Himself and I had got a grip of Dublin at the end of a week by using a
map and doing a lot of walking.
All this time Mrs. Slaney was becoming more friendly. She swallowed
rebuffs as an ostrich swallows stones.
We began to know by sight the people in the neighbourhood. A number of
officers lived in one of the houses. Sometimes they were in uniform,
and sometimes in mufti. They went out at night very late, returning
during or after curfew as they felt inclined. Usually a car called for
them, driven by a soldier, and it brought them back again with a great
clatter, when the street was doing its best to sleep. These men carried
guns in their pockets.
“Those men are spies,” Mrs. Slaney said, coming in to borrow a little
butter. “Look at them going out in mufti. Do they think our people are
fools? Absurd! The Government lets them go about like that, and expects
them to get information.”
“They must get information, I suppose,” I said. “After all, if they
were no good they wouldn’t be kept on.”
She threw up her hands.
“The Government pours out money like water!”
The men in this particular house fascinated me. They came and went
so often it seemed as if they never slept. There was one individual
I found more absorbing than the others. He was about forty, tall and
immaculate. His ties and socks were wonderful, his shoes the most
beautiful suède, his collar fitted as no other collar I have seen
fitted a man, and I am sure he wore stays. On his head was a bowler at
an extreme angle. He looked a “wrong un,” the sort of person you would
not introduce to your daughter. He usually made a first sortie about
eleven, and tottered towards the Shelbourne for a cocktail.
Dublin intrigued me. The people are grubby and intellectual, and crafty
and philosophic, and sublime and material all at the same time. The fat
beggars whine their piteous stories at every corner, and the children
tell the tale as glibly as the mothers. Each person is more droll than
the next, and nobody really believes anybody else.
Every day provided a new excitement. I have forgotten half of them now;
but one I remember clearly. It happened during one of my first walks.
I was coming home across one of the bridges over the canal on the south
side of the city. Men, women, and children were peering over into the
water, and I peered too. All I saw were four big, important policemen,
who seemed to be guarding the canal.
Then, in the middle of the canal, I discovered a large oil drum
floating with the Sinn Fein flag on top. Below the flag was a
placard--“Spies and Informers, beware.”
While I was still gaping, as was everybody else, a lorry load of
troops, with tin hats and rifles, rattled up.
“This is thrilling!” I exclaimed.
At every window was a head, at most two, in some there were half a
dozen heads, and the crowd, which had fallen back before the troops,
drifted as near as it dared.
The capture of the bridge and the bank of the canal was the matter of
moments, and then there was an armistice while two officers, displaying
many ribbons, discussed the next stage of the attack.
“Certain to be mined,” I heard one declare. “What would be the sense of
the Shinners putting a thing like that there if it wasn’t?”
“There may be a dead body attached. Some poor devil gone west,”
answered the other. He scratched his head. “Let’s put a shot into it to
make sure.”
“Blow the bally canal to bits, what?” declared the first man, gaily.
Then he became depressed.
“There must be a catch in it,” declared the second man. “Some one’ll
have to go out and see to it. Where the devil’s a boat?”
“There’s a boat the other side,” said a policeman, heavily.
“Bring her across, what!” cried the officer.
The policeman suddenly lost all joy in the day; but he got the boat. He
gave it over to the officers, who clambered in.
Some girls giggled.
The senior of the officers reached out his hand and carefully drew the
oil drum towards him. He fell upon the notice and destroyed it, and
captured the Sinn Fein flag.
“Empty!” he said, as he cleared the drum from its moorings and they
lifted it into the boat.
“It’ll be full next time,” I couldn’t help saying.
Everybody looked at me with one accord as if I had done it. I started
to depart, and the good example set the soldiers scrambling into the
lorry, the policemen stalking off on their beat, and the crowd drifting
on its way.
Such adventures as this might be met with at any street corner.
Himself speaks.
Everywhere there were signs of the times. All day long the military
lorries rumbled about the city--great brutal concerns crowded with
armed soldiers in tin hats, so that they looked like mouths bristling
with teeth. And faster than they rolled the armoured cars like little
forts on wheels. And faster still and more furious, lighter lorries
choked with Auxiliary police and Black-and-Tans.
At any hour of the day one might walk on top of a raid, though night
was the more chosen time for such things. There was generally a small
crowd of errand boys, beggars, and telegraph boys, and other people
with nothing important on hand, kept at rifle’s length by a line of
Tommies drawn across the streets; and a hundred yards beyond was
the fatal house with lorries like empty mouths before it--the teeth
having got out and gone inside. These raids had a fascination for the
passerby, although, nine cases out of ten, nothing was to be seen, and
the tenth time there was a chance of being shot, as some one would try
and escape, or something would happen inside the house.
There would be days of special military activity, when the bridges over
the canals were held up, and motorists had their cars searched for arms
and documents, and drivers their carts. At nights, when dark fell and
the cold crept through the city, there came occasional cracking shots,
which were more frequent as the weeks went on.
Every morning a flaring poster of the _Freeman’s Journal_, the most
violent organ of the National Press, shouted out some fresh Government
atrocity. Yes, signs of the times everywhere, and most eloquent where
least was said, as in the public places where never a word of politics
was spoken.
But for a day the humblest person could get out of it all. On Howth
Head he could wander in solitude. Up Killiney Hill he could climb and
feast his eyes on peace.
One afternoon, in the lounge of the Shelbourne Hotel, we were
introduced to our acquaintance of the wonderful waistcoats and socks.
His clothes were still as perfectly put on; but he seemed less at his
ease than usual. Whenever some one came in, he pivoted round, turning
the whole of his body in the movement, and every now and then he beat
his forehead with a beautiful silk handkerchief.
“Oh, I’m rocky to-day, very rocky,” he declared, swallowing the last
of the whiskey. “It’s a terrible place for a man to find himself in.
I was in uniform the other day, on the step out there, trying to get
inside. Suddenly a dear old lady trotted up to me and grasped me by the
hand. ‘Let me thank you,’ she said, ‘thank you in the name of all the
loyal women of Ireland, for coming over here to defend us from those
murderous Sinn Feiners.’ ‘Yes, madam, that’s all very well, that’s all
very nice,’ I answered, trying to get her to let go of my hand; ‘but
if I don’t get inside there with this uniform on there’ll be a bit of
daylight let into me.’” He mopped his brow, and exclaimed, “Oh, my God,
my God!”
“Would you sooner deal with the women on the other side?” I asked.
“Oh no; oh, not at all. Oh, nothing like that about me. I know the
other sort, too well I know them. You meet ’em at the top of the
landing when you and your merry men dash into a house full of beans.
Oh, I know the sort. They’d bite a man in the tonsils before he had
his collar on in the morning.”
“D’you raid houses?”
“That’s me. That’s me in the cold dark night. That’s unfortunately me.
I’m always getting myself into some trouble or other. As soon as I’ve
done with one stunt I say, Never again. But I get rested; I get full
of beans; I grow full of joy. On a fatal day, six months ago, I met a
pal. ‘What are you doin’, old bean?’ he said. ‘Come to Ireland. Come
and chase Shinners. Wonderful people, Shinners. All believe in the soap
boycott. It’s money for nothing.’
“Money for nothing! I felt full of joy. And here I am up all night and
all day, and feeling like death.”
“As bad as that?”
“Oh, terrible! Out every night, out all night long, hail and rain and
frost. Rushing up stairs, expecting a bullet on every landing. Tearing
into terrible slums where men and women and children all sleep in the
same bed, and you come away with the itch, and where you have to crawl
about with your hand to your nose looking for patriots. And they told
me it was money for nothing. And then, in the small hours, you stagger
back to bed and find an Irish patriot leaning against the door, and you
dodge by with your gun under your coat pointing at him, and he swings
about with his gun under his coat, and neither of you has the nerve to
shoot the other. Oh, it’s money for nothing, and the life fills a man
full of joy!” He beat his mouth with his handkerchief, and muttered,
“My God, my God, my God!”
“Poor man,” said my wife.
He pivoted round. “And the Castle people expect such wonderful things.
Last night, oh, last night!”
“What happened last night?”
“Last night they said to me, ‘Old bean, just paddle down to Irishtown
and watch a house there for half an hour. Watch it from ten to
ten-thirty, and see if anything happens. We think it’s a meeting-place.
Just watch for half an hour. It’s quite simple. Money for nothing!’
“Terrible place, Irishtown. Have you been there? Then don’t. Home of
dock labourers and navvies. I found my house, and in two minutes a
patriot who believed in the soap boycott came and breathed in my face.
And in five minutes a dear old lady came and looked at me as if she
wanted to bite me in the tonsils. I began to feel hot and bothered.
It was cold, cold, cold, and there was one lamp, which I seemed to be
getting under all the time. In ten minutes I was feeling like death.
Then, as the dear old bean at the Castle suggested, something did
happen. All the doors in Irishtown opened at the same moment, and
people came rushing out. And one man shouted, in a terrible voice,
‘There he goes, the C.I.D.!’
“The C.I.D. did go. Oh yes, the C.I.D. went. I butted into an old
beggar lady, and knocked her spinning. I rushed down one street and
up the next, and bowled over two or three children, and a dear old
girl who was trotting out of church full of beans at having saved her
soul. I trod on a blind man and his dog, and the dog bit the blind
man, and all the other dogs barked, and all the boys whistled, and
the married women hitched up their stockings, and the old men and the
cripples joined in the chase, shouting, ‘There goes the C.I.D.’ And if
I couldn’t have heard ’em, I could have smelt they were after me.
“And then I began to get a stitch, a terrible stitch, and every yard I
went it got worse. Money for nothing! Yes! What? I couldn’t go another
yard, and I pulled out my gun and came about under a lamp and waved it
at them.
“It was money for nothing the first time since I came over. They pulled
up like a tide coming against a wall--the old girls, and the boys, and
the cripples, and the dogs, all treading on one another’s toes. And
while I waved I tried to get rid of my damned stitch. ‘Now you stop
where you are,’ I said, giving my gun a final shake, ‘or you’ll find
it the worse for you!’ And round I went, and started to run again. And
all the dogs barked, and all the beggars picked up their crutches, and
all the married women hitched their garters, and came after me again.
And I didn’t know where I’d got, and I charged over a few more blind
men, and I got the damned stitch again, and I stopped and shook my gun
at ’em, and we all lined up again, and then we started off once more.
And then, when the stitch was killing me, a tram came by, and I made a
running jump on to the step, and dug my gun into the conductor’s ribs.
‘No funny business with the bell,’ I said. ‘You let her rip.’
“And I waved my gun all round the tram, and everybody tried to get off
at once, and two or three dear old ladies spread themselves on the
floor, and I said to one, ‘Yes, madam, that’s very nice, and we’ll
bring you to at the other end; but we’re letting this old tram rip just
now.’”
He sank back in his seat, mopping his forehead with his handkerchief,
muttering, “Money for nothing!” Then he saw the clock, and beat his
mouth with his handkerchief, and cried, “My God, my God, my God! I was
due somewhere else half an hour ago,” and seized his hat and stick and
hurried through the swing doors of the Shelbourne into the street.
We found Dublin more interesting every day.