Strumpet City (19 page)

The meeting lasted almost an hour. At the end of it Fitz found himself in a column of marching men, headed by Larkin. As they rounded the corner of Parnell Square he looked back. A few hundred men in ranks of four stretched behind. They passed the Rotunda and met the first heavy traffic. Horse-drawn cabs pulled in to one side, trams came to a standstill, people on the footpaths stood to stare. After two months of doubt and idleness to have control of a city street, however briefly, was an exhilarating experience. They strode out strongly, turning left before crossing O’Connell Bridge. They found the approach to the North Quays blocked by a cordon of police in plenty of time to swing confidently to the right and across Butt Bridge, then left again along the approach to the south bank of the river. As they passed the closed gates of the marshalling yards men who had worked in them before the strike cheered derisively. Mulhall pointed out Doggett & Co. to Fitz. The gate was red and the firm’s name stood out on it in white painted letters. About two hundred yards below that they came to a second cordon of police and halted. At a distance behind the police the first gang of dockers were unloading and behind that they could see the masts of ships that were lying to and crane arms swinging backwards and forwards against the skyline.

The police inspector stepped forward and Larkin went over on his own to meet him. In the centre of the few yards of dockside dividing the police from the strikers they parleyed for some minutes. The police were about sixty strong and the strikers, Fitz knew, had drawn too close. Anything would spark off a clash.

‘They won’t let us through,’ Mulhall predicted, while they waited.

‘Not a hope,’ Fitz said.

‘We could burst our way through,’ Joe said.

‘I’m on.’ Mulhall agreed.

‘Better wait and see what Larkin wants to do,’ Fitz advised.

The pressure of body against body in the crowd behind him generated an excitement of itself which was already reckless and dangerous. The police inspector rejoined his column and Larkin returned. For a while nothing happened. Then the police, turning about, withdrew some yards and about-faced again. This time they drew their batons. Larkin pushed through the ranks of the strikers, reached one of the quayside capstans and mounted it. He began to address them.

The police, he said, had closed the quays. They said it was to avoid disturbances but that was not the truth. It was to aid and abet the employers in their plan to import free labour. The Government had made its police force the minions of the employers instead of the servants of all the citizens. The answer to that was to close the port, not for a day or two days, but until such time as the demands of the men on strike had been conceded. He was going to address the dockers, despite employers and governments and police, and he would do so within the hour. Meanwhile he appealed to them to have trust in him and to promise that in his absence their demonstration would continue to be orderly and disciplined. He was helped down from the capstan and struggled towards the back of the crowd.

‘What do we do now?’ Joe asked generally.

‘How is he supposed to talk to the dockers?’ Mulhall wondered, ‘both sides of the river are cordoned off.’

‘He might get through on his own over on the North Bank.’

The men had broken rank and were gathered in a crowd. With Larkin gone there was no longer a focal point. Some of them lined up against the gates of the marshalling yards and shared cigarettes. The police, seeing the situation losing its tension, put away their batons.

‘Come on,’ Mulhall said. Fitz and Joe followed him over to the wall and they stood with their backs to Doggett & Co.’s gate.

‘If there’s a heave we don’t want to end up in the river,’ Mulhall explained, looking over at the unprotected quayside.

There was no sign of any slackening of work along the river. The cranes continued to swing, the rattle of horse-drawn floats and distant shouts mingled and drifted; it was the familiar voice of the riverside. A man who knew Mulhall came across and said:

‘What are we going to do?’

‘We were instructed to wait,’ Mulhall said.

‘Some of the lads at the back want to get on with it.’

‘That’s what I think too,’ Joe said.

‘We could easily break through. What do you say?’ He was speaking to Fitz, who said:

‘I say we should hold tight, but I’m willing to do what Mulhall thinks best.’

Mulhall looked across at the police.

‘We’d break through all right,’ he said, ‘because they’d let us. But you’d find they’ve reserves up every side street. And when they got us between them they’d let us have it.’

‘I don’t think we should be afraid of the police,’ the man objected.

‘There’s your answer,’ Fitz said, pointing towards the police. A second column had approached from behind and was spreading out in formation behind them.

‘That’s what I mean,’ Mulhall said.

A cheer began from behind. At first they thought the men were jeering at the reinforcements, but after a moment they realised that all heads were turning in the direction of the river. They could see nothing because of the crowd in front.

‘Up here,’ Mulhall said, turning to the wall. They climbed up after each other.

Fitz, who reached the top first, shouted ‘Look’ and pointed.

A rowing boat was moving downriver, manned by four oarsmen. Standing in the centre and waving to the men on shore was Larkin. The boat drew level with the police cordon, passed it and went on towards the unloading docks. A detachment of police left the main body and moved down the quayside, keeping pace with it.

Mulhall, deflated, said: ‘They’ll get him when he tries to land.’

But Larkin’s intention came suddenly to Fitz. He gripped Mulhall’s arm tightly and shouted:

‘He won’t land. He’ll speak to them from the boat.’

A hush fell on the crowd and they heard, after what seemed an age, the distant but still recognisable tones. What he was saying was lost, but the effect soon became clear. The nearest crane arm completed its semicircle and remained still. So did the next. Then, at intervals that grew shorter as the word spread from gang to gang, crane after crane became immobilised. They watched in silence as the paralysis spread. Yard by yard and ship by ship, the port was closing down. The cordon of police opened to form a narrow laneway, and through this the first contingent of striking dockers filed to join the demonstrators. Their arrival started a movement in the crowd which spread through it rapidly.

‘Let’s get down,’ Fitz suggested.

‘Stay put,’ Mulhall warned.

The cheering had grown wilder and the movement, reaching the rear, stopped for a moment and then began to surge forward. The front lines moved nearer to the police, hesitated, then surged forward once again. The police, deciding the moment of initiative, drew their batons and charged.

The mass of bodies shuddered as it took the impact, gave ground a little, but held. Fitz, looking down on the swaying bodies, wondered at the foolishness of the police action. Caught on one side by the wall and threatened by the river on the other, the crowd tightened and became impenetrable. There was no room to scatter and therefore no option but to stand firm. Already a number of men had been forced over the quayside into the water. Some of the police, detached from their colleagues, went down and were left behind, while the main body, finding the pressure irresistible, retreated and tried to hold together. The struggle continued back along the quays until the first side street offered a channel of escape, through which men streamed thickly from the main body. Fitz saw the mass thinning, and the police, the pressure at last released, stopping to regroup. Up the road from where they sat were three or four casualties of the charge. He climbed down and walked towards them. One man, with a deep gash along the side of his head, needed help urgently. Fitz turned and called to Mulhall.

‘Have a look at this.’ The man was barely conscious. His shirt and the collar of his coat were stained heavily with blood.

‘Can we lift him?’ Mulhall asked, when he had reached them.

‘I wouldn’t like to.’

‘There’s a stretcher in the first-aid room back in Doggett’s,’ Mulhall remembered.

‘I’ll go with you,’ Joe offered.

‘Will there be someone there?’

‘There’s bound to be a watchman,’ Mulhall said. It seemed the best thing. Doggett’s was only a short distance away. Fitz agreed.

‘Does he know how to use the telephone?’

‘I imagine so.’

‘Get him to call the ambulance while you’re there.’

When they had gone he lifted the injured man gently so that his arm made a rest for his head. It helped to slow down the flow of blood. Beyond that there was little he could do. The area immediately around them was deserted, but further along the riverside men still hung around in groups. Fitz, wondering uneasily where the police had got to, wished that Joe and Mulhall would hurry. The man in his arms was unconscious and breathing heavily, the wound was open and ugly, about him the painted gateways and dusty cobbles wore an air of brooding menace. He looked behind him and there was no sign of help.

‘Mulhall,’ he shouted, hardly knowing why. There was no answer. The injured man began to moan. It seemed to Fitz that the others had been gone for an hour. His arm under the head began to ache unbearably, the evening light bathed the cobbles about him with an oppressive light that seemed to press on him physically. At last he caught sight of Mulhall and Joe. They moved towards him for a short distance and stopped. He waved his free arm at them to hurry, but they signalled wildly to him and shouted. He looked downriver again and froze. The isolated groups had formed into a crowd again and were racing towards him. It was another baton charge, this time with the police in control. He heard Mulhall shouting to him to run, but the head on his arm, helpless and bloody, held him fixed where he was. He hugged the injured man tighter, until the bedlam of legs and bodies milled about him on all sides, cutting out the light, tripping over him, throwing him to the ground with his broken burden now lying beneath him. A heavily booted foot caught him on the forehead as it passed and he lost consciousness.

He woke up again in the timekeeper’s office of Doggett & Co. There were keys about the wall, each with a number chalked beneath its hook. Mulhall and Joe were drinking tea with the watchman.

‘We’ve been keeping an eye on you,’ Mulhall said, when he sat up. Fitz felt his head.

‘Don’t mind the bandage,’ Mulhall reassured him, ‘the ambulance man said you’d be as right as rain.’

Fitz remembered. ‘Where’s the other chap?’

‘They carted him off with them,’ Joe said.

‘Is he bad?’

‘Fractured skull—they think. You probably saved his life.’

‘Give me a cup of that,’ Fitz asked. Mulhall took a can from a gas ring in the corner and poured.

‘We were keeping it hot for you,’ he said. He grinned at Fitz, a kindly and approving grin that made Fitz feel happy. He sipped the tea. He realised as he did so that he was ravenously hungry.

Pat searched for Lily until the heat of airless streets brought him to a standstill. He leaned against a lamp-post and wondered what likely place was left. He had stood on the narrow landing outside her room for almost an hour, thinking she must surely return for a meal. He heard the Angelus bell striking and nodded to other occupants as they passed up and down the uncarpeted stairs until it became embarrassing to be seen standing so long in the same place. He went out again into the streets, tried the pubs and the usual shops all over again and met Maisie for the second time that evening. She treated him this time like a harmless lunatic.

‘There’s no sign of Lily anywhere,’ he reported.

‘Maybe she’s gone off with a soldier,’ Maisie said, laughing at him.

‘I want to see her urgently.’

‘You must be in a bad way,’ Maisie sympathised, ‘and it only half past six of a summer’s evening.’

‘Do you know where she is?’

‘I know where you’ll find as good as her.’

‘It’s important, Maisie,’ Pat appealed.

‘I haven’t seen sight nor light of her,’ Maisie said, ‘and that’s the gospel truth.’

She was lying. He was convinced of it. Lily, for whatever reason, was avoiding him.

Hunger and thirst made him wish now that he had waited to see if there was any strike pay. The thought that Lily did not want to see him began as a puzzling suspicion and became a gnawing pain. They had been warm to each other for so long.

He decided to abandon the search for the moment. His immediate need was a drink. He set off purposefully until he reached a shop with three brass balls hanging outside it.

‘Are we doing business, Patrick?’ Mr. Donegan said pleasantly. He had been writing in his accounts book. Pat removed his jacket.

‘This,’ he said putting it on the counter.

Mr. Donegan adjusted his glasses and held it up to examine it.

‘Your coat?’ he questioned.

‘How much?’ Pat asked.

‘How much did you want?’

‘Half a crown.’

Mr. Donegan made a clicking noise with his tongue. Pat was well known to him, a regular and reliable client. But he liked to make a business point.

‘It’s not worth half that,’ he said.

‘Two shillings,’ Pat compromised.

Mr. Donegan wrote a docket and handed him half a crown.

‘We’ll leave it the half-crown,’ he said easily. ‘Any sign of the work resuming?’

‘Not yet,’ Pat said, ‘but I’ll be back to you, whether or aye.’

‘Of course you will,’ Mr. Donegan said. A thought occurred to him. ‘Anything in the pockets?’ He ran his hands through them absentmindedly.

‘You might find a few holes,’

‘For ventilation,’ Mr. Donegan smiled. Then he frowned. ‘Don’t go getting drunk. There’s no nourishment in porter.’

‘There’s other things in porter,’ Pat suggested.

‘No’, Mr. Donegan denied. ‘Drink, like women, is a snare and a delusion. God bless you.’

‘God bless us all,’ Pat said.

He met Rashers on his way across town, recognising first the voice and then the bearded figure with the hand cupped against the side of the face and its feet planted in the gutter. The dog sat patiently, as though adjudicating.