Strumpet City (44 page)

The rain increased until his clothes clung so tightly against his body that it was hard to walk. All their spite hung over him, trapped between rain-soaked houses, leaking roofs, gutter gurgling, wind-tormented streets. As he walked he looked about for shelter, passing door after door endlessly, until above gas-lit windows and frames of blackened paint he saw, reading laboriously through the rain: ‘Choice Wines James Gill & Son, And Spirits’. And went in.

He had never been in a public house before and hesitated to find his bearings. The floor was bare wood, covered with a layer of sawdust. Three gas-lamps suspended in a row from the ceiling lit it. At the far end a group of men were in conversation. The man behind the counter had noticed him and stood transfixed with shock.

‘A glass of whiskey,’ Father Giffley said.

The man recovered a little and said: ‘Certainly, Father.’

He went away.

Father Giffley examined the fittings behind the bar. There was an oval mirror, with the words ‘Three Swallow Potstill Whiskey’ encircling it. From the middle of the oval his face looked back at him. The grey locks of hair were flattened about it by the rain. His clerical collar looked ridiculous. When the barman brought the whiskey he leaned forward and suggested:

‘There’s a snug at the back, Father.’

‘Snug? I don’t understand. Snug?’

‘A private room.’

‘Leave it there,’ Father Giffley insisted. The barman left the whiskey on the counter.

‘Certainly, Father.’

‘Bejaysus,’ one of the men told the group, ‘but it put the wind up me.’

‘Why didn’t you clatter it?’

‘With what might I ask?’

‘With your belt.’

‘A mad cow coming at me down the gangplank?’ the man asked. ‘Oh no bejaysus—none of that for yours truly.’

The barman moved anxiously towards them.

‘What did you do?’

‘Jumped into the water.’

‘You were right,’ another said. ‘Better a watery grave than a gory end.’

The thought of his friend taking to the water before the charge of an enraged animal amused one of the company so much that he spluttered over his drink and said:

‘Well, Jaysus, Mary and Joseph but that’s a good one.’

The barman with signs and whispered admonishments drew their attention. Then they all turned round and lapsed one by one into silence. One of them said sheepishly:

‘I beg your pardon, Father.’

Father Giffley removed his eyes from the caricature in the mirror and said:

‘Why apologise to me? My name is not Jesus.’

An astonishing thing happened. When he said the name ‘Jesus’ the men automatically raised their hats. That was habit. He had said the Name. Not at all the same thing as swearing with It. What were they? Dockers, cattle-drovers, seamen back home from voyaging? Dublinmen anyway. The raising of the hats proved it.

He looked again at the caricature; the oval advertisement, the grey, drowned locks, the priestly collar, aware as he did so of the unease which his presence was causing. He was a Catholic priest in a public bar. He was giving scandal. That could be put right.

‘I was caught by the rain,’ he explained, ‘don’t let me disturb you.’

After a moment one of them, more courageous than the rest, said heartily. ‘Divil the disturb, Father.’

Then he called to the barman:

‘Why don’t you offer a towel to his reverence. He’s soaked to the skin.’

But Father Giffley held up his hand and forbade it.

‘This is the best towel of them all,’ he said, finishing the whiskey. ‘And now,’ he added, ‘give me another for my journey, so that I won’t take pneumonia. And give the men here whatever they fancy.’

They protested, but he insisted. They had a consultation of some sort while they waited for the drinks. At the end one man left. Then the drinks came and they vied with each other to be agreeable to him, saying what a terrible evening it was and how easy it would be to take a sickness out of such a wetting and how wise he had been to take the right kind of precaution. They told him they were dockers. He noticed the buttons in their coats.

‘Followers of Mr. Larkin, I see,’ he remarked. They said they were. Then, to their surprise he said firmly: ‘You do right.’

At that moment the door opened and the man who had left earlier reappeared. He was now almost as wet as Father Giffley.

‘Did you get it?’ they asked him.

‘It’s outside the door,’ he said.

‘What’s this?’ Father Giffley asked.

‘He went to find you a cab, Father, it’ll save you another drenching.’

For the first time in several lonely years someone had done him a kindness. Father Giffley was moved.

‘I am extremely obliged and grateful.’

‘For nothing, Father,’ the men assured him, ‘you’re more than welcome.’

They saw him to the cab, which brought him home to a warm bath and a change of clothes. That was why he had taken the unusual course of using the general sitting room. His jacket and trousers were drying at the fire in his own room.

‘I think my presence here made Father O’Connor uneasy,’ he said.

‘He always retires early when he has the early mass,’ Father O’Sullivan explained.

‘That is not what I meant. He forgot this.’

Father Giffley rose and picked up Yearling’s letter from the arm of the chair that Father O’Connor had been using. He took it back to his own chair with him; then, holding it up, he asked: ‘His Kingstown friends—do you think?’

Father O’Sullivan avoided reply by rising to put the whiskey bottle back in the press.

‘Leave it where it is,’ Father Giffley commanded sharply.

‘I am sorry,’ Father O’Sullivan said. ‘I thought you were going to bed.’

‘We’ll see what his friends have to say first,’ Father Giffley said. ‘Listen.’

As he deliberately opened the letter Father O’Sullivan advanced quickly towards him and said: ‘Please—I beg you not to.’

Father Giffley looked up at him. ‘You will sit down, John. Over there, opposite me. Do as I tell you.’

Knowing there would be a scene if he refused, Father O’Sullivan did so. As the other read the letter aloud, deliberating on it sentence by sentence, he gripped the arms of his chair and strove to keep the horror from his face. Opposition of any kind would precipitate a storm. His parish priest, he realised, was very near to madness.

In the morning, when Father O’Connor and Father O’Sullivan were at breakfast, Father Giffley joined them briefly. He took the letter from his pocket and pushed it towards Father O’Connor.

‘Your property, I believe.’

Father O’Connor stared at the pages; Father O’Sullivan lowered the cup he had been raising to his lips.

‘I am sorry your friend finds difficulty with the doctrine of the Fall,’ Father Giffley said, ‘his sympathies otherwise are admirable.’

He turned to Father O’Sullivan. The skin of his face was blotched and taut, a pulse beat in the black vein which showed as a knot in his left temple.

‘Of France I know very little,’ he continued, ‘but Darwin, I believe, holds that we are descended from the apes. Isn’t that so, John?’

Father O’Sullivan remained frozen, with nothing at all to say, until at last Father Giffley turned away from him and went to the door, where he paused and said generally:

‘It is possible—I think it eminently possible.’

The door closed. They looked at each other.

‘He read it,’ Father O’Connor said, ‘he read my letter.’

‘The man is not well.’

‘My private correspondence—how dare he!’

‘He’s become very odd. You must try to understand him.’

‘I understand him very well,’ Father O’Connor said.

‘Father Giffley is sick.’

Father O’Connor rose angrily and pushed back his chair.

‘A drunkard,’ he said, ‘who hates me.’

He had almost reached the door when Father O’Sullivan’s quiet voice stopped him. ‘Your letter, Father.’

Once again he had forgotten it. It lay on the tablecloth where Father Giffley had thrown it. This second oversight embarrassed him. He put the letter in his pocket without thanking Father O’Sullivan.

‘I am beginning to consider seriously what I should do,’ he said.

‘Forgive him,’ Father O’Sullivan suggested gently.

‘It is no longer a question of forgiveness only,’ Father O’Connor said bitterly. ‘There are other considerations.’

He closed the door.

C
HAPTER
E
IGHT

It was raining. Mulhall, taking his breakfast by candlelight, heard the sprinkling of drops against the window as he ate.

‘Is it bad?’ he asked.

His wife went over to peer out. In windows down the length of Chandlers Court the light of candles wavered above a pitch black street. A squall rattled the window pane as she looked, taking her by surprise.

‘It’ll be bad enough,’ she said.

He filled his pipe, feeling the cold of the morning in his fingers. It would be two hours to the first of the light and by that time he would have the horse yoked and the cart loaded for the first delivery of the day.

‘Wear the sack about your shoulders,’ she advised him.

She was now on her knees in front of the fire, preparing to light it.

He puffed at his pipe.

‘Call Willie,’ she said, busy.

‘In a minute.’

He was thinking of the day ahead; yoking up, driving through wintry streets, hoisting wet sacks and labouring up and down stairs with them. He was in no humour.

‘There are times,’ he said, ‘when I think Hennessy above has more sense than any of us. He only works when the weather is fine.’

‘Call Willie for me, like a good man,’ she urged.

‘It’s too early to call him.’

‘No it isn’t,’ she said. ‘He wants to practise for half an hour before he goes out.’

‘Wouldn’t you think he had enough of it last night?’ he grumbled.

He took the candle and went into the small room at the back. His son was deeply asleep. On a chair beside the bed was the music he had been practising the night before. On top of the music lay his fife.

‘Willie,’ he called.

There was no stir. He leaned down until the candle lit up the sleeping form. The boy was nineteen now, tall. If all went well he would be as big in the body as well. He shook him by the shoulder.

‘Get up. The fire is lit and your breakfast is ready.’

The boy sat up, shaking his head to get rid of the sleep.

‘Playing that damn thing all night—and then not able to stir in the morning,’ Mulhall grumbled to his wife when he came back to the main room.

‘He’s anxious about the competition,’ she said.

It was to be held in the Queen’s Theatre that night—a Grand Fife and Drum Band Competition. They were going together to it. She would have her husband’s navy serge suit laid out airing for him when he came home, so that he could change quickly. She herself would wear her best dress, and in addition Mrs. Fitzpatrick might have something nice to lend her. They were friendly and she would call over during the course of the morning to enquire. The thought made her happy.

‘Be home early,’ she told him, ‘it’s not often we get out together.’

He pinned the sack about his shoulders and took his lunch parcel from the table.

‘Have you everything?’

She had asked the same question every morning of their lives—on weekdays as he went out to work, on Sundays when he made ready for mass. As he settled his cap on his head he smiled at her and said: ‘When me hat is on, me house is thatched.’

But as he went down the steps his moment of good humour left him. He was dispirited and reluctant to face the day, and wondered if he was starting a cold. The hall smelled dankly; on the steps the wind lifted up the sack so that he had to take his hands from his pockets to hold the ends in position. He bent his head against the rain and went down into the street. There were footsteps in the darkness ahead of him and behind him, echoing with the lonely sound of early morning. They were his mates and fellow-workers, a multitude moving through a dark dawn to earn their bread. In all the meaner streets of the city they were turning out to face the winter day.

In Brunswick Street, where the lighting was better, and he could see as well as hear the hurrying figures, a placard outside the Queen’s Theatre announced the evening’s attraction:

‘Tonight

Grand Fife & Drum

Band Con . . .’

That was as much as he could read. Rain had loosened the lower portion, which made a flapping noise in the wind. Was it ‘concert’ or ‘contest’? Not that it mattered. The tickets were at home and he knew all about it. No wonder, with Willie practising night after night for a full week.

Further down the street the Antient Concert Rooms promised music of a different kind. Holding the sack ends across his chest like a cloak he stopped to read:

‘Tonight (Friday) 13th December 1912

Dublin Philharmonic Society

Hymn of Praise

Athalie

(Mendelssohn)

Conductor Charles G. Marchant Mus.D.

Madame Nora Bonel

Miss Edith Mortier (Feis Gold Medallist)

J. J. Maltby (Principal Tenor, Chester Cathedral)

Full Band and Chorus

Prices: Reserved & Numbered seats 4s.

Balcony 2s.

Area 1s.

Booking at Cramer’s, Westmoreland Street’

Swanky stuff. Women in white and men in evening dress, reading the words out of books. He had seen them once, though not in full regalia, when he went in during a rehearsal to ask about delivering a load of coal. He had stood at the back, wondering whom to approach, while the voices of the chorus and the orchestra filled the hall with music. That was not in the Antient Concert Rooms, but in a hall attached to a convent school. A nun told him to sit and wait until the interval, but he felt self-conscious and slipped out again when she left him. Despite the convent, he felt they were a very Protestant-looking crowd.

A cold wind raked the quayside, driving the rain in squalls. Above the loading yard the windows of Mr. Doggett’s office and those flanking it were blank. It was too raw and early as yet for the owner and his henchmen. The air in the stables, comfortingly warm, smelled strongly of horse urine. The stableman greeted him. He was tossing hay by the light of a paraffin lamp, a shadowy presence in its inadequate glow.