— To everyone his role, Tyrone.
And then he got up. Fingertips to his temple, he saluted me as a soldier. Two óglaigh left their shadowy wall on the other side of the street to guard his passage.
— So long, Fianna! Tom Williams called over his shoulder.
I watched him head farther up Bombay Street, three shadows for a single person. He turned the corner. He was whistling ‘God Save Ireland’. I squeezed the white sliotar. I was afraid for all of us.
On Easter Sunday, Mother had us dress for Mass. I was wearing an old white shirt of Seánie’s, and Niall had on a pair of my old trousers. My Fianna uniform was hidden under Sara’s blanket in the pushchair. The street was deserted and tense. Friendly doors used to be opened to rebel scouts all over the nationalist enclaves. We would get ourselves ready in twos in people’s backyards, hidden in their wardrobes, behind workbenches, in school playgrounds, pub snugs. When we arrived in front of Costello’s grocery, Sheila opened the door. My family gathered around the pushchair as though trying to soothe the baby. They were hiding me. I slipped into Costello’s and the Meehans carried on towards the church.
Danny Finley was at the top of the stairs. He was dressing in silence under the gaze of a mournful Jesus. Sitting on the steps, Sheila watched me slip into my black shirt. I was blushing. I was in love with her. The times were too backward for making a move, and the parents of Belfast knew everything their children got up to. One hand taking another would mean dozens of pointed fingers. It was neither malicious nor derisive, but you could feel that there was always someone making a judgment behind a curtain. The British monitored our movements, the IRA monitored our commitment, the priests monitored our thoughts, the parents monitored our childhood and the windows monitored our romances. There was never anywhere to hide.
— Brits! Brits! shouted a young voice in the street.
Sheila was up in a flash and tearing down the stairs. Danny carried on buttoning his shirt. This calm was his way of panicking.
— Shit, there’s a button missing from the sleeve, my comrade grumbled. He had mended one of the knees of his trousers.
Outside, an armoured car with a loudspeaker was repeating that all gatherings were illegal. That demonstrating during wartime was an act of treason. Back when the hostilities with Germany had begun, military trucks used to roam our neighbourhoods calling on young Catholics to don the English uniform. Few responded to the appeal. In May 1941, more than 200,000 nationalists of fighting age had fled Belfast while thousands of others slept in the fields or hills around the city to avoid the recruiting officers. Our fathers, our mothers and our families took to the streets in their thousands, day after day, to protest against their sons having to die for the king. London abandoned conscription in Northern Ireland on 27 May, and only the Ulster Protestants were left to fight for their flag.
Mother had carefully ironed my uniform. A dark-green shirt, the jacket in the same colour with a closed officer collar, epaulettes, two rows of brass buttons, a white lanyard for attaching the whistle and an orange neckerchief. The Sam Browne belt was my father’s, and I had also inherited his shoulder strap. The enemy truck was moving off. I pinned the Fianna badge over my heart, the burning sun on a blue background. And then we sat down at the top of the stairs to await our orders. I’d put my slouched felt hat with its wide brim on my head; Danny had placed his on his knee. We used to steal ‘Baden-Powells’ by the dozen from scout shops in Dublin and Cork and dye them green. Ireland and Great Britain hunted down our secret army but they couldn’t outlaw our hats.
The Fianna exited on to the street almost simultaneously. Danny and I were standing behind the front door of the Costello house. Sheila was on the lookout behind a curtain she’d pulled back just a fraction. Her father had his hand on the door knob, waiting. There was a metallic whistling. Across the way, two doors opened and four scouts appeared. We left in turn. Danny got us to line up on the pavement. There were ten of us, and another dozen on the opposite side of the street, coming out of the alley. More again were arriving from Kashmir Road.
— Left! Left! Left, right, left!
An officer’s voice. We set off marching towards the Falls Road. I was trembling. It was pathetic. I was trembling and my teeth were chattering. I had dreamed of this epic moment so often. Dreamed of me, Tyrone Meehan, parading in uniform and in step. And here I was, afraid! Or cold. I could no longer tell. My hat was over my eyes and I didn’t dare push it back up. The Cumann na gCailíní girls were arriving from Leeson Street, with their green skirts and their hair tied up. Right arms, left arms, swinging in unison. We advanced along the centre of the avenue like an army of children.
Sheila was following us. She was carrying our civilian clothes in a bag. Every scout was followed at a distance by a mother, a sister or a friend. When our flags were raised, tears came to my eyes and I laughed with joy, feeling the shouts bubble up from my belly. The tricolour of our Republic was huge. It was the first time I had ever seen the green, white and orange floating freely under this sky. The Fianna’s standard was magnificent, fringed in gold, its sun splashed with sky-blue. A boy was carrying the national colours; a girl, the Fianna’s emblem.
We were taking over the street. We had snatched it from the English soldiers, we had taken it from the German bombers. It was Irish, this street, reconquered by kids dressed as soldiers. The people were waiting on the footpaths, in doorways. Around us, IRA men in civilian clothing were giving brief orders. When the flags moved forward, the nationalist population arrived from every direction. They were filled with emotion, concerned, simultaneously celebrating and worrying. A beautiful and dignified multitude. Women, hundreds of children, men, elderly people who fancied themselves officers, ordering the kids to form lines. A brass band was now leading the procession — a few flutes, three drums and accordions playing ‘God Save Ireland’ in time with our marching. I was on the side, between the street and the pavement, like the other Fianna. Our orders were to protect the crowd from Shankill Loyalists several streets away, and from British soldiers if they showed up. Older men were carrying hurleys in construction bags, studded sticks. Not weapons, they were just for defending, not for attacking.
When we arrived at the corner of Conway Street, we were ordered to disperse. An abrupt order. We were still a good way from the cemetery. Two men climbed on to a truck roof, arms raised, and roared at the crowd to leave the march.
— Back on the pavements! Immediately! Don’t go home alone! Join a group if you get split up!
— No more than five people together! shouted the other man.
I knew the elder of the two. He had taught us about the Great Famine.
I whistled with my arms outstretched to disperse the marchers.
— Pass the word along! Don’t run. Walk on the pavements!
Danny Finley scaled the truck.
— Fianna are to change here, immediately! And everyone get back to your cumanns!
Sheila came racing up to us. She upended the bag of clothes. We handed her our uniforms. Shirts, jackets, shorts. I was standing in my underpants on the street. I didn’t give a damn. She stuffed the rebel green into her satchel, crushing our hats. Around us, people were scattering and whispering. The street wasn’t frightened, it was worried. What had happened? Why stop the march in the middle of the commemoration? A young woman came briskly up to Sheila. She took her burden from her hands with neither a word nor a glance, then hid it beneath her coat and clung on to a man’s arm. They crossed the avenue. She walked with difficulty, one hand on her stomach like a mother-to-be while he appeared to reassure her. I didn’t know that woman, or that man, but I knew that our bag would be at our headquarters this evening, having got there circuitously, passed from strangers’ hands to other strangers’ hands.