The concussion of the bomb nearly threw me off my feet. For a few
moments I thought that I was hit. In a dream I could see people
falling, and I realised that things were darting by me like fast and
furious flies. The lorry had slackened speed, and the Auxiliaries were
standing up shooting. A man prone on the ground a few yards away raised
himself cautiously on his hands. Then I came to life. At the same
moment a man in the gutter decided that the moment to retire had come.
He scrambled to his feet and, crouching low, dashed past me round the
corner. Others ran with him wildly. The fire became concentrated on
the corner of the wall. I stepped in a panic into shelter, picking up
a child as I stepped. Women fell over perambulators after me, nurses
abandoned babies and snatched them up again, children were flung from
side to side and were pushed into shelter by people who wanted shelter
for themselves. The child I held was about three. Its face had grown a
dull red, and it caught its breath until I thought it would burst. The
only thing to do was to smack it. That took its attention off other
things, and it howled and breathed quite naturally. There was no longer
an ambusher to be seen.
“What a life!” I exclaimed to a woman beside me.
“Terrible,” she declared indignantly. “I declare this is the third
ambush I’ve wheeled my baby into this week. I can show you a bullet
hole through her pram top this very minute. People ought to be ashamed
throwing bombs in a crowd.”
“Indeed, the Shinners are only doing their duty,” broke in a girl. “Why
do the Black-and-Tans shoot back? It’s only babies they hit.”
“And aren’t the Black-and-Tans doing their duty, too?” retorted the
woman with the baby, who was thoroughly roused. “Indeed, and the
Shinners are taking no risks, they are not. Did ye ever see a Shinner
yet that came out in the open? Did ye ever see the Shinner that----”
I walked home, leaving behind me a heated argument, and feeling rubbed
up the wrong way. I decided I was quite glad to be joining Himself in
the North in a day or two.
Mrs. O’Grady met me at the door.
“It’s yourself that’s all right? I was after saying a rosary for you
this very minute. God save us! It’s the worst we’ve had yet. I thought
the house would come down.”
“I was right in the middle of it. I made sure I was hit at first. In
fact my head is still ringing.”
“And so it would,” Mrs. O’Grady agreed. “O’Grady is the very same.
Miss O’Farrell is still out, and the mistress is in a fuss over it to
be sure.”
She tramped off in her sandshoes to get my lunch, and I went into the
sitting-room.
The door opened suddenly and in bustled Mrs. Slaney.
“Such an explosion!” she exclaimed. “I’m glad you weren’t hit. I was
wondering where you were. Miss O’Farrell isn’t in yet. I hope she’s all
right.”
“Nice place to ambush,” I said, feeling aggressive. “The street was
filled with perambulators.”
Mrs. Slaney flushed.
“I have no doubt the Sinn Feiners find it necessary,” she answered.
“Why do the soldiers take advantage of the perambulators? They’ve
no business to pass down crowded streets as they do. They do it for
protection. They have no business in Ireland at all. Well, you’ve
really been ambushed? You can write home to Australia now, and tell
them all about it.”
Another crash cut her sentence short, and she flushed deeper.
“That seems to be in Stephen’s Green. Do you think that child will ever
get home for her dinner?”
“She won’t leave the office if it’s not safe.”
The shooting stopped, and we went to the front door to see what was
to be seen. There were people running all along the street, and the
jarvies from Stephen’s Green had whipped up their horses and taken
refuge in our direction. A tender of Auxiliaries drove slowly, the men
in it looking this way and that for suspects.
“Brutes! Blackguards! Threatening the people like that! I’d like to
make faces at them!”
“Please don’t while I’m here.”
“Ah, but that’s how I feel. And our boys aren’t always responsible
for the bombs. Three people told me that they saw the big ambush last
night, and that the soldiers threw the bomb deliberately themselves.”
“What for?”
“So that they could have an excuse for firing at the crowd.”
“Well, I saw the bomb thrown to-day, and they certainly did not throw
it themselves. A bomb isn’t a toy, Mrs. Slaney. I shouldn’t think many
soldiers would throw the bomb for the pleasure of ambushing themselves.
The man that threw it this morning was standing beside me, and he fell
flat on his face when it was thrown, and then he scuttled away among
the babies and the perambulators.”
She changed the subject. “When are you joining your husband? Mrs.
O’Grady wants a holiday, so I have given her next week. You and I will
be alone. Miss O’Farrell is going away for a few days at the end of
this week.”
“Really?” I made up my mind quickly. “I’m going away at once.”
“Oh!” Her face fell. “I had pictured a nice little time together. I
thought perhaps we could get our meals together. It would save you, and
would be company for me.”
“I’m afraid I’m going next Friday.”
“Well, I must try to get some one. I can’t stay in the house alone.
O’Grady isn’t much good.”
She went slowly upstairs, and I remained on the doorstep watching the
people grow calmer. While I watched Miss O’Farrell came hurrying home.
“I’ve had a dreadful time,” she said breathlessly. She looked shaken.
“There was an ambush in Stephen’s Green a minute ago. I had to lie on
my tummy for ages listening to the bullets flying over me. I was too
terrified to move.”
“That must have been the last ambush.”
“Yes. I don’t think I’m a national hero. I’d hate to be shot.” She
talked over her shoulder as she mounted the stairs. “It’s made me
fearfully late. I’ve hardly time for my lunch.”
“Wonderful spirit the Irish girls have,” said Mrs. Slaney, two hours
later, as she encountered me on my way out. “Little Miss O’Farrell
wasn’t at all put out by her experience this morning. ‘Only another
ambush,’ she said, when I asked her why she was late. Wonderful spirit,
and it’s all through the nation. You can write to Australia about that.
It’s little incidents that make the world thrill.”
I was alone in the flat for another three days. The rest of the house
had gone a-holidaying, and there was only Mrs. Slaney overhead. On
Monday Mrs. O’Grady would have flown, or rather limped, from the
basement. On these nights sleep was impossible. Crash after crash
shook the silence, and the rattle of rifle fire was never ending. Some
nights the concussion was so great that every time I put the window
up it was shaken down again. When it was very bad I pulled down the
blind, feeling rather like the soldiers on guard at the ruined Customs
House, who crept into their bell tents at night when they were being
sniped from the neighbouring roofs. It was a poor security, but it was
security of a sort, and the only security granted at that time to the
citizens of Dublin.
One night I saw a figure running down the opposite pavement, and
crouching against the walls of the houses. The man came to a garden
with a tree hanging over a fence. He had time to get on top of the
fence under the tree before the Auxiliaries rattled down the street
after him. He stood quite still on top of the fence. I could only see a
shadow where his toes must have been sticking out, the rest was hidden
in the branches of the tree. The Auxiliaries dropped out of their
lorry and searched up and down. The toes did not stir. I began to take
a passionate interest in those toes. There is an appeal in anything
hunted. After a little the lorry filled again and rattled away. The
toes still remained without motion on the top of the fence; but later
when I looked they had gone.
Mrs. Slaney grew more and more warlike as the days passed. Probably
she passed sleepless nights too, and the strain was telling on her.
“Wonderful to have a husband a patriot,” she declared on one occasion.
I remembered the wives of the patriots I knew, and recalled them to her
memory.
“Rubbish, Mrs. Slaney,” I said. “A patriot isn’t more of a hero than
another man. Look at the limelight a patriot gets to help him. If there
was no limelight, no publicity, a lot of the patriots would be a sorry
crew.”
I had said rather more than I meant out of exasperation; but it was
Mrs. Slaney’s fault.
I made my way into the street thinking over my theory. Political
patriots held no monopoly. There were heroes that worked and died
unheard of, heroes of exploration, of medicine, of religion, of
literature, anything one liked to name. My musings came suddenly to an
end. I had almost stepped in a pool of blood. It began halfway down the
steps of a house, and continued to the gutter. It looked as if some
one had carried a bucket of blood and had thrown it down the steps. I
looked at it with a feeling of nausea, which increased at the sight
of a dog’s footsteps running through it. Far along the pavement those
bloody footsteps led me on my way. Here the owner of them had lingered
sniffing, here he had chatted to a friend, here he had hesitated. It
was a long time before the little red footsteps became less plain, and
still longer before they died out altogether. I turned a corner, and
a hundred yards in front of me lay another pool of blood. The horror
of killing swept over me again. These two pools stirred something in
me that the riddled windows had never done. Those red footsteps had
brought the red ruin that was upon the land home to me far more than
any raid or fear of a raid had done, more than any ambush. They seemed
to sum up the whole case against war, to lay it red and bare upon the
pavement. Ireland could never do without England, nor England without
Ireland, for man cannot do without man.
The next morning we were raided for the last time. It was at eight
o’clock. Mrs. Slaney had gone to Mass, and I was alone in the house,
except for O’Grady, who had finished polishing the brass, and had
retired to his own quarters to make ready to go to work. I was used to
my sitting-room filling suddenly with men armed to the teeth, therefore
it was not upsetting to welcome them again. I had a pile of _Irish
Bulletins_, the forbidden organ of Sinn Fein, in the bottom drawer of
my desk, and the recollection of them was the only thing that made me
uneasy.
“Where’s Mrs. Fitzgerald?” demanded an old friend with a scar running
down his face.
I glanced outside before I answered. Mrs. Fitzgerald was considered
formidable enough to merit more lorries and armoured cars than her
husband. Wherever I looked were Auxiliaries, and the house was filled
with them.
“Mrs. Fitzgerald has gone. I’ve had her flat for two months now,” I
answered.
“What’s your name?”
I gave it.
He softened perceptibly. “You have the same Christian name as my wife.
Now we shall get on really well.”
“I’m glad.”
“All these things are Mrs. Fitzgerald’s, I know them,” he said, looking
round the room like an auctioneer in fancy dress.
“I took the flat over from her.”
“That’s her desk?”
“Yes.”
“I must search it.”
“Please do. You’ll only find my manuscript in there; but do go through
it. I’d love you to. I’d like to be sure somebody read it. Publishers
are such unkind people.”
I heard a smothered oath from the other room. The door was open, and I
saw an officer with my stocking bag. He had evidently run his finger on
a darning needle. He cast the bag from him, and turned his attention to
my chest of drawers.
The officer in charge opened the top of the desk. The _Bulletins_ were
in the bottom drawer; but one that I had been reading was on top of the
desk. It lay face downwards almost under his hand. I couldn’t make up
my mind whether to take the bull by the horns and own up to them, or
try my luck. My luck stood me in good stead. He picked up a horoscope
I had been casting. He had another attack of humanity. He put down the
gun he had in his hand, and turned to me with the map.
“By Jove, are you interested in astrology? I started it during the war,
and before I came on this stunt.”
“I started it when Curfew was long and life became perceptibly shorter.”
He propounded the map to me, as if he loved to hear himself on the
subject.
“Is there anywhere I can go for lessons in Dublin?”
I told him where to go, wondering what the feelings of the meek
astrologers would be when an Auxiliary armed to the teeth stalked into
their presence.
He flung down the map on top of the impious _Bulletin_, and then ran
his hand through the mass of papers and letters. He stooped to the
first drawer, then to the second; but my luck held good. Halfway
through the second drawer he straightened up and said--
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“Don’t do that,” I said. “Better finish your job.”
He laughed. “No, I’ll trust you.” He walked to the door of the other
room where the searchers were busy making hay. “Stop searching,” he
said. “Mrs. Fitzgerald isn’t in the mattress.”
After that we stood a few minutes in light conversation.
The tenders went off down the street with a flourish. At every window
as usual a head was watching, and a few of the more daring spirits
hovered upon their doorsteps. The day had begun well.
Mrs. Slaney returned five minutes after. I think she was glad to have
missed the raid, although she declared that she wished she had been
present to let the men have her opinion of them.
Worse things happened in Dublin every day. The Sinn Feiners began to
carry out their “executions” in the streets. Two Auxiliaries were shot
coming out of a Grafton Street Picture House. It was said a woman
pointed them out, and when the dying men were lying on the pavement
nobody dared go near them. Two more Auxiliaries were shot while they
were sitting at tea with their wives. The kidnappings were going on.
The military and police never rested, and all night long there was
shooting. People were sick to death at the state of things.
Nobody ever said what was at the bottom of his or her heart, for nobody
was sure of the other person’s beliefs, and everybody feared the power
of the opposite side. Meanwhile the country was going to rack and ruin,
and was there a human man or woman who did not long for peace?