The Young Rebels Read online

  Every day I strike off the calendar brings more bad news. Austria declares war on Russia, Serbia declares war on Germany, Germany and Austria threaten to attack Italy if it tries to remain neutral. Russia declares war on Germany. Events come thick and fast and seem to make no sense at all.

  When I ask Aunt Nell if she understands what’s going on, she shakes her head and clucks her tongue. ‘It’s terribly sad, John Joe. Queen Victoria’s sons and daughters married into all the great royal courts of Europe. The English King and the German Kaiser are first cousins and the Russian Czarina is Victoria’s granddaughter. Just a few years ago they were the best of friends, they went on holidays together. Look at them now. Thousands of men are going to die for the sake of what is, after all, a family squabble.’

  A family squabble. We know about those, in this house.

  Colourful recruiting posters appear on hoardings, urging men to sign up for the British army. ‘Free Belgium and Serbia from the Hun!’ ‘Join the Fight on Behalf of Small Nations!’

  One Saturday night my father bumps into me on the stair. He stumbles back, the smell of drink off him as thick as muck. When he raises one hand I draw back before I can stop myself. I know it’s a mistake, that always makes him worse.

  Instead of hitting me, he laughs. A sneering, snarling laugh. ‘They’re claiming this war will be over by Christmas,’ he says, ‘but for your sake I hope it lasts longer. Military service would do you a power of good.’

  If I ever do fight I want to fight for Ireland. This is a small country too.

  The following day, Aunt Nell and my father have a dreadful row at dinner. In the finish-up he grabs the table cloth and hurls our entire meal onto the floor. The bacon and cabbage, the roast potatoes, the fragrant brown gravy … and I haven’t had a chance to take a bite yet.

  My aunt pushes back her chair and gets to her feet. Her face is as tightly closed as a shuttered window. ‘That’s done it, Bertie. Ye’ve seen the last of me in this house.’

  ‘You can’t!’ my father cries. ‘What about the boy?’

  ‘You should have thought of that sooner. I strongly suggest you ring the school and ask the Pearses to take him before the autumn term begins.’

  What bliss to be back at St Enda’s! This time I have been allowed to bring my bicycle with me, since there is no fear I might run away. Having my own transportation makes me feel more independent.

  Mrs Pearse lets me help her prepare for the return of the other students. They will be here in a couple of weeks so there’s a lot to be done. We sweep and dust and scrub, boil sheets, beat rugs, polish windows and mirrors, take an inventory of the pantry. I’ve never done any of those things before. At home I would scorn them. Here it’s an honour. Besides, Mr Pearse says a man should be able to turn his hand to anything.

  ‘When it’s time to boil the Christmas puddings perhaps you may help me again, John Joe,’ his mother suggests. ‘I shall need someone strong to tie up the puddings in the pudding cloth, and my boys are so busy these days.’

  Someone strong. That’s me!

  On the last day of August there is a terrible bloodbath at a place called Mons. That’s in Belgium; I look at the map to be sure. The British forces begin to pull back. Afterward, some of them claim they saw a shining angel that halted the advance of the German cavalry long enough to allow them to get away. I ask Mr Pearse if that’s possible. ‘Miracles are always possible,’ he says.

  The war’s spreading. The Emperor of Japan has declared war on Germany.

  ‘I thought the war was a family squabble,’ I remark to Mr Pearse.

  He laughs. ‘Perhaps that’s how it started, but in the finish-up all wars are about territory, John Joe. When this one’s over they’ll have to redraw the maps.’

  ‘Is that a bad thing or a good thing, sir?’

  ‘It might be a good thing,’ he says slowly. ‘It just might be. Have you ever heard the saying, ‘England’s trouble is Ireland’s opportunity’?’

  I read in the newspapers that hundreds of men are joining the Irish Volunteers now. I wonder if we have enough guns for all of them.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  SEPTEMBER 1914

  All the students have returned to St Enda’s, and the war is being fought at sea as well as on land. It is even in the sky, with aeroplanes duelling above the clouds like knights of old. That sounds pretty exciting to me. On Sunday afternoon Mr MacDonagh reads to us from ‘The Idylls of the King’, which is not Irish, but English, and about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Afterward we discuss chivalry and codes of honour.

  In tales of chivalry there are Fair Ladies who give the knights their colours to wear. Scarves, I suppose that means. I would feel silly asking a girl for her scarf, until I remember the silk ribbon Marcella used to hold back her curls. It was a plain dark blue, something I could tie around my sleeve without feeling ridiculous.

  I like to imagine myself as a knight in armour, riding out on a prancing charger to have adventures. There are no more dragons to slay – at least I don’t think so – but there are always battles to fight.

  The Prime Minister calls for 500,000 more men to join the British army. The Empire rallies to the colours. Regiments from Ireland embark for the Continent, while Canada, Australia and New Zealand prepare to send expeditionary forces.

  ‘Brave Men must be willing to die for King and Country!’ shout the posters on the hoardings.

  But which country? Theirs? Or our own?

  Any possibility of the Home Rule Act being passed has vanished now. It is suspended for the duration of the war.

  Roger’s two older brothers, James and Donald, have enlisted in the Dublin Fusiliers. He’s very proud of them; there’s a big photograph of them in their uniforms on top of his locker. After about the tenth time Roger boasts about his wonderful amazing incredible brothers, I lose my temper. ‘Your brothers are stupid to fight for King George.’

  ‘My brothers are not stupid! And why shouldn’t they fight for the king? We’re British after all.’

  ‘Remember what we learned in history? Ireland was free for thousands of years before the English set out to conquer this island. They call themselves the British Empire now, but this,’ I stamp my foot on the ground, ‘is still Ireland, and you and I and our parents and their parents were all born here. We’re Irish!’

  Roger isn’t the sort to back down. ‘We’re British!’ he insists, glaring at me.

  I’m not one to back down either. ‘If you think that you’re as bloody stupid as your bloody brothers. Rome conquered France and Germany and Spain but that didn’t make the people who lived there into Romans!’

  Roger and I have a fight in back of the handball court. It isn’t much of a fight, but he thumps me and I thump him until Michael MacRory catches us and marches us into the Ardmháistir’s office.

  Mr Pearse asks, ‘Is the fight over now?’

  We both nod. Even if it’s not true.

  ‘Then shake hands.’

  We keep our hands in our pockets.

  Mr Pearse sits behind his desk watching us. Looking patient.

  This is boring. I won’t shake hands and I don’t know what else is expected of me.

  ‘Permission to leave the room, sir.’

  ‘Permission denied, John Joe.’

  So we stand here. I’m staring out the window and Roger’s staring at his feet. The only sound in the room is the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece behind the Ardmháistir’s desk.

  After a while I begin to feel foolish. I cut my eyes at Roger and see that he is biting his lip.

  The clock keeps ticking. We hear the distant clatter of pots and pans in the kitchen, then the eager voices of the other boys coming in for their tea.

  My stomach embarrasses me by growling.

  More time passes.

  Mr Pearse opens one of the many books on his desk. He riffles through the pages, then clears his throat and begins to read aloud. ‘Chieftains in ancient Ireland gave one another
gifts after a battle, so their conflict would not continue into the next generation.’

  I give Roger some of my best marbles, including a bulls-eye and two steelies. He gives me his leather belt with a wolfhound on the buckle.

  Willie Pearse is appearing in a play by Chekov at the Irish Theatre in Hardwicke Street, which is managed by Mr MacDonagh. The play is quite sombre, I understand, but the Ardmháistir says his brother is wonderful in the part. He brings some of the St Enda’s boys, myself included, to a matinee performance of the play. I’m seated next to Roger. Mr Pearse says, ‘I hope you two won’t mind sitting together?’

  ‘Why should we mind?’ Roger replies. ‘Sure are we not friends?’

  And we are.

  CHAPTER NINE

  DECEMBER 1914

  On the second of December several nationalist newspapers are ‘suppressed’, meaning the government won’t allow them to be published any more. The Ardmháistir is angry about it.

  My father works in the department which has responsibility for things like suppressing newspapers, I’m ashamed to say.

  Sometimes I pretend I’m an orphan. I almost am. My only happy memories of home date from the time when Mam was still alive and well. Is it possible that our house was a cheerful place then? I like to think it was, but maybe my memory is playing tricks on me. Maybe it was just Mam who was cheerful, and my father was always … No. I don’t want to think about that.

  The other boys have gone home for Christmas but I am still here. My father sends the money for my fees, but otherwise I am dumped like a dog dumped in the street. Since he’s so set against Irish nationalism I’m surprised he leaves me at St Enda’s. I suppose he’s never made any serious enquiries into the nature of this school. It’s enough for him that someone’s willing to take me off his hands.

  Meanwhile the Great War – that’s what they’re calling it now, since there has never been a conflict on this scale before – has bogged down in the trenches. The papers tell horror stories of mud and blood and ice all mixed together. Roger must be desperately worried about his brothers. I pray for them every day in chapel.

  A most strange thing has happened.

  On the Western Front the ordinary soldiers in the trenches declared a Christmas Truce of their own without permission from the generals. British and German soldiers met between the lines and exchanged jam and cigarettes. The generals are furious at their men for taking matters in their own hands.

  If no one was willing to fight there wouldn’t be any wars.

  But what can one do when one’s country is attacked? Or dominated by a foreign power?

  I’d like to ask the Ardmháistir but he’s out for the day, attending a meeting of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, another nationalist organisation to which he belongs. It’s a secret society. I would not know anything about the Brotherhood if I had not overheard a conversation between the Ardmháistir and Willie.

  I don’t earwig on purpose. I simply have a gift for being in the right place at the right time, and if interesting things are said within earshot, I can keep very still.

  The Ardmháistir has left Willie in charge today. ‘I’m relying on you to help me mind the place,’ Willie says to me.

  ‘I will of course!’ I can see myself marching bravely down to the front gates to stand on guard with my wooden rifle on my shoulder, like one of the policemen outside Dublin Castle.

  Willie Pearse is following in his father’s footsteps as a monumental sculptor. He has fitted out a studio here with his father’s old tools and equipment and has received several commissions. Since I’m the only student here now, he’s invited me to come along and have a look. It’s a great honour. Willie’s very modest about his work and shy about showing it to anyone.

  As I open the door to the studio I’m surprised to see other people already inside. Just then the stone dust in the air makes me sneeze. When I open my eyes again, the figures I mistook for living people are statues. Two large figures in marble are destined for churches down the country. One is the Dead Christ, the other, the Immaculate Conception. Every detail conveys Willie’s reverence for his subject. There are a number of studies of children, too. Laughing boys and pretty girls and one tiny wee infant tenderly cradled in adult hands. All are so lifelike I expect to see them move.

  ‘Why, these are amazing, Willie!’

  He ducks his chin and looks embarrassed. ‘Not at all, not at all.’

  ‘But they are, they’re beautiful. I didn’t know you were so good.’ I immediately bite my tongue. That sounded insulting.

  Willie doesn’t take offence. ‘I learned the basics in my father’s studio, then studied at the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin and in Paris as well, for a while,’ – his voice takes on a dreamy tone – ‘that lovely city of lime-white palaces.’

  All at once I understand what ‘lyrical’ means.

  Willie has exhibited his sculpture at the Hibernian Academy and elsewhere and won numerous awards. Yet you would never know it to look at him. Like the Ardmháistir, he keeps everything inside.

  I ask Willie the question my father would ask: ‘Can one make a living as an artist?’

  ‘Art is living, John Joe. Trying to earn money with it is something else entirely. I only wish it did pay well, the school needs the money.’

  The school is everything to the Pearse brothers. That, and Ireland.

  When the Ardmháistir returns I ask him my question about war. He says, ‘War is a terrible thing but war is not an evil thing. It is the things that make war necessary that are evil. You’ve heard me speak of James Connolly? Mr Connolly has written that just wars should be fought in, and unjust wars should be fought against.’

  I shall be glad when the holidays are over and Roger comes back to school. I find myself worrying about his brothers as if they were my own. I have no brothers; I was going to have a little sister. But now I never will.

  If I were really an orphan I wonder if Roger’s parents would be willing to adopt me. I suppose I’d have to become a Protestant. Would that be so difficult? Mr Pearse is a devoted Catholic, but he says we all worship the same God anyway.

  On the day Roger returns to St Enda’s he and I have another fight, but it’s sort of a pretend one. I’m so glad to see him I give him a really hard punch on the arm and he gets mad. So we flail away at each other for a while. Afterward we go into the kitchen together to ask Mrs Pearse for some bread and butter.

  ‘How did you get that bruise on your face, Roger?’ she wants to know.

  He glances at me. ‘I fell down.’

  ‘All on your own? You simply fell down?’

  ‘Well, we were running and … and this big dog ran out in front of us and …’

  ‘What big dog? Here on the grounds? Should I ask Michael MacRory to go out and find it?’

  ‘Unh, I threw a stone at it and it ran away,’ says Roger.

  She frowns. ‘You threw a stone at an animal? Roger, I’m ashamed of you!’

  ‘I mean we threw a stone at it. John Joe and me. John Joe more than me, actually.’

  There was no big dog. When Roger starts lying he doesn’t know how to stop, and he’s going to get us both in trouble. Me more than him, actually. If he would just tell the truth we could stop this before it gets any worse. But he’s not going to, he’s getting that sulky look he gets some times. And I can’t very well accuse my best friend of lying. Especially since he lied in the first place to keep from saying I hit him.

  So here we are in the Ardmháistir’s office again. He looks at us, shakes his head, and gives a long sigh. ‘What is it this time, boys? My mother says you’ve been up to something but she’s not sure what. Surely you weren’t fighting again.’

  ‘We were not fighting, sir,’ I say quickly. He would be so disappointed, after the last time, if … now I’m lying too. How did this happen?

  There is only one thing for it. I take a very deep breath. This is terribly hard, I wish he would not look at me so trustingly.

 
; Maybe that’s why I have to do it.

  ‘We were fighting, sir. Just roughhousing, you know. But when I hit Roger under the eye it made a bruise, and of course Mrs Pearse noticed it, and …’

  ‘And I told a lie to keep John Joe from getting into trouble,’ Roger interrupts gallantly.

  ‘I see. And there was no dog?’

  ‘No dog, sir. And no stone thrown at one, either.’

  ‘Please sir,’ says Roger, sounding very nervous, ‘are we going to be punished?’

  ‘Do you think you should be?’

  Roger bites his lip.

  ‘And you, John Joe, do you think you should be punished?’

  Perhaps sometimes telling the truth can go too far. But having begun I must continue. ‘I do think we should be punished, sir. We both told lies.’

  The Ardmháistir’s face fills with a light like the rising sun. He murmurs, ‘Whatever else I may do with my life …’ He does not finish the thought. ‘Thank you, boys, that will be all.’

  Roger asks anxiously, ‘What is our punishment, sir?’

  ‘No punishment,’ says Mr Pearse.

  CHAPTER TEN

  SPRING 1915

  The Great War goes on and on and gets worse and worse. Germany has placed a submarine blockade around the British Isles. Zeppelin airships have dropped bombs on English towns.

  Death falling silently out of the skies to kill innocent civilians.

  In ancient Ireland battles were fought hand to hand. If you killed someone – or he killed you – you looked in each other’s eyes first.

  The Irish Volunteers have seven commanding officers in Dublin: Thomas MacDonagh, Joseph Plunkett (he edits The Irish Review and his father’s the director of the Museum of Science and Art), Éamonn Ceannt, Bulmer Hobson, Edward Daly (Tom Clarke’s brother-in-law), Éamon de Valera, and our own Mr Pearse.

  Willie teases his brother by calling him ‘Commandant’ and saluting him at inappropriate times. I don’t think Mr Pearse would take it from anyone else, but when Willie does it he laughs.