—D’you have rifles?
—No.
—If the peelers do turn up you can hit them with the shovels. Let’s go.
They began taking their bikes from the hedge and ditch.
—Will we need them at all? said one of them.—Sure, aren’t we going in over the wall?
—No, we’re not, I said.—We’re going in through the gate. Look at the wall, sure. It’s falling down. It’s a fuckin’ disgrace. We’ll go in the proper way. No lamps.
In we went, ten men on bikes, past the rust-eaten gates of Shantallow, under the big trees that marked the houses of the planters, crunching over the few patches of gravel that were left on the road. I cycled at the pace I’d have taken through Strokestown at noon - this was a confidence-building exercise - and they followed me. It was a noise you never caught in the city, the whirr of bike chains in action together. It was one of the great sounds of the war. I swerved off the road just where it turned from the trees. I didn’t bother looking at the big house. I went under the trees, ducked the branches, and cycled across an open field where cows stood stupid waiting to be maimed. The moon was out and shining for us. I growled at the stars. At the far side of the meadow the long shadow of more trees made a wall of the night and that was where I braked and dismounted. The others caught up and stopped. I counted them. There were no deserters.
—Gather around there, I said.
They made a tight line between me and the house.
—Most of this war will be fought under cover of darkness. Get used to it.
—What’s there to get used to?
—Shut up and listen to the captain, said Ivan.—There’s more to darkness than just the dark.
—In the war against superior numbers, I told them,—the darkness of night is our greatest ally.
—See now? said Ivan.—I told you.
I was reciting passages I’d learnt from a book I took with me everywhere, a book with no cover that I stitched into my coat,
Small Wars: Their Principles and Practice.
This was a bit I’d read in the bed that morning. But I was talking to the wrong audience; I saw that now. These lads hadn’t grown up with streetlights and rows of open tenement windows. They already knew how to move and hide in black darkness, better by far than I did and ever would.
—Right, I said.—Divide yourselves into pairs.
In fact, they were all already better guerrillas than I’d ever be.
—Right, I said.—One each of you face the house. Who owns it again?
—We do, said a voice.—You said yourself.
—Yeah. But until we’re ready to take it back.
—Fitzgalway. The hoor. He’s never there.
—Right. Face the house. Stand apart. Arms out. Put a distance between yis.
—He has a daughter that paints.
—Right, I said.—The men not facing the house. It’s your job to creep up on the other lads without them hearing you do it. Then we’ll reverse the roles.
It was natural to them. They were poachers and the sons of poachers, creeping around and behind generations of Fitzgalways and their rabbits, cutting the tendons of their cattle, avoiding their agents and bullies, grabbing the arses of their scullery maids. They were people who had had to move furtively through their own place for hundreds of years, who had survived by hiding themselves. And still did, out of habit and necessity, and for entertainment, like Ivan, devoting so much thought to being an eejit, pretending to be one, giving his life to it. They were all masters of disguise and invisibility. I had nothing to teach them. I was the man from outside who would bring importance to their skills simply by stating them. I’d show them that their traits and talents were the stuff that made warriors.
—Right, men. Halt.
The only thing I could add was discipline. Precision, order and bearing - the restraints that would make soldiers out of them.
—In a line.
I picked on one, Willie O’Shea, from the barn that morning.
—What height are you, O’Shea?
—I don’t know, Captain. I never measured meself.
—You’re about five foot eight, I said.—Stand up straight. Attention!
My shout woke the shadows.
—Now look at you. You’re five foot ten at least. You’re a bigger man than you were a minute ago. How does that feel?
—Not so bad.
—Attention!
Even the cows moved.
—Shoulders back. Why?
—That’s the place for them.
—Sometimes it’s good to be small, other times it’s good to be bigger. If the enemy has to see you approaching, if that’s the only way to approach, if surprise isn’t an option, then he should see you approaching big. Make yourselves small when you’re ducking the bullets but let him know that when you get right up to him, when you’re past his bayonet, you’re going to be much bigger than him. Straight line there! That’s no line at all, crooked or straight. The average Irishman is three inches taller than the average Englishman. Did you know that?
—I never measured an English—
—Shut up! It’s true. You’re bigger than them. That’s why they enlist Irishmen into their army to do their fuckin’ empire building for them. And Welshmen are an inch smaller again. Remember that the next time you’re eating your dinner. Attention!
The land around us was alive. The air above was a clatter of wings and scratches.
—Name those birds making the racket.
—That’s a lark, the contrary one. And there are robins right on top of us.
—There’s an owl at his dinner; I can hear him gulping on the fur.
—Missel thrushes.
—There’s a fecker in there I don’t know.
—It’s a storm-cock; there he goes.
—That’s enough, I said.—Do you know why I asked you to tell me those names? When we should be getting the hell out of here?
—Because you didn’t know them yourself, maybe.
—You’re right but that’s not the point. The point is, you know them. You know something that I don’t. You have an advantage over me.
—There’s not much advantage in knowing the cries of ol’ birds.
—You’re dead right, I said.—There’s not much advantage. But there is an advantage and it might be useful. One time in a million maybe, but it’s there. And you’ll be waiting for it. Listen to this. There is no such thing as useless information. Listen. You might find yourself on a train beside a soldier, an officer, a peeler on his day off, say, and he might be interested in, Ivan?
—The noise that birds make in the dark.
—Exactly. He might be a bird watcher, one of those fellas. You get talking about birds. You loosen him up. You give him something, he gives something back. Information that’s much more useful to us than the noise of birds. It might happen, it might not. But you’re there and ready if it does. There is no such thing as useless information. What’s the name of the gamekeeper?
—Reynolds.
—More useful information.
—Why’s that?
—He’s coming across the field.
We lay in the ditch behind the bank of trees with the bikes and shovels all around us.
—See now, I whispered to Ivan as we watched the gamekeeper moving among the cows and turning towards the gate.—You know the fucker’s name. Even that’s useful to know.
—It wasn’t a hard name to find, Captain, said Ivan.—He’s my father and he’s off for his feed of porter. And ye might as well know this as well, lads, if ye meet that peeler on the train. He’s an ornithologist. That’s what the bird watchers like to call themselves.
—I hope it’s not a long journey, said Willie O’Shea.—I wouldn’t want to be stuck beside one of those fellas for too long.
—You could get up off your hole and sit somewhere else.
—He could, said Ivan.—He could sit beside a peeler that has an interest in stupidity. He’ll be on the road now, Captain. Have you seen enough of this ditch?
—I have, I said.—Once you’ve seen one ditch you’ve seen them all.
—You’re the captain, Captain, said Ivan.—But you earned your stripes in the big city. There are ditches and there are ditches. And this one here is hardly a ditch at all. There’s more useful information for you.
I told them to cycle as far as the road’s bend for the house and to take their shovels off the crossbars. We leaned our bikes against the trees and I walked them across the road to the steps that brought the road down to the lawn, right under the house. I looked at the house now. All turrets and other fuckologies, held up by yard-deep ivy. The windows were lit but none of the men seemed too worried now.
—How many Fitzgalways are there in there? I asked.
—It’s hard to tell with them always coming and going, said Ivan.
—If they were all at home how many?
—Five.
—How many men?
—Just the two. The ol’ fellow and the young fellow.
—Right, I said.—Dig two graves.
—We’re not going to kill them?
—No, I said.—But we can. Any time we want. Any time we need to. We’re in control here. Dig.
—They’re beyond in England.
—So are we, I said.—Dig.
And they did. It wasn’t late in the evening and the ground hadn’t yet hardened, so they were soon through the crust and into the wet muck.
—It’s a grand bit of soil, all the same.
There was grunting and laughter coming out with the shovel-loads. I watched the house.
—Tell us, Captain, said Ivan after twenty minutes.
He was up to his chin in the grave.
—Is this one here for the ol’ fellow or the young fellow?
—I hadn’t given it much thought, I said.—You choose.
—The young fellow. He’s not as big a man as the ol’ fellow, so we’re finished. There’s room for his horse in here with him.
Ivan climbed out of the grave and all the others followed him.
—Good work, men, I said.—These’ll be found in the morning if not before and then they’ll know. British rule in these parts is over.
And that was it for the weeks and months after. All over Ireland. Whipping the local boys into shape.
—Eyes right!
Forcing punctuality on them.
—Eyes front!
Making an army out of them.
—Eyes left!
I ran them and biked them and made them crawl through winter bog water. I went to their homes, in windows, over half-doors and dragged them out. I pulled them off bikes and women. I marched them through rivers, over mountains. I made them carry their bikes through the bogs. I taught them semaphore and lamp codes. I taught them how to get across stretches of land with nowhere to hide from the high road except the shadows. I put the years and inches on them. It was tough going. I broke their fuckin’ hearts. These boys worked hard all day and had to become soldiers at night. I brought them near fun and death. We went on long bike rides with stones in our pockets and we often ran into the peelers in their black uniforms on moonless nights, cycled right into them, and the men came away blooded, happy and anonymous. And I took the Widowmaker from off my back one evening when there was enough of the day left for them all to witness me shooting the wheel out from under a peeler’s bike as he cycled past us on the road to Tulsk. I let them bring me to all the barracks, Scramoge, Roosky, Termonbarry, and I let them tell me what cover to use, which adjoining shop to burrow through, who were our friends along the street and who weren’t. I gathered them in guarded barns and lectured them on tactics and military precedent. I blinded them with the wisdom I’d lifted from
Small Wars: Their Principles and Practice
. I gave them flanks and sorties and enfilades and they gave me the geography and we stayed the nights playing our own local chess on the floors of the barns.
I knocked on the door of the local curate and I told him that the Sinn Féin people up in Dublin had told me that he’d be the right man to mind the money for the guns we had to buy. I knew that the inclusion of himself, Dublin and Sinn Féin all in the one sentence would win him over to our dangerous cause, and I was right. He held on to the bits of money that the men gave me every Saturday, minus my 10 per cent, and kept it all in a sock and a ledger under the housekeeper’s bed.
I got the men to enrol other men, to go beyond their parish, beyond their fear and hatred, into the villages and on to Strokestown and further. I needed more men and a greater variety of men. I needed blacksmiths and jewellers and men who knew metal and springs, men who could charm engines, who could make bombs from nothing, men who were married to women with sisters married to peelers, who lived beside the barracks, contacts, eyes, ears, postmen and railwaymen. I wanted to leave behind a company of one hundred and twenty men, trained, armed and primed for the assault that was coming.
I cycled to Dublin with the priest’s sock in my coat. Ivan and Willie were my scouts. I brought them to Shanahan’s and showed them famous men and we cycled back to Rusg with the promise of ten rifles and, while I entertained Cathleen, the big girl in Kinnegad, Ivan got on with her sister and Willie threw the priest’s empty sock into the river, and by the time we cycled back through Athlone they were ready to take down the barracks with their teeth. It had all gone to plan: I’d be leaving soon and I wanted Ivan to take over. The men elected their own commander and other officers but it was always tricky; it had been a problem in other places. They’d be ruled by their place in the local pecking order and they’d vote up, for the big farmer, the teacher or the lad in the bank with the brother a priest, big noises in the parish but hopeless soldiers. Ivan was born to it. He had respect, know-how, he never slept. But he was no one; he’d no land, no connections. I wanted to leave him in charge, our own man. The coming war was his big chance and I needed him to see that, to fight for the leadership and what he could do with it. Cathleen’s sister and the pints in Shanahan’s had done their job. Ivan wanted more.
The rifles arrived, ten brand-new Lee-Enfields in a bed of oil and straw, and I watched as they held and rubbed them and passed them on to their friends. The rifle gave them power, style, military legitimacy; it made men of them, the men who meant business. I showed them how to dismantle and clean them and they queued to do it, like jealous sisters wanting their turn with the baby. They bathed the guns with Rangoon oil and a can of 3-in-1, patted a plug of Vaseline into the muzzle and breech and put them back together again. I gave them each a bullet and let them fall in love with it.