The Rebels of Ireland (121 page)

 

Sheridan Smith looked out of his capacious window at the mist and wondered if they'd all find their way to the house. He supposed they
would. It was easy enough: straight down Baggot Street from St. Stephen's Green, over the canal, continue a furlong, and turn right. A fool could do it. And besides, the mist was lifting. An hour ago you couldn't even see the house across the street.

He did not care to admit it, but he was enough of a snob to be a little anxious. For the Count was coming. And the Count had never been to his house before.

Wellington Road was a very pleasant place. Broad, lined with little trees, its handsome terraces set well back behind long lawns and gravel paths, it had almost the atmosphere of a leafy Parisian boulevard. It was part of the well-managed Pembroke family estate, which included the former villages of Ballsbridge and Donnybrook. Together with Ranelagh and Rathmines to the west, they formed a collection of genteel suburbs south of the Grand Canal, but all within a mile or so of St. Stephen's Green, where lawyers, civil servants, financial and professional men, with perhaps more Protestants than Catholics, could escape both the old city's municipal taxes, and the poor folk who infested its tenements and streets.

Sheridan Smith and his family liked to have company at Sunday lunch, and the company was usually good. Sheridan's position as a newspaper editor would in any case allow him a wide circle of acquaintance, but he made a point of cultivating friendships in every quarter. It was something the Smith family had learned from the Mountwalshes.

There was no question, the family of Stephen Smith and Maureen Madden had done remarkably well. They had had three children: Mary, followed at intervals by the two boys, Sheridan and Quinlan. Stephen had remained as agent to the family for the rest of his working life, and no doubt the frequent contact with that aristocratic family had been a useful influence on his children. Sheridan was a man of some position in Dublin. His brother Quinlan Smith, down in Wicklow, was the same way on a smaller stage. And since his own temperament inclined towards the theatre and the arts, as
well as politics, Sheridan Smith's range was broad indeed. “I can open every door in Dublin,” he liked to say to himself—not out loud, of course; but he was glad if people knew it.

Sheridan had married quite well—his wife belonged to the branch of the MacGowans with the most money—and they lived, if not in one of the largest, still in a very comfortable house on the northern side of the street; for all the houses in Wellington Road were good.

Sheridan quickly went over the company he was expecting. His mother first: widowed for nearly twenty years now, Maureen Smith was still an upright, active woman, with a sharp mind. Then Father Brendan MacGowan, a cousin of his wife's, who was bringing a young man he wanted him to do something for. Sheridan had asked young Gogarty, too. That was a lively fellow who'd go far. A gentleman also. He'd put up a good show. And then the Count and Countess: “The aristocratic side of my family,” as he'd said to his wife with a smile.

It must have been a shock to the Mountwalsh family when the old earl's youngest grandson had fallen in love with Stephen Smith's daughter, Mary. But they had been very gracious about it; and the marriage had taken place. Sheridan had still been only a boy at the time. Mary's daughter Louisa and he had always been rather friendly. And Louisa had made things even more interesting, it seemed to him, when she had married a most elegant older man, Count Birne. Louisa and the Count now divided their time between County Meath, where they had bought an estate, and Paris. In Dublin for a few days now, they had promised to come to the Sunday meal and would be bringing their little daughter.

Should he have striven for a more distinguished company? Of course not, he told himself. This was a family occasion. This was solid, middle-class Dublin, and none the worse for it. He was conscious also that, although the old landed aristocracy carried huge prestige, it was actually his own sort—more so with every year that went by—who were determining the course of affairs in Ireland. If
the Count ever had any desire to take part in the public affairs of Ireland—though, it had to be said, not a hint of such a notion had ever been apparent—he'd probably be quite glad, Sheridan told himself, to be related to me.

And now, faintly through the mist, he heard the ring of a bell, and a little toot from a horn, and, in brisk style, his first guest, half an hour early, came rapidly along the street on a bicycle.

Willy O'Byrne walked briskly. He had been on a small errand. But it wouldn't do to miss Father Brendan MacGowan and, perhaps, his destiny. “Don't be late,” the priest, who knew him well, had said, “for I shan't wait for you.”

Montgomery Street. It ran at a sleazy slant only a hundred yards behind the sleek Palladian presence of the Custom House on the Liffey's northern bank. Sublime Georgian Dublin stared graciously over the water towards Trinity, while at its backside, like a genial sewer, ran the city's other life. Monto—street of whores, street of his sin and shame. Necessary street. Quiet, almost empty for once, on a Sunday morning. He passed down it, ducked along Abbey Street, and out into the broad grandeur of Sackville Street, that marched grandly northwards from the river like a military parade. Respectable again. He proceeded south. Across the Liffey. He could have done it blindfolded.

City under a white mist. It was as if all the waters from mountain and stream had met the exhalations of last night's humanity—its drunkenness and its dreams, its whispers and its breathings—and that the two had coalesced,
e pluribus unum
, dissolving into this dank mist over the Liffey that hung by the bridges as if reluctant to leave Dublin and be gone, into the open sea.

It clung to him in dingy droplets, enveloped him. You could not escape it.

He hurried past the entrance to Trinity College. No point in glancing through its portals, since he wouldn't be going there. Then,
keeping its wall on his left, he walked eastwards with the shops on his right, past Dawson Street until, soon afterwards, he saw the shuttered bookshop where he was to meet him.

Willy tapped on the shutters, as instructed. A moment or two later, a door beside him opened, and the priest came out. Crinkly grey hair, a little stout, friendly, purposeful: Father Brendan MacGowan closed the door behind him with a sharp bang, extracted a small silver watch from a pocket, glanced at it, and smiled.

“You're on time,” he said, surprised. He gave a nod at the tightly closed green shutters behind him. “My brother's bookshop,” he said. “Do you know my brother?”

He knew all about him. MacGowan's bookshop was a world of its own, over which the priest's younger brother presided in a silent manner. If you dared to touch any of the books, it was said, he had a nasty way of half-closing one eye and staring at you with the other, so that people called him the Cyclops. Willy had heard that if he liked you, he was pleasant enough.

“I don't,” he said.

The priest was already sailing along at a good clip.

“There are three of us, you know,” he remarked. “My elder brother has the farm. My father bought it. Up in County Meath.” He waved, vaguely, in the direction of Tara. “I became the priest, and my younger brother has the shop. Your aunt and uncle are both well, I hope?”

His uncle, who had married his father's sister, had a job with the Guinness Brewery. You couldn't do better than that. Set for life, once you got in there. Good pay. Always looked after. The great brewery buildings and their associated smells rose like some huge, incense-laden temple, as if the city had a third, nondenominational cathedral out west of the Castle towards Kilmainham barracks. Generations of a family would work in there, secure in the knowledge that the holy black liquid they produced was the healthy lifeblood of the people. Had his father hoped that his uncle, having only daughters but no living son, might find a place for him there,
from which, perhaps, he might even rise into a position of minor authority? Had his father hinted something of the kind to his uncle, that day, when he had come into the city and, with his uncle, taken him, Willy, out to the pub as a father should, for the formal initiation into manhood—the taking of a tankard of the same liquid? Willy didn't know, but no such suggestion had ever been proffered; and he was secretly glad of it, for although he hadn't the slightest objection to the brewery, it would have been awkward to have to refuse such a gift.

“Yes, Father.”

They were well. They were very well. They were snugly well. They breathed the thick mist of Dublin and were sustained by it.

“And your cousins? They've three daughters I believe.”

“Yes, Father.” Thriving. If a man's best hope was the Guinness Brewery, a woman's was just half a mile south of the Castle, close to St. Patrick's Cathedral. For here a sister temple arose: The Jacobs Biscuit Factory.

If the Quakers had long been making a quiet contribution to the commerce, and the welfare, of Ireland, some of them had now been raised, by their diligence, into a veritable patriarchate: Jacobs, Newsoms, Bewleys, they controlled great wealth. Jacobs Cream Crackers and the brightly coloured Jacobs Biscuit tins were known over much of the globe. And in the usual Quaker fashion, the Jacobs were good employers, with about fourteen hundred men and women working in Dublin, and more brought in for the Christmas rush. The women were paid less than the men, of course. The men would have been outraged otherwise. But two of his aunt's three daughters were earning quite well, with piecework, in the bakehouse.

“Here we go,” said Father MacGowan, as they turned up Kildare Street. On the corner, its dark redbrick portals and cavernous marble halls rising like a rampant oriental palace, stood the Kildare Street Club, bastion of social might. Could Father MacGowan enter those portals? Willy wondered. Probably not. He, for certain, would never set foot in the place unless in some menial capacity. For
all he knew, there might be a maze underneath it, and a minotaur.

Then came the National Library, and Leinster House, and the National Museum. He could enter there, at least. They came out at the top of the street and into St. Stephen's Green. “Ah,” said Father MacGowan, “the Shelburne Hotel. That is the place where you meet the best people.” And then, by a train of thought that was not quite apparent to Willy: “You have never thought of entering the priesthood, I suppose?”

He had not been to the best of schools, the Jesuit schools; but, albeit often at the end of a strap, the Christian Brothers had taught him thoroughly. He was deemed to be intelligent. Possible material for the priesthood, therefore. Another kind of security was being offered, better than the brewery perhaps. There was a prestige in being a priest, too. Your family was proud of you. Not to mention the enhancement of your soul.

“I suppose I should like to marry some day,” he answered.

“Well,” said Father MacGowan, “we shall have an excellent meal, I am sure, with Sheridan Smith.”

Oliver St. John Gogarty was something of a young hero. Scholar, poet, athlete: Mahaffy at Trinity College said he was the best pupil he'd ever had. And he had taught Oscar Wilde, too—though of course, since the trial and disgrace, Wilde's name was not one to be mentioned, under any circumstances, in Dublin now. Gogarty had won the poetry prize three times, an astounding feat, favoured Greek metre over predictable English pentameters, and was an accomplished practical joker as well. With his smoky blue eyes and his thick brown hair flecked with fair highlights, he resembled, if not a Greek god, at least a Hibernian hero.

“I tried to bring my friend Joyce,” he had remarked pleasantly to his host when he had parked his bicycle, “but he wouldn't come.”

Sheridan Smith wasn't entirely sorry. He didn't know Joyce, but he was well aware that Gogarty, who was a generous fellow, swore
by the young man's genius, and promoted his reputation at every opportunity. Not, he felt sure, that young Joyce could possibly be in the same league as Gogarty himself. Besides, Gogarty was a gentleman and poor Joyce, he'd heard, was not. He thought of Joyce and the Count and was glad of the young man's absence.