After the Lockout by Darran McCann Page B

as a martyr. Everywhere in our country, dangerous men meet in shadows and plan our destruction. We are the front line in a war for the souls of man.’
    The Cardinal signalled to O’Donnell, who handed him a newspaper which he held up for all to see. The blood drained from Stanislaus’s face. It was the Armagh Guardian .
    â€˜Here is a story about a parish very near here. A criminal using Church property to deliver a blasphemous oration. This is a self-confessed communist and atheist, yet the people of his parish revere him because he took up arms against the English. Now, our day of reckoning with England will come soon, and whether it brings Home Rule or something else, men of the worst calibre are readying themselves to seize the spoils. In every parish of every Diocese lurk men as dangerous as this fellow, men who will attempt to cause ferment, to corrupt the people and turn Ireland into a colony of Moscow. They will prey on weak opponents such as lazy or careless priests.’
    The Cardinal was staring straight at Stanislaus, and he felt the stares of others bore holes in him. He wanted to run away as fast as his aged legs would carry him, but he held up his head and tried not to flinch from the Cardinal’s stare. If Mick was going to knife him in the guts, Stanislaus would make him look him in the eye as he did so.
    â€˜This shabby episode,’ the Cardinal said, slapping his hand disgustedly against the newspaper, ‘shows that even the finest can fail in his duty.’
    As soon as the Cardinal had finished his oration, Stanislaus fled, speaking to no-one as he left. He was glad Father Daly had the wit not to speak throughout the entire journey home. Peers and colleagues throughout the country would swap stories of this humiliation. He cursed Father Daly’s softness in allowing the use of the Parochial Hall in the first place. But the ultimate responsibility was his. Who had allowed the event to go ahead? Stanislaus Benedict. Because people would have been annoyed if he hadn’t. Because it would have been unpopular. Weakness borne of vanity. He wouldn’t make a mistake like that again. What people wanted, their daily, petty desires, their transient emotions, would not be his concern ever again.

    You have a pocket full of money when you arrive. Your brothers’ guilt in pounds, shillings and pence. It’s enough to pay for digs at a nice south-side boarding house for a few weeks. You only cross to the north side on Sunday mornings to attend mass at Marlborough Street. That’s the mass the respectable Dublin Catholics go to. The businessmen, the professionals, the Irish Party fellows. You try to fall in with some of them. Maybe someone will offer you a nice office job or something like that.
    Soon the money runs out. You take a tiny room in a tenement in Monto and get a job shovelling coal off the boat for three measly shillings a day. You step over men lying dead drunk in the street while youngsters with no shoes steal from their pockets. Women hang out of windows with their bosoms hanging out of their blouses. Soldiers liquored up and looking for something to rut or tokill or both run amok every night. You didn’t know Christian people could live like this. You still go to mass at Marlborough Street and hold off as long as you can before you pawn the good suit. Your last hope of a ticket out of here. But eventually it goes too. Hunger will make a man forgo even pride.
    What’s so special about these hateful rich bastards anyway? They talk about working people like a sub-species in need of extermination. One fat, obnoxious fellow says the Monto prostitutes should be flogged on a weekly basis. ‘That’ll keep them off their backs.’ They all laugh. In Monto they’ll knife you in the guts for a shilling, but only because they want the shilling. They’re not like these people with their tailored suits and their fancy ways. These people hate like