Strumpet City (3 page)

‘That’s a bad gash,’ he said, ‘let me help you.’

It was embarrassing to sprawl with bare feet on the damp sand under the eyes of a complete stranger. She felt foolish and undignified. But when she rose and tried to walk by herself she was unable.

‘Look, I know something about this,’ the young man said.

She made a rapid appraisal of him. He had a very pleasant face with dark hair and eyes which reflected kindness and concern. It was a good face. Everything was all right.

‘You’re very kind,’ she said.

He drew her arm around his shoulder and put his other arm about her waist. That shocked her for a moment until she realised that it was necessary. He was half lifting her and his grip was firm. She could feel his body against hers. The sensation was pleasant. He released her when they reached the rocks and examined the cut.

‘Have you a handkerchief?’ he asked. His own was coloured and they thought it might be dangerous. She produced one which was too small to be of use. He went away some distance and returned with his towel which he tore into strips.

‘This’ll do the job,’ he said.

Mary who found destruction of any kind unbearable, protested.

‘Your good towel, it’s a shame.’

‘What’s a towel,’ he said carelessly, and went on bandaging. It was a neat job. She found she could get her shoe on.

‘That’s wonderful,’ she said.

He smiled at her.

‘I look after the first-aid box and that sort of thing on the job,’ he explained.

‘You’re quite an expert.’

‘You’d better rest it for a while,’ he said.

They sat together, silent.

‘I’m on shift work in Morgan’s Foundry,’ he said.

‘Are you long there?’

‘Three years constant. Of course I was casual before that.’

‘Casual?’

‘You stand at the gate every morning and at eight o’clock the foreman comes out and says “I want you, you, you and you.” ’

He gave an imitation of the foreman singling out the lucky ones.

‘What happens if he doesn’t select you?’

‘You drift round to the quays and see if you can get work discharging. If you can’t you go home and hope for better luck the next time.’

‘But you don’t have to stand at the gate now?’

‘No. I’m constant in No. 3 house—a stoker.’

He pulled up the left sleeve of his jacket. There was a long red weal on his arm.

‘That was a present from No. 3 furnace I got the other day. It empties hot ash on you if you don’t keep your eyes skinned.’

‘Did it burn through your jacket?’ she asked. She found it hard to believe.

He hesitated. He put it as delicately as he could.

‘We don’t usually wear very much when we’re stoking,’ he said.

She realised that he meant they worked stripped.

‘Well,’ she said, glossing it over, ‘I’m lucky you weren’t stoking today.’

‘So am I,’ he said.

There was no mistaking what he meant.

She was pleased but was careful not to betray it.

‘I think it’s time I tried to get home,’ she said, rising.

He rose with her. Again she found it painful to put very much weight on her foot.

‘Let me help you,’ he said.

She consented, but this time she managed by allowing him only to link her. They reached his bicycle and after some persuasion she agreed to let him take her on the carrier. When they reached Kingstown she made him bring her to Mrs. Burns’ shop, where they parted, Mrs. Burns undertaking to see her home. He said his name was Bob Fitzpatrick and he would like very much to meet her again. But she was doubtful.

The next day, much to her relief, he left a note for her at Mrs. Burns’. And the next day again. The little sweetshop became a sort of private post office. It had continued so as their meetings became more frequent and their love grew.

The tram stopped short of the city centre and Mary had to get off. The royal procession had just passed, or was passing, or was about to pass, on its way to the Viceregal Lodge. The conductor was not sure. Mary forced her way through the crowd, which grew larger and less penetrable the further she went. Eventually she found herself jammed and immobilised. She thought of Fitz waiting at Butt Bridge and looked around desperately for a way out. There was none. She held tightly to her purse, remembering the newspaper warning about pickpockets. The royal occasion had drawn them in hundreds to the city. There were gentlemen in bowler hats, younger men in caps and knickerbockers, an odd policeman here and there keeping sharp eyes on the crowd. A ragged man with a beard was singing out a rigmarole to draw attention to the favours on his board.

‘One penny each the lovely ribbings. Red for royalty, white for fraternity, blue for Britannia and green for the beam of the fair isle of Erin. Buy your emblems of honour.’

It was Rashers Tierney. He came towards Mary. It was part of his technique to be able to move in the densest gathering.

‘Buy a favour, miss,’ he said to her.

She shook her head. She was thinking about Fitz.

‘For luck, lady,’ Rashers persisted. He held one up to her.

There was something hungry in his face which moved her. She gave him a penny. He pinned the ribbons in her coat.

‘God bless and reward you,’ he said, moving on.

She tried to do so too but made little progress.

A band was approaching, unseen but faintly heard. Horses stamped and pennants, at a great distance, tossed in orderly file above the heads of the crowd. A cheer began, travelling through the street until those around Mary joined in. It was overpoweringly warm as the heat of packed bodies augmented the blaze of the sun. Yet there was a communicated excitement too which drew Mary to her toes. She found it hard to understand Miss Gilchrist’s bitterness against the King. Patriots had been put in gaol and banished into penal servitude, of course, but you could not expect a king or a queen to do nothing to people who openly threatened to take over the country themselves. They made beautiful speeches, the patriots. They defied their judges and said they preferred English chains or even the gallows to an English king ruling over Ireland. Yet when all was said and done what great difference would it make, whether King Edward or the others ruled over Ireland? Would the patriots come back and live in Cahirdermot, scratching for a living like her father and her father’s people? Kings built great cities and that was why there were aristocrats and gentry and after them business people and then shopkeepers and then tradesmen and then poor people like Fitz and herself. Who would give work if there were no kings and gentry and the rest? No one ever said anything about that.

The band was now directly in front, so that now and then, between shoulders and heads, she caught the sudden flash of sun on the instruments. The roar of the people became louder and everybody said the King and Queen were at that moment passing. The men took off their hats, the crowd tightened and tightened. Mary looked behind and saw students clinging to the railings of Trinity College. They wore striped blazers and whirled their flat straw hats over their heads. Some of them were skylarking, of course, as young gentlemen always did on such occasions. One of them even had a policeman’s helmet wherever he had managed to get it. Mary felt the pressure easing and heard the notes of the band growing fainter, but the rhythmic chorus of carriage wheels over paving setts continued. People stopped cheering and talked to each other. Mary looked about once again for a way of escape. She frowned and bit her lip in perplexity, her thoughts so fixed on her purpose that at first the disturbance passed unnoticed. She felt the movement in the crowd for some time before the shouting of a raucous voice drew her eyes to her right. They rested on Rashers, who was pushing in her direction once more. There was a startling change in his face. It was working curiously and his arms were jerking with excited movements.

‘Come back, you bloody hill-and-dale robber,’ he was shouting, ‘come back with my few hard-earned ha’pence.’

He stopped close to Mary and appealed to the crowd.

‘Why couldn’t youse stop him? What ails the world that youse let a lousy pickpocket past youse?’

The people near him smiled. It maddened Rashers.

‘That’s right,’ he howled, ‘laugh. That’s all you were ever good at. A lousy lot of laughing loyalists. By Jasus, if I get my hands on that slippery fingers I’ll have his sacred life.’

Rashers pushed violently to force a passage. He swore at those in his way. His struggles and his curses attracted a widening circle of attention, until a section of the crowd opened and a policeman appeared. Rashers in his excitement gripped him by the tunic. The policeman pulled his hand away and caught him by the collar.

‘What’s all the commotion?’ he asked. Rashers squirmed.

‘I’ve been rooked by a bloody pickpocket,’ Rashers said, ‘while you and your like were gaping at his shagging majesty.’

‘You’d better come with me,’ the policeman said, twisting up Rashers’ coat.

‘What for?’ Rashers bawled, ‘for being bloodywell robbed, is it?’

‘And watch your language,’ the policeman said.

Rashers turned in his grip to fix a vicious eye on him.

‘That’s all you and the likes of you were ever good at,’ he said, ‘manhandling the bloody poor.’ He clawed at the policeman’s uniform, dislodging a loose button. The policeman’s face became thunderous.

‘Shut your mouth,’ the policeman said.

‘Shut your own,’ Rashers yelled. There was a line of foam about his lips. The policeman slapped him hard on the side of the mouth and twisted his arm. Rashers yelled with pain. Then the policeman began to hustle him through the crowd. They parted respectfully. Mary followed. The policeman was making a road for her which would lead eventually to Fitz. As she walked she caught glimpses now and then of Rashers. The blood on his mouth increased the pallor of his skin. His eyes were half closed and his teeth were clenched tight. Yet in the line of his jaw there was something unbreakable and defiant, a spirit which could bear with suffering because from experience it knew that it must eventually, like everything else, have an end. At the edge of the crowd Mary stood and stared after the policeman, wanting to do something for Rashers, to help in some way. But she could think of nothing to say that would be of any use. After a while she gave up and turned in the direction of Butt Bridge.

Rashers was brought to College Street station, where the duty sergeant glanced at him over a sheaf of reports.

‘What’s this?’ he asked the policeman.

‘Obscene language and conduct likely to lead to a breach of the peace.’

The policeman wiped sweat from his face. The day was too warm for even mild exertion.

‘Drink, I suppose?’

‘Drink how-are-you,’ Rashers said. ‘I was lifted of nine and fourpence by some louser of a pickpocket.’

The sergeant looked at the policeman.

‘That’s as may be,’ the policeman said, ‘but what about this?’

He pointed to his uniform where the button was missing.

‘I see,’ the sergeant said, ‘another George Hackenschmidt.’

The policeman smiled at the reference to the popular wrestler.

‘The real thing, Sergeant,’ he confirmed.

The sergeant relished his joke again.

‘What else?’ he asked.

‘For one, the use of an inflammatory expression.’

‘To wit?’ asked the sergeant.

‘Lousy loyalists.’

‘Better and better,’ said the sergeant.

He turned furiously on Rashers.

‘So you’re a bit of a Republican too,’ he said. Rashers made no answer.

‘Name?’ the sergeant barked.

‘Tierney.’

‘Christian name?’

‘Rashers.’

The sergeant put down his pen.

‘They never poured holy water on the likes of that,’ he said.

The policeman took a hand.

‘Give the sergeant your proper Christian name,’ he ordered.

‘I haven’t got a Christian name.’

‘Then you’d better bloodywell find one,’ the sergeant said. He had grown red and angry. He turned to the policeman and added, ‘Lock him up inside there for a while. Maybe it’ll jog his memory.’

Rashers was put in a cell. It had a rough bed which he sat down on gratefully. The socks were cutting into his feet. He ached all over. At intervals they came to demand his Christian name. He was afraid to invent one because that would convince them that he had been stubborn in the first instance. He kept answering ‘Rashers’. They determined to be as stubborn as he was.

Mary saw Fitz from a distance. He was leaning on the wall of the river. At the sight of him she hurried her step.

‘You got away,’ he said, looking down at her.

She smiled up at him and touched his hand lightly.

‘I very nearly didn’t. The tram was held up and then I got mixed up with the crowds.’

She wondered why he was staring at her coat. She looked down and saw the ribbons.

‘Oh, those,’ she said. ‘I bought them from an old man. He looked hungry.’

She wondered if Fitz had been waiting long.

‘Did you see the procession?’ she asked.

‘I stayed here in case I’d miss you. I heard the bands, though.’

‘It was impossible to see anything. The crowd was frightening.’

‘Where would you like to go?’

‘I don’t mind. Somewhere quiet.’

‘The prison ship? It’s just down beyond the Custom House.’

‘No—not that.’

‘You’ve changed your mind.’

‘The old man who sold me the ribbons was hit on the mouth by a policeman and his arm twisted until it was nearly broken. I don’t want to see anything today that would remind me of that.’

‘Poor Mary,’ Fitz said, taking her arm gently.

They decided against going to Phoenix Park because the garden party at the Viceregal Lodge was bound to attract numerous sightseers. Fitz suggested a walk along the sandbanks beyond Pigeon House Fort. They took the tram as far as Irishtown and when they reached the seafront they took off their shoes and began to walk together across the ebbed strand. It was a mile or more to the sandbanks. They waded through pools in which the water had grown warm from the strong sun and crossed swift-flowing rivulets which had worn deep channels in the sand. Behind them the houses along the front grew tiny with distance. Far out in front of them they could discern the thin white edge of foam and beyond it the calm water of the open sea. The sky was high and blue and immense.