Strumpet City (20 page)

‘Come all ye gallant neighbours come, and listen to my song

Of working men and women too who fight a cruel wrong

How sad their plight, this bitter night, deserted and let down

Their cause betrayed by foreign knaves which serves the British crown

O, do not trust unless you must the men that serves the crown.’

Pat slapped Rashers on the shoulder.

‘Come on. I’ll buy you a pint.’

‘I’d rather you forked out the tuppence.’

‘I’ll do both. Come on.’

‘You’re a decent Christian gentleman,’ Rashers said, following him, ‘and may you have the life of Reilly and a large funeral.’

He gave a jerk to the lead, bringing the dog reluctantly to its feet.

They went into the public house and ordered. Sunlight slanted through the windows and the air was warm and smelled a little of urine.

‘Where did you get the ballad?’

‘I made it up.’

‘Out of your head?’

‘Out of my heart,’ Rashers said, correcting him. ‘A ballad made out of the head is worse than useless. Here’s my best respects.’

He raised his pint.

‘A happy Christmas,’ Pat said.

‘We’ll see that too’, Rashers predicted, ‘when the working class comes into their own.’

‘We’ll have a statue put up to you in years to come,’ Pat promised, ‘and the people will gather from near and far to see the words spelled out on it in golden letters: Rashers Tierney, Bard of The Revolution.’

They both fell silent, picturing in their mind the stone tribute of Pat’s fantasy.

‘The only thing is,’ Pat amended, ‘they’d have to leave the bloody oul dog out of it.’

‘I seen a statue to a dog once,’ Rashers volunteered. ‘It was put up by a rich oul wan in memory of a pet terrier.’

‘And why not?’

‘It didn’t look right. I often wondered had she the priest to pronounce over it, sprinkling holy water and wishing it eternal rest,
in secula seculorium
.’

‘Maybe she believed in that thing about souls.

‘What thing?’

‘When you pass on you come back as an animal.’

‘You mean Rusty here mightn’t be a dog at all? He might only be somebody looking like a dog?’

‘Rusty could be Napoleon. Or Julius Caesar.’ Rashers looked down at the dog. It cocked its head at him, wondering if they were about to leave.

‘Poor Rusty,’ Rashers said, ‘it’s a bit of a come-down for you, whatever the hell you were.’

He patted the dog on the head. Pat looked for the public house clock and saw that it was half past eight.

‘There’s your tuppence,’ he said. ‘I have to be off.’

He finished his pint and went out. There seemed very little point in going to Lily’s room again, so he decided to kill time by walking down towards the quays. There were policemen everywhere in the streets, moving along in groups. He changed his mind about going to the quays and went in again to drink, this time with a man who was full of talk about the disturbances. When he came out it was half past nine. The streets had the late evening odour of dust, and an old man in a long black soutane was closing over the entrance doors to the Pro-Cathedral. One scraped its lock along the stone paved threshold, the other collided roughly with it and set up a thunder roll of sound that escaped from the church and echoed along the street. Pat, the drink moving in him, hurried his pace and headed directly for Lily’s favourite pub, where the curate said yes, she had been there on and off. His expression conveyed his conclusions about Pat’s reason for asking, but he went off polishing a glass and whistling. His customers’ business was their own, provided they conducted it in an orderly fashion. Pat took his drink and sat down to wait.

The pain inside him, which he had managed to forget in his talk with others, attacked him more fiercely now that he was alone. He looked at the fly-blown mirror with its lettered advertisement and recollected a night when Lily had asked to have it brought into the snug so that she could fix her hair. The curate did it for Lily, although he would have refused any of the others. Pat remembered her small, pretty face in it and the hands shaping the hair about it with movements that he loved. He had money that night after a lucky break with the horses, and they had gone to the Empire Palace Theatre afterwards to see James Fawn, the comedian.

Pat pushed the memory from his mind and was raising his glass when he heard the voice from the snug. He took his drink with him and walked down with it.

‘Lily,’ he said.

She started when she saw him at the door. He noted that too. It upset him. She stood waiting for her drink, drumming her fingers on the edge of the service hatch, unable to think of something to say that would be ordinary and usual. At last she managed, lamely, ‘Hello, Pat.’

She took her drink and sat down. He joined her.

‘I want to ask you something, Lily.’

‘You don’t have to sound like a bloody funeral about it.’

‘Why have you been avoiding me?’

She laughed falsely and said: ‘Are you getting ideas about yourself?’

‘For weeks I’ve been looking for you. You even got Maisie to put me off.’

She flushed angrily and he could see that her rage, too, was false. She was working it up purposely, a weapon of defence.

‘That’s something I want to have out with you, Pat Bannister. You’ve been following me around and asking every Tom, Dick and Harry about me, getting me talked about and making a holy show of me. What the hell ails you?’

‘I wanted to see you. About the few pounds you were holding for me.’

‘Four lousy pounds. Is that the extent of your trouble?’

‘Did you spend it?’

He said it casually, knowing now that she had.

‘You said I could.’

‘All of it?’

‘All of it he says. Four lousy pounds.’ Her vehemence surprised him. She looked tired and overwrought. In her eyes and on her face he saw the months of anguish and fear. They puzzled and touched him. He put his hand on hers.

‘It doesn’t matter if you needed it, Lily.’

‘I needed it,’ Lily said. ‘I bloody well needed it all right.’

Her voice was bitter, but it was more like her own. He had got nearer to the Lily he had always known.

‘All right,’ he said, ‘I’ll buy you a drink and we can talk.’

He rapped on the counter.

‘What’s the use of talk?’

‘What did you need it for?’

She froze again and said shortly: ‘Never mind what I needed it for.’

‘All right,’ he said, pacifying her, ‘it doesn’t matter. I didn’t know you’d spend it—not all of it.’ He paused and added, ‘You never did that before.’ He meant it as an explanation, but Lily chose to take it as a reproach. She turned quickly on him.

‘I needed it. I’ve told you already.’

‘And I said that’s all right. But you shouldn’t have avoided me.’

‘Who avoided you?’ Lily demanded, raising her voice.

The curate, coming for the order, said soothingly, ‘Now, now, lady, keep the voice down—no commotion.’

‘You shut up,’ Lily snapped at him.

He grinned at her and went off to get the drinks. Pat, the hurt of it goading him, persisted.

‘All those weeks you were avoiding me. And you had Maisie and her likes laughing at me.’

‘What the hell do you think they were doing at me?’

Pat touched her hand again, but she drew it quickly away from him. Her hostility was harder to bear than anything else. He had not realised before how much he cared for her; not her body only, that she had denied to him when they had last met, but Lily herself, Lily who was quick to gibe but quick also to comfort and generous also in giving. Lily who could touch him with a slender hand and evoke a memory of childhood. Painfully he asked:

‘Are you in trouble, Lily?’

His warmth and concern undermined her anger.

‘Was I ever in anything else?’ she said, her lip trembling and her eyes filling with tears, ‘since the day I came into the world.’

‘And you won’t tell me what it is?’

‘Please don’t ask me, Pat,’ she pleaded. ‘I needed your few pounds and I spent it. And for all the good it done I might as well have flung it into the Liffey.’ She turned to face him, a desperate honesty in her voice. ‘I played square with you always, didn’t I? You trusted me with many a thing and I never once let you down. This time it couldn’t be helped.’

‘You don’t have to explain anything, Lily.’

‘That’s what I used to think. But you kept looking for me.’

‘Is there any harm in that? Am I not to look for you?’

‘You were asking everybody. I knew it was the money you wanted.’

‘The others had me upset. I said I could get two pounds and when I told them how one of them jeered at me for a fool.’

He saw her stiffen and wondered what he had done now.

‘What others?’ she asked, in a tight, agonised voice.

‘Joe—Fitz. I told them I could get two pounds.’ The curate came and put their drinks on the table. Lily ignored him.

‘So you’ve been talking to them about me . . .’

‘I haven’t been talking to anybody.’

‘You blazoned it to the world and its wife that Lily Maxwell spent four pounds that didn’t belong to her.’

‘You have it all wrong, Lily.’

He had half risen in his effort to explain away her misunderstanding, but she brushed past the curate and stopped at the door.

‘After that you can keep your drink. I don’t want you crying it around the city that I drank your money on top of spending a bloody fortune on you.’

Pat stood up. Everything he tried to say had come out wrong. He struggled for more words, the right words. They didn’t come and he felt he was going to burst.

‘Lily . . .’ he shouted. He loved her. He wanted to shout that too. But the curate was standing by, grinning, taking it all in. She pushed open the door and went out. It banged hard behind her, sending a cloud of sawdust inwards along the floor. The curate, large, red-faced, amiable, said to Pat:

‘That’s women for you—never know when you have them.’

He was greatly amused.

‘Will I take back the second drink?’

‘Leave it where it is,’ Pat told him.

He tried to match the curate’s mood—to sound offhand and undisturbed. It was painfully difficult, with his world in bits about him.

She was gone. He lingered over the drink Lily had left behind her until the loneliness became unbearable. He was back in the street and wondering what direction to take, when the idea of approaching Mr. Donegan again suggested itself. He had nothing to pledge that was worth anything and anyway Mr. Donegan was bound to have put up the shutters for the night, but he made up his mind to try what was a forlorn hope.

It was quite dark now. Along Donegan’s street, the gas-lamps, spaced widely apart, threw a circle of soft light about themselves. The shutters of Mr. Donegan’s shop caught and reflected the ghost of their glow, the three brass balls shone dimly. A light escaped from the chink in the blind which covered the window above the gold lettered name. Pat began to knock at the door, producing a sound that startled the deserted street. It took Mr. Donegan some time to descend the stairs and when he opened the door he was not in the best of humour.

‘What’s all this?’ he demanded, peering out.

‘It’s me,’ Pat said.

‘Either that or your twin brother,’ Mr. Donegan agreed.

‘I want to see you about a little matter.’

‘I open in the morning,’ Mr. Donegan pointed out.

‘For the love of your mother, Mr. Donegan, as an old and loyal customer.’

Mr. Donegan sighed.

‘Come in.’

He led the way down a narrow passage until they came to a side door which let them into the shop. It was in darkness. Mr. Donegan found the portable ladder, struck a match and grunted elaborately as he stretched up to light the gas.

‘Now look what I’ve done,’ he said. He had touched the mantle with the head of the match. A blue flame, escaping through the puncture, tried like a tongue to lick the side of the glass.

‘It’s a favour,’ Pat began, when Mr. Donegan had climbed down.

‘So I feared.’ He looked again at the mantle, as though it was at fault.

‘I want two pounds.’

‘Tonight?’

‘At once, if I can have it.’

‘Are you in trouble?’

‘Of a kind.’

‘If it’s to bribe a policeman don’t be a fool. He’ll either list it in the charges or he’ll take it and tip off one of his pals to pick you up tomorrow.’

‘It’s not that sort of trouble.’

‘What have you to pledge?’

‘Nothing,’ Pat said.

It took Mr. Donegan some moments to find words.

‘Nothing,’ he repeated.

‘If you give me two pounds now, I’ll have it back with you before three o’clock tomorrow.’

‘Where will you get it?’ Mr. Donegan asked, putting his elbows on the counter and leaning forward, confident that there was no satisfactory answer.

‘From a moneylender who knows me well.’

‘And what guarantee have I that I’ll ever see you again?’

‘My good name.’

‘You’ve a good name,’ Mr. Donegan agreed, ‘but that’s not a good business basis. We must be reasonable.’

Pat bent down. Mr. Donegan, leaning forward still further, saw with growing surprise that he was unlacing his boots. He took them off with difficulty and placed them on the counter under Mr. Donegan’s nose.

‘These,’ he said.

Mr. Donegan lifted one of the boots, and, looking hard at the sole, spoke his mind.

‘Is it these . . .?’

‘Them.’

‘You’d buy five pairs of these for two pounds.’

‘I could. But I wouldn’t,’ Pat said.

‘You wouldn’t,’ Mr. Donegan agreed. ‘I know you well enough to believe that.’

‘Then take the boots. A man can’t do without his boots very long and they’ll be your warrant that I’ll be back with the money.’

Mr. Donegan thought hard. Then he went to the back of the shop. He reappeared with two sovereigns, which he gave to Pat.

‘Are you satisfied,’ Pat asked, before he accepted them.

‘I’m satisfied,’ Mr. Donegan said, ‘but take the boots. I can’t have you going around naked.’