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

  “I have made the flags,” she said proudly.

  She shook out a rectangle of green, white and orange, which is the tricolour flag for the Irish Republic. Then she took out another green cloth that looked like a tatty old bedspread with words written on it.

  “That’s the green bedspread from Larry’s bed. I cut it out on the drawing-room floor. The gold paint had dried out, so I moistened it with a tin of mustard. It’s just barely dry.”

  I hoped Larry wouldn’t get cold, whoever Larry was!

  “There’s a bit missing,” said Connolly.

  “Poppet my spaniel took a chunk out of it,” she said.

  As she smoothed it out, I saw the words “Irish Republic” in old-fashioned Irish writing, with a bit of the ‘C’ missing where the dog tore it. ‘Republic’ means they don’t want to have a king. The last people who had a republic were the French and they cut their royals’ and aristocrats’ heads off. So I wonder would the Countess Marzipan, as Nancy calls her, have to cut her own head off if Ireland became a republic?

  At first, I thought the Countess was being very silly making a huge fuss about cancelling something small like a parade. But then I felt a cold pang in the pit of my stomach. I still feel it. It was like a heavy sky before a storm, something threatening in the air, though it hasn’t happened yet. Or maybe it’s just because it’s the time for April showers despite sunny days. Perhaps because I am writing a diary, I am getting fanciful.

  As I left, Rosie Hackett, the tiny little woman Mother told me had organized the women’s strike in Jacob’s, dashed in clutching a document. She was in a state of excited panic.

  “Hurry! The proclamation! Be careful, Jim, the ink is still wet!”

  I waited until she was gone, then wandered about looking for Jack but got lost in the maze of rooms. I passed a music room where lots of people were practising as if for a concert. I recognized the man playing the flute, but I didn’t know from where. Blundering about, I spied Mr Pearse through a doorway talking to a lot of other gentlemen. He glanced out but as his eyes go in different directions, I wasn’t sure if he saw me or not.

  I left with a creepy feeling of dread, suddenly desperate to find out what Jack had hidden in the mail bag of sphagnum moss during our trip to Howth Head. I had a bad feeling about it. So I ran in a panic back to Sackville Street.

  Father was still at work. He almost never takes a day off, as he says the communication links always have to be kept running. And since the Post Office has just reopened, it still has teething problems.

  I dashed over to the GPO and the sentries let me in, thinking I was looking for Father. They told me there had been a few problems with the wires around the country and he was in the Instrument Room so I just nodded and went into the lift – but instead of going up to the first floor I went down to the basement. I felt very brave going down to the rabbit warren of rooms and vaults like a secret world. But unlike the unfamiliar Liberty Hall, at least in the GPO I had my bearings and I thought I could find my way blindfold through its labyrinth.

  I found the pile of mail sacks which had been left there and, making sure nobody was coming, began to search frantically in the five bags that still needed to be dried out. But all I gripped were handfuls of still damp sphagnum moss.

  I was feeling very downhearted by the time I came to the last bag. It was much heavier than the others. With a heavy heart, I rustled through it and to my horror my hand touched cold hard steel. I took the object out, my hands shaking.

  It was a gun! “Automatic Colt – Calibre .32 Rimless Smokeless” was printed on one side. It bore a little medal of a rearing-up colt on the handle, like something a cowboy or a gangster would have. It didn’t weigh much and could easily be concealed in a coat pocket.

  I panicked. A year and a half ago, there was major gun-running in Howth by the Nationalists bringing in German guns. I’d heard Jack and Anto going on about it before. This one looked American but it must have been hidden in the Bog of Frogs and Jack had retrieved it.

  I wanted to hurl it into the Liffey to rust for all eternity. But my brother would never speak to me again for sure if I did, so I resolved to at least get rid of the bullets. I was terrified in case I shot my foot off but I managed to slide open the safety catch and empty out the bullets. I put the gun back. I weighed the bullets in my hand for an instant, sickened by the cold clink of steel. Then I ran as fast as I could, out of the GPO, down to O’Connell Bridge, past the blind beggar rattling his tin, and flung the bullets in the water. A Guinness barge came under the bridge and a plume of smoke rose up. A couple of bullets rattled off the boat and then plopped in the water.

  Now at least Jack will not rot in hell for shooting someone dead.

  I dashed back home and, feeling like a spy, I set about searching Jack’s bedroom in case he has any other concealed weapons. I did find something new laid out under the mattress. A green soldier’s jacket and a crusher hat, which has one side of the brim turned up – a Fianna Boy Scout uniform! Maybe he had been planning to wear it but they cancelled the march. There was also a beautiful new Sam Browne belt with a cross strap for the shoulder, just like the soldiers wear. It had his initials carved on it: JFO’D, Jack Fitzgerald O’Donovan. So that was the one he’d saved all his money for and was gambling over. He must have won it back from Gerald Keogh when they played double or quits. The sight filled me with dread. Jack’s defiance of Father is definitely going up a notch.

  As I pushed the belt back under the mattress, who should burst in but Jack! He ran at me and hastily checked I hadn’t disturbed anything.

  “I’m sorry, Jack,” I cried. “I didn’t mean . . .”

  He pushed me roughly then grabbed me by the arm, twisting it behind my back. “If you so much as breathe a word!”

  Tears pricked the back of my eyes but I tried not to cry. “But why do you have this, Jack?”

  “They’re for Anto,” he mumbled.

  “You’re not mixed up in anything?” I asked him anxiously. “Only I don’t want you to die for Ireland or any place else.”

  He dropped my arm and, screwing up my courage, I faced him. But when I looked him in the eye, his face crumpled like a small boy’s. Then he tried to harden his features but looked sad and yearning.

  “We have to shake off England’s yoke one way or other. Ireland needs to be free.”

  “It’s one thing trying to impress boys on a street corner. Another picking a fight with the British Empire that rules half the world,” I said. “Even if they are all fighting the Germans, England still has millions more soldiers and loads of them are Irish. It’s not just tin soldiers on a counterpane.”

  “Sometimes you have to take a stand. Anyway, what would you know about it? You’re just a girl.”

  “I know it is wrong to take a life,” I said.

  “All of us young men are doomed to die in any case. Soon they will make us join the British Army by conscription,” he said. “We might as well choose the cause we want to give our lives for. I can be cannon fodder in the British Army or sacrifice myself for something I believe in.”

  “But it’s not just about dying,” I said. “It’s also about killing. Shooting someone dead with that gun –”

  Jack gave me a sharp look that cut through me like a knife. I had said too much.

  “What do you know about a gun, you stupid girl? If you dare breathe a word about anything, I will cut you dead.”

  Something suddenly struck me and I wondered why I hadn’t realized it before. “Why did you ask me to check the names of the equipment at the Post Office? I was at Liberty Hall looking for you and I saw Martin King giving a note to James Connolly – was it the one with the list of machines I wrote out for you? Are you spying on Father?”

  “Shut your mouth!”

  “And all those sketches of bridges and rooftops?” I asked desperately. “Jack, please, tell me there is nothing amiss!”

  “None of your business. I’m warning you!”

  He storm
ed out. I am very much afraid and worried sick.

  Father came home at lunchtime and to my relief showed no sign that he knew I’d been over to the GPO. Nor did he enquire about Miss Nugent. But I was still a bag of nerves. I tried to eat the boiled ham and potatoes my mother had prepared earlier but my stomach felt sick after my fight with Jack. I couldn’t even manage a DBC currant bun.

  After raining non-stop for the last thirteen days, there was a small break in the weather and Father decided to take me out on a bicycle ride to cheer me up. Often my father is so busy and distracted he doesn’t notice me, but sometimes he surprises me by a sudden attentiveness. Jack had disappeared again and I was glad of the diversion. I changed into my new dress of cambric lace. Mother wouldn’t have let me wear it cycling but Father doesn’t care about such things.

  Outside Trinity College Miss Mahaffey was just going out. She bid us good day and enquired after my mother. I was surprised she talked to us at all as she looks down on you as if you were a smell under her long pointy nose. Just because her father is a famous professor or something and head of Trinity, doesn’t mean they are better than anyone else.

  There was a lovely holiday air about Dublin. Many people had taken the tram into the city to go window-shopping. We cycled up to Dublin Castle, the centre of government, with its grey stone and impressive archways. It looked very quiet and brooding.

  At Stephen’s Green, we peeked into the Shelbourne Hotel where “the Quality” stay, as Dublin people call the rich. The hotel was heaving as the races are on in Fairyhouse tomorrow and the Spring Show, which is full of bulls and sheep and farmers, is due to start in Ballsbridge next week. My father advised the hotel on their telephone lines so we are always made welcome by the manager, Mr Olden, who invited us in for a cup of tea, his treat, and we sat in the front lounge. I felt just like a lady as I ate the finger sandwiches.

  I kept trying to pluck up my courage to say something to Father about Jack but he looked so careworn I didn’t have the heart. I soon got distracted staring at the “the Quality”. One fashionable Miss was wearing a yellow silk dress with a tiered skirt which was very daringly mid-calf length, with flesh-coloured tights and high shoes crisscrossed at the ankle. She caused quite a sensation and a couple of old ladies muttered under their breaths when she swished past. The stylish young woman winked at me. She was also wearing a jolly panama hat with a peacock feather and her hair was bobbed underneath.

  But the highlight for me was seeing a woman wearing a Lanvin gown from Paris – Mother and I had admired it in the paper and it was a thrill to see it for real. It was beige silk with a little bouquet of artificial flowers at the cinched waist. The material was draped over the hips in folds and she looked like a doll. I was glad I was wearing my new white dress and didn’t stick out like a scarecrow.

  After that we cycled on up by Boland’s Mill, the forbidding-looking large hulk of a building where they grind the flour, and stopped at the bridge into Ringsend to watch the boats docking. Several fishing boats pulled into the quayside and small groups of fishermen loaded barrels. No wonder the locals call it “Raytown” after the flat bony ray fish.

  As we stood on the bridge, my father spied Mother O’Brien down on the quayside. She is the fishmonger my mother always buys from. She’s still in her thirties, a handsome woman, but everyone calls her “Mother”. She was inspecting ropes of mussels and a bucket of cockles brought to her by some fishermen.

  “Happy Easter!” my father called out.

  “The same to you!” She gestured to the bucket. “I’m sendin’ these over to Gleeson’s pub for the Waxies’ Dargle tomorrow. All the aul’ wans will be comin’ for their annual outing.”

  “Ah, the annual cobbler’s holiday,” said my father. “Good luck to them. The cobblers deserve to rest their feet too.”

  “I’ll be goin’ off to Fairyhouse myself for the Irish Grand National. Bridie, my little one, loves the gee-gees.”

  “Put an each-way bet for me on Civil War,” laughed my father.

  “You’re on! Though I fancy Allsorts myself,” cried Mother, giving him a thumbs-up. “Hope it’s worth the thirty-mile round trip.”

  What a strange name to call a holiday – the Waxies’ Dargle! Father explained to me it’s because the cobblers use wax to preserve the thread they use in stitching shoes – and in Dublin slang ‘Dargle’ means a holiday resort because the Quality go to picnic by the River Dargle in County Wicklow.

  It sounds like the whole of Dublin will be betting on horses tomorrow! Hyacinth’s family, the O’Hares, also plan to go to Fairyhouse. Her father is a photographer with Lawrence’s, so he will be busy photographing the horses and jockeys. I wish Father would take me to the races. But he won’t because he loves to work so. We don’t have a motor car but he learned to drive when he was in America working for Mr Edison. I think he would go back to work for Mr Edison tomorrow but my mother still has hopes of being reconciled with her family here.

  There is another reason. My mother lost two babies after me and they are buried in the Quaker Temple Hill Graveyard that is between Blackrock and Monkstown. They have but a simple stone saying, PATIENCE O’DONOVAN AGED THREE MONTHS 1905 and TERENCE O’DONOVAN 1913. I think my mother still sorrows for her lost babies and does not want to leave them. That is why she also collects those tiny porcelain dolls. Sometimes I think if I was still a baby she would pay more attention to me. But she is kept very busy being a saint.

  We cycled back by the quays and passed by Liberty Hall. I was very anxious in case my father saw Jack inside and there would be a great to-do. But it seemed quiet.

  We also called in to visit Father’s youngest brother Edward and his wife Elizabeth who live in Oriel Street on the north side of the docks. Edward is a seaman and sails a pilot boat for ships coming into Dublin Harbour when he isn’t on long voyages. He and Father enjoy speaking Hindi together on account of them being raised by nyahs, Indian nurses, when they were little. Edward and Elizabeth too have been cut off by their parents, though Elizabeth is attempting a reconciliation. As well as “marrying out”, Edward also disappointed his parents by leaving the Merchant Navy before he finished his training, as he was so desperate to have adventures. And Elizabeth’s family is Presbyterian who didn’t like her marrying a Catholic. In fact, her grandfather is a Minister of the Church. My aunt and uncle are very poor now but proud.

  Elizabeth is kindly and was fretting over her baby Josephine who is just nine months old and sickly. William who is ten and seven-year-old Dan Junior were playing ball in the back yard. Dan is very skillful with a ball and very quick at everything. He is excellent at the mathematics and a firm of accountants, Craig Gardiner & Co in Dawson Street that he runs a few messages for, has offered him an apprenticeship when he is older. But Uncle Edward is not too keen because he says many of the clerks there are Irish extremists. He is happier that his older boy is being considered for a scholarship to his old school Blackrock College and is to visit there this week.

  When I was practising the sailor’s knots Edward teaches me, I heard my father say very quietly to him, “The Viceroy has sent to England for permission to arrest them all next week.”

  I saw little Dan’s ears prick up at this, though he is but a small boy.

  “Dan is all for a united Ireland,” laughed Edward. “He wants to fight the English but he’s not even in long trousers yet. There’s a fellow at the accountants called Michael Collins, a Corkman, who also works for another extremist, Count Plunkett, and Dan admires him very much.”

  Afterwards, we nipped over to the Post Office to collect more bags of sphagnum moss, for I shall spend tomorrow sewing, stuffing, sewing . . . yawwwwnnnnn!

  We entered the vaults by the Prince’s Street entrance. Father was glad to see all the wires humming. To him it is like music.

  It is a most splendid building, like a palace. The roof is a large glass dome with elaborate plasterwork. There are beautiful white pillars and a mosaic floor, with counters all of red te
ak wood and bright brass fittings everywhere. Father is very proud of it, as if he designed it himself!

  We took the lift up to the Instrument Room on the first floor that directly looks out over Sackville Street.

  Father repeated to me the names and numbers of some of the equipment – four fast-speed duplex repeaters – twenty and forty line concentrators and so on – all the names I had heard so often before. I confess it just all looked like boxes of wires and “circuitry” to me. I might as well have been looking at the innards of a goat. But it gave me a cold sick feeling to think I’d revealed something I shouldn’t have.

  “Behold the beating heart of the Post Office,” Father said proudly. “Jack is getting very interested in it too. Maybe he wants to follow in my footsteps.”

  The mention of Jack unnerved me.

  Father pointed to a bunch of red and yellow wires. “Without those cables, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland couldn’t talk to the Prime Minister. The whole government of Ireland would come crashing down.”

  I felt another pang as I wondered why Jack had really asked me to copy out those names. Maybe it was just my imagination that he had passed the note to Connolly through Martin King. But then I told myself they said they weren’t going to do anything so it was of no consequence. I crossed my fingers and hoped so!

  But then Father has been pleased that Jack has shown an interest recently, asking him what lines were connected to where. I truly hope that Jack really is interested and is not some sort of spy for the extremists. And I his foolish, unwitting accomplice. Father would be devastated!

  Especially as I love it all for Father’s sake, even if I don’t understand it, most of all the Telegraph Room. Here there are about fifty desks, each with a phone and a bank of wires. The Telegraph Officers interpret the electronic pulses of dots and dashes called Morse code into meaningful words and sentences. My father sees it all as terribly modern, but to me they are like magicians, interpreting signals from beyond like Mr Yeats and his Ouija board.