After the Lockout (10 page)

OPINION is divided in the village of Madden on the homecoming of Mr Victor Lennon, who was recently released from the camp for Irish prisoners at Frongoch in Wales. During a dance held in his honour at Madden Parochial Hall, Lennon was heard to criticise the Roman Church and Cardinal Logue, as well as make seditious and wholly unpatriotic remarks.

KNOWN FELON

Mr Lennon has been domiciled in Dublin for several years past and was associated with the Communist wing of the outbreak of anarchy last April. His return to Madden was attended with great ceremony but his speech, made while clearly under the influence of intoxicants, caused great consternation. The following is an extract.

MISREPRESENTS CONDITION OF WORKERS

‘Workers in Armagh face the same humiliating, inhuman conditions as everywhere else, and we will not have justice until that exploitation is at an end. A foreign nation denies us control of our destiny. Empires are rapacious and capitalistic, so neither socialism nor the justice manifest in socialism can be achieved as a colony of empire. That is why we proclaimed the Republic on Easter Monday, but the Republic is not an end in itself. Irish capitalists are no different than English ones. The lockout taught us that.

ARGUMENT WITH ECONOMICS, NOT EMPIRE

‘The Republic is a necessary first step. We must overthrow the institutions of empire and build institutions of the people. Unions. Co-operatives. Pearse said Ireland unfree would never be at peace, but an Ireland ruled by capital shall always be unfree, no matter where the parliament sits. It is firstly capital that enslaves us. Peace will come when Ireland is sovereign and socialist, and when the people have ownership of the means of production.

SEES ALMOST EVERYONE AS ENEMY

‘We must defeat the empire, but the empire has no monopoly on tyranny. We must overcome the reactionaries and counter-revolutionaries, the so-called reformers and crypto-capitalists who claim to want change but in fact buttress the status quo. Our political process is the property of spineless collaborators like Redmond. Our economy is run by and for slavers like William Martin
(expletive)
Murphy. Our society is dominated by churches more insidious and corrupting than any empire. Comrade Connolly died to ensure a dynamic social programme at the core of our revolution and Comrade Lenin is continuing that work in Petersburg
(sic)
as we speak. Without that social programme, so-called Irish freedom isn't worth a Dublin-minted farthing.'

CONSTERNATION WIDESPREAD

Reaction to Mr Lennon's speech was mixed. There were cries of disgust but also shouts of ‘Hear Hear!' from the large crowd in attendance. Mr Lennon, 27, is a former docker and tram driver. He was sacked for his part in the failed Larkinite strike of four years ago, and is believed to have made his living as a trade union organiser and journalist since then. He attended Madden National School before leaving for Dublin, where he is not known to have furthered his studies. He was the only speaker at the event in Madden, which was a social gathering rather than a political meeting, despite Mr Lennon's unfortunate outburst. Otherwise the event was a great success and enjoyed by all. Mr Ignatius Harney, 35, won a week's supply of mincemeat from Sweeney's Butchers of Ballymacnab in the raffle, organised in aid of Madden GAA.

 

‘Apparently Victor said far worse things that they couldn't print,' said Father Daly.

‘What they did print is quite bad enough.'

‘Victor must have been very drunk, to say some of those things.'

‘In vino veritas. From the looks of this article, he was eloquent as a serpent.'

‘I think TP may have tidied it up a bit.'

‘Some of the people applauded him,' Stanislaus scolded. He was perturbed by Father Daly's sanguinity.

The car hit a bump in the road and Stanislaus cursed the pain to his poor back. Cars like this cost a hundred pounds or more, a sum that could be gathered from a priest's salary only after years of sacrifice and prudence. For Tim Daly, though, the car had been, like his youthful handsomeness, easygoing manner and seminary education, a gift from his parents. The Dalys were well-connected businesspeople who rejoiced in their son's entrance to the priesthood. Tim's academic ability too had been a gift. Success for him had required little of the character-building labour that leads to excellence. Stanislaus had known many fellows like him; fellows who had never known sacrifice or hunger or failure. Life was easy for them, and this ease led to complacent liberalism. They could no more grasp the danger of a Victor Lennon than lemmings grasp the oblivion beyond the cliff. ‘This is no time to play devil's advocate, this is not a seminary game. We must find out who supports him. We need to know who's against us,' said Stanislaus.

‘Madden people aren't communists, Your Grace,' Father Daly countered. ‘If Victor waves a green flag they'll salute him. If he
waves a red flag, they'll just be confused. To them he's an Irishman striking a blow against the English, that's all.'

Father Daly may have been right. Mrs Geraghty was usually a good barometer for how people were feeling – the decent people at any rate – and she had been appalled by what Victor had said. That kind of talk might find an audience in the slums of Dublin, but these left-wing fellows he admired so much spoke of collectivising agriculture. That meant the government taking the land off the people, and that conjured all-too-recent nightmares in Irish country people.

The two great spires of the cathedral, visible for miles around, were close now. They had covered five miles in little more than twenty-five minutes. Cold, dirty, uncomfortable though it was, the motorcar was undeniably fast. But when they left the macadamised road and hit the cobbled streets of the city, the car bumped and rocked and jiggled so much that Stanislaus considered walking the rest of the way. Riding these contraptions on cobblestones was impossibly punishing. Another reason they wouldn't catch on. At least the streets were quiet – people would have laughed their heads off at the two goggled priests bouncing around like unfastened cargo in their spluttering, juddering buggy. The motorcar chugged up Irish Street, losing speed with every yard but just making the summit without rolling backwards. They passed the Protestant cathedral, an unassuming, ancient building that they too named for St Patrick, before freewheeling with a merciless velocity down the hill to the Shambles yard. The car cornered like a dreadnought around the dogleg of Edward Street and Father Daly brought it to a full stop at the gates of the Catholic St Patrick's Cathedral. He put the car in reverse with a guttural clanking of the gears and manoeuvred it
to point away from the gate and the cinder path that snaked up the hill to the cathedral. Navigating out the egg-shaped window sewn into the back of the canvas awning, he let go of the handbrake and reversed uphill in a whirl of dust.

‘What on earth are you doing?' asked Stanislaus.

‘The fuel is in a tank at the back but the engine is in the front. The fuels flows forward to the engine by gravity, but I'm low on fuel, so gravity doesn't get the job done. If you're low on fuel, you have to reverse uphill.'

‘Silly contraptions.'

Four great granite institutions bestrode the hill like a citadel: St Patrick's Cathedral; St Patrick's College and Junior Seminary; the Synod Hall; and Ara Coeli, official residence of the Cardinal. Stanislaus was surprised to see motorcars parked everywhere, most of them, like Father Daly's, the black, Henry Ford variety they made in Cork. Good thing he'd arrived in one after all. He saw an elderly infirm-looking man being helped from a car by two young curates. It was Johnny Mangan, an old friend. He was four years younger than Stanislaus and had always been the picture of health, but the years did terrible things. Stanislaus hopped out and moved across the yard with sprightly steps. He put his hand on Johnny's shoulder, as much to help him as to greet him.

‘Ah, Stanislaus, 'tis great to see you, boy. It must be twenty years.'

‘Neither of us was in purple, at any rate. You haven't come all the way from Killarney in the motorcar, have you?'

‘God Almighty no, that would have killed me. We were met at the station by that contraption.'

‘Long old journey.'

‘To tell you the truth, Stanislaus, the doctor said I was mad to come at all. But when the boss calls, you have to come running, don't you? What's it all about anyway? I felt sure you'd be the man would know.'

‘I haven't been in the know for a long time now, Johnny.'

‘Oh, of course.' He paused. ‘It's fine and well you're looking now though. You're well off out of it. Heading up a Diocese, it's all politics.'

‘It is nice to have time to spend with my books.'

‘That last paper of yours was something else. You always know how to stick it into the liberals.'

They went in the massive mahogany doors of the Synod Hall. The insistent rumble of talk and chatter tumbled from the Synod chamber down the vast, sweeping staircase, and Stanislaus and Johnny started up the mountain of stairs towards it. ‘Take my arm, Your Grace,' said Johnny's young curate. Stanislaus informed Father Daly with a scowl that he needed no help in ascending this staircase that he had ascended a thousand times before, and started to move up, passing beneath the portraits of the archbishops. St Patrick himself. St Malachy half a millennium later. The Penal-era martyrs another half-millennium after that. They stopped on the landing halfway up for a breather, Johnny needed to sit down on the stairs a moment, beneath the bust of Blessed Oliver Plunkett. Stanislaus recalled once tearing strips off a young priest who had joked that it was a funny thing to commemorate someone who had been beheaded with a bust. Below, two men deep in conversation were starting up the stairs. Though he had not met either personally, Stanislaus recognised them as the new Bishop of Clogher, Patrick McKenna, and Edward Mulhern, recently installed as Bishop of Dromore. They
were impossibly young-looking, neither man looked fifty, and they bounded up the stairs. Johnny greeted them as they arrived on the landing. ‘You know Ned and Pat, don't you, Stanislaus?' he said.

‘Bishop Benedict, isn't it? Pleasure to meet you,' said Mulhern, offering his hand.

‘Congratulations on your elevation. If you do half as well as Henry O'Neill, Dromore will be in good hands,' Stanislaus said.

Dromore was a proper Diocese, not a titular, semi-mythical one. Not like Stanislaus's well-known Episcopal See of Parthenia. Parthenia. A fifth-century outpost in pre-Islamic Algeria from which Christendom had been driven, not by the Mohammedans but the sands of the Sahara. Mick Logue had recommended it to Stanislaus, and Stanislaus had often wondered if it had been his intention to mock. He wondered if young Mulhern – Ned, apparently – knew that Henry O'Neill had been a surprise appointment to Dromore, that everyone had said Stanislaus's name was carved on it. He probably did. Stanislaus had a mortifying memory of taking a day trip to Newry Cathedral, just to acquaint himself with his new surroundings. But Henry O'Neill had been given the nod because Henry O'Neill was younger. That was the Cardinal's explanation. Now young Henry O'Neill was dead.

‘You've come a long way, Bishop Mangan,' said McKenna.

‘Two days. Seven changes, sixty-one stops, and I still don't know what this is all about,' Johnny replied.

‘I heard that it might be something to do with …' Ned began, but stopped when he saw Pat O'Donnell and Charlie McHugh, Bishops of Raphoe and Derry respectively, coming up the stairs behind them.

‘Lads, you can't block the landing like this. Let's get a move on here. You're the last to arrive and the Cardinal will be here in a minute,' said O'Donnell. O'Donnell was Logue's favourite, it was no secret he was being groomed for the big job. Everyone ascended in silence like scolded schoolboys. At the top of the stairs Stanislaus noticed Johnny Mangan was looking unwell. He put his hand on Johnny's shoulder. ‘Are you feeling all right there, Johnny?'

‘A hundred per cent, boy,' he said, but his creaking and wheezing gave the lie to the brave face.

‘Hurry up there, we can't keep the Cardinal waiting,' said O'Donnell.

‘You know, there was a time in this country when priests were expected to show a bit of courtesy and compassion,' Stanislaus snapped. O'Donnell's first reaction seemed to be irritation, but he buttoned his lip and relented. Stanislaus and Johnny went inside when they were good and ready.

The wide spaces, stained-glass windows and high, baroque ceiling of the great Synod Hall reverberated with the sound of important men used to hearing their own voices and unused to being challenged for attention. Perhaps a hundred old acquaintances, friends and colleagues greeted one another with excitement and curiosity. Chairs were set out in neat rows but no-one was sitting down yet. Deans, canons and monsignors were present, but only bishops wore purple sashes around their waists and Stanislaus had worn his for the occasion. Ireland had forty-nine bishops, from archbishops to ordinaries, auxiliaries, co-adjutors, titulars and bishops emeritus, and it seemed a great many of them were present. Stanislaus was disturbed to see several men in purple that he didn't know.
Once, it had been his business to know men such as these inside-out.

Everyone sat as the Cardinal entered. He wore full scarlet regalia, even his galero, and nodded here and there to familiar faces as he made his way forward. He did not see Stanislaus as he passed. The Cathedra had been removed from the sanctuary to the Synod Hall, and he sat in it now, facing towards the assembly. The ranks of black and purple sat in hushed deference for the only man in Ireland entitled to wear red.

‘I thank God to see so many old friends and brothers in Christ. I thank you all for gathering here today,' he began. ‘Recently I joined with the other cardinals and the Holy Father in Rome to discuss the crisis in Russia, of which you will all be aware. Bolshevist victory there now seems certain, and therefore Russian withdrawal from the war is inevitable. But worse: the Bolshevists propose to make Russia atheist. They aim to wreak holocaust on the Faith, and they would seek to spread this evil message worldwide. It is the view of the Holy Father that this represents a threat to mankind's very spiritual essence. This evil ideology is the most grave threat the Faith has faced since Luther. Furthermore, it is the opinion of the Holy Father and the College of Cardinals that this country, Ireland, is the most likely to be next.'