermanded. This caused a good deal of heart-burning, and the men began to get angry and to damn leaders who didn’t seem to know their own minds. I saw nothing of Donnelly all that day—he was confabbing at Liberty Hall—and I have not seen him since. I wonder whether I shall ever see him again.
Then we were called on to parade at 10 on Monday morning. It was a grand Easter Monday, bright and sunny. We did not know what we were paraded for, but some of us had a good guess. All the officers wore their green uniforms; many of the men were in uniform, too. The streets were full of people strolling about in the cheerful holiday weather. They did not take any more notice of us than usual, because they are so used to seeing us marching here and there. My battalion is the 3rd of the Dublin Brigade, and we were commanded by Commandant Eamon de Valera, a pallid spectacled man who hasn’t much to say.
Well, there we were at 10 o’clock in the familiar Dublin streets. De Valera marched us off, and when we reached our objective, we didn’t play at taking it as we have done in the past; we entered upon it. It was a place called Boland’s bakery, and as soon as we were there I realised that the decisive moment had come. Boland’s bakery commands the road by which troops would have to pass coming from Kingstown Harbour to Dublin. We were there to stop them. That was clear.
They gave us plenty of time to dig ourselves in. No one disturbed us all through that day. When night came and nothing had happened, an extraordinary sense of unreality came over me. This couldn’t be true. We knew by then that Pearse had taken the Post Office in Sackville Street—just walked in as we had done here—and that there he had established his headquarters and proclaimed the Republic. We knew, too, that other important points had been occupied; things had gone as they were intended to go, and yet there we were in Boland’s bakery, a handful of men, looking through the windows into the quiet street, and nothing was happening to us. I couldn’t believe that the Republic was here—actually here in Dublin—proclaimed by Pearse, with Pearse himself as President. I kept on telling myself: ‘Now you have a country and a ruler, and you are a soldier sworn to defend them,’ but the silence, the inaction, as though the enemy were treating us with contempt, made me feel cold and queer. I imagine De Valera realised what I was thinking. As the light was fading and I was sitting at a window looking unhappily into the empty street, he passed by and clapped a hand on my shoulder. I looked up, and his eyes glinted at me through the spectacles and down his long nose. ‘It’ll come,’ he said. ‘It’ll come.’ That was all, and he continued his rounds to another room.
We didn’t all remain at Boland’s bakery. We were ordered to occupy other houses round about. On the Tuesday we seemed a more ridiculously small army than ever, for I was now in a house with only two other men. We took all our ammunition up to the attic. A skylight from there opened on to the roof. There was a useful parapet to serve as a breastwork. Lying flat on the roof, we could rest our rifles on the parapet and get a good shot down into the street. I was in command. The other two men were named Clancy and Deasy. Clancy was a huge fellow, a docker, who swore everything ‘by the Mother of God and Jim Larkin,’ and Deasy was a thin dark slip of a chap who swears he’s been a detective in London, but I think he’s a good liar. Anyway, he kept on throughout the day telling us we were all daft.
‘Would you listen now to them bloody guns?’ he suddenly broke out, and by this time there were guns enough. We could hear artillery roaring and the loud explosive shock of bursting shells. ‘It’s off the face of the map this city will be blown,’ said Deasy. ‘I’ll obey me orders with the bloody rest, but whoever organised this shooting-match was daft from his mother’s womb. Can the poor bloody bhoys stand up to the likes of that artillery? Begod, it’s assassination we should be going in for. Every sod in the Viceregal Lodge. Shoot ’em in the back. Let ’em send out relays. Shoot ’em down. Every bloody one. In the back. That’s the war we want.’
Clancy told him to shut his gob, and I thought they’d be getting to blows. We were all lying on the roof, with our rifles by our sides. I decided to change the arrangement. I ordered Clancy to remain where he was, and to call us if anything happened. Deasy and I climbed down the ladder from the skylight to the attic.
All through the day we remained there, listening to the tumult of artillery elsewhere in the city. Nothing happened to us. We took turns on the roof throughout the day and night, two hours on and four off. De Valera visited us several times, but save for that, Deasy, Clancy and I were alone in the empty house.
It was nerve-racking, this inaction. Donnelly, I knew now, was in the Post Office with Pearse, James Connolly, Thomas Clarke, Joseph Plunkett and others. I thought of him all day long, and as the artillery crashed I prayed God he would come to no harm.
In the course of the day we had evidence that the Post Office garrison was holding out, for a leaflet reached us, signed by Pearse, saying that nowhere had British troops broken through the Republican lines.
Deasy and Clancy slept well on Tuesday night. I did not sleep at all.
Now we come to the morning of this day on which I write. The clamour of the British artillery greatly increased, and it sounded as though hell were let loose in the direction of Sackville Street, where Donnelly is. I had made this arrangement for us three men. All the ammunition we had was taken up on the roof. There were three rifles. Deasy and Clancy were not strangers to me. I knew that Clancy was a magnificent shot and that Deasy might waste ammunition. So the orders were that if fighting came our way, Clancy and I should do the shooting. Whichever emptied his rifle first should drop it and pick up the third. Deasy, lying on the roof, would see that a dropped rifle was immediately loaded and placed ready to hand.
So far as I remember, it was at about half-past three that Clancy shouted from the roof: ‘Mother of God and Jim Larkin! Sojers!’
My heart thumped. I leapt up the ladder, Deasy following at my heels. I took up a rifle and crouched, peering over the parapet. There at last was the enemy—men in khaki, coming unsuspectingly up the road. It was, somehow, so different, when you saw the men there, from anything you had imagined. It held me and Clancy spellbound, so that we just crouched and watched, the triggers under our fingers. Then suddenly it all became real. From another house along the street there came the sharp crack of a rifle, and one of the soldiers in the road turned round very slowly on his own axis, then quietly folded up in the road. Clancy said: ‘Poor sod!’ and pressed on his trigger. A second soldier fell. Then I fired, and there were three dead lying in the road.
My dear Father, I cannot tell you of all that has happened this terrible afternoon. The fight went on for hours. Hundreds of British soldiers were killed and wounded. Clancy was killed. During a lull, he lifted himself to peer over the parapet, but by then our position was too well marked. He slid back on to the roof with not so much as a groan. Deasy took his place.
The weight of numbers told at last. We were all withdrawn from the outlying buildings and are now back at Boland’s. We gave a good account of ourselves. We can hold on to this place for a long time.
A man has to sneak his way back into the city tonight. He has promised to get this letter to a friend of his, a seaman who is crossing on a Liverpool boat. It is to tell you that all is well with me, and that I am happy. I have done what you wanted me to do.
Pearse’s proclamation which reached me yesterday says: ‘We have lived to see an Irish Republic proclaimed. May we live to establish it firmly.’ We shall do that, and then all this will not have been in vain.
Love from RORY.”
When I had read the letter I could not look Dermot in the face, for I knew, as he knew, that by then Pearse had handed in his sword. It was not easy to make some of the men obey his order to surrender. The 3rd battalion, which still held Boland’s bakery, was stricken with consternation. Some smashed their rifles rather than hand them in. Among those who did so was Rory O’Riorden.