I lingered at the corner of Sackville Street, listening to the sporadic sound of gunfire coming from all parts of the city. I felt completely dazed by what I had seen. It was the first time I had witnessed death at such close quarters. The sincerity of Pearse, the killing of the soldiers, and the orgy of looting whirled around in my brain. I could not make sense of any of it.
Suddenly a hand touched my arm. I gasped.
“Miss Singleton . . . Caroline, is it?” Hughie’s freckled face was lit up with a kind of unearthly glee.
“Hughie! What are you doing here?”
“Same as you—lookin’ around,” the boy replied. “I was just over at the Green, matter of fact.”
“What’s happening there?” I asked, clutching his arm.
Hughie pulled out a cigarette. It was obviously his moment to be suave and manly, and I waited impatiently, frowning.
“Well, the rebels are digging in at the Green and barricading all the roads around it,” he said, exhaling a puff of smoke. “There’s English officers firing at them from the roof of the Shelbourne Hotel. Meanwhile, there’s posh ladies taking afternoon tea and chatting inside. ’Course, they can’t get out, so there stuck there for the duration. What do you think of that?”
“Has anyone been killed?”
“A policeman was, earlier. Then the Sinn Feiners killed a man who wandered up and seized hold of a cart. He wouldn’t let go. The Countess was furious that they shot him. Turns out he was on their side, but was bein’ an eejit for some reason. I don’t think any of the Citizen Army lads have been shot yet.”
“Oh God, Hughie,” I muttered.
I hardly expected any sympathy, but to my surprise he put his arm on my arm again.
“Don’t go down there, Miss. It’s pretty bad. There’s dead horses lying around the streets. A stray bullet could get yeh at any minute. I thought about joinin’ them but then I thought, why would I? I’m in enough trouble at home as it is for being sacked from Grimsby’s.”
“Why did the Grimsbys sack you?” My voice sounded shrill and uneven.
“Ah, don’t worry, it’s not your fault. Sure, it’s true the missus was angry at me for not bringin’ you back, but then she got that note you sent and she seemed all right after that. I’ve been taking the odd bottle of booze home for me and my girl, that’s all—everyone does it. But himself caught me at it and said it was the last straw, threatened to box my ears, even. Never mind. I don’t give a damn if oul’ Grimsby and his fat wife call me a jackeen and throw me out. I can do better than the likes o’ them. I’ll show them!”
He pulled a little bottle of brandy out of his jacket and handed it to me with a flourish.
I looked at him blankly.
“You might need this. You never know. Medicinal.”
I smiled at him. “Hughie, I’m a woman and a foreigner in this city, as you know. I can’t move about it in the way you do. Would you be willing to meet me here at the same time every day for a few minutes—just to let me know what’s going on?”
He considered for a moment.
“Yeah, all right, for Jack’s sake. It’s wrong of Jack to leave you stranded like this.”
“Hughie, Jack and I are just friends,” I murmured. “He has a sweetheart.”
He winked at me. “Friends... Yeah. Well, you can count on me. Jack’s quite the man, isn’t he?” He shook his head, baffled at Jack’s stupidity. “To have two girls after him—and then to run off and get involved in a thing like this. The fella needs his head examined.”
“It’s for his country,” I said, shrugging.
Hughie gave me a withering look and spat eloquently into the gutter. “I tell you one thing: the British are going to have to rip apart every building they’re in to get them out. By the end of this thing, the people of this city will be howling for their heads.”
“The soldiers?” I asked, confused.
“The rebels’. Shoot the whole bloody lot of ’em. That’s what people are saying already.”
“But they don’t mean it,” I whispered.
“Time will tell,” Hughie replied, tucking another cigarette into his mouth.
I remember that it was very cold that first night. I built up the fire and sat by it, sketching in my book. I also kept a diary, for I wanted to be able to tell Grace of the events I saw or heard about, and I sensed that, by the time she came back to me, too much would have happened for me to be able to reel off a string of stories. It was strange that the little pockets of rebels were so cut off from one another. It must be terrible for them. I knew that one of the functions of the Cumann na mBán women in this struggle was to cut across enemy lines with messages. If only Grace had decided to do that... But I was proud of her as she was. I thought about her and Jack huddling in the cold park somewhere and my heart sank.
I awoke to the distant pock-pock of gunfire and the sound of rain spitting against the window. I lay in bed for a while, then got up and made myself a cup of tea. Even if I wanted to return to the Grimsbys now, I reflected, I couldn’t. The city was paralyzed: no deliveries, no public transport. It would soon a problem to get food and fuel, no doubt.
I dozed on the bed for a while and then realized it was time to meet Hughie. I threw on my clothes and went out.
Sackville Street was a mess. The windows of most shops were broken; those that weren’t were protected by thick shutters. I stood on the corner, trembling, as angry gunfire exchanges went on up the street. I glanced at my watch. It was three o’clock. I ducked under a striped shop-awning to shelter from the rain.
I waited for twenty minutes. Finally a small figure dashed across the street toward me. Hughie was soaking wet.
“D’you want the latest?” he cried. The Countess and the Citizen Army fellas have left the Green. They did it early this morning. There’s dead and wounded. They’re holed up in the College of Surgeons, firin’ back out the windows at the soldiers shootin’ at them. They’ll be all right now till it ends. Would you believe I saw a Cumann na mBán girl holding up a bread van?”
I smiled at him, and he rewarded me with a cigarette.
“Yeah, they’re short of food, but so’s the whole city now,” he said philosophically. “But you’re not going to like this, Caroline...” He paused for effect.
“What?” I whispered.
“You’ll hear it soon enough,” he said.
He was right. A couple of minutes later, as I continued pumping him for information, a massive boom rang out.
“What is it?” I gasped.
“That’s an 18-pounder,” Hughie said. “Artillery, wha’? The British are after bringin’ four of them in from Athlone, a fella told me. They’ll be bangin’ away at the GPO, that’s for sure.”
“How awful,” I said, shivering. But at least Grace and Jack were safe!
“Can you come tomorrow, Hughie?” I asked him.
“I don’t see why not,” he said, shrugging. “Best be off now, though. See ya.”
And so we parted ways, the thunder of the big guns ringing in our ears.
The next day my interview with Hughie was even shorter. I had woken up in the early hours of Wednesday morning and lain shivering in bed. The city was being pounded relentlessly. It brought back to me the misery my brother must have endured in the trenches. A terrible, stony anger had come upon me. By the time I reached my rendezvous spot, near the corner of Sackville Street, I was dizzy from the smoke and fumes. Peering around the corner, I saw houses burning close the GPO, which itself still looked more or less intact. Weeping and moaning women passed me.
Hughie sidled up to me with a dirty face. We stood in silence for a moment, and then I offered him a gulp of his own brandy. He wiped his mouth and sighed.
“Well,” he said bitterly, “they’ve destroyed Liberty Hall.”
I looked at him open-mouthed.
“The English general, Sir John Maxwell, had the gunboat Helga come down the Liffey and fire on it for hours, even though ‘twas empty. It’s still standing, but they say it’s pounded all to pieces inside.”
I burst into tears. Hughie stood beside me in the rain, his hand on my arm.
“Yeah,” he said, sighing, “they’re going to burn them out.” He gestured in the direction of the GPO.
“I suppose it’ll be too dangerous to meet tomorrow,” I muttered.
“We’ll do it anyway. God knows I can’t sit at home all day listening to me ma wailing and carrying on.”
On Thursday Hughie told me that there had been a raiding party sent out form the College of Surgeons, and that a Citizen Army boy of seventeen had been killed and a girl badly wounded; but her name was Margaret something, he assured me. And anyway, the Countess was doing well: she was up on the roof, picking off snipers like a professional soldier.
He told me that a handful of Volunteers had kept British reinforcements out of the city for a long time before they had been overpowered.
“They’re brave lads,” he declared, as the guns pounded on the street. “Brave lads. They’re outnumbered twenty to one now.”
That night was terrible. The gunfire continued all night, along with sporadic shots that I feared were from officers picking off people on the street who were out after the curfew. Screams and confused shouting thwarted my attempts to sleep. I heard rough English accents and listened to them with dread. The soldiers were patrolling everywhere, taking back the city, street by street.
Toward dawn, I heard a man pounding on the door downstairs. “Let me in! Ah, Jaysus, let me in!” he begged. Someone clattered down the stairs of the house; but before they could open the door and pull him to safety, I heard an English voice shouting, “Hands up!” and then “Get the bastard!”
I crept to the window and looked down. In the eerie pre-dawn glow the man was on his knees, the officer holding a gun to his head, while the rest of the soldiers stood by as if frozen.
The man was quite young—just a boy, really. His mouth was moving; it looked like he was saying a Hail Mary. Acting out of some instinct I had not known I had, I unlatched the window and let it slide down. The cold, smoky air streamed in.
The soldiers below looked up, hands on guns. They saw I was a woman. I leaned out.
“Don’t kill him,” I said loudly. I tried to make my voice sound like the Countess’s. What would she say? “He’s not armed!”
“He’s violating the curfew,” the officer said curtly. “We have orders to shoot to kill.”
A lorry pulled up.
“You don’t mind if we arrest him, do you, Miss?” the officer called up, his voice thick with sarcasm. The soldiers began joking among themselves, and I saw the boy’s body relax. He looked up briefly at the window, his face pale as milk in the ghostly light, and I thought: He’ll always remember this and so will I.
They herded him roughly into the lorry. I pushed the window closed, shaking. Sleep still did not come, but as I lay on the bed I felt a rare moment of peace and gratitude.
On Friday fear hammered at me as I walked the streets, drying my mouth, making my hands tremble. Sackville Street was a lake of fire. I had never seen such desolation. Flames were licking at the roof of the battered GPO.
Hughie and I met at the corner, as before, but hurried away from the burning street. A British Army officer rushed up and ordered us back further. “Clear out, you fools!” he yelled at us contemptuously. Then, to another soldier, he commented, “What is it about these people? They’ve been blundering into the line of fire all week.”
“But it’s our city,” Hughie said softly, as if to himself.
For all of these nights I could barely sleep; I lay awake reading by the light of a candle in the dingy room. I was waiting for Grace’s step on the stairs—yet how could she come? I prayed that the Countess would let her go. But even if the Countess did that, I thought, out of a brief impulse of mercy, Grace would insist on staying till the bitter end.
On Saturday Hughie told me that the rebels in the GPO had evacuated to houses in nearby Moore Street the night before and that they were now trapped. Connolly was badly wounded and had been carried out on a stretcher. “They’ll have to surrender,” he said, his eyes red-rimmed with exhaustion. The firing was dying down all over the city and a curious sense of desolation and bitterness was taking its place, as if rising from the smoking ruins.
“I tell you what, Caroline,” Hughie promised, “when I find out that the Countess and her men have surrendered, I’ll come find you. Maybe you’ll be able to spot Jack marching by on his way to the Castle—that’s where they’ll all end up, I s’pose, till they decide what to do with them.”
I told him my address and he nodded.
“Just wait there for me.”