insane adventure of Easter week, sneaking regard flowered into strident pride. No-one from Madden had ever been famous before.
Victorâs best friend Charlie Quinn had volunteered to go to Dublin to find him. Stanislaus asked Charlie whether he thought Victor would agree to come home. Charlie said he didnât know.What he was willing to predict, though, was that Victor would still be every bit as angry as he was the day he left Madden. Stanislaus was discomfited to think of the rage-filled boy coming back into his life a full-grown man. He pushed the newspaper across the desk under Father Dalyâs nose and pointed to the Ulyanov headline.
âThis is the kind of man weâre talking about. A bolshevist, you know,â he snapped.
âHe canât be that bad if he was with Connolly, God rest him,â said Father Daly.
âConnolly was a communist.â
âOnly in life. No-one will remember that whole communist thing in the long run.â
Stanislaus got up from his desk. He had no intention of debating with a guileless liberal not five minutes out of the seminary. âIâm going for a walk,â he said. He went downstairs, opened the door and pulled on his coat as he strode out the gate into the street. He grimaced at the red bunting and flags as he passed under them. Otherwise good parishioners openly disobeying his injunction â and the Cardinalâs â against Gaelic games. Theyâll all be thrilled when they hear of their Victor Lennonâs return, he thought. He whispered a prayer for the peace of the parish.
Itâs your stick. You found it. Itâs the best stick youâve ever seen: three feet long, thick but pliable enough to bend double without cracking. Your brothers are jealous of it. Charlieâs jealous of it. Even Maggieâs jealous of it, and sheâs a girl. You use it to hunt, to fish and a hundred other things. Itâs yours, and the bastard thinks he can justtake it. Phelim Cullen. You know the name. Everyone does. Heâs three years older than you, looks like heâs nearly six foot, fifteen and out of school with the cigarette to prove it. He tells you to go away, stop pestering him. You are far from home, five or six miles at least, in his parish to watch the Madden footballers take another hammering. Itâs his parish and he says heâs keeping your stick. Heâs laughing but heâs threatening to lose his good humour any second. But itâs your stick and he canât have it, no matter what.
âYou rotten thieving bastard.â
His expression darkens and he swings the stick at you with a terrifying whoosh. Last warning. Christ but heâs a vicious bastard. Charlie and Maggie are looking at you with pleading, terrified eyes.
âIf you donât hand over the stick I wonât be responsible for what happens to you.â
The crowd gathered around winces as his open palm cracks loudly against your cheek. A slap in the face. Wouldnât even dignify you with a closed fist.
Well, youâll dignify him with one.
He doesnât see it coming. Not in a million years did he think youâd do it. Heâs stunned, and heâs not the only one. Your fist opens his nose like a knife through a feed sack. You swing again and again and the blows land again and again, till he drops your stick and flees like a beaten dog. You pick up your stick, gingerly, since your knuckles are bruised and bloodied. But itâs not your blood.
Charlie and Maggie look at you differently now. Itâs like theyâre scared. Youâre a little scared yourself.
Charlie follows me onto the Number 14 tram. My old route. Once upon a time I knew every tram driver in Dublin but I donât recognise this young, ignorant-looking fellow with the shirt collar too small on him. He yanks the handbrake too sharply and rings the bells like heâs Quasimodo. Everything about him screams non-union. A bastard scab. We