The Wake - Table of contents

The Wake - afters (15)

“Anyway,” said Frances, “Casement was appointed by the British government to find out what was going on and his report put a stop to Leopold’s Free State.” She sighed a put on sigh. “If ever there was a misnomer that was it.”

It was then the nerves got to me because I didn’t think I could listen any longer to that freak whining out her data. “Casement’s time in Africa turned him anti-British, right?” I blurted.

“Well it wasn’t as simple as that,” she said to Aisling. “There were stages. He was sort of crazy mixed-up when he was a teenager. He thought British rule should be everywhere no matter what it took but Charles Stewart Parnell was his hero at the same time. And you can’t get much more crazy mixed-up than that. I’d say it was really the Boer war and the British concentration camps that changed him and of course straight after this he was sent to the Congo and that put the tin lid on it, he was an anti-imperialist from then on. What was it he wrote when the Brits sent him to South America?”

It wasn’t really a question. From her tone you knew you were going to have to wait for that particular piece of information. Her eyelids closed while she remembered. Then it came. “I’m a queer sort of a British consul. I should really be in one of their jails instead of under the Lion and Unicorn.”

“Sounds like the name of a pub,” I said. Nerves again.

She stared at me, forehead furrowed with exaggerated irritation. “Do you know what the Lion and Unicorn are?”

“Well I used to drink in a place with a name very like that every payday the summer I worked in Forte’s Coffee House in Piccadilly. It was round the corner in Leicester Square. Now I think of it that was the name and all. Nearly next to the Mitre bar where Charles Laughton used to drink.”

“You don’t know what they are, don’t you not? They’re symbols of the United Kingdom, the lion and the unicorn are symbols of the United Kingdom.” She shook her head.

The bitch wasn’t getting away with it. I’d tell her a thing or two she didn’t know.

“Our history teacher reckoned Casement was unhinged,” I said. Bingo, better effect than I could have hoped for. Black sockets widened till they seemed to take up about a quarter of her face, mouth open like a dead flounder. So far so good.

“Aye, I remember him saying he was a typical Protestant convert to the Irish Nationalist cause. How’s this now he put it?”

I actually couldn’t remember how he’d put it but that wasn’t going to stop me. “Full of guilt,” I said, “for the way England treated Ireland and hadn’t a clue how the ordinary Prod felt about all these uprisings.”

She was speechless. I’d got her speechless. I was on a roll, no question.

“Do you know where he was captured?” I said this eyeing her steadily.

The dark pits were impassive but the mouth had started to move, still didn’t speak though.

“I was actually there.”

“Is that right?” encouraged Aisling nervously. “Where?”

“The Centre Spot restaurant up in Letterkenny. I’ve eaten there. Casement was caught in it by British forces. It was actually Laird’s Hotel then. He was sitting in French uniform having his breakfast and a guy that used to study law with him recognised him and informed.” Stick that in your fucking pipe, dyke.

She didn’t just stick it in her pipe, she smoked it furiously and then knocked the ashes out on top of my head while they were still hot. “Really? Did you say you studied this? You’re about a hundred and twenty years and four hundred miles out friend. You’re thinking of Wolfe Tone. Roger Casement was captured at McKenna’s fort in Kerry. Christ.”

Aisling to the rescue. “Time for a refill,” she said and hurried to the worktop. “Here, give us your glass there,” and came over to me, hand outstretched, not taking no for an answer kind of way.