PRIVATE PROPERTY My mother was never really happy about my being in the secret revolutionary army, and Father hated it. Father was a natural conservative who hated change on principle, and he had a shrewd idea of the sort of families whose lack of balance would cause them to be concerned in it. Having relatives in the lunatic asylum would naturally be a predisposing factor. Another would be having come from some backward place like Carlow. Father disliked my great friend, Mick Ryan, for no other reason than that. Now, I was a well-balanced young fellow. I will say that for myself. I didn’t drink; I smoked very little; I was regular at the packers’ where I worked; and no one could ever accuse me of not contributing my share to the housekeeping. So I did not fly off the handle as another might have done, and did my best to explain to Father that all this was only passion and prejudice on his part, that nothing would ever be improved if it depended on people like him, and that it didn’t really matter who a man was or where his family came from. It had no effect on Father. He didn’t want things to be improved; that was his trouble. He wanted them to last out his lifetime in the way in which he was used to them. He tried to keep me in check by making me be home at ten, but I felt that as a revolutionist as well as a wageearner, I had to stick out for half past. It was the old story. He wouldn't give me a key and 80 to bed like a reasonable man. One lock wasn’t enough for him. The world was too uncertain, with murderers and thieves forever on the prowl. He had three separate bolts on the front door and had to bolt them himself before he could sleep. There was no use arguing with a man like that. We met in a Gaelic League hall in a back street and discussed dispatches from Dublin telling us to be armed and ready for the great day. I didn’t see how we were to be armed at all, the way we were going. Our Quartermaster was a stocky little stone-mason called Johnny Forrestal, a bitter little pill who had been a revolutionary from the age of fifteen and had been in five gaols and on three hungerstrikes. He was above suspicion, and almost above criticism by kids like ourselves, but he had no luck. As soon as ever we scraped together a few pounds from the men’s subscriptions and bought a couple of rifles, the police made a raid and got them. It was making us all depressed to see our own few shillings go like that, and the Adjutant, Tom Harrison, was really savage about it. He said Johnny was too old, but I knew it wasn’t Johnny’s age that came against him 3 it was his vanity. Johnny simply couldn’t walk down a street, in that stocky portentous way of his, without letting the whole world know he was a man who had fought in two wars and was waiting for his chance to fight in another. Johnny advertised himself, and I suspected that he had toadies who gave him all the admiration he expected and to whom he spilled everything. But if Johnny was tough, Harrison was tougher. He was a grocer’s curate from down the country, tall and severe, and looking like a seminarist in mufti. He was a man who never hesitated to speak his mind, and as this was a privilege Johnny liked to reserve for himself, there was always bad blood between them. “I tell you again there’s a spy in the camp,” Harrison shouted one night when we were discussing the latest catastrophe. “Maybe you'd tell us who it is,” Johnny said, looking like one of his own tombstones. “If I knew, he wouldn’t be there long,” Harrison said with an ugly look. “You'd shoot him, I suppose?” Johnny asked with a sneer. “I would shoot him.” “Anyway,” Johnny said in a surly voice, “he got no information out of me. I was able to keep my mouth shut before some people here were born.” This was Johnny at his old game of turning the discussion into a vote of confidence, and he’d done it too often for my liking. “I’m afraid I agree with Tom Harrison, Johnny,” I said mildly. “Then you should take the job yourself,” said Johnny, leaving it to be understood what would happen if I did. “I don’t want to make a personal matter of it, Johnny,” I said, keeping my temper. “This is something that concerns us all.” “And I _do_ want to make a personal matter of it,” said Harrison. “Damn it, we’re only wasting our time. We'll only be wasting our time till we learn to keep our equipment safe. I say Larry should take the job.” So that was how, at the age of seventeen, I came to be Brigade Quartermaster, and, though it may sound like self-praise, they never had a better. Mick Ryan, even if he was from Carlow, was a tower of strength to me. He was a tall, handsome, reckless devil who worked on the railway, and the pair of us made a grand team because he was always making me do things that ordinarily I’d have been too shy to do, while I stopped him doing things he would have done when his imagination began to run away with him, which it frequently did. In the evenings we went into pubs on the quays, talking to sailors and giving assumed names. When we began, we had only one Smith and Wesson pistol, belonging to Mick’s elder brother who was in the British Army, and even for this we had only Thomson gun ammunition, but within six months we were getting guns from Hamburg and Lisbon and packing them away in a dump we had constructed on the hill behind the church. Mick and I had dug out the dump ourselves and propped it with railway sleepers. We even put an old bed in it, so that we could sleep there—not that I ever did, but Mick was a bit of a night-bird. By this time the police began to realize that it wasn’t old Johnny Forrestal they had to deal with, and panicked. Dwyer, the superintendent, called the detectives together and warned them that there would be sackings if something wasn’t done. They did their best, but it wasn’t very good. You could see somebody had tipped them off about me, for day and night my house and Mick’s were watched by flatties with bikes, and we made a new game of giving them the slip. To tell the God’s truth, I was a bit flattered by all this attention. It was the first time anyone had taken me seriously. At first Father couldn’t believe it, and after that he was stunned. For hours he stood behind the curtains in the front room, watching the detective, and sometimes getting mad with the detective and sometimes with me. He discovered that the detective’s wife kept chickens, so he dropped poisoned bread in her garden one night. At the same time, he tried to make me stay in, but, with the best will in the world, no Brigade Quartermaster with an ounce of self-respect could let himself be locked in at ten. Father locked me out, but behind his back Mother left the window open, so I got in that way. Then he secured the window, but I got over the back wall in full view of the neighbours, and after that he contented himself with muttering prophecies to himself about what was going to happen me. “They think they’re cleverer than their fathers, but they'll be taught. Mark my words! The rope will teach him. _Then_ they'll remember their fathers’ advice.” I made it a point that no one should know the whereabouts of the dump except Mick, Harrison, and myself. Mick had even been against Harrison’s knowing, but, seeing that only for Harrison there would be no dump at all, I thought this was carrying secrecy too far. Besides, I knew Mick was prejudiced against Harrison for reasons that had nothing to do with the organization. In his own way, Mick was as bad as Father. It was one of the main drawbacks of the organization—private quarrels—and I was always begging Mick to keep out of them and think only of principles, but he couldn't. Mick hadn’t a principle in his head. He liked or hated people and that was all there was to it. Now, his reason for hating Harrison was this. Harrison was married to the sister of Mick’s friend Joe Ward. Joe was also a member of the organization, and as decent a poor devil as ever drew breath, only he was most unfortunate. He had married a flighty woman who'd borne him four kids but omitted to make a proper home for them because the horses took up all her spare time. Between illness and debt, poor Joe was half distracted. Mick, being a single man and very open-handed, was always helping Joe along, but Harrison—his brother-in-law—would never do anything for him. This cut poor Joe to the heart because he was an emotional man, always laughing or crying; he dearly loved his sister, and when she married Harrison he had given them a magnificent clock as a wedding present, something he could badly afford. Now, I didn’t doubt that for a moment, but I could also see Harrison’s point of view. “That was always my trouble. As a reasonable man, I could always see everyone’s point of view. After all, Harrison was a married man, too, with a kid of his own, and he wasn’t earning so much in the grocery shop that he could afford to be generous on Mick’s scale. And, for the sake of the organization, I tried to keep the peace between them. I praised Mick to Harrison and Harrison to Mick, and any little admission I could wring out of one in favour of the other I magnified and passed on. It was all for the cause. I was a conscientious officer, even if I was only seventeen, and in those days I was innocent enough to believe that this was all that was needed to keep Ireland united. And that was where the ferryboat left me. It began harmlessly enough one day when Joe Ward discovered that his wife had been to a moneylender and borrowed seven pounds. To poor Joe, weighed down with troubles, this seemed like the end of the world. He was never what you'd call a well-balanced man, and for a while he was probably a little off his head. Instead of going to his sister, who might have raised a few shillings for him unknown to her husband, or to Mick, who would have borrowed the money himself to help him, he went straight to the pub where Harrison worked. In spite of what happened afterwards, I want to be quite fair about this. Though Mick called Harrison a mean bastard, my own impression of him was that he wasn’t a bad chap really, and that, given time to get used to the idea, he might have done something substantial for Joe. I understood his position. In his place I might have taken the cautious line myself. After all, where was this thing going to end? “Begor, Joe,” he said with an air of great distress, “if I had it, you’d be welcome, but the Way it is with me, I haven’t.” “I'm sorry for your troubles, poor man,” said Joe and walked out. Of course, Harrison was leaping. After all, he was only playing for time, and while it’s bad enough to be asked for money, it’s a hard thing to be insulted when you don’t produce it at once. I sympathized with Harrison. As I say, the only excuse I could see for Joe was that he was probably a little bit off his head. I saw his point of view, too, of course. That’s the worst of being a fair-minded man. Next evening, when I was pushing my bicycle back up Summerhill from work, whom did I see but Harrison, coming down towards me, looking very serious. He barely saluted me. “Nothing wrong, Tom?” I asked, “I’m afraid so,” he said stiffly, and made to go by me. “Nothing to do with the organization, Tom?” I asked, turning the bike and going back down the hill with him. Of course, it was the organization that was on my mind. “Oh, nothing,” he said in the same tone. “A purely private matter.” As much as to say I could mind my own blooming business, but I didn’t take offence. I could see the man was upset. “Larceny!” he said then, not to waste a good audience. “My house broken into and looted while I was at work. Nothing to do with the organization, of course,” “For God’s sake, Tom!” I said with real sympathy. “Was much taken?” “Oh, only a clock,” he snapped, and then, in case I mightn’t think he had justification enough: “A valuable clock.” The word struck a familiar chord, but for a few minutes I was at a loss. Then I suddenly remembered where I'd heard of that clock before. “That wouldn’t be the clock Joe Ward gave you, Tom?” I asked. “It would,” he said, stopping to give me a suspicious glance. “How do you know about it?” “Oh, only that Mick Ryan said something about it,” I replied in confusion. “Whoever gave it, the clock is my property now,” said Harrison, moving on. “And what are you going to do?” I asked. “I’m going to put the police on him,” Harrison said defiantly, and I knew by his truculent tone that it was something he hadn’t decided on without a struggle. To us, of course, the civil police were never anything but enemy spies. It gave me a hasty turn. Besides, I was tired and was beginning to feel that to keep our fellows together would take more than compliments. “On who, Tom?” I asked. “Who do you think?” he demanded in the same tone. “Ward, of course. It’s about time somebody did something.” Now, to tell the truth, I hadn’t been thinking of anyone in particular, and when he mentioned Joe I thought with a start of the misery of his life and the money his wife had borrowed, and felt myself getting red. “Oh, was it he took it?” I asked in embarrassment. “He walked into the house and took it from under my wife’s eyes,” said Harrison. “And you're going to put the—enemy police on him?” I asked weakly. “Who else is there?” he asked hotly. “Well,” I said, “of course, I was thinking of the organization.” “And while I was waiting for the organization to do something, my clock would be sold.” “Well, of course, there is that danger,” I said. “I’m not criticizing. I was only thinking what effect it would have on young fellows in the organization—an officer going to the enemy to complain on another member.” “But damn it, man,” he said angrily, “if someone broke into your house tonight and stole valuable property, wouldn’t you do the same?” “If I had any property, and the man was a common thief, I dare say I would,” I admitted. “There’s nothing uncommon about Ward, only his impudence,” said Harrison, “Now, it’s all very well to talk, Larry,” he went on in a more reasonable tone, “and you and I are in general agreement about most things, but, whatever government you have, you must protect private property.” “Oh, I’m not denying that, Tom,” I said, making the best I could of an argument that wasn’t really relevant to me yet, “but I don’t think you're being fair on poor Joe. I don’t really, Tom. My own impression is—and I said the same to Mick Ryan before it happened—the man wasn't right in his head.” “He was sufficiently right in the head to come to my house while I was at work,” retorted Harrison. “’Twas no madman did that.” So we went on together, past the church at the foot of the hill and across the New Bridge, with me still arguing for the sake of appearances. It was the organization I was thinking of, the whole blooming time, and the scandal and disagreements that were bound to follow, but nothing was further from Harrison’s mind. He hadn’t a Principle in his head any more than Father or Mick. All he could think of was his blooming old clock. I knew if he didn’t do something about it he wouldn’t sleep, only lying awake, noticing the silence, and mourning for his clock like somebody who'd died on him. God, I felt desperate! It was a spring evening, coming on to dusk, and the metal bridges and the back streets full of old warehouses gave me the creeps. There seemed no chance for idealism, the way things were. We crossed the second bridge, and I remained outside on the quay while Harrison went into the barrack. It was a big red-brick building with a few lights burning. I wondered whether I ought to be there at all, whether, as an officer, I should countenance Harrison’s behaviour without leaving myself open to a charge of fraternizing with the enemy. I decided that the man was upset. It was the same thing with Mick. He’d get in a bake, and do something he shouldn’t, and then regret it after. It all came of a want of principle. Besides, I suppose I was curious to see what would happen. Nothing happened for a long time, and I began to wonder whether Dwyer, the superintendent, hadn’t taken the chance of locking him up and whether it was safe for me to stay. Dwyer was probably in because there was a light in his office, which I recognized because I had plans of the whole building against the day I had to lead the attack on it. I saw a figure come to the window and look up and down the river. Then two detectives came out the front door, and I grabbed my bicycle, intending to skip. But they ignored me. They simply got into a car and started to drive off up the quay. Then I took the notion to follow and see where they were going. I knew they couldn’t make much speed through the city streets, and it was a real pleasure to tail them for a change. It didn’t take me long to recognize where they were going. They crossed town, emerged on a quay on the north side, and stopped outside a big tenement house. There were no curtains in the windows, and no lights but candles. A couple of women were leaning out of the windows, and they began to pretend the police were coming to call on them—not in the way of duty, of course. Some of the things those women said were shocking. The police let ox hot to notice and walked straight into the hallway as if they knew where they were going. In no time a crowd gathered on the quay. I knew it was where Joe Ward lived, and I felt very sorry for him. It seemed to me the poor devil had enough to bear. When the detectives came out, each of them was carrying a clock. I wasn’t surprised when Joe himself came after them. He was a thin, consumptive-looking chap with glasses and a mad air. He stood on the steps of the house and addressed the police and the crowd. Like all emotional men, he laughed as if he was crying, and cried as if he was laughing, and only that I knew him so well I'd have laughed at him too. “There’s the great Irish patriot for you!” he bawled, waving one arm wildly. “There’s the great Republican leader, General Harrison, putting the Free State police on his own brother-in-law, and all over an old clock. A clock I gave him for his wedding! There’s the great patriot, a fellow that wouldn't lend you a bob if the poor children died of hunger at his feet. God help Ireland! God help the poor! Give me back my own clock anyway, ye robbers of hell! Give me back the clock I bought with my own few ha’pence.” They ignored him and simply drove off. This time they got well away from me, and I only arrived back at the barracks in time to see Harrison coming out. He had his own clock under his arm, wrapped up, and you could see it was a great ease to him. He wasn’t the same man at all. That is the only way I can describe it. He was bubbling with good nature to myself and the whole world, and nothing would do him but to unwrap the clock for me to see it. It was a good clock, all right. “Ah, it may teach Joe Ward some sense,” he said, but there was no indignation left in him. There was nothing there now but the man’s basic good humour. “He ought to know better than to think he can get away with things like that.” With the picture of Joe fresh in my mind, I didn’t feel much like discussing that. I had an impression that poor Joe would get away with damn little, in this world or the next. In a funny way I began to share Mick Ryan’s view of Harrison. It was against my principles, but I simply couldn’t help it. “Who did you see?” I asked. “You'd never believe,” said Harrison with a chuckle. “Not Dwyer, surely?” I asked—I could scarcely believe that Dwyer would stoop to concern himself over a clock. “Oh, one of the detectives recognized me, of course,” said Harrison. “Dwyer came down to me himself and brought me up to his room to wait. He took it more seriously than I did actually, but I suppose he had to. Of course, it’s his job. He told them to bring in every clock in the place. They brought two.” “I saw them,” I said, feeling a bit sick. “Did you follow them?” he asked eagerly. “What happened?” “Oh, Joe came out and made a bit of a scene. There was a crowd.” “Was he mad?” “He was a bit upset. I suppose you can hardly blame him.” Harrison frowned and shook his head. “I do not blame him, Larry,” he said gravely. “I’m really sorry for that poor wretch. We all told him what that woman was like, but he wouldn’t believe us. God knows, if there was anything I could do for him, I’d do it.” The benevolence that clock produced in Harrison was astonishing. He was so full of good nature that he never even noticed I didn’t share it with him. “Tell us about Dwyer,” I said, thinking of the organization again. “Oh, he stood me a drink, man,” said Harrison, beginning to chuckle again. “You should have come in.” “I saw the light in his office.” “Oh, he saw you! There are no flies on Dwyer.” “He didn’t ask any questions?” “He never stopped.” “About me?” “About you and Ryan and the dump. Oh, naturally, pretending to have a great admiration for us all! He was like that himself when he was younger. My eye! He even pretended he knew where the dump was—all lies, of course. Stand in here for a minute!” He whispered the last words, glancing hastily back over his shoulder to see if we were being followed, and then pulled me into a dark archway. “Do you know that he offered me money to say where it was?” he whispered fiercely. “Big money! A hundred pounds down! He said the organization was riddled with spies, that every gun Johnny Forrestal bought was given away twice over inside twenty-four hours. They meet him after midnight, wherever his den in town is.” That finished me. Of course, I had always suspected that there was a spy in the organization, but it was a different thing to be sure of it. For the future I should feel secure with nobody. All the same I wasn’t feeling so kindly to Harrison as to look for sympathy from him. “I was afraid of that,” I said, “I guessed Johnny talked too much. But Dwyer isn’t getting the information now.” “That’s what I told him,” said Harrison. “He said he was, but that’s only bluff. They say things like that to rattle you. Otherwise, why would he offer to bribe me? ... But imagine it!” he went on bitterly. “Fellows you'd be drinking with one minute stealing down there after dark to swear your life away. God, what sort of conscience can they have?” “If they have a conscience,” I said wearily. In the badly lit streets, supperless, cold, and tired, I was beginning to think there was no chance at all for idealism, and wondered if there mightn’t be something in Father’s views. “And yet Dwyer said there was nothing unusual about them,” said Harrison, “Ordinary fellows like ourselves—that’s what he called them. According to him, they only do it because they're in a jam—women or something like that.” “They couldn’t do without women, I suppose,” I said. Naturally, at seventeen they were the last things I wanted. “Oh, I’m not defending them, of course,” Harrison said hastily. “I’m only repeating what the man said.” Not _all_ he said, though, even if I didn’t recognize it until three weeks later when the dump was raided and everything in it seized, including Mick Ryan with all the Brigade papers on him. It was pure fluke that I wasn’t there myself. Mick, who was a resourceful chap, got rid of the papers by distributing cigarettes for an hour to the detectives and lighting them with letters he pulled from his pockets. Only for that, I’d have been in gaol with him. From the barrack he slipped me out a note that read “Shoot Harrison.” I didn’t shoot Harrison. If it had only been about anything else but a clock! I was sick at the loss of my priceless dump, all the lovely rifles and automatics of the latest makes, smuggled in from all over Europe; and the one time I went to Mass at the church near it, the feeling of tears choked me. I simply hadn’t the heart to start again. Father was very cocked up about Mick’s arrest. It confirmed his old impression that there was something unstable about Carlow people, and the first night the detective failed to show up, he handed me five shillings and told me I could stay out for the future till eleven—or even a bit later. He didn’t want to be severe, and, of course, he’d been a bit wild himself when he was my age. I was so touched that I told him the whole story, and, to my great astonishment, he flew into a wild rage and wanted to know why we didn’t bomb Harrison’s house. That night he took a pot of white paint and painted the words “Spies Beware” on Harrison’s front door. Conservatives are very queer that way, I find. I took the five bob, but I was home by half ten. I’d decided to go to the School of Commerce. I was beginning to see that there was no future in revolutions. (1950)