laughed at him as he headed back down the street towards the Domain. Relief and excitement flooded them, hearts booming like cannon on the front line.
Tomfool whooped in excitement, for no other reason than to hear his own voice louder than the sound of four pairs of Sunday best boots clattering on the roadway.
‘I’ve been robbed!’ Tomfool called. They laughed louder, sillier, at him. ‘I’ve been robbed!’ he sang out again and again as he dashed along the footpath behind Molly.
‘Tomas! No!’ Joe puffed as sternly as he could. Tomfool stopped cavorting to turn with a devastated look.
‘Maybe later,’ Joe recanted. Tomfool beamed, pushing his tomato and blood-smeared, turned-out pockets back into his trouser legs.
Molly stopped dead.
‘Come back here, Micky Doyle!’ she called, without looking.
Tomfool ran on.
As Molly turned to look for Mick, Tomfool crashed into her, knocking her sideways. Molly ended-up sitting on her rear end in the middle of the footpath in a very unladylike fashion – laughing loudly. Tomas and Joe stopped beside her, bent over and panting. Mick paused, torn, drawn towards the donnybrook but wanting to be with his friends, before he ran, decided, to rejoin them. No pursuers could be seen or heard, only snatches of song wafting up the street. God Save the King and The Red Flag mixed with other lively tunes in a musical duel.
They laughed again.
‘That’ll be your mother for sure,’ Molly said. They all pictured Kathleen O’Donghue, hands on hips, singing it at them like every note was a Mills bomb.
‘It’s like she says,’ Molly panted. ‘The right wing are such blockheads because they don’t have any decent songs. When she starts the Internationale the Loyalists won’t have a hope!’
They laughed even more.
Joe Hill smiled wider than a cracked watermelon, with elation and with … just being alive.
‘There hasn’t been a reaction like that since after the last Referendum vote,’ he puffed. ‘Dad should be pleased. Segeyev was, and Mum too.’
‘Shame we couldn’t have a crack at ‘em, though,’ Mick added, almost ruefully. ‘You wind ‘em up Joe and I’ll knock ‘em over!’
Molly still sat akimbo on the footpath.
‘No, they’ll only be wanting Joe Hill dead!’ Tomas grinned at her.
‘Tomas, you’re a fool,’ Molly said. Her green eyes glinted up at him. ‘A lovely fool but a fool for sure!’ She laughed, her red hair bouncing as she shook her head like a mop with a straight-cut.
Joe couldn’t help but laugh with her, especially now he could see there were only a few red scratches on her cheeks and no deeper gravel wounds.
‘Thought you’d have a bit of a sit-down on the way home, Moll?’ Mick panted.
Molly smiled that smile at him.
‘By the sweet loving Jesus,’ Joe groaned, covering his unbidden utterance with a catch of breath.
‘I was looking at that fellow at the pub,’ she said, nodding towards a blonde-haired soldier at the window. ‘He’s Babushka’s new lodger.’
Mick and Joe gave the bloke a furtive once over. Mick didn’t like what he saw.
‘He’ll fit right in,’ he said, ‘he’s got a head like a boarding house pudding.’
‘I’ve been robbed?’ a voice whined. Tomfool pulled at Joe’s sleeve and pointed across the street to the crowd of men milling around the doors of the pub for the six o’clock swill.
‘I’ve been robbed?’ Tomfool asked again.
‘Why not play it? For divilment!’ Molly suggested, her eyes aglitter.
‘Tweak a few noses,’ Mick agreed. They both still simmered like a kettle just off the boil. Only Joe was reluctant.
‘Come on, cobber,’ Mick remonstrated. ‘You’ve had your say today, but we haven’t. I’ll do it if you don’t want to!’
Joe glanced around their eager faces.
‘All right, then,’ he agreed, though he knew it would detract from his triumph.
But that look in her eyes. Her hair. Her dress. Her smile.
‘As long as you three play it. I’m tired.’
All of them nodded.
‘Right-oh,’ Mick ordered. Get on with you, Tomas!’
Tomfool jumped like a scalded cat, flying across the road, he ran helter-skelter, pulling his trouser pockets out as he fled.
‘Help!’ he yelled. ‘Help, I’ve been robbed!’ he wailed. His voice was truly desperate, close to tears. Pedestrians stopped to gawk. A woman, out for an afternoon stroll with her bloke, crossed the street. The crowd from near the pub followed. Tomfool ran on until he stood on the footpath in front of the building beyond the pub. He pulled at his turned out pockets like they were rabbits’ ears, all the while wailing at the top of his lungs,
‘I’ve been robbed!’ Tears of real distress stained his cheeks.
‘Righto!’ Mick nodded. They all ran across the street to join the crowd, tut-tutting and fretting over Tomas. Mick jumped up onto the stairs of the building.
‘That’s right ladies and gentlemen, he’s been robbed,’ Mick yelled. Tomfool smiled slyly. With all the crowd’s attention drawn to the new speaker he slowly withdrew to stand at the back with Molly and Joe.
‘But so have I!’ Mick turned out his own pockets. ‘And so have you. We’ve all been robbed, my friends. We’ve been robbed by the Capitalist system that turns us into slaves.’ The faces in the crowd turned from concern, to puzzlement, to laughter or, in a couple of cases, anger, as they twigged to what was going on. Mick hustled them along.
‘The Capitalists take our toil and turn it into huge profit and what do we get in return? A pittance. Ladies and Gentleman as the fat pigs …’
A burly bloke in a navvie’s singlet, the sort who at first glance you would expect to be a member of the Movement, stood unsteadily.
‘What would you know, you white-anting whelp? You’re still wet behind the ears. Join the Army and fight for your bloody King. That’ll make a man out of you!’
But Mick was not to be undone.
‘That’s just what the bosses want you to think,’ he began, but again the burly bloke interjected.
‘You know buggar-all about nothing! My brother…’ he yelled at Mick, his words slurred, spittle flying like shrapnel. But he was too much for Molly.
‘Well, you know buggar-all about anything
