We made a living. We robbed and helped, invented and begged. We were small, so hard to grab. We were pathetic - our mournful, crusted eyes hauled farthings and ha’pennies from purses and pockets. There were thousands of street arabs just like us; we were impossible to find. We were little princes of the streets, little packs of enterprise and cunning. We were often cold, always hungry but we kept on going going going.
We helped the tuggers. We pushed their basket cars for them when they were tired, the stooped men in dungereens and women in blue and pink smocks, the colours fading into sameness, uniforms provided by Mister Lipman, the Russian Jewman. They sang in the mornings when they set out from the yard, pushing the empty baskets.
My hat is frozen to my head. My body’s like a lump of lead
. They walked all day, out to where the rich lived, out further to the country towns, Lucan and Dundrum, Sutton and Man o’ War, to collect the unwanted clothes and delph, pans and bottles, jars and anything.
My shoes are frozen to my feet from standing at your window
. They tumbled everything into the baskets, made them heavy, and me and Victor were waiting for them for their last stretch home, the last mile to Mister Lipman’s scrap yard. They liked Lipman. He was fair. A decent man. And they liked us too. Our timing was always perfect. At the end of the day, when the cold was beginning to remind them that spring could be as cruel a bastard as winter, we’d come up from behind a wall at the bottom of one of the canal bridges and offer to push the rest of the way, or at the corner of Hill Street and Great Britain Street or the last stretch of the North Circular. The bridges and hills of the city paid our wages. We heaved a side of the cart each; we couldn’t see where we were going but that didn’t matter - we knew every cobble and rut of every street. We knew when to heave or hang on. And when the streets were tarred for the motor cars we knew where we were by the black blisters and stones under our feet.
—You’re grand lads altogether. My chin was nearly hopping off the road, only for yis.
They paid us with food they got given out the back doors of the rich houses or with little bits of money after they’d been paid by Mister Lipman.
We blew the ice-cream seller’s bugle after his own lips rotted on him; we brought him his customers but we never tasted ice cream. We caught rats for the dog fighters. We sold bones to Keefe’s, the knackers. I was a beggar’s assistant and Victor was my own assistant. Rafferty was the beggar’s name.
—Call me Mister Rafferty. D’you hear me? I’m down but I’m not out.
He sat outside the Coffee Palace and we gathered the coins that were thrown at him because he had to hide his legs under his coat.
—Help an old soldier and his childer, missis.
But Dublin was a small city - you couldn’t be legless and still walk home without getting caught. He left for bigger cities and we were on our own again. We sold newspapers we’d stolen. We stole back flowers we’d sold. We ate while we ran; we slept standing up. I was learning to swing my daddy’s leg, the spare one he’d left behind. I had a blade sewn into the peak of my cap, and I did my own sewing. There was nothing I wouldn’t do.
I had charm and invention. Women saw the future Henry under my crust and they melted; they saw a future they wanted now and badly and knew they’d never get. They wanted to touch me but couldn’t, so they patted little Victor instead.
—Isn’t he gorgeous?
—God love him, he’s a dote.
But I knew who they were talking about and what they really wanted. I was never a child. I could read their eyes. I could smell their longing and pain. I’d stand right up against them, confuse them, harass them. Guilt would open their purses. And shame threw the spondulix at us. We were the beggars who never asked for money.
I sometimes crept by the house to see that my mother was still alive. I left food when I had any, even a bottle of gin. There was always a bottle now under the pile of children. She’d suck on it as if her only life was deep inside. I’d seen her crying when a wasted drop slipped down into her chins or shawl; her fingers poked and scratched for the drop and she mourned the loss in little, killing whimpers. If she was on the steps I’d go over and say hello. She knew me; she’d smile. She’d open her arms and I’d crawl in, with Victor, over the other children, just for a minute. She’d cry, and sometimes I would too.
—You’re. Get. Ting big.
I’d watch her mouth fighting, remembering shapes. I had to look at every word.
—Are. You. Being good?
—Yes, Mammy.
—Good. Boy. What. Have you. Brought me?
I’d stay on her lap for a few minutes but I’d never let myself rest there. I’d grab Victor and go. If it was early enough she’d have the attention for a few last words.
—Stay out. Of troub. Trouble now.
—Yes, Mammy. Bye bye.
—Bye. Bye. Tell. Tell your father. His tea’s read. Y.
We fended and coped, we survived and grew, side by side or with Victor on my shoulders. We survived but never prospered. We were never going to prosper. We were allowed the freedom of the streets - no one gave a fuck - but we’d never, ever be allowed up the bright steps and into the comfort and warmth behind the doors and windows. I knew that. I knew it every time I jumped out of the way of a passing coach or car, every time I filled my weeping mouth with rotten food, every time I saw shoes on a child my age. I knew it every time a strange man would offer us money or food to come with him. I knew it, and the knowledge fed my brain. I was the brightest spark in a city full of bright and desperate sparks.
I reinvented rat-catching. We didn’t go after the rats; they came to us. We found their nests and took the babies, boiled them and rubbed the soup onto our arms and hands. (We never ate it. You can laugh or gag, but you’ve never been hungry.) The scent - Jesus, the scent - it drove their parents wild. We dangled our hands in front of their holes and they came at us as if, in their dreams, they’d just seen the dogs that were going to destroy them. They’d scream for the children they could smell on our hands as we dropped them into the sack. We carried the screeching, pounding sack to the betting men around the pit. They loved our rats. They paid me extra to put my hands into the sack. I always did it but I wouldn’t let Victor risk his fingers. I loved watching the faces of the men around the pit; I read their contempt, pity and admiration. I stared at the rich ones, the ones I knew already felt guilty about being there, with the worst of the scum of the slums; I’d stare at them as I sank my hand into the sack and felt the fury in the rats’ backs and the men would look away. I’d let them see the little boy being asked to maim himself for their entertainment. I’d leave my hand in there until I was ready to faint, I could feel my heart waiting for death; I’d feel the maddened rats sniffing for their children on my wrist and fingers, and I’d hang on just a few seconds longer - before the rats knew that they were licking the hand of the killer. They were all looking at me, the men and boys around the pit; I was more important now than the dogs that were howling and digging into the ground. I loved the silence that I could make with my eyes. It was power. Even the dogs noticed and stopped still. Then I’d grab at the heat and pull out my fist with its screaming rat. I’d hold it over the pit, the rat breaking its back to get its teeth into my veins. Then they’d cheer. I’d hold it a while, looking around, letting them all know that I was the one who was giving them their night out. Then I’d drop the rat. I didn’t care what happened after that. I had no interest in the dogs or the betting or kills. I never watched. The dog men paid me, the bookies paid me, the winners paid me. The rich men held out closed hands and let me take money from them. We walked back into the city through the dark, me and Victor. We remembered to wash the rats off our hands and arms before we went looking for a place to sleep. We lay together and I warmed us with my stories. I never slept until I knew that Victor was asleep. Then I joined him. We were in each other’s dreams.
We went out to Kingstown to see the
Lusitania
. We got into the crowd and looked out for bulging pockets. Pockets were Victor’s speciality. He could empty an inside pocket without touching it. We emptied pockets while their owners stared up at Halley’s Comet. I heard one man tell another that it was heading for Earth. I looked at it, the comet, to see if it was getting bigger, but it didn’t frighten me. It was just a big star, someone’s dead brother.
And we helped the drovers. We met them at Lucan, the muddy men with their sticks and cigarettes, driving the cattle from the Midlands to the sea. We threw small stones at the cows, ambushed them and sent them running into Dublin. And the drovers liked that. They’d see the city in the valley waiting for them and the fit ones would start running too, alongside us, in their cracked boots. They’d get excited; they were spending their money already. They’d laugh when a well flicked stone sent a cow’s back legs up and skidding. They thought we were great, the gutties from Dublin. We’d run ahead to make the cattle turn their corners. There’d be twenty and more children, sometimes more than cattle. All forming walls to send the cattle to the yards of Cowtown or down as far as the docks if they’d already been sold. It was a stampede of cattle and children and countrymen, across the river at Kingsbridge, past the Royal Barracks, charging through the big and back streets, careening off the walls of corner houses, sending women and men up the steps to safety, throwing shit and more dust into the air. I’d feel the ground jumping under me. We rustled the cattle when the drovers were slow. If we had the room and time, we could send a bullock down one of the alleys behind the Four Courts and get him lost.
—D’you want to buy a cow, mister?
No butcher in Dublin could resist that offer.
Or we butchered them ourselves. We’d hound the cows into one of our corners and beat their heads with sticks and bits of brick; we’d climb onto a wall to get at their heads. They were stupid but they eventually died. I took the stitches from my cap and took out the blade. The other kids would gawk and giggle and one or two would cry. But they were all hungry and they knew where meat came from. And I was giving it to them. I slit one bullock’s throat when it was still running and me running under it. I felt its scorching blood on my head before I got away and I heard the life charge out of it and felt the weight of its death as it fell. I made lines of the blood down my cheeks with my fingers and Victor copied me. And the other children did it. We built a fire with wood that the other kids collected, and dragged the carcass on top of it. We leaned into it and drank the smoke.
And then the drovers weren’t so happy to see us when we came out of the bushes at Lucan. Their sticks and anger were no good against us, so they paid us to make sure that none of the cattle or sheep got lost. And butchers with back doors and deeper pockets paid us to make sure that a few of the beasts went astray. There was money in cattle. The police started to join us. The gombeen men from down the country paid them, their younger brothers, to escort the cattle, to make sure that they got to the yards and onto the boats to England. But there was no stopping us. We heard the horses of the mounted rozzers stumbling on the wet, slippery cobbles and we laughed. Eventually, the drovers stopped coming through Lucan. They headed north and south and tried to get the cattle and sheep into the city by backways and along different rivers. But they were wasting their time. It was our city. The destinations were always the same and we didn’t mind waiting. There were other ports in Ireland but they were all full of starving children and cute butchers. They had to come our way.
And then there was another source of income from the cattle. Men came to us when we were eating a bullock off a fire. They had beards and hard eyes, two of them, big men made bigger by their greatcoats. We were ready to run or fight - I grabbed a hold of Victor - but they made soothing noises and one of them showed us money in his hand. We were used to strange men offering us money; they were usually uncomfortable and worried, a doddle to confuse and rob. These men were different. They were serious-looking men. They looked straight at us; they weren’t interested in what was behind their backs. I stood my ground and the others stood with me.
—Do you love Ireland, lads? said one of them.
They got no answer.
We didn’t understand the question. Ireland was something in songs that drunken old men wept about as they held on to the railings at three in the morning and we homed in to rob them; that was all. I loved Victor and my memories of some other people. That was all I understood about love.
I waited for more.
The other man spoke.
—Do you want to earn a few shillings for yourselves?
He wasn’t from Dublin. Or from the country. The voice was English but the head on the shoulders was definitely Irish.
One of the bigger kids answered him.
—We might.
He’d taken the words out of my mouth. So I stayed quiet.
—Easy money, said the second one.
—And noble, said the first.
—What do you want us to do?
—Strike a blow for the smallholder.
—What?
They wanted us to join the fight against the ranchers, the absentee bastards who were pushing the small men off the land, to help them win back the land that had been stolen from us. They wanted us to go into the yards and maim the cattle. With tar and feathers, and they’d pay us by the tail. They gave us a leg up and we slid into the pens, in among the cattle. We listened for the muttering of watchmen, climbed on gates and poured buckets of the black stuff over the backs and heads of the eejit cows. (I’ve always loved the smell of tar. It’s the smell of life.) They were slow to react but, once they started howling, there was no end. It was Cowtown falling apart. They bucked and slammed into each other. It was no place for children. I got Victor onto the wall and tied the tails around my waist. I slipped among the hoofs and shit, and cut, and draped more tails over my shoulder. For the smallholder. For Ireland. For me and Victor.