Strumpet City (35 page)

‘I spoke loudly. I am sorry.’

‘That look on your face. It comes quite often. I saw it earlier today. Shall I tell you when?’

Goaded beyond endurance by the tone, Father O’Connor said: ‘I am not here to be insulted.’

Father Giffley rose from his chair and left down his glass with a bang.

‘This morning,’ he continued, his hands clasped behind him, his head inclined pugnaciously towards Father O’Connor, ‘I watched you distributing holy communion. The old men, and the young men too, thronged to the altar rails—in this parish they always have on sodality Sunday. You were distributing holy communion. It had been raining. Nothing unusual in that, of course. It is never done raining in the parish of St. Brigid. You have probably had time to notice that—in between your visits to Kingstown. The rain makes them smell quite badly. And when they are packed together, row on row, that smell can be more than a little distressing.’

Father Giffley took his hands from behind his back and leaned his weight on the table.

‘You were faced with a line of assorted tongues, all thrust forward to receive the Body of our Lord from your hands. You kept as far off as possible from the assorted breaths they were exhaling at you. And in all my days I have never seen a priest’s face that wore such a look of loathing and disgust.’

‘It’s a lie,’ Father O’Connor shouted. The denial broke from him before he could attempt to control it. The sound of his voice reverberating through the room shocked him. He trembled as Father Giffley resumed his seat by the fire. Then, with a feeling of loneliness and despair which reduced him almost to tears, he added:

‘I can only assume that you have already had too much whiskey to drink. It will ruin you. If you do not respect yourself I cannot expect you to respect me.’

Father Giffley was unmoved. He folded his arms and gave his attention entirely to the fire. It burned clearly and brightly. In it were coloured scenes of ethereal beauty. In it were no dead born babies, no lice-infested heads, no worn-out creatures, no malformed bodies. Soul and imagination could wander down its galleries for ever, in peace, in contemplation without end.

He heard the door close. He did not associate it with Father O’Connor leaving. Already, it seemed to him, Father O’Connor had left a long time ago.

Rashers went back once more among the old women and the children who searched the dustbins. There was nothing much to be got elsewhere. A dock strike spread and involved the railway workers; there was a partial stoppage in the timber trade. Throughout the city, jobs closed, men picketed, homes went short of food and firing. Among themselves the poor had nothing to spare. At night Rashers played his tin whistle for the theatre queues. Everywhere the competition proved formidable. A man with a barrel-organ and a monkey was a frequent rival. Another pair, with fiddle and full-size harp, outdid him in both sound and spectacle. There was an unusual number of casuals, from broken-voiced ballad-singers to outright beggars wheedling for the price of a cup of tea and a night’s lodging.

Often enough he lost heart. His limp had grown worse, his chest constantly gave him trouble.

‘Why don’t you go round and apologise to Father O’Connor?’ Hennessy urged him more than once throughout the long winter.

‘Because Rashers Tierney isn’t that class of a man,’ he always answered.

‘After all—he’s a priest.’

‘If he is he shouldn’t want an apology.’

‘And what should he do?’

‘He should turn the other cheek.’

Hennessy, with a grunt of impatience, sat down beside him.

‘Ah—talk sense.’

‘Sense be damned.’

Finding him immovable, Hennessy offered a cigarette. They smoked and watched the children swinging about a lamp-post on the opposite pavement.

‘You’re a stubborn and cantankerous bloody oul oddity,’ Hennessy decided.

Rashers shrugged the rebuke away. His job was filled. Apologising would get him nowhere. Never again would he go next or near St. Brigid’s. Mass was available elsewhere; God and His Blessed Mother and St. Joseph and St. Anthony and anyone else he cared to address a prayer to would listen to him without asking Father O’Connor’s permission. That was one good thing about religion. No one owned it. No one could put a wall around it and lock the gate on you. If he was sorry for his sins God would smile and say, ‘Come on in, Rashers—I knew your knock.’ If he was not, all the Father O’Connors in the world could do nothing to put him back into favour.

‘I’ll creep in through a little hole or behind the little children,’ Rashers said aloud.

He screwed up his face defiantly.

Hennessy, wondering what he was wandering in his mind about, looked at him but said nothing. For once he was incurious, his thoughts returning to his own plight. Another of his temporary jobs had come to an end. There were too many idle men now to compete for what might be left. Like Rashers, he stood little chance in open competition. Unlike Rashers, his accomplishments did not include a command of the tin whistle. He sighed and said:

‘One of the chisellers is sick.’

‘Which of them?’

‘The second youngest. It’s some class of a bowel complaint. I’d like to get a bit of decent nourishment for her.’

‘The poor little morsel,’ Rashers said.

‘But with all the strikes, it’s hard to know where to turn to earn a crust.’

‘It always was,’ Rashers agreed, ‘in this glorified kip of a city.’

They both fell silent again.

C
HAPTER
F
IVE

It was summer when Mulhall left prison. He had to stand for some moments to adjust himself to the space and noise of the early-morning streets. Even the sunlight seemed loud. Then he began to head towards the centre of the city, where the crowded pavements bewildered him, until he remembered again that he was a leader among all the people. He had been in gaol for them. He would be in gaol again. He squared his shoulders when the floats and carts rattled past him. While he had been in gaol for them they had not let him down. The dockers had tied up the port rather than work with non-union labour. The Viceroy had invited Larkin to Dublin Castle to discuss ways and means of settling with the men. That was a new measure of recognition. Now the railway men were on strike in sympathy with their comrades in England.

Mulhall saluted the pickets as he passed and was saluted in turn. They knew him as a leader too. These were part of his great army, an army that would grow and grow until wealth and eminence would bow to its banners. There would be no more slums, no more rickety children, no more hunger and cold. Because he, and others like him, would refuse to be defeated.

‘I declare to God,’ Rashers said, ‘will you look who’s here?’ Mulhall paused to greet Rashers on the steps. Rusty the dog sniffed at his trouser legs. That, more than anything so far, assured him that he was back in the world again. Mulhall patted the dog.

‘All present and correct,’ he said.

As he went into the house Rashers stared after him. So did the dog.

‘I might do worse than go to gaol myself,’ Rashers said to the dog, ‘but if I did what the hell would happen to you?’

The dog flexed his ears and sat down again. Neither of them had very much to do.

Mulhall found his wife making their son’s bed. She turned round slowly when the door opened. He stood for a moment, waiting for her to overcome her surprise. The room was familiar and yet new. The chairs and the table, the statue and its lamp, the pictures on the wall, seemed to turn with her to regard him.

‘You’re back,’ she said.

‘Like a bad ha’penny.’

She let the blanket fall from her hands and came to him. He embraced her.

‘We missed you, Bernie.’

He knew they had—his wife, his son, the statue and the lamp, the pictures and the furniture. He was a leader in a great army, but he was king also here, in a little world where everything was moulded to serve him.

‘I know,’ he said. While he had been dreaming of conquering a city, they had been lonely for him and wishing him home. He released her and found tears covering her face. It was her way. She cried for sorrow and for joy, a tender, ageing woman easily moved. She wiped her face with her apron as she went over to the stove.

‘I’ll make you a cup of tea.’

That was her answer to every visitation of woe and joy, her response to an unexpected call, the preliminary to all departures.

‘No hurry,’ he said. He was over at the window and looking down at the street. The sight gave him pleasure. It was sunny and quiet. He saw Rashers and the dog turning the corner, two inseparable questors. Then he looked at his pipe-rack. There were four pipes stuck in it, all old, acquired over a lifetime. He kept them clean with methylated spirit which the watchmen in Doggett & Co. saved for him from time to time. He went over and took one down. He was examining it when she came over to give him the plug of tobacco.

‘I’ve a head like a sieve,’ she complained.

‘Where did this come from?’

‘I bought it to keep for when you came out. I knew it’d be the first thing you’d want.’

‘God bless the thought,’ he said. He sat down and began to cut it. As he filled his pipe he asked:

‘And how’s Willie?’

‘He missed you.’

‘Damn the miss,’ he said gruffly, to hide his pleasure. The smell of his tobacco drifted about the room.

‘I’ve a job for Willie,’ he said presently, when they were sitting at table, ‘and that’s to get them messengers and parcel boys organised in the union.’

‘You’ve got thin in the face,’ she said, when she had scrutinised him closely. ‘Did they treat you bad?’

‘I didn’t mind it.’

‘It used to worry me all the time, thinking of you locked in there with rogues and robbers.’

He had known that would worry her. She could not be expected to understand what it had taken himself a long time to find out. There were worse rogues.

‘Gaol isn’t so bad,’ he said, ‘the real criminals are outside.’

After a while he went out again, roaming for an hour or so at will. He walked the docks and saw, piled along the quayside and outside the sheds, the accumulation of goods that the rail workers and the dockers had refused to handle. At the gates of Doggett & Co. some of the carters reined in and greeted him.

‘When are you starting back, Barney?’ they asked him.

‘That’s what I’m here to see about.’

‘If there’s any mullarkey, let’s know.’

They took pains to show him they would stand by him if Doggett made any difficulties. He waved them on and went through the gate, pausing for a moment in the yard as affection stirred in him for the familiar coal-heaps and the black dust which formed odd patterns on the ground. He had worked here a long time and knew every corner of it. He could recognise every horse in an instant and recall its name. Horses, when you worked with them for a long time, he thought, were like any other working mate. Some were lazy and forgetful, some had good humours and bad, some were inexhaustible and patient and long suffering, pulling loads without flinching until the great heart inside them burst.

The timekeeper said Mr. Doggett would see him. He was to wait. They talked about gaol and what it was like. The timekeeper told him of small changes.

‘Who took over my horse?’ Mulhall asked.

‘Gibney,’ the timekeeper said.

‘Gibney is a butcher, not a carter,’ Mulhall said, ‘he’ll pull the mouth off her.’ The timekeeper took a delivery docket off the table and stuck it on a hook behind him, over a key that was numbered fourteen.

‘Who the hell gave her to him?’ Mulhall demanded.

‘You seem to forget,’ the timekeeper said, when he had completed his business, ‘that his nibs Gibney is related to the foreman.’

‘Since when?’

‘Married to the daughter, less than six weeks ago.’ Then, as though Mulhall ought to have known, he added: ‘That’s been going on a long time.’

A clerk came in and said Mr. Doggett would see Mulhall. They went together through the door at the back of the office and up a carpeted staircase. Doggett was standing at the window overlooking the yard. He turned and said to the clerk: ‘You may go.’ Then he sat at his desk.

‘I expect you’ve come for your job back.’

‘I’ve come to find out when do I start,’ Mulhall corrected. There was a difference.

‘And if I say you can’t start?’

‘Why should you say that?’

Doggett paused before answering. He was alert and cool. If what stood before him was simply a man, he could smash him by merely deciding to do so. But he was not confronted by a man. He was face to face with a movement. He did not want Mulhall back. On the other hand, it would not be worth facing a strike to get rid of him. The thought ran through Doggett’s mind that things had changed. Three years ago it would have been a simple matter.

‘I don’t know if you’re aware of it,’ he said, ‘but there is a railway strike and several smaller strikes too. We haven’t the work for a full staff.’

‘No one’s been laid off.’

‘Not yet—but the situation changes day by day.’

‘And what about Gibney?’

‘Gibney?’

‘He’s got my horse and he isn’t a carter at all. He hasn’t twelve months’ service.’

‘And what service had you?’

‘I was jobbed in Mr. Waterville’s time,’ Mulhall said, ‘and that was neither today nor yesterday.’

‘In the meanwhile,’ Doggett suggested quietly, ‘you’ve been in gaol—on a criminal charge.’

Mulhall smiled. They were getting down to brass tacks. He went over to the window and looked down. Three carts had pulled up in a line and were waiting their turn to ride on to the tare scales.

‘Those men below wouldn’t consider it criminal,’ he answered.

Behind his back irritation had brought Doggett to his feet. His workmen did not usually behave so casually in his presence. He mastered his ill humour. There would be a time to put this man back in his place. To do so too obviously now would be a mistake. He went over quietly and they both stood shoulder to shoulder. Below them lay the yard, peaceful in the sunlight. To Doggett it was not unlovely. Anything he had he owed to it. For Mulhall it meant bread and butter and, now that he had been away from it for half a year, something more. It was a familiar plot, as much a part of him as the street he had played in when he was a child, or the school he had gone to for so short a while, or the walks he had walked with his father when he was still small enough to be led by the hand.