“I’ve had a dreadful time,” she said breathlessly. She looked shaken. “There was an ambush in Stephen’s Green a minute ago. I had to lie on my tummy for ages listening to the bullets flying over me. I was too terrified to move.”
“That must have been the last ambush.”
“Yes. I don’t think I’m a national hero. I’d hate to be shot.” She talked over her shoulder as she mounted the stairs. “It’s made me fearfully late. I’ve hardly time for my lunch.”
“Wonderful spirit the Irish girls have,” said Mrs. Slaney, two hours later, as she encountered me on my way out. “Little Miss O’Farrell wasn’t at all put out by her experience this morning. ‘Only another ambush,’ she said, when I asked her why she was late. Wonderful spirit, and it’s all through the nation. You can write to Australia about that. It’s little incidents that make the world thrill.”
I was alone in the flat for another three days. The rest of the house had gone a-holidaying, and there was only Mrs. Slaney overhead. On Monday Mrs. O’Grady would have flown, or rather limped, from the basement. On these nights sleep was impossible. Crash after crash shook the silence, and the rattle of rifle fire was never ending. Some nights the concussion was so great that every time I put the window up it was shaken down again. When it was very bad I pulled down the blind, feeling rather like the soldiers on guard at the ruined Customs House, who crept into their bell tents at night when they were being sniped from the neighbouring roofs. It was a poor security, but it was security of a sort, and the only security granted at that time to the citizens of Dublin.
One night I saw a figure running down the opposite pavement, and crouching against the walls of the houses. The man came to a garden with a tree hanging over a fence. He had time to get on top of the fence under the tree before the Auxiliaries rattled down the street after him. He stood quite still on top of the fence. I could only see a shadow where his toes must have been sticking out, the rest was hidden in the branches of the tree. The Auxiliaries dropped out of their lorry and searched up and down. The toes did not stir. I began to take a passionate interest in those toes. There is an appeal in anything hunted. After a little the lorry filled again and rattled away. The toes still remained without motion on the top of the fence; but later when I looked they had gone.
Mrs. Slaney grew more and more warlike as the days passed. Probably she passed sleepless nights too, and the strain was telling on her.
“Wonderful to have a husband a patriot,” she declared on one occasion.
I remembered the wives of the patriots I knew, and recalled them to her memory.
“Rubbish, Mrs. Slaney,” I said. “A patriot isn’t more of a hero than another man. Look at the limelight a patriot gets to help him. If there was no limelight, no publicity, a lot of the patriots would be a sorry crew.”