In a few seconds the lorries were empty and everybody was disappearing
into the dark. A voice had cried out, “Come along, boys, the bar’s open
for another half-hour.”
Not everybody succumbed to the magic of those words, for O’Grady and I
were led away to the left to a place which must have been a guardroom.
The spell of the army was upon everything. There were endless unbrushed
passages as a start, and everybody we came upon seemed to come to life
suddenly, and to wave us on to somebody else.
In the guardroom we were delivered over to new people.
The room was of no special size, shape or description, and had only one
attraction, which was a fire. The windows were sandbagged. There was a
table at which a strenuous Auxiliary sat writing; two other Auxiliaries
nodded over the fire; and to one side of the room were three baths, and
in each bath slumbered an Auxiliary. On some biscuits, not the edible
kind, on the floor slept two young prisoners. The strenuous Auxiliary
reluctantly put down his pen. The two men nodding at the fire watched
out of an eye each.
As a start we were prodded all over for arms and seditious documents,
and I was told to give up my pocket-book.
“Any money in it?” demanded the strenuous Auxiliary, as I was passing
it over.
“Thirty bob, I think,” I answered.
“Well, count it and see,” he ordered, “or you’ll say we pinched it.”
I counted it and handed him the pocket-book, which he went through page
by page, asking me to explain every likely-looking sentence. Finally
he slapped it back at me on the table. He waved a hand at some dirty
biscuits and dirtier blankets, which were stacked in a corner.
“You can take some of those,” he said, “and doss on the floor.”
I nodded to show I was grateful for the favour, and O’Grady and I
explored these biscuits. I wondered if O’Grady had ever been in as bad
straits before. I had had to put up with all sorts of beds in my life,
beds on the bare earth, beds on the rolling sea, most bitter barren
beds; but they had not taught me to be friendly to the colour of these
blankets. However, O’Grady seemed to find what he wanted, took off his
boots, put his hard hat on top of them, rolled up just as he had been
standing, and was asleep before I had made a first choice. Before long
the men nodding by the fire came across.
“The old un’s got down to it quickly,” one of them said with
admiration. “The old dog for the hard road.”
“You can doss by the fire there,” the other one said to me, jerking his
hand to a place by the side of the fire.
I took him at his word and emigrated with two blankets which seemed to
have known fewer generations of Sinn Feiners than any of the others. I
grew more friendly with them as gradually I became warm and sleepy.
But I never quite fell asleep, and though it was late when I lay down,
what remained of the night was ages long.
It was a very restless place. People came in and out, cheery people,
people in evening dress who had dined well, people in uniform who
seemed to have nothing to do and no desire for bed. Now one Auxiliary
arose out of his bath like Lazarus come out of his tomb; now a second
sprang up like a jack-in-the-box and the first sank back again. All the
while the strenuous Auxiliary continued to write, and to this day I
believe he was at work upon his reminiscences. Finally, an Auxiliary,
who had arisen from his bath and not gone back again, started an
argument with the strenuous Auxiliary about who burned Cork. He was
serious and anxious to get at the truth. They produced paper and worked
at the answer with a will.
The Auxiliary from the bath proved there were only a small number of
his fraternity in Cork at the time, and that most of them, including
himself, were in hospital having pieces of bomb taken out of them. He
said there were over four thousand soldiers in Cork, and God knew how
many Shinners, and it was either the military or the I.R.A.; but the
Auxiliaries were blameless. This argument lasted a very long time, and
caused books to be tossed about, and feet to be shuffled, and other
things to happen unconducive to sleep, and it must have worn out the
Auxiliary from the bath, for at the end of it he sank into his bath
again like a corpse sinking into a grave. The strenuous Auxiliary
returned to his writing.
The Auxiliaries who lived in the baths were thin Auxiliaries; there was
a stout Auxiliary dozing on a chair on the farther side of the fire. He
was middle-aged, and had something of the look of a father of a family;
but there was never a moment when he was not picturesque, with his
rifle at his hand and his Balmoral bonnet on his head.
Whatever might be one’s feelings towards these men, there was no
denying they were a fine type--active, young, for the most part in
splendid physical condition, and most romantically dressed. I kept on
dozing and coming to again, coming to and dozing, for I would suddenly
be aware of everything--of the room full of miscellaneous and dreary
things, of the sandbagged window with the Lewis gun in position, of the
men nodding on their arms, of the two young prisoners rolled up in one
blanket, of O’Grady dreaming of Mrs. Slaney’s basement, and of the
kindly fire next door to me leaping up the chimney--and then all would
pass away again.
About breakfast time everybody awakened. I sat up blinking with my
tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth, O’Grady felt himself all
over and put on his boots, the youthful prisoners came to, and the
Auxiliaries emerged from their baths and stayed out.
Breakfast came in--ham and eggs in a pile, and pyramids of bread.
These encouraging things began to disappear down the throats of the
Auxiliaries; but half-way through the feast somebody heartened us a
little by announcing we would get something later on. And in time we
found ourselves sitting down to ham and immense wedges of bread and
butter. While we ate somebody cleaned the Lewis gun, pointing the
muzzle at the pit of my stomach. The last wedge of ham was eaten, and
that was the end of whatever good time O’Grady and I had at the Castle.
We were still looking at our empty plates when an escort turned up,
and O’Grady and I began a new journey, down winding passages where the
plaster was peeling off walls and roof. We seemed to be going on and on
into the bowels of the Castle; but at last came round a sudden corner
into a small chamber given over to a military guard.
The soldiers looked at us resentfully, as if they thought us a
disturbing influence; but the sergeant of the guard came forward,
shuffled some dreary papers, produced a bad pen, which he straightened
upon the wooden table, found some worse ink, and proceeded to give
a receipt for us. After that transaction I gathered we no longer
belonged to the police; but our new possessors seemed to distrust
their possessions until we had proved beyond a doubt that we were
our fathers’ sons. This I found a more difficult thing to do than it
sounds, and it took several sheets of official paper. These papers were
slapped on top of a pile of others, and we were told to go through an
ancient wooden door, past a sentry with fixed bayonet. Through the door
we went into the most dismal place I have seen in my life.
Verily we had fallen from the frying-pan into the fire.
The room was no size at all, with one long high window boarded up to
the top so that little light got in and the gas had to burn all day.
There was a good fire leaping in the grate; but the air was stale and
thick, and hazy with tobacco smoke. There was nothing but the names of
past prisoners written in pencil on the walls from which the plaster
was falling, and in a corner some blankets filthier than those we had
left behind us. Three or four men sat on the ground round the fire
talking in whispers.
They looked up as we stood just inside the door discovering what had
happened to us, and beckoned us to the fire. We joined the sad circle.
“Have you got in here, too?” said a dark fellow like a Spaniard.
“It looks like it,” I answered, gaping at the desolate prospect.
“What was the trouble?”
“They found some ammunition under somebody else’s bed and said it was
mine.”
My listener looked respectful. “Ammunition! That’s bad,” he said.
Everybody was smoking. The smoke curled up and made the thick air
thicker. O’Grady pulled a pipe out of some part of him, and I found a
cigarette.
“How long are we going to be here?” I said.
“Until you go up for interrogation.”
“When’s that?”
“Sure and it’s the same day sometimes, or it’s two days or three days.”
“And what happens after that?”
“Indade, and if you can explain things you can go. And if you can’t
it’s to Ballykinler Internment Camp you go.”
“What’s that like?”
“Sure, and I hear tell it’s not bad in summer. Plenty of sports and
games, and a chap gets a rest; but it’s no place at all at all in
winter, but wind and rain.”
Somebody else joined in the talk.
“They got me on Monday. They had me up for interrogation two days ago
and put me back. They put you back to find out more about you. One of
them says to the other, reading it off a paper, this man’s a lieutenant
in the I.R.A. Their intelligence men are very good.”
The man like a Spaniard spoke. “When they got hold of me one man said
to the other, ‘Take care of this fellow, we want him. He’s a prominent
Sinn Feiner.’”
I found everybody rather inclined to hint at his value as a Republican;
but I had no intention of following the good example when I went up for
interrogation. I found in these people the trait common to all men who
come together in difficulties. They made a great show of cheerfulness
and good humour, finding a joke in everything and laughing at nothing.
At long intervals a new prisoner came through the door, and eventually
the number had grown to thirteen. The arrival of a new companion always
wakened us up for a little, and then the spell of the place fell on us
again. The atmosphere was too devastating to think in, to read in; we
passed the time on our backs, pacing up and down in twos or singly, now
and then wearily playing cards and sleeping. And everybody who was not
asleep smoked until the air was like a fog.
Lunch time came. A couple of us went away under escort and returned
with two tin dishes laden with food. There was food and to spare, and
good food too; but strange are the ways of Dublin Castle, and there was
nothing to eat it off or with. Among thirteen people there were three
or four plates, a couple of knives, a couple of forks and a spoon. We
had to eat in turn. I saw that my turn never came. If you keep a bird
in a cage you should see that the cage is clean. These people, who
were of inferior social position, two were railway porters, may not
have been squeamish; but the conditions were unnecessary, and gave the
Sinn Fein party a genuine handle for their propaganda. There was a
gallon of tea for us, and not one cup, and an apologetic sergeant could
only produce five jam jars of different sizes. Yet countless prisoners
have lain in Dublin Castle.
We asked for coal, we got coal, and the place was never chilly. “Eat as
much as you want,” the sergeant said, “but don’t get more than you can
eat or there’ll be trouble about it.” The contrast was extreme between
the accommodation provided and the readiness of our guards to make us
comfortable. I found no man who was not accommodating. One had only to
knock on the door and the guard opened it to grant any little request
he could, such as purchasing cigarettes or a pack of cards. When night
came along one soldier gave up his blankets to us because we had not
enough to go round.
The man like a Spaniard had seen the inside of many prisons.
“A man is better off when it’s their minds they have made up what
they’re going to do with him,” he said. “Sure, once a man’s sentenced
conditions are better. It’s these places where they grab chaps and keep
them for interrogation that are worst.”
At night, when we rolled up in our blankets, we covered the whole
floor. I was to get an intimate glance into Catholic life. As each man
finished taking off his boots and such clothes as he thought fit, he
knelt upon his blankets in the most natural way in the world and said
his prayers. Nobody seemed to think there was anything strange in this
behaviour; but it was surprising to a stranger, and proved how intimate
a part of a Catholic’s life his religion is. The fire was made up last
thing to last through the night.
For three days thirteen of us stayed in an atmosphere which was foul in
the beginning and staling all the time.
The third day we were told to get ready for exercise, and were taken
under escort to a back yard of the Castle where we wandered wearily up
and down, while female servants looked down on us disdainfully from
upper stories. In the middle of our wanderings somebody arrived with
a chair, and a sprightly young man, waving a diminutive camera on
very long legs, so that it looked like some breed of spider, invited
us to take the chair in turn and be photographed. At the same time
another gentleman with a waxed moustache and a very penetrating eye
jotted down his personal reflections upon our looks. This was for the
Castle archives. Tears came into the eyes of poor old O’Grady when
he had to suffer the indignity of the chair; but I disguised myself
behind a three days’ growth of beard and remained unashamed. After the
photography we were headed back to our cell, to staleness, to boredom
and to dreary contemplation.
The end of my adventure came as suddenly as the beginning. We were
exercising next day. A sergeant of Military Police tapped me on the
shoulder and said, “This way.” I started at his side and we crossed the
Upper Castle Yard, and then the Lower Castle Yard, and finally we came
to the main gate. He gave a flourish of his hand and said, “There you
are. You are free.”
Not to be outdone, I also waved my hand. “I’m to walk out there?”
“You’re free.”
“What about the other fellow, the old man?”
“I don’t know anything about him. He’ll be out in a few minutes.”
“But I’ve not got my gear. I must go back and get it.”
He looked scandalised. “You can’t. You’re free. You can’t be in the
Castle without a permit. You must go. You have no right here. You must
go. The other fellow will bring your bag.”
“I didn’t want to come, and you brought me here. Now you want me to go,
and I don’t want to go--without the old man and my gear.”
“You are free, and you can’t be in the Castle without a permit.” He was
shocked to the root of his being.
I departed.