Strumpet City (18 page)

‘I’ll do that, Father.’

Father O’Connor thought Keever looked uneasy.

‘Do you not agree?’

‘Certainly, Father, of course,’ Keever said.

‘Very well. Let me have the list as soon as you can.’

There was a large press in Father O’Connor’s bedroom, which was quite empty. He decided that tins of cocoa would be easiest to store and more nourishing than tea. Sugar and tins of milk would be no problem. He ordered these in quantity. While he was at it he decided to stock in some blankets. They would be cheaper now that summer was coming and could be held against the winter. He found room for these in the press also. Drawing the money by cheque, visiting shops, consulting with the two prefects, kept him busy and contented. They spent three evenings in the room behind the vestry making up parcels. Each contained a packet of flour, a tin of cocoa and a tin of milk. It was good to work so humbly for others.

The rumours of disagreement between Sexton and Larkin persisted. Fitz was certain that sooner or later the Liverpool Executive would stop their strike pay.

‘Isn’t Larkin collecting in Cork?’ Joe pointed out.

‘I’d feel happier with a little cash in reserve, just the same,’ Fitz said.

They were resting on a piece of waste ground near the river, a favourite site for games of pitch and toss. Nettles and weeds wrestled for possession of the few feet of soil. A mane of grass, reaching upwards through the broken bottom of an upturned bucket, had the gloss of health.

‘If you need it badly I can lay hands on a couple of pounds for you,’ Pat offered.

‘Where?’

‘From Lily.’

‘The fancy woman,’ Joe put in.

‘It’s my own money,’ Pat added, ignoring him. ‘She’s minding four pounds for me.’

Joe looked up at the blue sky and joined his hands across his belly.

‘Minding it for him,’ he said, addressing his scepticism directly to God.

‘When do you want it?’ Pat asked Fitz.

Joe remained in isolated communion with the Powers above him.

‘There’s no great hurry,’ Fitz said.

The Angelus bell sounded from a nearby church. When they had taken off their hats and crossed themselves Joe asked:

‘Did you hear it was the curate in St. Brigid’s advised Keever to carry on?’

‘I didn’t hear that,’ Fitz admitted.

‘We’re a priest-ridden race,’ Pat declared, ‘but we’ll get rid of them.’

‘When?’ Joe asked.

‘When we organise and establish a Workers’ Republic.’

‘With Lily Maxwell in the chair.’

‘Leave Lily Maxwell alone.’

‘That’s what you should do,’ Joe said, goading him.

‘You’ll have your money tomorrow,’ Pat assured Fitz.

But though he tried throughout the week to find Lily she seemed to have disappeared. There was no answer when he knocked at her room. Maisie, when he met her, said she had no idea where Lily could be. He met her again and was told the same thing. The second time he got the impression that she was lying.

Chandlers Court looked out on the summer evenings and waited for whatever might choose to happen. There was a tension in the streets, a promise of action which seemed each day to be on the point of materialising, but which never did. The weather, mercifully, made heating unnecessary, but fires were still needed for cooking. In No. 3 a communal system helped the economy. They pooled their resources and took it in turns to use each other’s fireplace. Mary began to know the lives of those about her. The Mulhalls lived best. They had a table with a cover, good chairs, a dresser well stocked with crockery. Mrs. Mulhall was a woman who polished and scrubbed. The Bartleys below were clean people too, but the room was poorly equipped because Mr. Bartley never seemed to be able to find anything except casual work. The little boy at whose bed Father Giffley had watched some years before was now a messenger with one of the grocery shops. He earned half a crown a week, which helped to pay the rent. Most of all she hated going to the Hennessys, who were desperately poor. They drank out of tins and jamjars and spread covering on the floors at night for their numerous children.

The first ten families listed by Keever received their food parcels with gratitude. They were all, in one way or another, intimates of his. With the second ten he ran into trouble. After an evening of successive calls he returned to Father O’Connor. Hegarty and he placed the parcels on the table.

‘What’s this?’ Father O’Connor asked.

‘We had trouble,’ Keever said.

‘They refused to take the parcels,’ Hegarty explained.

‘They refused . . .’

‘They called me a scab,’ Keever said.

‘And they didn’t leave your name altogether out of it either, Father,’ Hegarty added.

Father O’Connor flushed deeply. ‘All of them refused?’

‘Every one of them.’

‘In one of the houses they tried to empty water over us from the windows.’

‘Blackguardism,’ Father O’Connor said.

‘It’s Larkin and the union, Father. They’re boycotting Keever and myself.’

‘I see,’ Father O’Connor said. He had betrayed anger. That was a mistake. He should be calm. He should receive the information as though it was of no importance.

‘Well—leave the parcels back in the press. Tomorrow evening we’ll have a committee meeting.’

But the next evening only Keever and Hegarty and one very old man turned up.

‘If you’d send someone else with the parcels they’d take them,’ Keever suggested. He was humble. It would not matter to him.

‘Certainly not,’ Father O’Connor decided. ‘We are not going to be dictated to.’

The parcels remained in the press. He owed a duty to Keever. More important still, he owed a duty to himself. Or, rather, to his cloth and the Church which had been offered a blackguardly insult. It was an indication of the evil disposition which was gaining ground, even among the lowly and illiterate.

Rashers had his own campaign to fight in the daily battle to survive and he fought it with his own weapons. Circumstances were making it more than usually difficult. The city was either curtailing its charity in the belief that that would kill the new tendency among its lower orders to strike and perhaps do worse, or reserving its coppers for the collecting boxes of the locked-out men. It was a new partisanship which left no place for Rashers. The idea of cashing in on this sympathy occurred to him, and he got as far as painting the words ‘Help the Lock-Out’ on the side of a home-made box. But while he waited for the lettering to dry he changed his mind. It would be wrong, his conscience suggested, and he gave in to its reproaches. The idea of writing a ballad about the strikes seemed better and more honest. Hennessy found him sitting on the steps one afternoon, already at work on it. He had the first two lines on the back of a cigarette packet, but its composition was a laborious process. He welcomed the interruption.

‘Is Fitzpatrick above?’ Hennessy asked.

‘He went out about twenty minutes ago,’ Rashers said.

‘That’s most unfortunate,’ Hennessy remarked. The cigarette packet intrigued him.

‘What’s the writing about?’

‘It’s a ballad about the strike.’

Rashers handed him the packet. Hennessy, screwing up his eyes, read:

‘Come all ye gallant Dublin crew and listen to my song

Of working men and women too who fight the cruel wrong.’

‘What comes after that?’

‘Damn the bit of me knows,’ Rashers confessed, ‘it has me puckered.’

‘What are you going to do with it?’

‘Sing it at meetings and outside public houses.’

‘In the hope of making a few coppers?’

‘What else?’

‘Not a chance now,’ Hennessy said.

‘Why not?’

‘The tide has gone out, oul skin. That’s why Mulhall sent me looking for Fitzpatrick.’ Hennessy handed back the cigarette packet.

‘The Liverpool Executive stopped the strike pay this morning.’

Fitz was already down at the committee rooms, where Mulhall had been waiting in the hope of seeing him. The doors were still closed and the crowd grew as they talked. Men who would not normally have come until later in the evening arrived early because the story of the stoppage of the relief money had spread from street to street. There were carters, shipping workers, a number of hands from factories that had become involved in the spread of the stoppages. The rumour went that there would be no money at all. Mulhall was more optimistic.

‘Larkin collected in Cork,’ he said, ‘and as well as that the committee built up a relief fund through the collection boxes. There’s bound to be something.’

‘It’ll want to be a lot,’ Fitz said, looking at the crowd, ‘to go anywhere among this mob.’

Joe joined them and after an hour Pat came along.

‘Trouble in our native land,’ he said.

‘The strike pay has been stopped,’ Fitz confirmed. There was still no sign of the doors being opened, so they moved over to the river wall. Down towards the sea, on the South Wall, cranes swivelled above ships.

‘It’s at times like this I wish I was a docker,’ Fitz said.

‘Or a sailor,’ Pat said. ‘Plenty of money and a wife in every port.’

Joe, who had been brooding about the matter on and off, saw his opportunity and said:

‘What about the four pounds you left with Lily Maxwell?’

Mulhall looked mildly curious. Fitz, glancing quickly at Pat’s face, knew that Joe had gone too far. It was one of those things which should never have been said.

‘I haven’t been able to see her,’ Pat said. Joe began to explain to Mulhall.

‘Imagine giving four pounds to mind to a . . .’

But Fitz, his tone sharp and violently angry, cut him short.

‘Give it a rest.’

Pat, who had been leaning on the wall, straightened and faced the three of them.

‘I promised Fitz two pounds of it and he’ll have it. I’ll pick her up.’

‘The girl might need it,’ Fitz said, ‘don’t go trailing her.’

He was sorry for Pat, whose face showed pain and humiliation.

‘There’s no question of trailing her,’ Pat said, ‘the girl never wronged me of a penny piece. You’ll have two pounds tonight.’

He left them abruptly. Mulhall looked after him and then asked: ‘What’s the matter with him?’

‘His sweetheart let him down,’ Joe said, beginning to laugh.

‘Give it over, I told you,’ Fitz said, rounding on him.

They went back to the hall and found it open, but the crowd outside seemed as dense as before. Someone Mulhall knew said: ‘They’re paying out inside.’

‘What’s the damage?’

‘It’s reduced to five bob.’

‘Better than nothing.’ Mulhall remarked. He began to elbow his way in. Fitz and Joe followed. Inside they produced their cards to the first man of three sitting at a table. With a shock Fitz realised that he was looking at Jim Larkin.

He was bigger than Fitz had imagined him and was smoking a black cheroot. The thumb of his left hand was stuck into the docker’s belt which he wore loosely about his waist. The man next to him made a quick entry in a book, the third man counted out five single shillings and handed them to Fitz, together with a printed notice which said:

‘Meeting This Evening At Parnell Square 5 p.m. sharp.

Jim Larkin Will Speak

Scabs Arriving

Muster For Action

Unity Is Strength’

They reached the sunlight again.

‘It was Jim Larkin,’ Fitz said. The encounter had excited him. It was as though he had just seen personalised all the slogans and half-conceived ideas that had been the common currency of the past two months. Mulhall, more experienced in such matters, found it less remarkable.

‘How’s the time?’

‘I’ve no notion.’

They walked together towards the city centre to consult the public clocks. It was half past four. All three were more or less hungry, yet they passed the bread shops and walked across restaurant gratings and were unaware for the moment of their drifting odours.

‘What’s that about scabs arriving?’ Joe asked, looking again at the badly printed notice.

‘That’s more of their dirty play.’

‘They did it in Belfast, didn’t they?’ Mulhall reminded them.

They went on towards the square, where they found a few men with banners building a temporary platform against the ornamental railings. Four or five hundred men were spread about in loose groups, waiting. From the windows of Vaughan’s Hotel guests were watching curiously.

‘Anyone a cigarette?’ Fitz asked.

Men were still arriving and the scattered groups began to move forward into a mass. After a while Fitz found himself hemmed in on either side and then, quite suddenly it seemed, the pressure of people jammed his shoulder tight against Mulhall’s. He looked towards the platform and saw that Larkin had mounted it. He began to address them.

At first the accent was strange. Part Liverpool, part Irish, it produced immediate silence. The voice, flung back again from the high housefronts on the other side of the road, was the strongest Fitz had ever heard. From time to time the hands moved with an eloquence of their own. The strike pay had been withdrawn, he was saying, because the British Executive were indifferent to the sufferings of people in Dublin. For two months they had given them half-hearted support and now, the fight was proving too big. The Executive were afraid. It was laughable, he said, that trade union leaders with the broad waters of the Irish Sea between them and the field of action should be afraid, while the Dublin trade unionists were still full of courage and fighting fit. If they intended to withhold strike pay why was it not done at the beginning, before men had sacrificed themselves and their families throughout two long and bitter months?

They answered with a cheer. Fitz found himself joining in. He saw Larkin’s hand upheld for silence and stopped. They were going to carry on, Larkin continued, with or without money. A sum had been collected which would keep them going for a while. The weekly payment would be even less than in the past, but they must see themselves as soldiers in the field, holding a position against odds, surrounded and cut off and ready to continue on short rations. He had information that a shipload of free labourers would arrive at the South Wall that evening. The answer to that would be to call out the dockers. He intended to address meetings on the South and the North Wall and hoped to bring work there to a standstill. In that way they would close the port of Dublin. The Government might then take a hand in persuading the employers to see reason.