The Easter Rising 1916 - Molly's Diary (Hands-on History) Read online

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  Published 2014

  by Poolbeg Press Ltd

  123 Grange Hill, Baldoyle

  Dublin 13, Ireland

  E-mail: [email protected]

  © PATRICIA MURPHY 2014

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  Typesetting, layout, design, ebook © Poolbeg Press Ltd.

  1

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978-1-78199-974-5

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photography, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  www.poolbeg.com

  About the Author

  Patricia Murphy is an award-winning Producer/Director of documentaries for BBC and Channel 4 and a children’s author.

  Many of her groundbreaking programmes are about children and include Children of Helen House for the BBC about a children’s hospice, Raised by the State on growing up in care and Caravan Kids about the children of New Age Travellers. She devised and directed the launch programmes of Born to Be Different, Channel 4’s pioneering series following the lives of six children born with disabilities in the 21st century. She also made TheWorst Jobs in History with Tony Robinson, Behind the Crime (a controversial series about criminals) and several films on the environment.

  She is the author of The Chingles Celtic fantasy trilogy published by Poolbeg.

  She grew up in Dublin and graduated from Trinity College, Dublin, with a degree in English and History. She now lives in Oxford with her husband and young daughter.

  Dedication

  In memory of my father Charles Murphy (1937-2013) who died while I was writing this book, and all those who lost their lives in the 1916 Rising

  Easter 1916. The Great War rages in Europe with two hundred thousand Irishmen fighting in the British Army. But a small group of Irish nationalists refuse to fight for Britain and strike a blow for Irish freedom. Caught up in the action in Dublin is twelve-year-old Molly O’Donovan. This is her diary.

  & & &

  9 o’clock, Saturday morning, 22nd April 1916 – MY BIRTHDAY!

  My bedroom, 9 Sackville Street, Dublin, Ireland, Second City of the British Empire.

  My name is Molly O’Donovan and I am twelve years old today. Hurray! My father is Chief Technical Officer at the General Post Office (GPO for short) and makes sure everyone gets their telegraphs and telephone calls. My mother is called Bessie. She is a Quaker from Enniskillen in the North of Ireland. We live opposite the GPO in Sackville Street, Dublin, the widest street in Europe, in a tall thin house above a tailor’s shop.

  My brother Jack is two years older than me – and teases me something rotten!

  I had hoped to fill my new diary with elegant words and clever thoughts but all I’ve had are constant interruptions. I only had to pick up my new fountain pen earlier at breakfast for Jack to make fun of me.

  “Why on earth would a boring girl need a diary!” he jeered. “Dear Diary, today I broke a comb in my awful red hair, I played nurses with my silly dolls. Blah, blah, blah!”

  Jack tried to swipe the diary from me but I held it out of reach.

  “Die, Imperial Enemy! God save Ireland!” he cried and the eejit tried to bayonet my diary with his fork.

  “Shush! I’m writing down EVERYTHING that happens. So you’d better stop jumping off roofs and marching with rebels!” I made a face at him but he made a worse one back and stabbed again at my lovely diary. “Hands off! It’s the best present ever!”

  It’s true. It’s vellum and hand-bound in leather with my name carved on the front. It has a little lock and all. Mother’s friend, Addy, who works in Eason Stationers, made it.

  Then our char Nancy Maguire chimed in. “Janey Mac! Would yeh ever stop actin’ the maggot, young Jack,” she scolded. She is quite old and crinkly and her face is sooty from cleaning the grate.

  Jack mimed shooting at me with a rifle, the dangerous galoot.

  “At least your sister’s not hangin’ outside old Fenian bomber’s tobacco shops like you and our Anto,” said Nancy.

  Anto is Nancy’s fifteen-year-old son, a messenger boy with buck teeth and sticky-out ears. Jack thinks the sun shines out of his scrawny backside.

  “Nancy, who are the Fenians?” I asked.

  “A shower of no-account troublemakers from way back who want to bomb us all into bein’ an Irish Republic,” she said, shaking her brush. “I’ll give them the tail-end of this if they come too close.”

  Jack was going to rugby-tackle me so I jumped up on my chair to hold the diary out of arm’s reach.

  In all the rough and tumble we hadn’t noticed that my father had walked into the room and heard what we’d been saying.

  “What’s this about Fenians?” he asked sharply.

  “If I catch our Anto with dem bowsies marchin’ around like tin soldiers,” said Nancy, “I’ll box his ears and theirs too.”

  My father suppressed a smile. He thinks Nancy is very funny.

  “Lookin’ for an Ireland Republic while my poor aul’ husband Mossy and Jemsie me firstborn are fightin’ the Germans,” continued Nancy.

  Both are soldiers with the Dublin Fusiliers in Flanders. So Nancy is one of the ‘Separation Women’ who wait to get money every week from the Post Office because their husbands are off fighting the Germans.

  The Kaiser in Germany started the war. It’s a long story. A madman in Serbia shot a duke and now everyone is fighting everybody. It all gets very confusing because some of the Irish, and not just the old Fenians that Nancy wants to wallop with her brush, won’t fight for England against Germany and want an independent Ireland. Friends of Jack, I’ll have you know.

  “‘We serve neither King nor Kaiser but Ireland!’” said Jack defiantly. He’d told me he saw this slogan on a big banner outside Liberty Hall down on Burgh Quay. It’s the headquarters of the Trade Unionists who want the employers to give their workers more money and rights. They are yet another group who have their own army. There are so many armies marching about it’s surprising they don’t all bump into each other.

  “I’m amazed you could even read that banner on Liberty Hall,” I said to Jack. This was unkind and I immediately felt bad. Jack has problems with reading.

  “If I ever see that Kaiser, I’ll make him sit on his big pointy helmet – that’ll put some manners on him,” said Nancy.

  “Nancy should be the Prime Minister,” I giggled.

  “And that fella Tom Clarke in the tobacco shop around the corner,” she went on. “What that aul’ Fenian bomb-maker says is more dangerous than the matches he sells. As for yer one, Countess Marzipan!”

  “Countess Markievicz. Her husband is a Polish Count, though she herself is Anglo-Irish,” corrected my father who is a stickler for accuracy.

  “Whatever she’s called, she’s a bit of a consequence with her smokin’ and trousers and big hats,” said Nancy. “Turnin’ all tho
se young boys to devilment!”

  “Isn’t Anto in the Countess’s Scouts –” I began, but Jack pinched me hard and looked daggers at me, so I bit my tongue. Luckily Nancy didn’t hear me and was going on about how the Countess should stick to making soup for the poor.

  “At the Post Office we maintain a neutral stance,” said my father sternly to Jack. “I suggest you do the same, young man.”

  Jack kicked the chair leg. “I’ll do as I please,” he mumbled.

  “Not when you’re in my house,” said Father. “Go to your room.”

  Jack skulked upstairs. My father hurried out. I was left standing on the chair, holding my Dear Diary, like a scarecrow. And my father hadn’t even noticed!

  I heard my father in the hall, taking his hat and umbrella from the hallstand, and then his exclamation of “Good God!”

  He rushed back into the room and I thought I was in for it.

  “Molly, I nearly forgot to wish you Happy Birthday!”

  I jumped down and embraced him, for I love my daddy dearly and wish I could spend more time with him – but he is always so busy keeping the General Post Office going and says it is the most important building in Ireland. Not a telegram would be received nor a telephone call put through without my daddy looking after all the wires.

  We heard a clatter at the front door. It was my mother arriving back with the delivery boy from the Dublin Bread Company, known as the DBC. As it’s Holy Saturday it’s closed for the rest of the day. The stout little boy was juggling several packages, including my birthday cake! His name is Tommy Keenan and he looks like he eats most of the cakes. He was wearing a little tricolour badge, the green, white and orange flag of the Republicans, so I think he is a Fenian too!

  “Where’s our wee Jack?” Mother asked anxiously in her soft Northern Irish accent. (Jack is heading towards six foot and is not at all wee!)

  My father pointed up towards the ceiling, with an expression that indicated he had been sent to his room in disgrace. He kissed my mother on the cheek.

  “The telegraph wires are always humming, holiday or no holiday,” he said, heading for the door. This make me think of busy bees humming in a hive.

  “Don’t forget we’re taking Molly to Bewley’s Café when we come back from Howth Head,” said my mother.

  My father brightened up. “Make sure Jack goes to the sea. The fresh air will blow those silly notions out of his head.”

  “I’ll write it all down in my diary!” I said excitedly.

  “We better all watch our pee’s and poo’s so,” proclaimed Nancy.

  We all laughed. Nancy, of course, meant P’s and Q’s. Though I confess that doesn’t make much sense either.

  My mother gave her a bundle of old baby clothes and I helped her carry them to the door. I can’t think why she needs baby clothes. Nancy is an old woman with lots of wobbly teeth and more like a grandmother – though I know she doesn’t have grandchildren.

  As she left Nancy whispered to me, “My Anto and Jack are good boys really. If Mossy were here, he’d tan Anto’s hide to knock some sense into him.”

  “My mother won’t let Father hit Jack,” I said. It’s because she’s a Quaker and they are against war and violence, but Father would not like to do it anyhow.

  “Yer da is as daecent as any man who ever wore a hat, and yer ma is a saint,” said Nancy.

  That is true for sure. Mother is always giving loaves of bread and stuff to old people in the slums, like in Moore Street.

  Everything quietened down for a while after that but Jack is wrong about my life being boring so, Dear Diary, together we are going to show him! I know one or two secrets about him and presently I may reveal them if he isn’t nice to me!

  But let me tell you more about myself and my family. I was christened Margaret but everyone calls me Molly. I am tall for my age with reddish hair and a dusting of freckles. My mother says my hair is “Titian” like the women in the pre-Raphaelite paintings. Jack says my hair is like rusty old springs and I look like I have the measles – that I am so ugly no one will want to marry me. But I don’t care. There IS someone who wants to marry me – even if it’s only Anto. Though I don’t want to marry him. So Jack is wrong!

  Jack is also wrong about me playing nurses with my dolls. I’m practising being a doctorlike my grandfather, a Surgeon Major in the Army in India who died before we could meet him. Or my mother’s friend, Dr Ella Webb, who lives in Hatch Street. She even has a husband and four children. So I hope to be a doctor like her.

  My father tells Jack he won’t amount to much. But even if he is not one for book learning and gets his words all jumbled up, Jack is very clever. He knows how to fix watches and bicycles. He repaired my music box when no one else could. It belonged to my grandmother in India and plays “The Last Rose of Summer” by Thomas Moore. Father told me that the music reminded her of home when she felt lonely.

  Jack can also climb anything. He scales the roofs all over Dublin (this is a secret!). His friends call him “Jack the Cat” for he would make a great cat burglar and can land on his feet from any height.

  We play this game where I dare Jack to put one of his tin soldiers in a difficult place. You should see where those soldiers get to! The chimney of the Provost’s House, Trinity College. On the shoulder of the statue of Daniel O’Connell. Even the roof of the GPO between the statues of Fidelity and Hibernia!

  Jack is golden. His hair is an unusual amber-gold that glows in the light, a prettier shade than mine, his skin is tanned and he has brown eyes. Lots of girls like him. Like Hyacinth O’Hare who lives a few houses down who is thirteen and has fat sausage curls like a spaniel. I’ve looked out the window just now and, yes, she is standing outside on the pavement hoping to see him on her way to her dancing class. How pathetic! She’s supposed to be my friend but she’s always mooning over Jack, making googly eyes at him.

  My father’s job at the General Post Office was specially created for him, as he knows so much about telephones and telegraphs. He has even been to America to visit Mr Edison who invented them. They have been rebuilding the Dublin Post Office and my father made sure they had all the best equipment in the world. It opened six weeks ago and Mr Norway, the head of the Post Office, and the Lord Lieutenant gave a special thanks to my father. We were all very proud.

  We even have our own telephone that stands on its own table in the sitting room like a statue to be adored. It is like a big brass candlestick with a mouthpiece on top with a listening device attached by a wire. Truth be told, it is almost never used as the only people we know with telephones are mother’s friend Dr Ella Webb and Great-aunt Bessie in Belfast. Father is usually at work so makes all his calls from the GPO. And the higher-ups and staff always send a messenger to fetch him if there is an emergency, which is often – too often, says my mother. But my, when that telephone rings it’s like the bell of a ship and we all jump to attention!

  How I love to look out our window at the General Post Office! You see, Dublin is the second city of the British Empire which is so mighty the sun never sets on it. That makes our GPO the second most important, after London, in the whole world!

  As I said, Sackville Street is the widest street in Europe. It hums like a hive with shoeblacks outside calling out to polish shoes, the flower-sellers around Nelson’s Pillar singing, “Get your daffs – a penny a bunch!” and the paper-sellers shouting out the news: “Battle of Verdun still raging on the Western Front!” The telegram boys skitter past on foot or whizz by on their bikes and all day long the deep-red mail cars come and go with the royal insignia, GR for Georgius Rex (King George), on the side. They carry sackfuls of letters, postcards and parcels destined for all over. It’s the very navel of the world!

  I have to stop writing now as Miss Nosy Nugent is coming for half an hour to teach English grammar and stuff. Groan. I don’t go to school because we have moved around so much. We have lived in London, Manchester, Belfast, Birmingham and Dublin. But I love Dublin best.

&nb
sp; My mother wants me to learn Latin and improve my Mathematics so I can sit the scholarship exams for Alexandra College for Girls in Sandymount and the Dominican Convent in Eccles Street. Those schools believe in educating girls to be the same as men. My father says my mother should not be encouraging me in such notions. But Mother will bring him round. She believes in votes for women.

  Miss Nugent says I will fail every exam on account of being so lazy. I don’t care because school is probably full of very stuck-up young ladies – and I am not exactly a young lady. (This is a secret. Sometimes I pick my nose when no one is looking. And Jack and I have “passing wind” competitions. This is something we both excel in. Shame it is not a proper subject. We would be professors! But now that I am twelve I won’t do those babyish things any more.)

  I’ve peeked in his room and Jack has already sneaked out his window. I bet as I’ve been writing he has scrambled over the rooftops and is laughing at the people in bathrobes visiting the Hamman Turkish Baths, or he’s larking around the Pagoda roof of the Dublin Bread Company and stealing a bun.

  Or maybe something worse! When we were on holiday in the Lake District he learned how to climb with ropes and grappling irons, and now he practises all over Dublin’s parapets. The rascal is planning to scale bridges next. He secretly plots dangerous forays. I found maps and drawings in his room of different routes around Dublin by rooftop. There are sketches of bridges: the Loopline Railway Bridge, a viaduct crossing the Liffey by the Customs House, Butt Bridge over to Tara Street, O’Connell Bridge, the Ha’penny footbridge and so on up to the Bridge at Knightsbridge Station on the way to the Phoenix Park. Miss Nugent would be amazed how carefully he plots his escapades! I told you he was clever.