Inside, behind us, it was different. Commandant Connolly’s voice drove through the rest of the noise.
—Barricade the windows with mailbags, typewriters, anything that’s handy.
The main hall was being transformed. Men in the uniforms of the Volunteers and Citizen Army, and most in bits and pieces or no uniform at all, were carrying bags of sand on their shoulders, and tables, chairs, ledgers, mailbags, sacks of coal and piling them into defensive walls at the main and side doors and all the windows. The women of Cumann na mBan carried urns and cauldrons, trestle tables and baskets to the stairs and down to the basement. Other men humped provisions and guns, sledgehammers and laundry hampers in from the courtyard. Others had been sent down to the Metropole Hotel and across to the Imperial for bedding, supplies and anything else that might come in handy. Orders were barked, barked again and obeyed. There were younger ones running back and forth between the officers, delivering and bringing back messages. They moved frantically, riddled with excitement, while the older ones, the men and nearly men, were slowed by the knowledge that they were witnessing their own most important moments.
A shot sent us to the floor. Bits of the stuccoed ceiling fell on us; I felt a chunk of it hopping off my back.
—Who fired that shot?
—Me, said someone at the other side of the hall.—I only dropped my gun and it went off.
—Will yis all be careful. We don’t want to kill someone.
A huge man with an axe was demolishing one of the counters; he cut through the red teak like it was cake. He needed the wood for the big kettle that sat on the tiles near his feet; Commandant Clarke had called for tea. Another man, without a uniform, ran a coil of copper wire around table and chair legs and a pile of typewriters, strengthening his barricade. Post office workers were running to the main door and I could hear the thundering feet of the last of them coming down the stairs, escaping before it was locked and barricaded.
—You’re welcome to stay now, comrades, Paddy Swanzy told them as he knocked the white dust off his Citizen Army uniform.—Jesus, look it. I’m already filthy and we haven’t even started yet. My mother would kill me if she saw me.
—If you knew your mother, said Seán Knowles.
—Ah now, Paddy shouted after him.—If I die today at least I can say that I once knew
your
mother.
—Keep the voices down, boys, said an officer I didn’t know, a Volunteer.—And no mocking the mammies, for God’s sake. If Commandant Pearse hears you, you’ll be out on your ears before the fighting starts. And there’s few enough of us as it is.
Few enough of us.
Easter Monday, 1916.
One of the runners came up to the officer. He wiped his nose on his sleeve and reported.
—There’s tills full of money over behind the counter, sir.
—Good man, O’Toole. Good man. We’d better find a safe place for them.
Good man, O’Toole. The fuckin’ eejit. I looked at his trousers as he went off with the officer and there wasn’t the bulge of a wad or a pull on a leg that would have come from the weight of half-crowns or florins. The eejit. I could tell from the back of his head, he was one of the Christian Brothers’ boys, here to die for Ireland, dying to please his betters. With a little rifle that had once belonged to an American Boy Scout, tied to his back with a bit of string. I was ready to die myself - I was banking on it - but I’d still been hoping to get a few quid into my pocket in case the worst came to the worst and I lived. We were locked into the biggest post office in the country and, even though it was now the centre of the new republic, it was still a post office, a land of opportunity, a great big building full of money. And I wanted some of it. My conscience wouldn’t let me ignore it. I watched O’Toole carrying a pile of till drawers out to the stairs, the self-importance running out of him in his snot. His mammy had combed his hair that morning, before he’d gone off on his manoeuvres for Ireland. He was seventeen. Three years older than me. And lifetimes younger.
—Barricade those bloody windows. Quick!
—Less of that language!
—And someone go out and spread that broken glass over the street. It’ll stop the cavalry.
I was fourteen. None of the others knew, or would have believed it. I was six foot, two inches tall and had the shoulders of a boy built to carry the weight of the world. I was probably the best-looking man in the G.P.O. but there was nothing beautiful about me. My eyes were astonishing, blue daggers that warned the world to keep its distance. I was one of the few real soldiers there; I had nothing to fear and nothing to go home to.
Paddy Swanzy and some other men jumped over the counter and came back with books and more ledgers, everything and anything that could be built into barricades - a filing cabinet, half-filled mailbags, stools, empty tills, pads of money orders, more ledgers, desks and telegram pads.
—These things’ll be useless after we take over, said Charlie Murtagh.—We’ll put harps on everything.
—The starry plough on everything, you mean, said Paddy Swanzy.—Including the arses of newborn babbies.
I kept watch while the barricade began to climb up the window, and I pocketed some of the money order pads and a rubber date stamp.
Felix Harte was at the window next to me.
—How long will we last, Henry?
—They don’t even know we’re here, I said.
We waited for the Empire to wake up.
It was Monday, the 24th of April. Just after noon. A beautiful, windless holiday. And Henry Smart, stark and magnificent in the uniform of the Irish Citizen Army, was ready for war. In a uniform he’d bought bit by bit with money he’d robbed and squeezed. In the uniform of the workers’ army. I had the whole works - the bandolier with pockets full of bullets, a snake belt that rested nicely on my hips, riding britches that had never touched a horse. They were strictly for the officers but nobody had complained when I’d turned up in mine.
—That’s a grand pair of britches on a bugler, Michael Mallin, the second in command, had said.
—I’m not a bugler any more, I’d told him.
I’d played
The Last Post
at the grave of O’Donovan Rossa the year before. The history books will tell you that it was William Oman but don’t believe them: he was tucked up at home with the flu.
The left side of my slouch hat was held up by the Red Hand badge of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union. I was a member of the union, although I’d never had a job. I was walking dynamite in that uniform.
Sackville Street was emptying. The city was beginning to notice. There was a crowd still clinging to the area in front of Nelson’s Pillar and out in front of the G.P.O., waiting to see what happened.
—Remember now. Shoot anything in a uniform.
—Wha’? said Paddy Swanzy.—Even the postmen?
—No lip.
The street and the whole city had been packed; strolling crowds on their way to the races in Fairyhouse and even to the beaches at Sandymount and Malahide, and the Spring Show at the R.D.S. Off-duty soldiers held up the corners. I saw people across the street, on the corner of North Earl Street, looking up at the men on the roof, the old boys from St Enda’s, Pearse’s school. I wished that I was up there with them. They could see everything, and when night came, if we were still here, they could point their rifles at the stars and shoot. And they’d know before the rest of us when the war had started. Better yet, I could have been outside, on top of Nelson’s Pillar. With the old one-armed bollocks protecting my head, I could have commanded the city; I could have watched the whole place topple.
Few enough of us.
I liked it that way.
We Serve Neither King Nor Kaiser
. So said the message on the banner that had hung across the front of Liberty Hall, headquarters of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union. If I’d had my way,
Or Anyone Else
would have been added, instead of
But Ireland.
I didn’t give a shite about Ireland.
I could hear gunfire now. Probably from Boland’s Bakery, or the Four Courts. And a soft thud that might have been an explosion; the Magazine Fort up in the Park. Or maybe the Citizen Army lads had taken the Castle. It was hard to tell where exactly the firing was coming from. The revolution had started. But outside, it was still a holiday.
Connolly and Pearse, and Clarke with them, were about to go back outside.
Only four or five hours earlier I’d been sitting on the steps of Liberty Hall, letting the sun send me to sleep. The Hall had been my home for the last three years. I’d been up all night. The sun was warm and tolerant; its heat was already in the stone - I could feel it rising around me. I’d been sitting there since just after dawn. I’d seen Commandant Pearse arrive in full uniform, pistol, provisions, sword, the lot, all under his greatcoat, cycling over Butt Bridge, the Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the Irish Republic and President-Elect, struggling across the bridge and sweating like a bastard. And his little brother and faithful hound, Willie, pedalling away behind him. The other officers had arrived after him. Some of them had gone straight off to the other battalion meeting points around the city, bringing some of the waiting men with them, and the rest were still inside the Hall. We’d be moving off soon. But now, the excitement of the day and days ahead was far away from me. My slouch hat seemed to be pressing my head to my chest. The gulls above were floating and silent and there was the hot-day smell of old drink coming off the river. I closed my eyes, and everything was gone.
Cheers woke me and the first shock was the numbers of men around me. They were suddenly there, right beside me, sitting, starting to stand, dozens of them, most of them Citizen Army, but strangers too I’d never seen before. I had wondered if anyone at all would turn up after Eoin MacNeill’s cancellation the day before -
no parades, marches, or other movements of the Irish Volunteers will take place. Each individual Volunteer will obey this order strictly in every particular
- but there was a fair gang now outside the Hall; not the thousands we needed to win but enough to be starting with. The thousands, the whole country would follow. That was the plan. The hope. The men were cheering the arrival of a car, a sparkling De Dion Bouton. I recognised the driver. It was The O’Rahilly, in the uniform of a Volunteer officer; the story had been doing the rounds that he wasn’t going to turn up. The back of his car and the front seat beside him were packed with guns. He climbed out of the car and saluted. His waxed moustache couldn’t hide his grin.
A crowd had gathered, across at the quay wall and in the shadow of the Loop Line bridge. They had no idea of what was about to happen, despite our guns and uniforms. And many of the men in uniform didn’t know, either; they thought they were going out on manoeuvres. There were more onlookers now than rebels. And the rebels, the new Irish Republican Army, made up of the Volunteers and Citizen Army - and, again, few were aware yet of its existence - were a sorry-looking gang. Some of them had just the hat. Others made do with a bandolier. Some had the trousers or a jacket but, except for the officers and commandants, Henry Smart was the only one with the lot. The most common gun was the single-shot Mauser, from the pile that had come off the
Asgard
, a good rifle when it was made fifty years before, but much too slow in a fight against an empire, and inclined to overheat. There were plenty who didn’t have guns at all.
A voice got us moving.
—Form fours!
We assembled in front of the Hall, the main noise now our feet finding position, until Willie Oman started his bugling. There was no stopping the little fucker once he’d started; he must have died with blisters on his lips. I was given two sledgehammers to carry.
—Can you manage the two?
—Of course he can, the buck.
Connolly was on the steps now, and Pearse beside him, and other officers coming out of the Hall. A fine body of men: Clarke was there, as old and as frail as Ireland; MacDiarmada, left lopsided by polio, was leaning on his stick; Plunkett had his neck wrapped in bandages and looked like death congealing.
A woman ran up the steps and shouted at Pearse.
—Come home!
Pearse turned from her. He spoke to Mick Collins, behind him.
—Who’s your woman? I asked Paddy Swanzy who was standing to my left.
—Can’t say that I know, said Paddy.—She’s put the colour into Pearse’s cheeks though, look it.
—She’s his sister, said Seán Knowles.
—Ooops, said Paddy.—Watch it, lads. Jimmy’s hopping.
He was talking about Connolly and he was right. Connolly was furious. He barked something over his shoulder. Collins barked at somebody else. Then we heard the order.
—By the left. Quick march!
And Pearse’s sister was left alone on the steps as the generals ran down before we’d marched off without them. They went to the front. The crowd cheered and jeered as we went past.
—Here come the toy soldiers!
—Bang bang.
—Do your mammies know you’re out?
There weren’t many of us - there couldn’t have been more than two hundred after the others had followed their officers to the other posts throughout the city - but the thump of our feet in unison, like strange echoes that preceded bullets or the knocking off of seconds before something momentous, shuddered through me and shut up the crowd. Two hundred marching men, and Winnie Carney, Connolly’s secretary, with her huge typewriter in a case and a Webley revolver, almost as long as her leg, in her holster. We looked odd but we sounded like business.
At the corner of Abbey Street and Marlborough Street Paddy Swanzy tried to sink into his jacket.
—The missus, he said.—I’m not here.
—Paddy! Paddy! I see yeh!
He gave up.
—What?
—Will you be home for your tea?