“It’s a longer au revoir than usual,” I said, flourishing a hand.
“How’s that?”
“I’m off to Ulster for the twelfth of July. I’m thinking of going quite soon.”
“You may find a change when you come back. Peace or something of the sort.”
“By all means.”
My road always lay through the centre of the city, and coming to College Green one met the inevitable paper boys bawling their wares, and if one still had curiosity enough to buy another issue, one opened it to find “Auxiliaries capture a Number of Armed Civilians,” or “Mysterious Death. Man’s Body found in Field. On the Victim’s Breast was pinned a piece of paper bearing the words—‘Spies and Informers beware. By Order. I.R.A.’”
CHAPTER XXV
THE EVE OF PEACE
The concussion of the bomb nearly threw me off my feet. For a few moments I thought that I was hit. In a dream I could see people falling, and I realised that things were darting by me like fast and furious flies. The lorry had slackened speed, and the Auxiliaries were standing up shooting. A man prone on the ground a few yards away raised himself cautiously on his hands. Then I came to life. At the same moment a man in the gutter decided that the moment to retire had come. He scrambled to his feet and, crouching low, dashed past me round the corner. Others ran with him wildly. The fire became concentrated on the corner of the wall. I stepped in a panic into shelter, picking up a child as I stepped. Women fell over perambulators after me, nurses abandoned babies and snatched them up again, children were flung from side to side and were pushed into shelter by people who wanted shelter for themselves. The child I held was about three. Its face had grown a dull red, and it caught its breath until I thought it would burst. The only thing to do was to smack it. That took its attention off other things, and it howled and breathed quite naturally. There was no longer an ambusher to be seen.
“What a life!” I exclaimed to a woman beside me.