Strumpet City (24 page)

‘I am not the Hierarchy,’ Father O’Connor said, with a modest smile. ‘My duty is to be obedient.’

‘You broke Parnell,’ Yearling suggested.

‘I wonder did we?’ Father O’Connor said. ‘Do you not think it was his own party that broke him? After all, many of the people continued to follow him.’

‘You condemned him,’ Yearling insisted. ‘Yet, as you say, many of the people remained loyal to him. They didn’t listen to you—that’s my point.’

Did Yearling speak with sympathy of Parnell because he, like the fallen chief, was a Protestant. Why was he questioning about Larkin? Did he wish the Church to condemn openly and at once? Or was it possible that Larkin’s methods had his sympathy? Surely not. If the Church commanded absolute obedience Yearling would say the country was priest-ridden; if it did not he would taunt the Church for its failure. A note of sadness crept into Father O’Connor’s voice as he answered, generally:

‘There are other, more important matters in which they sometimes do not listen to us either. That is why we have to spend so much of our time hearing confessions.’

To his surprise Yearling began to laugh.

‘Have I said something amusing?’

‘You are like all the others of your cloth,’ Yearling explained. ‘I point out the very real threat of social revolution to you and you are only concerned about it because it may, perhaps, be a sin.’

‘Surely,’ Father O’Connor said earnestly, ‘that is the only thing which is worth being concerned about.’

At Kingstown Father O’Connor was persuaded to agree to drop in on Yearling when he had concluded his visit to the Bradshaws. They parted. Father O’Connor allowed himself the pleasure of a walk along the front. The elegance of the houses pleased him, the frequent carriages, the manifestations of polite living. It was a world in which he had once held an honoured place. He turned into the back streets, where the passage of a couple of years had left their less kindly traces. Mr. Bradshaw’s set of houses near the harbour, he discovered, were now in need of support and had great beams slanting against them to prop the front walls. But their poverty was not like that of the central city; their squalor kept itself to itself. The township remained elegant.

He refused Mrs. Bradshaw’s invitation to stay for dinner, and explained that he was already committed. As an alternative she was happy to have him accept tea and scones. She hoped he was contented still in his parish and wondered why he seemed to have abandoned the relief fund idea. She had thought it such an excellent one. Father O’Connor explained that it had not proved so straightforward a matter as, in his early enthusiasm, he had believed it to be. He would not vex her with details. She thought his uneasiness was a sign that their efforts had fallen short of his expectations. He assured her that that was not the case.

‘Our help was so small it wasn’t worth while,’ she suggested.

‘Everything is worth while,’ Father O’Connor insisted, ‘even the smallest thing we do.’

‘I’ve often thought of visiting myself,’ Mrs. Bradshaw confided, ‘but my husband is very much against it.’

‘He is right,’ Father O’Connor said.

‘And Miss Gilchrist. I’d like to speak to her even for half an hour.’

Father O’Connor insisted that it was out of the question. He told her again about the kind of place it was, about the inmates, their coarseness, the overpowering combination of age and ignorance and illness. Mrs. Bradshaw would find it too distressing.

‘Is she very ill?’ Mrs. Bradshaw asked.

‘Last week there seemed little hope for her. But on Sunday she seemed as well as ever.’

‘She was always very strong,’ Mrs. Bradshaw said. She seemed to be considering something. In order not to intrude, he took his time putting milk and sugar in his tea, stirring it, tasting it. He was glad he did so. Her next question led without embarrassment towards the topic he had come to discuss.

‘When they die,’ Mrs. Bradshaw asked, ‘what are the arrangements?’

He chose his sentences carefully.

‘The relatives are notified—if there are any. If there are and they claim the body they have the option of making the customary funeral arrangements—at their own personal expense, of course.’

‘And if there are no relatives?’

‘In that case, I’m afraid, it’s an institutional burial in a pauper’s grave.’

‘I shouldn’t like that to happen to Miss Gilchrist,’ Mrs. Bradshaw said.

Father O’Connor saw that the moment had come when he should be frank.

‘She spoke to me about it last Sunday. The thought seems to be constantly at the back of her mind. It has made her very unhappy—so unhappy that she asked me, as a great favour, to mention it to you.’

His words so affected Mrs. Bradshaw that he wondered for a moment if he had been too brutal and direct, if he had assaulted her feelings instead of appealing to her charity. She set his mind at rest almost at once.

‘I’m very glad you told me this. Please let Miss Gilchrist know that if I’ve failed the living I’ll at least do my duty by the dead.’

She began to weep. They were the tears of a kind-hearted woman and they distressed him greatly. It was not her fault that Miss Gilchrist had been cast off.

‘You are very generous,’ he offered. It was the best he could think of.

‘We should have looked after her ourselves. She was such a loyal poor soul—and she was with us so long.’

‘Your husband had to be practical.’

‘Do we fulfil our obligations by being practical all the time?’ she asked.

Her bitter tone caught him on the wrong foot. He had only meant to console, not to begin a discussion on the morality of a dismal affair. The main thing was she was prepared to meet Miss Gilchrist’s wishes.

‘I’ll tell Miss Gilchrist. It will make her very happy. And grateful.’

‘For so little?’

‘It is not by any means little,’ he said, earnestly.

‘It seems so to me.’

‘I assure you it isn’t. You are a generous woman. You must stop reproaching yourself. And you must not blame your husband.’

‘He is not to know,’ she interrupted quickly. ‘Please don’t mention anything to him.’

This mild woman surprised him. He had thought her incapable of bitterness, an imperturbable woman at the centre of a small, smoothly enamelled world. Yet she criticised her husband and was prepared to disobey him because in her heart she felt a greater power at work. He knew how hard that must be for her, a woman shaped—to the raising of a teacup—by the conventions of her class.

‘You need have no fear,’ he told her, in his quietest and most reassuring tone.

Then, to ease her mind further, he told of his call on Mary. She questioned him about Mary’s circumstances, her husband, her children. He began to understand how lonely and unhappy she was, this woman without children of her own who brooded too much over the misfortunes of those for whom she felt the tug of responsibility. She did not brush shoulders often enough with reality to know that these were commonplace hardships. There was nothing to be done about them that Father O’Connor could see, except to suffer them with patience and to offer, where possible, some negligible but well-intentioned relief. Her kindness impressed him, but he was glad, nevertheless, when he could look at the clock and say, without lying, that it was really time to go if he was to spare a little while for Mr. Yearling before getting back to the duties of his parish.

Hennessy, about to climb the steps to 3 Chandlers Court, heard the tin whistle and cocked his head to listen. The notes, creeping from behind the basement window, shaped a slow air that was barely audible, although the street was enjoying one of its rare interludes of quietness. Where were the men? Hennessy wondered. Where were the women, the children, the dogs that should have been searching the gutter with noses nursing the remote hope of something edible? Off to gape at some moment’s diversion, he decided; off to follow a German band, maybe, or a parade of military passing on its way to join a ship. It was disappointing. There was no one to pass on his news to, no one standing on any of the steps, no one leaning against a lamp-post; only a street in the evening sunlight and a melancholy air meandering down its emptiness. The basement window had no glass in it. Instead, pieces of cardboard filled in its frame, leaving a small panel at the top for light and air.

‘Rashers,’ he shouted.

The air continued. It was slow; it was a personal, unorganised kind of air that could meander on for ever. Hennessy saw a stone, stooped for it, then let it fly at the window. It made a sharp sound on the cardboard. For a moment the melody broke off, then started again. Irritated, Hennessy searched once more. He found a larger stone which hopped back off the cardboard and fell into the area space with a thud. The music stopped abruptly and a voice from inside yelled in anger.

‘Who flung that?’

‘Rashers,’ Hennessy shouted again.

‘Go home, you little bowsie. Flinging stones at a decent man’s window. I know you. I’ll tell your mother—honest to God I will.’

‘It’s me, Hennessy.’

‘Who?’

‘Hennessy.’

‘Wouldn’t you think you’d have more sense at your age,’ Rashers yelled.

‘I want to talk to you.’

‘You could knock at the bloody door.’

‘A bit of news.’

‘Like a bloody Christian. That cardboard cost money.’

‘Come on up,’ Hennessy invited, ‘I want a word with you.’

He sat on the steps. The stone under his skinny behind felt warm. The day had been good. He had spent it travelling between the office of Bates & Sons, Contractors, in Merchants Lane and a gang of men who were working in Phoenix Park. Twice he had pushed a handcart across the city to them with supplies. But he had taken his time, pausing when he wanted to watch anything of interest, enjoying the sunlight, happy to have a few weeks’ work as a runner. Two rosy spots on his normally sallow face showed the benefit of good weather and exercise. He took a cigarette from his waistcoat pocket, lit it with an air of luxury and waited. When Rashers joined him he had the tin whistle still in his hands.

‘What’s the commotion?’ Rashers asked, taking a seat beside him.

‘Where’s everybody gone?’

‘To hell, for all I know.’

‘Not even a stray cat . . .’

‘Or out of their minds for the want of sense.’

Rashers absentmindedly raised the tin whistle to his lips.

‘Don’t start on that again,’ Hennessy appealed.

‘You’re unmusical as well as being a bowsie,’ Rashers commented.

‘It was a sad sort of tune you were playing.’

‘I was thinking,’ Rashers said. He laid the whistle aside.

‘Have a cigarette,’ Hennessy invited. He drew one from a packet of Woodbines and passed it over to Rashers, who said:

‘Thanks be to God someone’s earning,’ and lit it.

‘Are you in a bad way?’

‘Bloody terrible.’

‘I’ll get the missus to send down one of the kids with a few cuts of bread and a cup of tea,’ Hennessy promised.

‘You’re earning, then?’

‘A few weeks.’

‘It makes all the difference,’ Rashers said.

Summer was now his bad time. Father O’Connor no longer needed a boilerman. There were too many beggars. People like the Gaelic League and the Larkinites, the St. Finbar’s Hurling and Football Club or the charitable societies were all joining in the competition for stray pennies. Besides, he was not as good at the walking as he had been. It was his chest. Sometimes in the heat he found it hard to get air into his lungs. Often he had to stop, his hand against a wall for support, while he struggled to breathe.

‘That’s what I was thinking about,’ Rashers said, not knowing that so far he had said nothing to Hennessy of what he was thinking about.

‘What was that?’

‘I’m getting the bronchitis bad.’

‘The weather will soon fix that up.’

‘I wouldn’t be too sure. Look at King Edward. Weather or no weather, it bloodywell killed him.’

‘His heart was bad,’ Hennessy consoled.

‘And what’s to stop my heart getting bad?’ Rashers asked in a reasonable tone. Finding he had silenced Hennessy, Rashers dragged the cigarette and offered:

‘If a fellow only had a bit of capital he could set himself up comfortable enough.’

‘That’s right,’ Hennessy said. ‘I often thought myself if I had enough to buy an old ass and cart I’d be made.’

‘What would you do?’

‘Removals. Or selling coal blocks—there’s good profit in coal blocks.’

‘You’d have to hump all them sacks up all them stairs. Up and down and up and down all day. What I’d do is buy a barrel-organ and a monkey,’ Rashers said. ‘There’s great money in it and only a modicum of exertion.’

‘Monkeys is very hard to rear. I knew a man was put out of business by it. Three of them in a row kicked the bucket on him.’

Mary, sitting at the open window above them, heard the exchange and leaned out to identify them. She recognised Rashers first. He came in and out at such odd hours and kept so much to himself that she seldom saw him. Whenever she did she thought of the coloured favours and the blood on his mouth.

‘There’s a catch in everything,’ Rashers said, when he had considered the triple tragedy.

Nothing ever worked out. You went up with your tin whistle to a polo match in the Park, expecting a crowd, and found there was a reception at the Castle or cricket in Trinity College. The theatre queues were overworked and, worse still, overwatched by policemen.

‘There’s nothing but bloody beggars in this misfortunate town,’ he complained, ‘and what’s more, the half of them is illegitimate beggars, a crowd of amateurs with boxes for the Jim Larkin Defence Collection. It makes shocking inroads on the Rashers Tierney Fund.’

‘You won’t be troubled much longer from that quarter,’ Hennessy told him. ‘Larkin got twelve months’ hard today. That’s the news I had for you.’

‘Holy God—you’re codding me.’

‘Here’s the very man will tell you.’

Fitz had turned the corner. They watched his approach, but when he came abreast of them and climbed the steps he passed them with a nod. He had a collection box under one arm.

‘That’s another that’s in on the collection box act,’ Rashers said.