‘Why would they fight for the English?’ he asked now, looking down at the letter on the table.
‘They?’ asked Stephen, turning his head quickly and staring at his son; it wasn’t often that he had a flash of anger like this. ‘Who’s this they that you’re talking about, son?’
‘The Irish,’ said Émile quietly.
‘The Irish are a they now, are they?’ he asked.
‘Stephen, stop it,’ said Marie.
‘Stop what?’
‘Just stop it.’
‘Come on ahead,’ said Stephen irritably, shaking his head. ‘I’ll not be having theys in this house.’
Émile looked from his father to his mother and back again, angry and upset at being spoken to like this. ‘Well I don’t know, do I?’ he cried, trying to hold back tears. ‘You’re English, Mum’s French, sometimes you tell me I’m Irish, other times you tell me I’m half English and half French.’
‘You’re Irish,’ said Stephen. ‘And don’t you forget it.’
But he wasn’t fully Irish, he knew that. The boys at school picked on him and said he was only a blow-in and that if your family hadn’t lived in Ireland since before Cromwell had started his slaughter of the innocents then you had no business being here anyway. And why did he have to be anything, he wondered? The Irish hated the English, the English hated the Germans, the Germans hated the French, so it seemed that if you lived in a country, you had to have someone to hate. But then Cork people hated the Kerry people, and the Kerry people hated the Dubliners, and the Dubs were split in two by the Liffey, with the families who lived in the tenements in the city centre hated by all. It seemed to Émile that you weren’t allowed to be alive unless you had someone to hate and someone to hate you in return.
‘You’re right,’ said Stephen, reaching forward and pulling Émile’s head into his shoulder for a moment. ‘I’m sorry, son. I shouldn’t have snapped.’
Marie stood up, gathering up the posters and taking them over towards the fireplace.
‘What are you doing?’ asked Stephen, staring at her.
‘The sensible thing,’ she said, peeling one off, folding it in half and then half again, before reaching its corner into the flames and letting the fire take a catch of it before she allowed it to sink into the hearth and burn. Then she unpeeled the second one and started to fold it too but Stephen was too quick for her; he was on his feet in a jiffy, pulling the posters out of her arms.
‘Stop that now,’ he shouted.
‘Why?’
‘They’re not for burning.’
Émile reached over for the letter, wanting to know what else it said, but Marie pulled it out of his hands and put it on the top shelf of the dresser, next to the key for the outside lav.
‘Did no one ever tell you not to read other people’s letters?’ she asked, staring down at her son. Émile said nothing in reply but looked at his father instead.
‘What does James want you to do with those posters?’ he asked.
‘Paste them up around the town. See if any of the men here will sign up.’
‘Do you think they will?’
Stephen shook his head. ‘Probably not,’ he said.
‘Then there’s no point doing it,’ said Marie.
‘Oh, I’ll do it all right.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it’s the right thing.’
‘The right thing for who?’
Stephen shrugged his shoulders. ‘If the Germans win,’ he said, ‘if they conquer England, where do you think they’ll go next? Have a think about it, love. What’s the next country along?’
Marie threw her arms in the air. ‘If you put those posters up around here,’ she said, ‘our neighbours will call you a traitor. Like they did with Séamus Kilduff’s brother.’
‘Who everyone said was a hero in the end.’
‘They said he was a hero when they were putting him in the ground. They didn’t say anything like that when he was walking above it.’
‘You’re not going away to fight, are you, Dad?’ asked Émile, his eyes opening wide in horror at the idea.
‘I don’t know, son,’ replied Stephen. ‘But it’s something that I’ve been thinking about. After all, the sooner the war is over, the sooner we can all live in peace.’
‘No!’ shouted Émile, jumping up. ‘No, you can’t. Mum, tell him he can’t.’
‘Stephen, you’re upsetting the boy. And throw those things away before they land us all in trouble.’
‘It’s only a few posters. Those who want to take an interest can and those who don’t, well they don’t have to.’
‘Don’t be so naive,’ snapped Marie as Émile rushed to her side and pressed himself against her. ‘You have no idea what will happen to you if you put them up around town. To us. To all of us. Irishmen – To Arms,’ she added, laughing bitterly. ‘They want us on their side when they need help, that’s for sure. But when they don’t—’
‘Us! Them! You! Me!’ shouted Stephen. ‘If you ask me, we all choose our pronouns depending on what suits us at the time!’
And that was the end of that. Marie stormed off to her bedroom, Stephen stayed in the front parlour for a smoke, and Émile grabbed the key for the outside lav and ran down in the cold night air. He’d been desperate for a pee ever since Mr Devlin had arrived with the post but he couldn’t leave the front parlour when there was so much going on.
Émile went with his father when he placed the posters in prominent positions around town, and when the townspeople saw them, there was an outcry. A meeting was held in the church and Émile listened as Stephen made the case that here was something bigger than the argument between England and Ireland – that, he said, could be returned to at a later date and hopefully with wiser, more peaceful heads, but in the meantime there was a bigger fight being played out across Europe – and the Irish couldn’t stick their heads under their blankets forever because sooner or later it would come their way. ‘We’ve spent centuries trying to win the land back for ourselves,’ he told them. ‘And we’re this close. You can feel it. I can feel it. We’re on the cusp, lads. Now tell me, all of you, what if we win our country back and lose it all over again to someone else? Where’s the victory in that?’
Donal Higgins’ father had fought the opposite case. ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend,’ he said. ‘Did you never hear that line, no? Why on earth would we spend all this time trying to get the English out of Ireland only to help them in their hour of need? Could someone please explain that to me, for it makes no sense as far as I can see!’
‘But look, if we help out now, maybe that’ll be the difference between victory and defeat,’ argued Stephen.
‘Let them be defeated!’ cried Donal Higgins’ father.
‘And then what? If this war doesn’t end soon and with fairness on all sides, you can mark my words that there will be another along before too long and you’ll be too old to fight in it and I’ll be too old to fight in it but our sons won’t! Your Donal will be of an age. And my Émile. So think on before you say we should just ignore what’s going on.’