In this extract from Whatever You Say, Say Nothing, Patrick Kelly, an IRA assassin, reminisces about his role in the 1916 rising against British rule.
They were on Sackville Street by now, the main street of Dublin, its enormous width stretching all the way down to the river. The widest street in Europe, they said. The bell of a tram clanged as it rattled past them. Opposite them was the Post Office, left just as it had been after it was burnt down in the Easter Rising four years previously. People said the English meant it to stand like that forever, as a punishment and a warning. Only its front remained, nothing behind it, no roofs, no floors, just piles of rubble and twisted girders and scorched relics, open to the soaking rain. Aisling had been past it many times, and each time she thought of the Rising. It had been the beginning of her and Da’s work for Ireland together, but even so, seeing the Post Office, symbol of the Rising’s failure, always made her a little sad. It was like a gap-toothed drunk who had been full of promise when he was younger, but who at any minute might fall flat on his face.
Patrick nodded across the street.
‘I was there, four years ago. Easter week, 1916. That week ended in the biggest house fire of the lot.’
Aisling felt the colour rise to her face.
‘The Rising? You were in the Rising?’
Patrick was grinning to himself. She could see he wanted to tell her about what it was like being in the Rising. Well, she wanted to hear. So he told her.
‘A hundred and fifty men marched down this very street,’ he began, making a sweeping gesture as if he owned the street, his face lighting up as he spoke, ‘through the sunshine on Easter Monday, with rifles, but no uniforms. Some of them arrived on a tram; and they made sure their fares were paid properly, so!’ She laughed, feeling more relaxed in his company already. He pointed across the street. ‘They pushed their way into the Post Office, there, through that door, past all the posh ladies buying stamps and the soldiers sending parcels home to England. Come on, let’s cross.’ He took her, to her excitement, by the hand, and led her across the wide street, running so they just missed a tram gathering speed, slipping behind a horse drawn cab. He made her stand outside the Post Office, and stepped back as if he was taking a photograph of her.
‘It was on that very paving stone, that one you’re standing on now,’ he said ‘where Patrick Pearse himself, may he rest in peace, proclaimed the Irish Republic. Half the people paid no notice, but they’d be paying notice soon, right enough.’ He pointed upwards, and she craned her neck back, feeling the sun hurt her eyes.
‘Up there; that’s where I lay with my rifle, picking off the English. I was there six days with barely a biscuit to eat. You see that shop there?’ She shielded her eyes against the sun and looked back across the street at a cake shop.
‘They came out of the slums and smashed its windows and helped themselves to cream cakes. I could have done with a few myself.’ She laughed. He pointed to Lord Nelson, arrogantly surveying the city from the top of his pillar. ‘There in the middle of the street, see, under Nelson’s Pillar, there was a dead horse all week, covered in flies. I didn’t feel sorry for him, though; he was an English horse.’ She laughed again. Da used to make her laugh all the time, but she hadn’t laughed once since she’d come to Dublin. She liked being with a man who made her laugh.
‘Come on, let’s walk,’ he said. ‘I don’t like standing still.’
‘Me neither,’ she said. He walked fast. She liked that, too; she had never been one for dawdling herself.
‘What was it like inside the GPO?’ she asked him, really wanting to know.
‘Sure, they were a holy bunch. I heard the rosary going day and night, and they say the fellas were lining up for confession with a priest they’d sneaked in. We weren’t all like that, though; up on the roof, some of our jokes were not fit for a lady’s ears.’ He winked at her when he told her this, and Aisling blushed, but didn’t mind blushing, and laughed some more, and said,
‘No, but will you tell me the jokes some day all the same? I like jokes. My Da was a one for the jokes.’
‘Ah, maybe one day, when I know you better. You know a strange thing?’ he told her as they went past the Metropole Hotel, where a cab was stopping and a man in a peaked cap was holding the door open for a woman in a fur coat.
‘What’s that?’ she said.
‘My C.O. was my big brother, Sean. He was in there with me, giving me orders.’
He paused and looked away, suddenly silent. Aisling knew not to ask him about Sean, and felt in that moment as if she’d known him a long time. Then he thrust his hands in his pockets, and continued with his story.
‘It was boring as hell, most of the time, if you want the truth. But that didn’t mean it was safe. There was an English sniper up there, see, top of Trinity –‘ he pointed across the river to the round stately dome of Trinity College – ‘ he could reach us. He picked off Dermot O’Casey himself, a boy I was at the Christian Brothers with. He died two men down from me. I held him as he said his last act of contrition. He bled from the neck onto my sleeve, so.’
‘You held a man as he died?’ said Aisling.
‘I did. His mother was glad to hear of it after.’
She thought of Da then, of his body stretched out on her bedroom floor. She wished she’d been able to hold him.
As they crossed the Liffey, its waters rushing impatiently to the sea, Patrick started to walk slower and his voice lowered.
‘It didn’t end well, though,’ he said. He paused at the end of the bridge and made another sweeping gesture back to Sackville Street, cluttered now with trams and cabs and people.
‘That whole street was in flames from the English shells. There were balls of fire, ten feet wide, flying into the air from the oil depot. You see Reiss’s the jewellers there?’
Aisling nodded.
‘There were tongues of flame lighting up the night sky. I saw it from the roof. When the glass melted, there was something beautiful about it. It sounded like a waterfall crashing.’
His voice was shaking. He seemed to be on the verge of tears. She wanted to hold him in her arms, to comfort her.
‘Come on, let’s go,’ he said, as if he didn’t want her to see him upset.
They dodged round the back of another tram and ran across the street; again he took her hand. Then they turned past Trinity College and its playing fields as big as a farm, all scattered with the sons of the gentry baying at the oval ball.
‘When the fire reached the Post Office, and it was too hot to touch anything, and all the water in the building turned to steam. The roof was falling in; we gathered downstairs and sang ‘The Soldier’s Song’ Do you know it?’
‘I do.’
They’d sung it at the end of every meeting in Flanagan’s back room; it always lifted them, gave them courage for whatever lay ahead. He stopped, and looked out over the playing fields of Trinity. Then he began to sing, very softly, whispering the words, glaring at the posh Protestant boys on the rugby field as he sang:
‘Soldiers are we,
whose lives are pledged to Ireland,
Some have come
from a land beyond the wave.
Sworn to be free,
no more our ancient sireland,
Shall shelter the despot or the slave.
Tonight we man the gap of danger
In Erin's cause, come woe or weal
Mid cannons’ roar and rifles peal,
We'll chant a soldier's song.’
A platoon of English soldiers turned out of Grafton Street and wheeled right towards them. They were only a couple of hundred yards away. By singing that song, Patrick might as well have taken a gun out and pointed it at them. Aisling felt afraid and thrilled at the same time, just as she had on the night the Tans came. And as on that night, she felt ready to fight for Ireland. As Patrick began the second verse, she stood close to him, and sang it with him, as softly as she could. Their words and their breath mingled as they whispered the song to each other. They seemed to be exchanging secrets. People stared at them as they passed. One man winked at her; another gave her a discreet thumbs up. The two of them were together as one, defying the English.
‘In valley green, on towering crag,
Our fathers fought before us,
And conquered 'neath the same old flag
That's proudly floating o'er us.
We're children of a fighting race,
That never yet has known disgrace,
And as we march, the foe to face,
We'll chant a soldier's song. ’
They finished, together, on the same rising note, just as the English soldiers came into earshot. They stepped back and let the soldiers march past, their eyes to the front, their boots clumping, resentment on their boys’ faces, as she and Patrick hugged their secret defiance to themselves. When the last soldier had passed, they turned to each other and laughed.
‘Let’s get moving before we get arrested,’ he said.
Now they were in the smart part of the city, south of the river. The houses were high, with small windows at the top; families with servants.
‘How did it end?’ she asked.
‘We broke out of the GPO, across Henry Street, the English firing all the time, into the houses on Moore Street. We had to smash our way through the walls with a sledgehammer. How we managed it, God only knows; most of us could hardly stand after a week without sleep. It stopped at last when Pearse saw an old man dead in the street holding a white flag and knew it was time to surrender. That’s the kind of man he was, Miss O’Flaherty.’
‘Were you taken prisoner?’
‘I was. The English kept us all night outside in Rutland Square at gunpoint. I won’t go into the details, Miss O’Flaherty, but the plumbing’s not so good there – we had to take our relief as we could.’
Again she blushed, and laughed, and felt a thrill at being admitted to this masculine world.
‘Then they marched us to the boats for England. I was a year in a prison camp in Wales. Boring as hell at first, when they kept us in solitary. But when they let us out of our cells, I made some friends for life amongst the fellas. There’s one especially I’d go to the death for – name of Mick Collins. He is simply the greatest man I’ve ever met. No question. You’ll be hearing more of him before long, Miss O’Flaherty, I can promise you that. No one knows who he is, but he has the whole of Dublin in his pocket.’
She wanted to meet this Mick Collins fella; wondered if he’d introduce her to him.
‘Do you miss it now?’ she asked.
‘Sure, when they let us out, it was good to get home, and eat decent grub and be able to walk the streets, but I miss the fellas too. Still, I mustn’t complain. I’m alive; which is more than can be said for the fifteen they shot, may they rest in peace.’
He blessed himself swiftly, and she copied him.
‘I have a good job in a carpenter’s. I like working with my hands. The only trouble is, it’s a family business: Sean’s still my boss!’
He laughed, and she laughed with him.
‘Is that still as bad as it was?’
‘Sure, he’s been bossing me since the day I was born, and I’m used to it now. You know something, Miss O’Flaherty?’
‘What’s that?’
‘Ireland will be free very soon. Her day is coming. We knocked the English off their perch that Easter week, and they’ll never get back now.’
They were on Sackville Street by now, the main street of Dublin, its enormous width stretching all the way down to the river. The widest street in Europe, they said. The bell of a tram clanged as it rattled past them. Opposite them was the Post Office, left just as it had been after it was burnt down in the Easter Rising four years previously. People said the English meant it to stand like that forever, as a punishment and a warning. Only its front remained, nothing behind it, no roofs, no floors, just piles of rubble and twisted girders and scorched relics, open to the soaking rain. Aisling had been past it many times, and each time she thought of the Rising. It had been the beginning of her and Da’s work for Ireland together, but even so, seeing the Post Office, symbol of the Rising’s failure, always made her a little sad. It was like a gap-toothed drunk who had been full of promise when he was younger, but who at any minute might fall flat on his face.
Patrick nodded across the street.
‘I was there, four years ago. Easter week, 1916. That week ended in the biggest house fire of the lot.’
Aisling felt the colour rise to her face.
‘The Rising? You were in the Rising?’
Patrick was grinning to himself. She could see he wanted to tell her about what it was like being in the Rising. Well, she wanted to hear. So he told her.
‘A hundred and fifty men marched down this very street,’ he began, making a sweeping gesture as if he owned the street, his face lighting up as he spoke, ‘through the sunshine on Easter Monday, with rifles, but no uniforms. Some of them arrived on a tram; and they made sure their fares were paid properly, so!’ She laughed, feeling more relaxed in his company already. He pointed across the street. ‘They pushed their way into the Post Office, there, through that door, past all the posh ladies buying stamps and the soldiers sending parcels home to England. Come on, let’s cross.’ He took her, to her excitement, by the hand, and led her across the wide street, running so they just missed a tram gathering speed, slipping behind a horse drawn cab. He made her stand outside the Post Office, and stepped back as if he was taking a photograph of her.
‘It was on that very paving stone, that one you’re standing on now,’ he said ‘where Patrick Pearse himself, may he rest in peace, proclaimed the Irish Republic. Half the people paid no notice, but they’d be paying notice soon, right enough.’ He pointed upwards, and she craned her neck back, feeling the sun hurt her eyes.
‘Up there; that’s where I lay with my rifle, picking off the English. I was there six days with barely a biscuit to eat. You see that shop there?’ She shielded her eyes against the sun and looked back across the street at a cake shop.
‘They came out of the slums and smashed its windows and helped themselves to cream cakes. I could have done with a few myself.’ She laughed. He pointed to Lord Nelson, arrogantly surveying the city from the top of his pillar. ‘There in the middle of the street, see, under Nelson’s Pillar, there was a dead horse all week, covered in flies. I didn’t feel sorry for him, though; he was an English horse.’ She laughed again. Da used to make her laugh all the time, but she hadn’t laughed once since she’d come to Dublin. She liked being with a man who made her laugh.
‘Come on, let’s walk,’ he said. ‘I don’t like standing still.’
‘Me neither,’ she said. He walked fast. She liked that, too; she had never been one for dawdling herself.
‘What was it like inside the GPO?’ she asked him, really wanting to know.
‘Sure, they were a holy bunch. I heard the rosary going day and night, and they say the fellas were lining up for confession with a priest they’d sneaked in. We weren’t all like that, though; up on the roof, some of our jokes were not fit for a lady’s ears.’ He winked at her when he told her this, and Aisling blushed, but didn’t mind blushing, and laughed some more, and said,
‘No, but will you tell me the jokes some day all the same? I like jokes. My Da was a one for the jokes.’
‘Ah, maybe one day, when I know you better. You know a strange thing?’ he told her as they went past the Metropole Hotel, where a cab was stopping and a man in a peaked cap was holding the door open for a woman in a fur coat.
‘What’s that?’ she said.
‘My C.O. was my big brother, Sean. He was in there with me, giving me orders.’
He paused and looked away, suddenly silent. Aisling knew not to ask him about Sean, and felt in that moment as if she’d known him a long time. Then he thrust his hands in his pockets, and continued with his story.
‘It was boring as hell, most of the time, if you want the truth. But that didn’t mean it was safe. There was an English sniper up there, see, top of Trinity –‘ he pointed across the river to the round stately dome of Trinity College – ‘ he could reach us. He picked off Dermot O’Casey himself, a boy I was at the Christian Brothers with. He died two men down from me. I held him as he said his last act of contrition. He bled from the neck onto my sleeve, so.’
‘You held a man as he died?’ said Aisling.
‘I did. His mother was glad to hear of it after.’
She thought of Da then, of his body stretched out on her bedroom floor. She wished she’d been able to hold him.
As they crossed the Liffey, its waters rushing impatiently to the sea, Patrick started to walk slower and his voice lowered.
‘It didn’t end well, though,’ he said. He paused at the end of the bridge and made another sweeping gesture back to Sackville Street, cluttered now with trams and cabs and people.
‘That whole street was in flames from the English shells. There were balls of fire, ten feet wide, flying into the air from the oil depot. You see Reiss’s the jewellers there?’
Aisling nodded.
‘There were tongues of flame lighting up the night sky. I saw it from the roof. When the glass melted, there was something beautiful about it. It sounded like a waterfall crashing.’
His voice was shaking. He seemed to be on the verge of tears. She wanted to hold him in her arms, to comfort her.
‘Come on, let’s go,’ he said, as if he didn’t want her to see him upset.
They dodged round the back of another tram and ran across the street; again he took her hand. Then they turned past Trinity College and its playing fields as big as a farm, all scattered with the sons of the gentry baying at the oval ball.
‘When the fire reached the Post Office, and it was too hot to touch anything, and all the water in the building turned to steam. The roof was falling in; we gathered downstairs and sang ‘The Soldier’s Song’ Do you know it?’
‘I do.’
They’d sung it at the end of every meeting in Flanagan’s back room; it always lifted them, gave them courage for whatever lay ahead. He stopped, and looked out over the playing fields of Trinity. Then he began to sing, very softly, whispering the words, glaring at the posh Protestant boys on the rugby field as he sang:
‘Soldiers are we,
whose lives are pledged to Ireland,
Some have come
from a land beyond the wave.
Sworn to be free,
no more our ancient sireland,
Shall shelter the despot or the slave.
Tonight we man the gap of danger
In Erin's cause, come woe or weal
Mid cannons’ roar and rifles peal,
We'll chant a soldier's song.’
A platoon of English soldiers turned out of Grafton Street and wheeled right towards them. They were only a couple of hundred yards away. By singing that song, Patrick might as well have taken a gun out and pointed it at them. Aisling felt afraid and thrilled at the same time, just as she had on the night the Tans came. And as on that night, she felt ready to fight for Ireland. As Patrick began the second verse, she stood close to him, and sang it with him, as softly as she could. Their words and their breath mingled as they whispered the song to each other. They seemed to be exchanging secrets. People stared at them as they passed. One man winked at her; another gave her a discreet thumbs up. The two of them were together as one, defying the English.
‘In valley green, on towering crag,
Our fathers fought before us,
And conquered 'neath the same old flag
That's proudly floating o'er us.
We're children of a fighting race,
That never yet has known disgrace,
And as we march, the foe to face,
We'll chant a soldier's song. ’
They finished, together, on the same rising note, just as the English soldiers came into earshot. They stepped back and let the soldiers march past, their eyes to the front, their boots clumping, resentment on their boys’ faces, as she and Patrick hugged their secret defiance to themselves. When the last soldier had passed, they turned to each other and laughed.
‘Let’s get moving before we get arrested,’ he said.
Now they were in the smart part of the city, south of the river. The houses were high, with small windows at the top; families with servants.
‘How did it end?’ she asked.
‘We broke out of the GPO, across Henry Street, the English firing all the time, into the houses on Moore Street. We had to smash our way through the walls with a sledgehammer. How we managed it, God only knows; most of us could hardly stand after a week without sleep. It stopped at last when Pearse saw an old man dead in the street holding a white flag and knew it was time to surrender. That’s the kind of man he was, Miss O’Flaherty.’
‘Were you taken prisoner?’
‘I was. The English kept us all night outside in Rutland Square at gunpoint. I won’t go into the details, Miss O’Flaherty, but the plumbing’s not so good there – we had to take our relief as we could.’
Again she blushed, and laughed, and felt a thrill at being admitted to this masculine world.
‘Then they marched us to the boats for England. I was a year in a prison camp in Wales. Boring as hell at first, when they kept us in solitary. But when they let us out of our cells, I made some friends for life amongst the fellas. There’s one especially I’d go to the death for – name of Mick Collins. He is simply the greatest man I’ve ever met. No question. You’ll be hearing more of him before long, Miss O’Flaherty, I can promise you that. No one knows who he is, but he has the whole of Dublin in his pocket.’
She wanted to meet this Mick Collins fella; wondered if he’d introduce her to him.
‘Do you miss it now?’ she asked.
‘Sure, when they let us out, it was good to get home, and eat decent grub and be able to walk the streets, but I miss the fellas too. Still, I mustn’t complain. I’m alive; which is more than can be said for the fifteen they shot, may they rest in peace.’
He blessed himself swiftly, and she copied him.
‘I have a good job in a carpenter’s. I like working with my hands. The only trouble is, it’s a family business: Sean’s still my boss!’
He laughed, and she laughed with him.
‘Is that still as bad as it was?’
‘Sure, he’s been bossing me since the day I was born, and I’m used to it now. You know something, Miss O’Flaherty?’
‘What’s that?’
‘Ireland will be free very soon. Her day is coming. We knocked the English off their perch that Easter week, and they’ll never get back now.’