I sat against the wall.
And ate the griddle cake.
I was Henry Smart. I was sitting in a cell in Kilmainham Gaol and I was eating a griddle cake that had been cooked very recently by my wife. It was her best yet, the best and only thing I’d ever tasted. But I didn’t cry.
I read the cake carefully as I swallowed it. I followed every sound of the retreating guard, and the one sound that had been missing, one very important sound. I stood up. I could stand straight. It hurt but it wasn’t difficult. I could move; I could walk. I walked to the door. And pushed. He hadn’t locked the door. The key turning in the lock had been missing. The door opened for me.
It was a very short journey from the cell to the Stonebreakers’ Yard, a short walk for men who were to be shot at dawn, a few steps and a door away. But I didn’t move. I listened. I listened for breaths, scrapes.
Nothing.
I moved. I had no shoes. My feet on the flags, they wanted to run. I could run. I was full of the griddle cake, already free. I could run right through the last locked door. But I went slowly. I listened at the end of every step. I watched for shadows, the glint or click of metal.
I could already hear the water, I knew it through my bones. I was being dragged there. Across the yard, over the high wall - no bother at all - and down into the water, the Camac River, tucked under the wall. Down into the cold, the cleansing, numbing cold. And away. Back under the city, free. I knew exactly where I was going.
I waited at the door. I listened. Distant life, trapped voices, away far behind me. I held the handle. It was heavy and cold, something that hadn’t been touched in years. But the handle turned smoothly and I put my other hand against the door and pushed. Very, very slowly. I stopped at every hint of a creak. I listened for discovery, response. But there was nothing. Nothing beyond the door. I pushed, a small bit more. The yard was empty. It was dark outside. I slid out.
—I’ve another message for you.
The griddle-cake guard. I was done for, fucked.
But he was alone.
The moon and the city over the wall let me see him properly. He was holding out his hand and this time it held a sixpence. The hand was shaking.
—Your tram fare, he said.
—I was going to go the opposite way.
—She said the tram.
I took the coin. He slid past me, back into the prison. I moved along the wall, towards the high gate. It annoyed me, her deciding my route of escape, and means. But I fought it. And enjoyed it - ordinary feeling, resentment. I stepped away from the wall and walked to the gate. The owner of the biggest, most exposed back in the world. The gate was open, of course, very slightly ajar. It gave out as I pulled but it came, and I was out.
It was like the back of a dancehall. There were Auxiliaries and their mots up against every wall and tree on the street, kissing and feeling, grunting and sucking. I was the only man on the street without a partner. There were no other sounds.
—Excuse me?
He turned from his woman and wiped his mouth on his sleeve.
—Could you point me to the nearest tram stop?
—Top of the street, to the right.
—Good man; thanks.
—Good-night, mate.
I winked at the woman over his shoulder - he was welcome to her - and went.
I enjoyed the wet ground under my feet, the stones, the puddles. I enjoyed the cold - it was freezing and I hadn’t a shirt or anything else under my jacket - and the wind whipping at my trousers. I enjoyed the new dirt in my lungs, the lights of the city, everything about the place. The works. I had to run to catch the tram. And I could run, no bother to me. I knew the driver, Tim Doyle. He stuck his head out his side window.
—How’s yourself?
—Not so bad. I’m just after escaping from Kilmainham.
—Good man yourself. In you hop.
I went upstairs. I didn’t want a roof over my head. It was empty on the top deck. James’s Street, Thomas Street, the Cornmarket - I looked down at the world and loved the feel of the seat against my back.
She got on at Lord Edward Street. We said nothing for a while. I wasn’t sure if we were still alone. I didn’t want to look behind me. I was free as long as I looked ahead.
—It’s nice, she said.
—Yep.
—Have you my change for me?
—He hasn’t come up for the fare yet. How did you persuade your man to help me escape?
—Flattery, Henry. It makes great rebels, remember?
I looked at her. And gasped; I couldn’t help it.
—What happened?
Her hair was gone.
—Ivan’s boys cut it off me, she said.
—Why?
But I knew the answer.
—I’ve been getting in his way.
She ran her hands over her head.
—It’s grand, she said.—It’s coming back and only a few grey ones. Do I look too old for you?
—No. What about me?
—You’ll mend.
—I’ll kill him.
—No, she said.—You won’t. There are more important things than my hair.
She rubbed her head again.
—You should have seen it just after they cut it and let me go. I was scalped.
There was nothing too drastic about it now; she was a woman with short hair. A beautiful woman with short hair.
—When did it happen?
—Just after we were in Templemore. November, last year.
—Last year?
She looked at me. Then she took an
Independent
from her pocket. She unfolded it and showed me the date. March the 22nd, 1921.
—Four fuckin’ months.
—They flew.
—They fuckin’ did.
—I missed you.
She rubbed my hands in hers.
My feet were sore and bleeding. A chunk of my brow was flapping over my left eye. My jaw ached, my teeth were loose, and some gone. There were ribs broken, toes smashed. My back was killing me. My ear was ripped. My balls were kicked huge and screaming. The burns on my chest and neck were being scraped by the cold and the rough threads of my Templemore jacket. I didn’t know if I’d ever sleep again. I was very, very old.
We got off at the Pillar.
—Where now? I said.
—Home.
—Where’s that?
—Ah, Henry.
Twelve
K
evin Barry had been executed. Terence MacSwiney had died in Brixton Gaol after refusing food for seventy-four days. His story gripped the country; men and women walked miles every morning for news of his decline and resilience. Rory O’Connor had taken the war to England and set fire to warehouses on the Liverpool docks. Catholic refugees were pouring over the new border, getting out of the new Ulster, away from the guns and hammers of the B Specials.
Forget not the boys of Kilmichael, those gallant lads stalwart and true.
Tom Barry and the West Cork Flying Column ambushed and killed seventeen Auxiliary Cadets. Jack Dalton, recently let out of Kilmainham, wrote their song in his Mary Street office and the boys, hard men with years of fight behind them, became instant heroes. Ivan Reynolds was on the rampage, getting fatter on power and all the food and drink that got in his way. He’d broken the knees of a twelve-year-old spy in Bally-macurly and placed the placard around his neck:
Too young to be shot - keep your mouth shut.
He took four men from a village and shot them on the road -
a bloody pile of spies.
In Dublin, the curfew hour was now ten o’clock; patrols prowled all night on rubber soles. The Igoe Gang roamed the city, rozzers brought up from the country, on the lookout for rebels from home, with licence to kill on sight. An I.R.A. Intelligence Squad roamed the city, looking for the Igoe Gang. There were executions and counter-executions, reprisals and counter-reprisals. The British trained their own flying columns and sent them after the I.R.A. columns. The war had become a cross-country race between running gunmen. They took no prisoners. 17th Lancers and Lancashire Fusiliers, Auxiliaries and Tans disappeared into the bogs and the Lancers and Tans, when they caught their men, invited them to escape and shot them.
Failed to halt, attempted to escape.
The boys kept up the fight by sniping from long distance, and when there were no men to shoot at they searched the sky and shot down British carrier pigeons. They burnt down loyalist shops and houses, they trenched and mined the roads, they pulled up the tracks, chopped down telegraph poles. Aeroplanes were sent after them, but there was nothing to see. They were under the ground. Lloyd George wouldn’t talk to de Valera until the I.R.A. had handed in its weapons. Alfred O’Gandúin was arrested in his office on Nassau Street and interned without trial in Mountjoy. He continued his government work from his cell. He elected not to go on hunger strike; his dinner came over the wall at the same time every evening. Collins was running the fight but talking peace:
We started the war with hurleys and, by God, we’ll finish it with fountain pens.
And Ireland wasn’t the only colony giving lip; badly needed troops were taken from Macroom and Athlone and sent off to other cranky places: India, Egypt, Jamaica. Martial law was extended to Wexford, Waterford, Clare and Kilkenny. And Henry Smart slept.
He slept and ran. Nursed by his short-haired wife who fed him griddle cake soaked in warm milk, his bones knitted, his bruises faded. Nursed by his beautiful, older wife when she wasn’t off ambushing troop lorries and robbing banks, he was becoming, once again, a fine figure of a man. Nursed by his beautiful, pregnant wife when she wasn’t off winning the war and defying the local warlord’s edict that an Irish-woman’s place was in the home, when she wasn’t under the local warlord. Henry Smart recovered as he ran. He ran, even though his war was over and he’d take no further part in the killing. He slept in the dugouts that hid the men of the columns from the planes and armoured cars. He slept in the safe houses that hadn’t been burnt, in the houses that would still take men on their standing. He slept under one roof and heard a voice that sent him running from the house:
I’m still available, mister.
Old Missis O’Shea’s house had been torched and she lived now in the long barn. Henry slept in the burnt ruin because the Black and Tans rarely set fire to the same house twice. He slept and often woke up roaring.
—I could have killed you there, Captain.
He was sitting beside the mattress, his mouth three inches from my ear.
—If I’d wanted to.
—And why would you want to?
—No reason, said Ivan.
It had been a long time since I’d seen him. It was getting dark and he was a wide shadow against the wall behind him.
—How come the baddies are always fat? I said.
He smiled.
—You’re a brave man, Captain.
—So are you, Ivan. Get your fuckin’ face out of my ear.
We were in the old kitchen. It was black-walled after the fire, and empty. The window glass was gone and much of the wall around the door had collapsed. The few attic boards that had survived could take the weight of a tarpaulin, so there was a roof right over us, although the rest of the room was open to the sky and the rain.
It was raining now. I could hear and feel it.
He wasn’t alone. I couldn’t see anyone else but Ivan wouldn’t have ventured anywhere without numbers to look after him.
—So, Ivan, I said.—Why the visit?
—Old times’ sake, said Ivan.
—That’s nice, I said.—I’ve been hearing all about you.
—Ah now.
—You’re getting ahead in the world. Fair play to you.
—I can recognise sarcasm when I hear it, Captain, he said.
—Good man. How’s the hair-cutting business?
—We’ll say no more about that. Only, I didn’t order that one, Captain. It was done on some other buck’s initiative.
—And he’s been dealt with?
—I didn’t say I didn’t approve of it, Captain. Have you any control over your wife at all?
—No, I said proudly.
—I’m inclined to believe you, he said.—But, all the same, I don’t believe a word. You’re a fine man, Captain. We all think that around here. No doxie could ever take the starch out of your trousers.
—Get to the point, Ivan.
—Right, so. I’m the commander of these parts. I’ve letters from Dublin to prove it, and a hundred and seven men waiting to hear anyone who says different. Fair dues now, if she wants to join Cumann na mBan and give the boys a hand, fine. No better woman. We’ll always have need of the rucksacks and sangwidges. But she’s going bananas out there, Captain.
—What’s she doing?
—What isn’t she feckin’ doing? In a nutshell, Captain, she’s queering things for the rest of us.
—The young men on the make.
—Ah now, Captain. I’d have sent her on her way long ago only she’s my cousin and married to yourself.
—I’ll tell you what, Ivan.
I didn’t move.
—Touch her again and I’ll fuckin’ kill you and any other bollocks that gets in my way.
—I know you will, Captain. Or die in the attempt. Which is why I’m here.
—Go on.
I was still lying on the mattress. My gun and leg were with me, under the blankets.
—I’m just back from Dublin, Captain, he said.—I heard things. Not that I listen to much of what that Dublin crowd has to say. But anyway. There are people there that aren’t too happy with you. At all. Big people, mind. I don’t know why, Captain, but one or two of them would be happy to see the back of you. Does that upset you?
—No.
—I believe you, Captain. Sure, you knew already.
I didn’t.
—Didn’t you?
—Go on, Ivan.
—If it was anyone else, I’d be happy to oblige them. I’d arrange that they wouldn’t have to see you or your back again. But we go back a long way, Captain.
—That we do, Ivan. I fuckin’ made you.
—You fuckin’ did. Spot on. But that, now, is another reason why it would make sense for me to finish you off. I’m king of the Republic around here, boy. And I don’t want reminders that I was once a runt that people only noticed to laugh at. All the originals are dead, Captain. All the lads that met beyond in the barn that morning.