A Star Called Henry (24 page)

—How does he manage? I asked.

—How do
I
manage? said Annie.—Don’t bother taking your boots off. I’m expecting a little visitor.

And she showed me how to play the piano standing up. She was as enthusiastic as ever but necessity was forcing her to play by the one fast rule:

—More than three minutes is waste.

She was out from under me; she left me holding myself up against the door with my forehead, gasping for the first indoor breath my lungs had had in days.

—More than three minutes is dangerous, she said.—Out you get now till I hide your oul’ fella’s leg.

—When can I come again?

—You’ll know, she said.

Three days later the stevedore ignored me again and I saw Annie’s dead husband marching off to the docks. Lugging bananas one-handed wasn’t so hard and he’d never have to shovel phosphorite. I was happy for him and by the time he got to the Inner Dock, before he’d the sack on his back, Annie was fingering my back with one of her American songs -
Sooooo send me away
- good man, good maaaan -
with a smile
. You finished before me there, Henry, my lovely lad.

—I’m a fast learner, Annie.

—If you can get out of here as fast we’ll be a very happy couple.

I didn’t want to go yet.

—Is he good to you, Annie? I said.

—Which he?

—Your husband.

—He’s grand, she said.—He’s had a hard time these years. He finds it hard. Go now.

—What about a walk?

—Don’t be stupid, Henry. Go on.

I knew I’d never be at home in Annie’s house again. I missed her.

Letters of a Javanese Princess.
I slid it under the old witch’s eyes.

—How come you can tell me so much about Gandon but nothing about your own daughter? I said.

She shoved the book back at me.

—I seen that one already, she said.—Who d’you think you’re codding?

—How come?

She might have noticed the anger; she didn’t look up.

—Some things are worth knowing, she said.—And some aren’t. She’s dead.

—Where?

—Nowhere.

 

—Fergus Nash?

I turned away from Paddy Clare’s counter but I brought my bottle with me, in case I needed a club. I had a chisel in my pocket but I didn’t want to go for it.

—Your name is Fergus Nash?

—Yeah.

He was like the rest of us, in a coal-covered jacket and trousers. His cap was off and I could tell from his forehead that he’d washed himself quite recently. He had a half-gone pint in one hand and the other was in his jacket pocket. I’d never seen him before.

—I knew you when you were Henry Smart.

He spoke softly. The accent wasn’t quite right. I studied his face again, looked behind the dirt. Nothing came back; I still didn’t know him.

—You’ve got the wrong man, pal, I said.

—No, he said.—I don’t think so.

He was nervous but sure of himself. He looked straight at me like someone who had other men to back him up. I looked past him, but I knew all the others, and none of them were with him. I fit there; he didn’t. He was by himself, although Paddy Clare’s could have been surrounded by uniformed rozzers and the more dangerous men from Dublin Castle, outside waiting for the signal to roar in and take me. I was in trouble. He was a G-man, I decided, a detective from the Castle, but the decision didn’t bring recognition. He wasn’t one of the bastards who’d stared at us over the shoulders and heads of the soldiers as they rounded us up and marched us off to Richmond Barracks the day after Pearse had surrendered. I’d never seen him at any of the roll-calls in the days after, when they’d taken away the leaders and shot them. And back before that, before the Rising, he wasn’t one of the ones who’d hung around outside Liberty Hall, trying desperately to blend in with the railings. I didn’t know him at all.

—Who are you? I said.

—Dalton.

I still didn’t know him. But I was changing my mind about him. He edged a tiny bit closer to me. I stayed put.

—Jack Dalton, he said.—I was there the day you dived down the manhole. And that, man, is one day I’ll never forget.

He held out his hand, and I took it. I felt the softness in his fingers under the blisters and cracks; real dockers’ hands were always hard and smooth, like worked mahogany, from years of rubbing the shovel. I let go of his hand when I saw the pain slip across his eyes.

—I’ve been away for a while, he said.—A hotel across the water.

—And now you’re back.

—That’s right, he said.—Will we go somewhere else?

—Fair enough.

And that was how I found my way back in. Jack Dalton had been in the College of Surgeons in Easter Week, with Michael Mallin and the Countess. He’d spent the time since then in Frongoch and Lewes, until two weeks before I met him. He’d joined the Volunteers - F Company of the First Battalion - before he had a job or a roof over his head, two hours after he got off the boat from Liverpool.

—They’re in a dreadful state, he said.—There’s none of the old crowd. It’s all students and kids.

The job on the docks came the next morning.

—He’s one of us, he said, of the stevedore.

—Are you married? I asked him.

—No. Why?

—Just wondering.

He had a room in a house in Cranby Row by the end of the same day.

—The landlord is with us as well, said Jack.

—No rent then?

—You’re joking, man, he said.—He’s not that bloody committed.

By the end of the night we were old friends. We went on a crawl that left us holding each other up on the way back to Jack’s room. I liked Jack; I knew him immediately. He was a great swinging mixture of passion and fun. His eye could pin you dead, then wink at you. He had both eyes for the women and a tenor voice that could open cans. He loved singing out of doors.
He fought like a lion with an Irishman’s heart.
He was singing as we turned onto Rutland Square, trying to coordinate our march.

—You could be arrested for singing that, I told him.

—Quite right too, he said.—It’s shite. But its heart’s in the right place.

And he sang to the lit windows of the Rotunda.
The pride of all Gaels was young Henry Smart.

That stopped me. I nearly fell onto the street. Jack laughed at my shock. He held me up by my collar.

—You didn’t know they were singing about you, did you, Henry?

—No, I said.—I haven’t heard that one.

—You haven’t been listening. It’s doing the rounds, man. I heard Dev himself singing it when he was in solitary. He hasn’t a note in his head.

—Who wrote it? I asked him.

—Who knows? he said.—The people. That’s where all the real songs come from. Come on now. I’m starving.

—Sing the rest of it, will yeh.

—Tomorrow, he said.

He had tea and bread and butter and thick slices of cooked ham and even a hunk of porter cake. I felt them all settle down inside me and the sugar in the tea told me that life was just great as I sat on the floor and listened to Jack. He wasn’t a born docker; my reading of his hands had been right. He was an architect, but wasn’t going back to it until after the revolution. He didn’t have time for blueprints or building.

—What revolution? I said.

I’d had my fill of revolution; I thought I had.

—The one that’s coming, he said.—It’s on the way, man.

When the country was free, when the last Englishman was on a boat or in a box, then he’d start designing houses that were fit for people. He’d build halls and cathedrals. Dublin would be a jewel again. We’d go at every reminder of the Empire with a wrecking ball made from all the balls and chains that had fettered the people for centuries. There’d be no evidence left of England by the time we stopped for a rest and our dinner.

—We’ll have no use for granite, he said.—It’s the stone of the empire builder.

—But it comes from Wicklow, I said.

—Along with most of the other traitors and Protestants who’ve made our country’s history such a misery. Don’t talk to me about Wicklow. Renegades and adulterers, the lot of them. We’ll have our own architecture, man.

He could deliver sense and shite in the one sentence. And it struck me even then, although I didn’t think much about it at the time, that his Ireland was a very small place. Vast chunks of it didn’t fit his bill; he had grudges stored up against the inhabitants of most of the counties. His republic was going to be a few blameless pockets, connected to the capital by vast bridges of his own design. But I liked listening to him and loved the idea of knocking down Dublin and starting afresh. I’d roll my sleeves up for that particular job.

—So what’ll you do when you’ve built the turf post office? I said.

—I’ll build a bridge across the Liffey and name it after you, he told me.

And I believed him.
The pride of all Gaels was young Henry Smart.
The night before I’d been homeless and alone and now I was warm and full, in the wild and generous company of Jack Dalton, my new friend and old comrade in arms. The plans and dreams rolled out of him that night and other long nights.

—And when I’m finished with Dublin I’m going home to Limerick. I’ll tell you, man, it’ll be the Venice of the west by the time I put down my pencil.

And by the time he announced that he had the legs walked off his tongue and he needed some sleep for the next day, I was ready to die again for Ireland; me, who had never been further than Lucan, who less than a year before had jumped over the bodies of friends lying dead and destroyed, who would never have given a fuck what de Valera sang in his prison cell. I was ready to die for Ireland. I was ready to die for Limerick. Ready to fall dead for a version of Ireland that had little or nothing to do with the Ireland I’d gone out to die for the last time.

I lay on Jack’s floor and slept well and dreamt of nothing at all. We walked down to work together the next morning and collected our wages together and by dark that night I was a Volunteer. And when we got back to Cranby Row there was a mattress waiting for me where the bare floor had been the night before.

—Where did this come from? I said as I fell back and let the mattress cuddle me.

—I told you already, said Jack.—The landlord’s one of us.

—Good man, the landlord, I said.—Fresh straw as well.

—Fresh straw in every mattress, said Jack.—It’s only a matter of time.

—That sounds like socialism.

—What it is, said Jack,—is a lot of straw in a country full of straw. It’s an easy enough promise to keep. And don’t be bothering yourself with socialism. That stuff’s only old Jewish shite.

The next weeks and months were the best of the war, when none but a few - and I thought I was one of them - knew that there was a war. Long before a shot was fired, an ambush or an execution. It was the prelude, the build-up, and I was in at the beginning. Like Jack, I was in the First Battalion, F Company, the Company made up of recruits from the area north of the Liffey. And, like Jack, I caused a silent stir when I walked into the room. I was one of the legends, one of the survivors of Easter Week. I was Fergie Nash every morning on the Custom House Dock when I waited for the stevedore to shout that name - and he did, every morning when I was there, from then on - but every night I was Henry Smart again. They gawked at me like I was an apparition, one of the executed men come back. They were afraid to speak to me, scared even to meet my glance; their arses hovered over their chairs, in case I wanted to evict them. It was heady stuff; I was a walking saint. And there were women there too, secretly looking at me. I’d forgotten for a while what that was like. I’d hear their talk and whispers, the boys and girls, before I entered the room, and I quickly loved the silence and adoration that were coming my way.

We met at 25 Rutland Square, in rooms rented by the Gaelic League. We came and left through different doors, carried copybooks and pencil cases to prove to G-men and their lurkers that we were there for our Irish lessons. I’d seen death and handed it out, only a year before; I’d seen the G-men taking men away to be shot; they’d stared into my face looking for the excuse to do the same to me - but there was nothing like the excitement now of walking past a frozen G-man in a trenchcoat, in a Rutland Square doorway. The sheer fun of it: for the first time in my life I was behaving like a kid.

—That’s a cold one, Sergeant.

We were laughing our way to the new Ireland. Robbing apples for Ireland. Crawling over roofs, spitting down on the G-men, dropping slates to their feet. Shouting down names at them.

—Hey there, Bollicky! Does your mammy know you hang around street corners?

—How much for a ride, Sergeant?

Bringing them out cups of tea.

—Enjoy that now, Sergeant, because one of these days, man, we’re going to shoot you.

He laughed because he was afraid not to. He looked down the street, to the safety of another trenchcoat in another doorway.

—Would your friend like a cup or will yis share?

—I don’t want it, said the G-man.

—You’ll have the biscuits at least, said Jack.—They’re Irish, like ourselves.

—No.

—We could have them delivered for you, said Jack.—We know where you live.

We walked back into the hall before the G-man could gather himself.

—Do we really know where he lives? I asked Jack.

—No, said Jack.—But we will.

For those first months, before Dublin Castle knew how to cope with us, we flaunted our secrecy, right up to their faces. Jack had done his spell in jail. We both knew the fizz of passing bullets. There wasn’t much that could frighten us. We’d already won.

Annie noticed the change in me.

—Jesus Christ, she said.