There were mending sheds at Blessington where sometimes there would be men working on an engine in overalls, covered in dirt and oil. Dermot would watch them in silence as they worked and wonder if their mammies would give out to them for the state of their clothes and hands and faces, as his mammy surely would if he went home half as bad.

  When he had asked Rosie that question one day she’d laughed, even though she really felt sorry for the boy, for her mother always had Dermot dressed up to the nines for a visit to the village. He was always warned to keep his clothes clean and tidy. His sisters never dared let him leap after the other young boys and get up to all kinds of devilment, lest he rip or soil his clothes. If he did that the sisters, not Dermot, would feel the power of their mother’s hands and fists for not keeping a better eye on him.

  So before she had married Danny and left home, Rosie often took Dermot somewhere that might entertain him. And when he’d finally turn from the engines there was always something to examine in the wagons in the sidings, often waiting to be hitched onto the trams going towards either Terenure or Poulaphuca. Then there was the passing loop too and Rosie would time her visit if she possibly could, so that Dermot would see it in action.

  She breathed a sigh of relief when she first saw the steam tram approaching, its horn blowing to clear the track ahead, its funnels puffing out billowing white clouds of smoke that floated into the spring air. Eventually, the tram pulled up at the stop with a hiss of steam.

  Matt was delighted to see he knew the conductor. ‘Look after my girl, will you?’ he asked, indicating Rosie making her way up the tram. ‘She’s for Dublin and has never been before. Tell her where to get off and all will you?’

  ‘I will and it will be no bother, but Dublin’s not a place I’d be making for just now, unless I had to.’

  ‘It’s not from choice,’ Matt replied sadly. ‘The woman is my daughter-in-law and it’s her husband, my son, that she’s seeking news of.’

  ‘Was he involved in that last little lot?’

  ‘Yes, we think so,’ Matt said wearily. ‘That’s the very devil of it. Danny was against it from the beginning, but his younger brother was caught up in it and him not fifteen until July. When we found out he’d gone, Danny went after him. The boy’s home now, him and his friend and both unharmed, but he said Danny took his place and we know nothing more. Rosie said she must go and see for herself.’

  ‘She’s a brave lassie.’

  ‘She is that,’ Matt said. ‘She’s fitted into our family as if she’s always lived with us and has been a fine wife to Danny and a wonderful mother to their wee baby.’

  ‘Well, please God the news will be good when she gets into the city,’ the conductor said. ‘Don’t you worry, she’ll be as safe as houses with me and I’ll show her where to catch the electric tram later.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Matt said. ‘To tell you the truth, I’m worried to death about what she might find out, and on her own too. But I mustn’t keep you talking. You have a timetable to abide by. I’ll hold you up no longer.’

  The conductor nodded and rang the bell for the driver to start and the tram lurched forward. Rosie, settling herself in the seat, had one last brief glimpse of Matt waving to her before they pulled out of sight.

  ‘Hello there,’ the conductor said suddenly beside her. ‘Return to Terenure, is it?’

  ‘I suppose,’ Rosie said. ‘Is that where I must change trams for Dublin?’

  ‘Aye,’ the conductor said. ‘There are no steam trams allowed in Dublin itself. Terenure is just on the outskirts and you have to catch an electric tram from there. But it’s fifteen and a half miles away yet, so you can relax a wee while. I’ll put you right, never fear. The next stop is Crosschapel.’

  The tram rattled on, past Crosschapel village where there was a small delay because there was a siding there and a few passengers to pick up and goods to load in the wagons at the back.

  ‘We’ll be at Brittas in a little while,’ the conductor said, once again at Rosie’s elbow just a little later. ‘Busy stop that, and we usually have quite a wait. We bring supplies in for the Kilbride Camp and they all have to be unloaded.’

  Rosie didn’t mind the stop at all, she had no wish to reach Dublin in any sort of a hurry and she was entertained by the activity at the station, like the unloading of supplies into carts and the people standing in the doorway of the Brittas Inn, looking on and giving advice that was neither asked for nor helpful, and often caused hilarity amongst the onlookers.

  The woman sitting beside Rosie was becoming impatient. ‘It should only take one and a half hours to reach Terenure from Blessington,’ she told Rosie, clucking her tongue in annoyance. ‘At this rate it will be afternoon before we arrive.’

  ‘I don’t mind that much,’ Rosie said. ‘It’s all new to me, you see. I’ve never been on a tram before.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the woman, ‘well, look to your right as we approach the next station, the mountains of Mourne are visible on a clear day.’

  And Rosie did see them soon after, way, way in the distance, dark green with purple swathes here and there. ‘You can see for miles,’ she said in amazement and the woman smiled.

  ‘We’re seven hundred feet above sea level,’ she said. ‘That’s why.’

  ‘Are we?’

  ‘Aye,’ the woman said. ‘You’ll know we are in a minute, for after we’re through this station, we’ll descend so quickly if you don’t hold tight you’ll be flung forward, so be warned.’

  Rosie was glad she was, for the tram had not long left Crooksling when it seemed to almost tip forward before hurtling down the incline at a terrific speed. Rosie tried not to think about the tales she’d heard of trams jumping off the rails and the number of people killed each year. ‘Quite scary, isn’t it?’ said the woman, seeing Rosie’s knuckles whiten where she’d gripped the seat hard.

  ‘Aye, it is,’ Rosie replied, sighing with relief that the tracks had finally levelled out and they were now travelling at a more sedate pace.

  ‘My children love it whenever I have them with me,’ the woman went on. ‘But then children don’t see danger, do they? I have three and they have my hair near white at times, the mischief and pranks they get up to.’

  ‘Are they in Dublin, your children?’ Rosie asked, thankful to have some distracting conversation.

  ‘No, with their daddy in Terenure, that’s where I live,’ the woman said. ‘I’ve been up to visit my mother in Poulaphuca. She hasn’t been at all well, which is why I didn’t want to take any of the children with me this time. In fact, she was so poorly I ended up staying the night. I wouldn’t go to Dublin at the moment for a pension.’

  ‘Nor me, by choice,’ Rosie said, and then, despite the fact the woman was a stranger, or maybe because of it, she found herself telling her everything. The woman listened without saying a word, but her eyes spoke her sympathy and finally she said, ‘it might not be as bad as you fear, my dear.’

  ‘Aye, and it may be far worse,’ Rosie said. ‘But however bad the news is, it is a hundred times better than knowing nothing day after day.’

  The conductor, coming up the tram jiggling his money bag and punching tickets, put an end to anything further the woman would have said, informing them the tram was approaching Embankment Halt.

  ‘This is where we take on water,’ the conductor told Rosie, ‘and where the mail for Staggart and Rathcoole villages is taken off the tram to be delivered by a fine fellow, by the name of John Kelly, who collects it in his pony and trap.’

  ‘It’s fascinating, isn’t it?’ Rosie said to the woman beside her. ‘All the things the tram carries, besides people I mean.’

  The woman smiled. ‘Maybe the first few times you make the trip’, she said. ‘I’m well used to it now. When we come to the next halt, Jobstown, the carters will be waiting to load stone from the De Selby quarries.

  ‘Tallaght and Killinarden have quarries too,’ the conductor commented, ‘but we don’t get much there. Most of the large boulders are sent to Kilmainham Jail for the prisoners to break into smaller pieces.’

  He went silent for a minute, remembering what Matt Walsh had told him about the young woman’s husband. According to what he’d heard, all those who’d survived the insurrection had been sent to Kilmainham Jail so her man could well be in that prison. Him and his big mouth!

  But Rosie wasn’t offended or upset. She knew Danny in jail was the best outcome she could possibly hope for.

  As the tram pulled away from Tallagh Halt she had her first sight of the Dublin Hills. She felt her stomach turn over and again doubted the wisdom of what she was doing.

  A few minutes later, the woman nudged her and pointed out of the window. ‘See that branch line? It goes to the aerodrome, and belongs to the British Government.’

  ‘Aerodrome!’ Rosie repeated incredulously.

  ‘Aye, the British and Germans are flying planes now. They’re fighting each other in the air as well, or so people tell me.’

  ‘Dear God!’ Rosie remarked. ‘You’d never get me up in one of those things.’

  ‘Oh I agree,’ the woman said. ‘If God wanted a man to fly he’d have given him wings, that’s what I say.’

  Suddenly, there was another sharp dip in the road, and again Rosie had to grip the seats hard to prevent herself falling forward, and then to stop herself being thrown into her fellow passenger as the tram passed so close to the gable end of a set of cottages that she gasped, certain they were going to crash into them.

  ‘It has been known, I believe,’ the woman said, when Rosie shared her fears. ‘Did you notice the sign?’

  ‘Aye,’ Rosie said. ‘“Beware of the trams.”’

  ‘That’s because so many people have been knocked down and injured there,’ the woman told her. ‘One man even said his thatch was set on fire by a spark from the tram’s chimney. He couldn’t prove it, of course, but still, if I lived there I’d feel in constant danger.’

  ‘And me,’ Rosie said with feeling.

  Then the tram was running into Templeogue, which the woman told Rosie had been the old depot. She saw it still had the engine and carriage sheds and a smithy further into the village opposite a pub called Floods. But the tram didn’t stop and carried on and the woman beside Rosie said, ‘Terenure is the next stop and the terminus,’ and she began collecting her things together and Rosie did the same.

  Rosie said goodbye to the woman as they both left the tram, thanking her for her company and saying she hoped her mother would soon be on the mend.

  The woman grasped her hands warmly. ‘Best of luck to you,’ she said. ‘I hope you find news of your man soon, and that the news is good.’

  Rosie was unable to speak for the sudden lump that rose in her throat. She was sorry to see the woman go – she had provided comfort as well as distraction – and so was grateful for the conductor coming up at that moment. ‘Just make your way down there by that whitewashed wall,’ he said, pointing. ‘You’ll pass the booking office and just after it an iron gate is set into a wall that leads onto Rathfarnham Road. You go through that and to the right you will see Terenure Road East. The halt is there, though there won’t be a tram there yet awhile. The tram you’ll want has a triangle on it and it’s the number fifteen. Have you got that?’

  ‘Aye,’ Rosie replied, ‘and thank you so much for your kindness.’

  ‘It’s my pleasure,’ the conductor said and Rosie waved to him. Carrying her bag over her shoulder and Danny’s basket in the other hand, she followed the conductor’s directions to the tram stop where she would begin the last leg of her journey to Dublin and to whatever the city might hold.

  TEN

  As the conductor had predicted, Rosie had a little wait for the Dublin tram and when she was settled into it, she realised she had no idea what to ask for when the conductor came abreast of her for her fare. ‘Well, where are you going?’ The conductor asked. ‘We won’t be going the whole hog to Nelson’s Pillar, that I do know, for Sackville Street is impossible to cross with rubble and fallen masonry.’

  ‘I need to get to Baggot Street,’ Rosie replied.

  ‘Oh, then you wouldn’t have gone up so far anyway, it would be taking you out of your way,’ the conductor told her. ‘You need to get off at the corner of St Stephen’s Green North and Dawson Road. Baggot Street is only a stone’s throw from there, so to speak. Don’t you worry about it now, I’ll tell you when we get there and point you in the right direction.’

  Rosie sank back in her seat and didn’t worry about it, not about getting off a tram at the right stop anyway. She had far more pressing worries pounding her brain. She read the signs as they passed through Rathgar and then Rathmines, noting the area became more built up as they drew closer to Dublin.

  There were more people on the streets here, more cars and carts and bicycles and the odd omnibus too. She saw whole streets of houses and a few shops here and there. The tram began to fill up and, with all the seats taken, people stood holding onto the straps fastened to the roof as the tram swayed and clanked its way forward.

  As the tram suddenly turned sharply, Rosie couldn’t prevent herself sliding into a fellow passenger on the hard wooden seats. ‘Sorry,’ she said, but the woman she’d collided with just smiled.

  ‘It’s hard not to crash into one another the way they throw you about in these things,’ the woman said. ‘Still, not much further now. We’re nearly at St Stephen’s Green.’

  Rosie looked back, but the conductor was talking to someone animatedly and Rosie hoped she didn’t go sailing past where she should got off. There was little she could see now through the throng of people. She wished she was on the other side of the tram as they passed the Green, for knowing it had been the scene of action in the rebellion, she would have liked to have studied it, but she could barely see.

  Then, the tram suddenly swung right and Rosie saw the conductor making his way through the crush towards her. ‘Next stop’s yours,’ he said.

  Rosie picked up her bags and wondered if she should find somewhere to have a hot drink and compose herself before landing on the convent doorstep. But the conductor shook his head regretfully when Rosie asked if there was a café nearby. ‘You’d struggle to find a café open,’ he said. ‘There’s been no food in the shops for days, and those restaurants and cafés not looted or burned to the ground will be boarded up.’

  Rosie suddenly felt a little frightened and nervous. The tram drew to a halt and Rosie stepped down, as the conductor stood talking to a man passing, the Angelus Bell pealing out telling her it was twelve o’clock, and she knew she had no option but to make straight for the convent.

  ‘Baggot Street you were making for, wasn’t it?’ the conductor asked, giving a wave to the man as he carried on up the street. ‘Have you anyone belonging you? Anyone in this place you know at all?’

  ‘Aye,’ Rosie said. ‘I have a relative in the convent, at a place called the ‘House of Mercy’.

  The conductor sighed in relief. ‘Angels of Mercy, no less,’ he said. ‘That’s what those nuns are. They help everyone and anyone in need. No-one is ever turned away from their door. You’ll get a welcome there all right.’ He looked Rosie up and down and then went on, ‘You new to Dublin?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Well, you chose a fine time to visit,’ the conductor commented. ‘If you want to go out and look at the city centre and particularly if you want to cross the Liffey, you’ll need a pass. Various barracks and police stations have them, so I hear, or sometimes the sentries guarding the Liffey will be able to issue one.’

  ‘A pass!’ Rosie repeated incredulously. ‘For going about Dublin?’

  ‘Aye,’ the conductor said. ‘But remember it’s a Dublin that’s been at war. People have been killed, houses and shops destroyed. I tell you, if they don’t like the look of you, you’ll get no pass at all, people say. Only the religious orders can move freely.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘The nuns will put you right,’ the conductor said. ‘And you’ll have no trouble reaching Baggot Street.’ He pointed the way down the road and said, ‘Now you go along there now, just straight on and you’ll come to Baggot Street in no time at all. Don’t look left or right, nor turn down any other road – that man I was just talking to was telling me some of the rebels have occupied a house in Mount Street Crescent. The army have installed a field gun in Merrion Square and are blasting them to Kingdom Come.’

  Now that the Angelus bell had died away, Rosie was suddenly all too aware of the sound of rifle fire. There was a sudden loud boom and she shivered. ‘I thought there was a surrender?’

  ‘Aye, there is,’ the conductor said. ‘These are just pockets of resistance. But don’t you worry about that. You just get yourself to Baggot Street.’

  Rosie nodded and the tram moved away and swung up Dawson Street. She began to walk down the north side of St Stephen’s Green, passing people with grim, serious faces. On the corner of the road she came upon the Shelbourne Hotel, now a barricaded and sandbagged structure with not a window in place, its stucco frontage pockmarked with bullet holes. It bore so little resemblance to any hotel she’d ever seen that if it hadn’t been for the sign still on the wall above the shuttered entrance, she would never have believed it.

  She remembered in the newspaper reports she’d read about the insurrection that the army had installed field guns in the hotel and on the roof to clear the rebels out of the park. It seemed too awful for words to her to destroy buildings, not to mention lives, for an ideal that burned with a bright flame for only six short days.

  Opposite the hotel was a barricade blocking the way into St Stephen’s Green and Rosie remembered reading that the rebels had commandeered every vehicle passing to add to it. She saw for herself what the papers had reported – carts, traps, cars and vans, together with the odd bicycle, piled haphazardly one on top of another, pockmarked as the hotel had been and with big holes blasted into the sides of them. Much of the barricade had been dismantled now and she knew it would be easy to climb over and into the park if anyone had the desire to do so.