Read After the Lockout for Free Online Page B

Hugh barks. ‘This man deserves your respect and with God as my witness, he will have it.’ The train hits the buffers with a jolt of sufficient violence to wake any man except John Swift. I tense up, waiting to be unmasked. But instead I hear first Campbell, then Hugh, apologise to Charlie. They leave.
    â€˜Jesus Christ, Charlie,’ I say when I come out from under my hat.
    We disembark the train. Not more than a handful of people are in the station, so there would be nowhere for us to hide, but the soldiers aren’t on the platform yet. We move as quickly as we can out of the station and into the refuge of the shadows. The night is still and calm and the full moon lights up the empty street. It’s late. In a few hours the mills around here will be thronged. Up ahead, lights flash and an automobile splutters beneath a street light. A military vehicle. Behind us Hugh and his men exit the station. I drag Charlie into the shadow of the arches at the front of the station and we watch the soldiers pass by, no more than a few yards from us. Hugh talks to the driver of the truck, and they climb into the back. The truck retreats into the distance and I breathe again.
    It’s quiet now. I see a horse and buggy idling outside a large red-brick house at the top of the street, and as we movecautiously in that direction I pull the hat down across my face and try to make out the features of the man sitting on the trap. When we get close, the faceless horseman says: ‘Is it him?’
    Alarmed, I look to Charlie. He nods. ‘You got my telegram.’
    The horseman claps his hands together and cries gleefully: ‘Welcome home, Victor. Erin go fucken bragh!’
    â€˜Ssssshhh! Keep it down, will you? The Baptist minister lives in there,’ says Charlie, pointing to the red-bricked house. Curtains twitch in the upstairs window. The horseman giggles and tells me to throw my suitcase on board. I hesitate. He’s late thirties, tall and strong-looking, with the floury face of a man too fond of the drink. He’s familiar. A Madden man presumably. Damned if I can place him. Charlie senses my confusion.
    â€˜I sent a telegram ahead asking for Turlough to come and pick us up,’ he says.
    Of course. Turlough Moriarty. I was in school with his younger brother Sean. Big, strong fellow too, Sean was, if a bit soft in the head. Turlough was the smarter of the two, relatively speaking. All dead-on people, the Moriartys. I climb onto the buggy and thank Turlough for coming. He gives the horse a light lick of the whip and we’re on our way. We go up over Banbrook hill past the pubs at the Shambles, up English Street with its proud, polished shop fronts, the gleaming terraces of Market Square and Thomas Street, the huckster shops of Ogle Street and onto poor Irish Street. Not a sinner to be seen. We cut through the slums of Culdee and pass the long sail-less windmill of Windmill Hill, and soon reach Droim Gabhla at the edge of the town. I tell the lads about something a great, wise and knowledgeable man once told me: how the official name for this little hamlet is not Drumgola, as would have been the logicalAnglicisation, but Umgola, because some careless clerk somewhere made a balls of it and left out the ‘Dr’. This little Irish townland has a name straight out of deepest, darkest Africa because of the tin-eared ignorance of the foreigners who took it upon themselves to rename our country. We share a bitter laugh. I look back to the little town, the tiny city of Armagh, lit by a moon bright as a cool blue sun. ‘Crazy place to build a town, the whole place is hills,’ I say.
    â€˜Built on seven hills,’ Turlough sings, beginning the chorus to the old Armagh song.
    â€˜Like a little Rome.’
    After a few miles we turn left and the lights of Madden village glow softly, down below us in a hollow. The horse snorts tiredly. Somewhere in the distance is a fast, throbbing hum,