Strumpet City (27 page)

‘Don’t let me detain you,’ Father Giffley replied, lifting the black book from the chair and sitting down. As Father O’Connor closed the door he said, raising his voice slightly: ‘If you need help during the night, call out for me.’

At first it was a relief to get inside his own bedroom, but when he closed the door he began to feel he had walked into a tomb. The curtains were drawn, the window closed, it was completely dark. He crossed and opened a press, the wrong one. Some left-over tins of cocoa fell about the floor. He left them there. He felt unable to stoop. He found he had to stand quite still to remember where he was. He saw the placards twisting this way and that, white against the darkness, he saw the torches sparking and swaying, lurid red against the pitch darkness. He bumped against the bed, leaned heavily on it, heard the noise of its springs and groped with his free hand. He reached the chamber-pot in time to be violently and repeatedly sick. Then he knelt, his cheek against the coverings, until the trembling of his body ceased.

When he felt stronger he removed his collar and went over to draw the curtains and open the window. The sky above the church was a vast, night blue field, stars grew wild all over it, the breeze from the window touched his face with healing and coolness. It was a mild night of June, month of the Sacred Heart. The gardens of Kingstown would smell sweetly at this hour, full of flowers and leafy quiet. Along the coast, on miles and miles of fine wet shingle, about crusted rocks, against the wooden beams of piers, the sea was making night sounds, the tides building and turning in time with the laws of God who was the maker and regulator of all things. He had a sense of sin. Casting back over the day he remembered his lack of humility with the young woman who had once been a servant; the impatience that caused him to turn down Mrs. Bradshaw’s offer of hospitality; his three glasses of wine which, in him, might well count as intemperance; his delight in Yearling’s praise when he played well on the beautiful piano.

Troubled, he fingered his rosary and, leaning against the window jamb, his eyes fixed on the night sky, he began to pray—for his mother’s soul, for Miss Gilchrist, for each face that looked out at him from moment to moment as he examined his conscience and lived in retrospect through the events of the day. He remained so for almost half an hour until, his attention wavering, he became aware of the odour in the room. It was the smell of puke, of half-digested food and sour wine. Away from the window it was worse, an offensive and choking manifestation of infirmity, of uncleanness, of corruption. It was the wine then, that had made him sick.

He shrank from the ordeal of lifting the pot, but there was no help for it. Gingerly he opened the door and stole past Father Giffley’s room once again to the toilet on the upper landing. His stomach turned as he emptied the foul contents and rinsed out the remaining traces. He returned and got into bed, relieved that the unpleasant task was over and done with, relieved too that Father Giffley had not come into the corridor to investigate these latenight comings and goings. There were tins of some kind lying on the floor, he now remembered. Let them stay there.

He lay exhausted, yet sleepless. The retort he had made to Father Giffley returned several times to his mind: ‘I haven’t that habit, Father.’ He regretted it. He wished he could recall and erase it. He had been wrong in his earlier suspicions about the locked room. Father Giffley had been perfectly sober. As he watched the narrow strip of sky between the partly drawn curtains, accusing himself, asking for forgiveness, the meaning of Father Giffley’s phrase about the devil’s efforts not being very profitable—for once, suggested itself. Had he locked his door to shut out temptation? Had he called out for Father O’Sullivan because, at the end of the long day, from that simple, unnoticing man, there would flow the springs of consolation? ‘I haven’t that habit, Father.’ Had he asked for bread, and been given a stone?

Father O’Connor closed his eyes tightly, not in an effort to sleep, but the better to bear the self-accusation which desolated him.

C
HAPTER
T
WO

In October, whenever he walked along the Vico Road, the hills rising at the back of the city reminded Yearling of Connemara. They were turning brown now under evenings of long, yellow sunsets. Often the green sea below him set him thinking of the miles and miles of water and waste; of England; of the too-faraway years of youth. One day, when Father O’Connor strolled with him, he said: ‘I am getting old.’

He stopped to lean for a moment on his cane. It was growing dusk. The sea had a strong, autumn smell. The air was damp.

‘Everybody does,’ Father O’Connor said, agreeably.

‘I begin to think that times are changing, that soon the world we knew will be finished and done with.’

‘There are new ideas,’ Father O’Connor admitted, ‘disturbing ideas, abroad. I feel it too and I’m younger than you are.’

‘And I begin to look back—to remember; that’s a bad sign.’ He knitted his heavy eyebrows and looked sharply at Father O’Connor.

‘Do you think I should have married?’ he asked.

‘There’s still time.’

‘I don’t think so—ah no.’

He sighed and began to walk again.

‘Still,’ he said, after a while, ‘celibacy was never suited to me. I don’t understand how you fellows manage.’

‘We win it by our own means. For some it is easy; for others—it is painfully hard.’

‘Is it the same with drink?’

‘You are confusing what is sinful and what may only be unseemly.’

‘Yes,’ Yearling admitted, ‘you are more broadminded about drink than our crowd. Still, I was jilted for drinking—did I ever tell you that? She was a Catholic too.’

‘Once, when we were playing music with Mr. and Mrs. Bradshaw, you hinted at something. It happened in England, I think?’

‘A long, long time ago. The sea there reminded me of it. I must tell you about it some time.’

‘If you are unhappy at times there are other ways of considering life. There may be a plan, or a reason . . .’

Yearling looked at him sharply.

‘Are you thinking of trying to convert me?’

Father O’Connor did not return the look. But he said: ‘If I thought I could I would not hesitate.’

‘And do you?’

‘It is God who converts . . . not bunglers such as I am.’

A little later Father O’Connor said: ‘When I spoke of drink as being unseemly I didn’t mean that it could not be sinful. It can. I’ve seen it become sinful and I’ve seen it lead to much human tragedy.’ He spoke generally. But he was thinking of Father Giffley.

October brought work for Rashers once again. He piled paper on the cold bars of the furnace, spread sticks and a dressing of coke. Then he lit the first fire of another season, building it to give a slow heat which he could control. For the first week it required attention at night-time, so he decided to sleep in the boiler house. On the Saturday night, when there was a corpse in the mortuary chapel above, he brought the dog and played music on the flageolet to keep himself company. The dog was a mistake. In the morning, when Father Giffley passed near the entrance, it gave a warning bark.

‘In the first week of the season I have to sleep here at night, Father,’ he said. ‘I keep a slow fire so as not to do damage to the pipes.’

‘And is the . . . dog . . . very useful?’

‘In the matter of company, Father.’

‘St. Francis and yourself would get on well together, I can see that.’

Father Giffley peered into the corners beyond the ring of candlelight. They were grimed with dust. The cobwebs looked solid.

‘Do you sleep on the coke?’

‘With a sack underneath.’

‘And it is comfortable?’

‘It could be worse.’

Father Giffley noted the familiar phrase. Everything could be worse.

‘It could, indeed.’

‘Only I noticed it’s inclined to bring on the bronchitis.’

‘That would be the dust,’ Father Giffley said.

‘I hope you don’t think bad of me bringing the dog, Father.’

‘We could deduct something for its board and lodging,’ Father Giffley suggested, smiling to himself. ‘What’s his name?’

‘Rusty, Father.’

Father Giffley bent down to the dog and said: ‘Here, Rusty, that’s the fellow, that’s the good doggie.’

The dog wagged its tail. It was a mangy-looking specimen, he thought, like its lord and master. Father Giffley wrinkled his forehead. He thought of a religious picture which had hung somewhere, of a saint who wept for his ox. The picture he remembered clearly—a great, bearded human face pressed in fellowship against the hairy face of the beast—but the saint’s name evaded him. Or—after all, was it called ‘The Peasant Weeps Over His Ox’? Father Giffley was unsure. He patted the dog’s head. Then he straightened and said:

‘You shouldn’t spend too much time in this place. The air is foul. Call into the housekeeper later—I’ll tell her to give you some breakfast, and some scraps for Rusty. Do you drink?’

‘Whenever good luck pushes a drop under my nose.’

‘I’ll tell her to give you a little something to take home.’

‘God bless you, Father.’

‘For your bronchitis, you understand,’ Father Giffley added.

He climbed the steps and went out into the air, which was mild. When he had seen the housekeeper he came back again, circled the courtyard a couple of times and then went out into the street. With his hands behind his back and his head bowed forward he pushed through the people who were on their way to mass. They parted for him. Some of them who greeted him were acknowledged with an inclination of the head, others he did not see. He passed under the railway bridge, through side streets which were so far from the church that people wondered to see a priest dressed only in his soutane. Here and there he stopped to talk to children who were playing hopscotch and skipping outside the tenements which occupied so large a part of his parish. He came to the riverside at last and remained leaning against a capstan for some time. To the right and left of him ships lay to. Sunday ships, deserted, he would believe, were it not for the smoke streaming up from the galleys. The cranes were still and the buckets empty. Behind him the bells of Sunday were clamouring throughout the city, marking the arrival of each half-hour. Men passed him and saluted. One of them, a young man of average height, well built, had a grimy and unsabbath like face.

‘Good morning,’ Father Giffley said.

‘Good morning, Father.’

‘Have you been working?’

‘At it all night, Father,’ Fitz said. He pushed his cap on to the back of his head and now that he had stopped, let his eyes travel with the river to the point where the north and south walls widened, disappeared and left it to the sea. It was sluggish and grey, but with a sheen here and there that acknowledged the sunshine.

‘Shift work, I suppose?’ Father Giffley questioned.

‘At the foundry, Father.’

‘How do you get to mass?’

‘Our mates come in an hour earlier on Sundays—we do the same for them in our turn.’

‘You’re a good bunch of men,’ Father Giffley said. ‘You’ll be off to a football match after the dinner, I suppose?’

Fitz smiled and said: ‘No such luck today—I’m minding the kids.’

‘Letting herself out?’

‘For a change,’ Fitz said easily. Father Giffley, he realised, did not remember him.

‘You’ve a button in your coat,’ Father Giffley remarked, ‘and I haven’t seen one like it before.’

Fitz said it was a trade union button.

‘Will they release Larkin, do you think?’

‘There’s great talk of it, Father.’

‘So they should,’ Father Giffley said. ‘Have you ever been on strike?’

‘Which of us hasn’t?’

‘Of course,’ Father Giffley said, ‘everybody in my parish has been, I suppose. They don’t treat you very fairly, do they?’

It was not a question that needed answering. Father Giffley rose and put his hands behind his back once more.

‘No, indeed,’ he said as he went off, ‘they do not.’

He went back again through the side streets. People who knew him thought it strange, not because he was walking in his soutane—he was odd and had peculiar ways—but because he was seldom known to stroll through his parish.

The high windows let in the afternoon sun behind the girl at the bedside, giving lights to her smooth, black hair, leaving her pale face in shadow. She was the girl with the two children who so often brought her snuff, who in fact had just given her a small packet of snuff, which was now under the pillow somewhere, if she could find it. She quested with the fingers of one hand.

‘I’ll get it for you.’

The lights in the hair went out as the girl who had left a good place to marry some poor chap or other leaned nearer the bed. Mary . . . that was the name she was searching for.

‘What were you saying, love?’ Miss Gilchrist asked.

‘I said I’ll get it for you.’

The young face smiled. A pleasant girl, she now remembered, who always brought her snuff. Mary.

‘I mean before that.’

‘I was saying the days are growing short already.’

‘What day is it?’

‘Sunday.’

Of course it was Sunday. It was on Sundays she got the snuff. If she used it carefully and watched that it wasn’t stolen it would last a week. Almost.

‘When I was a young bit of a thing in Dublin at first I never liked Sundays.’

‘Why was that?’

‘The bells. I never liked the sound of them.’

‘Yes. They make you lonely when there’s only yourself.’

‘Our own bells making a din the whole of the morning. And then the Protestant bells going in the afternoon. And the bells for devotion at seven or eight o’clock. They made such a commotion from morning till night I used to be glad when it was Monday.’

‘I was like that myself too, at first.’

‘When you looked out the window and saw everyone else parading it in their finery?’

‘Meeting each other and going to each other’s houses.’

‘That was it.’

Lonely, that was it. In the winter it had not been so bad, though. There were more musical evenings. You got used to it. Sometimes, even, you enjoyed it. Guests got to notice you, gradually. They enquired after your health. They said, ‘Miss Gilchrist, you’re a treasure—you really are.’