Strumpet City (45 page)

‘Seasonable weather.’

It was seasonable, all right, and set now to go on being seasonable through January and February and early March, the most godforsaken months of the year.

‘I thought she was going lame on me yesterday,’ Mulhall said, stroking the mare.

‘A little stiffness,’ the stableman said, ‘nothing much. I gave her a rub.’

‘Rheumatism, maybe,’ Mulhall suggested.

‘A twinge,’ the stableman said, ‘she’s only flesh and blood—like the rest of us.’

Sure of a bed and a bit to eat while she could work, Mulhall thought, and a bullet to end it all when she was past labour. If she didn’t die in harness, like many another. The stableman started to cough, checked it, then began more violently. He had to lean on the rake until the fit passed. He was a long, thin man with a haggard face and consumptive frame, who lived on the premises. In the daytime he cleaned out the stables and in the evenings he examined the horses for any signs of injury or ill-health. If an animal was sick he stayed up at night to tend it. His father and his grandfather before him had done the same thing in their time.

Mulhall continued to stroke the horse.

‘Less than a fortnight now to Christmas,’ the stableman said, when he had got his breath back.

‘You’ll be going abroad for it, no doubt,’ Mulhall joked. The neck muscles of the horse were quivering delicately under his hand.

‘I was talking to the missus about that,’ the stableman said, ‘she has a fancy for the Rivieria.’

‘My own was thinking of one of them spas,’ Mulhall said.

‘Right enough,’ the stableman said, after a moment of consideration, ‘you meet a nicer class of people altogether at a spa.’

‘That’s my own experience too,’ Mulhall agreed.

‘Did you think of Lisdoonvarna—or must it be abroad?’

‘Abroad,’ Mulhall said. ‘Herself always insists on the sea trip.’

‘Well—have a nice time,’ the stableman said, beginning once again to rake up the straw. But as Mulhall was leading the horse across the yard another thought struck him and he shouted after him: ‘And don’t forget to send us a postcard.’

Mulhall yoked up and went over to the hatch for the bundle of dockets which would make up his delivery duties for the day. He checked through them. They were all city business premises, which meant very little stair-climbing, a relief. Then he noticed that there seemed to be less of them than usual.

‘Is this the lot?’ he asked.

‘There’s one more,’ the clerk said. ‘It’s a very special one so I kept it separate.’

He handed out another docket. It was for a house about six miles away, on the other side of Phoenix Park. It had the word ‘Priority’ inscribed and underlined on the top corner.

‘Holy Jaysus!’ Mulhall exclaimed when he saw it.

‘Some friend of Doggett’s,’ the clerk speculated.

‘It’ll take the whole morning.’

‘I know. That’s why I’ve given you less of the others.’

It would mean a long slow journey across the city and by the high, unsheltered road that led through the Park. On a fine day he would have welcomed it; today it meant freezing with inactivity and being soaked to the skin. Mulhall stuffed the dockets into his pocket and went across the yard again, this time to load up.

The long mirror of the wardrobe showed her the transformation. The dark coat, with the pleated cape at the shoulders, completely hid her house clothes. The feather on the black velvet hat nodded at her from the glass, with such an air of elegance that she became uneasy. It was too good for her. It would embarrass her husband. She said so to Mary, who stood behind, admiring her.

‘Nonsense,’ Mary said, ‘it looks just right.’ She turned to Fitz for confirmation.

‘He won’t know you for style,’ Fitz said encouragingly.

Mary, busy helping Mrs. Mulhall to adjust the hat with the feather, asked him to look in the box on the sideboard for a white medallion which was yet another of the odds and ends Mrs. Bradshaw had sent to her over the past several months. The articles came regularly; now a chair, or curtains perhaps, cast-off clothes that were far better than any she could have bought in the second-hand shops. The latest gifts were two ornamental dogs which now stood on the mantelpiece on either side of the clock Pat had given them on their wedding day. Mrs. Mulhall had noticed them the moment she called to borrow the coat.

‘You have everything,’ she said, looking round a little enviously at the comfortable room.

Fitz found a cameo brooch among the litter of buttons and safety pins.

‘Wear it on your blouse,’ Mary said to Mrs. Mulhall, ‘it will look very nice.’

The older woman hesitated. It was one thing to be clean and tidy, but another to dress above your station. The brooch was meant for a lady.

‘I couldn’t’, she protested, ‘it wouldn’t be right.’

But in the end she took it away with her. It was a long time since she had been to a theatre. It would be a long time again.

She left the clothes in her bedroom and put on her shawl to shop for Willie’s lunch. She wore it over her head and shoulders, holding it tight under her chin with her hands. It was Friday so she bought herrings. When a carter drove past her, huddled against the cold and wet of the morning, she was sorry for him and thought of her own husband. Bernie was a big man. He was strong. But he was not getting any younger. Strength was no use against the wettings and the colds of winter. You needed youth as well. When she got home, before she started to prepare the dinner for her son, she took her husband’s suit from the cupboard and spread it in front of the fire which she built up with reckless extravagance, until its glow showed on each wall of the room. His clothes would be aired and warm for him when he came home. Then she peeled potatoes. That too, made the day unusual. Normally the men did not get home until evening. But today Willie was taking the afternoon off to attend a final band practice before the competition. She set the table for him and prepared the pan. It was donkey’s years, she told herself, since she had done that in the middle of the day.

‘What did you think of her?’ Mary asked.

‘Who?’ Fitz said absently. He was taking his dinner before going to work.

She sighed and said: ‘Mrs. Mulhall—of course.’

‘I thought she looked very nice,’ he said.

‘She’ll enjoy her little outing.’

‘So will I,’ Fitz said. ‘I’ve been listening to those same three tunes on the fife for the past six weeks. How Bernard Mulhall sticks it I don’t know.’

‘Willie is their son. That makes all the difference,’ Mary said.

She took away his plate and poured tea into a mug she had bought for him when she was staying with her father. It had the words ‘A present from Cork’ engraved on it. He looked at the inscription and then at the rain beating against the window and thought how long ago that had been. She had returned in July, and after that it had been their best summer together in their four years of marriage. Steady work and the occasional assistance from Mrs. Bradshaw made them modestly comfortable. Having the second-hand pram they got down most Sundays with the children to Sandymount Strand. There must have been wet days, but he could not now remember them. He could only remember blue skies and level stretches of sand. If the tide was fully ebbed it took half an hour to reach the edge of the sea, and when you turned around the houses along the coast road were tiny with distance, and the beauty of the mountains of Dublin and Wicklow encircling the bay would take your breath away. Even now the thought of that strand moved him. He had played on it as a child, and many a long evening he had walked across it from the Half Moon Swimming Club, a young man made melancholy by the breadth of a summer sunset, or perhaps passing the time by trying to count the lights that had begun to appear through the dusk along the coast road.

‘Cork by the Lee,’ he bantered, taking the mug.

‘Caherdermott’s on the Lee too,’ she said, ‘but it’s only a small stream you could wade across.’

‘So is the Liffey near Sally Gap.’

‘Where’s Sally Gap?’

‘In the mountains. We’d need bicycles to get there.’

He used to cycle there too in the summers of long ago. Once he had lost his way and an old man who lived alone in a cottage made him have tea and bread and butter and boiled eggs for both of them. It was strange, all the memories of summer a mug with ‘Present from Cork’ on it could call up. He told Mary about it as he finished the tea, but it didn’t sound very interesting. Then he took his supper parcel and went out to work, meeting Willie Mulhall on the way. Willie had on a bandsman’s hat and wore a patent leather strap across one shoulder like a Sam Browne. The fife was sticking out of his pocket.

‘Good luck tonight,’ he said, as they parted in the street.

‘We’ll need it,’ Willie said fervently. He was nearly nineteen now. Competitions were important.

‘There’s Willie Mulhall with the cap on him,’ Hennessy said. He was sitting in the basement with Rashers and could see the street above through a section of the window that the cardboard was not wide enough to cover.

‘What cap?’

‘The bandsman’s cap.’

‘Bandsman how-are-you,’ Rashers said, letting a great spit into the home-made brazier that stood in the fireplace. It was an old bucket pierced with holes and full now of glowing charcoal he had gathered laboriously from the beach the day before. It was to be found along the high-tide mark when the water had receded, especially after stormy weather.

‘That was a wathery one,’ he added, as the spit continued to sizzle among the protesting coals.

‘You nearly put the bloody thing out,’ Hennessy reproved.

‘I can’t abide amateurs,’ Rashers said.

‘There’s some band competition on,’ Hennessy explained, ‘and he’s been practising for weeks. I used to hear him as I came in and out. He was talking to me about it.’

‘I know,’ Rashers said, ‘going over and over a couple of scraps of tunes, with music stuck up in front of him in case he’d forget. I never had to do that.’

‘You have the head for it,’ Hennessy flattered, ‘a memory plus a natural aptitude.’

‘That’s what you need,’ Rashers agreed, ‘that’s the difference between the amateur and the professional. The amateur has to have his music—but the professional plays by ear. Supposing, every time I went to play at a race meeting, I had to stick a music stand up in front of me, what’d happen?’

Hennessy smiled. ‘The crowd would get a right laugh out of you.’

‘They’d knock the whole shooting gallery over every time they rushed to the rails.’

‘Can you read music yourself?’ Hennessy asked.

‘I don’t have to read music,’ Rashers said, ‘isn’t that my point?’

‘What I mean is—did you ever learn how to read music?’

Rashers felt he was being pinned down.

‘In a class of a way,’ he evaded.

‘Who learned you?’ Hennessy persisted.

‘How do you mean—who learned me?’

‘Who was your teacher?’

‘I taught myself.’

Hennessy rooted from pocket to pocket until he found a collection of cigarette butts. He offered one to Rashers, who made a paper spill and inserted it into one of the holes in the bucket. The butt was so small that Rashers had difficulty trying to light it. He growled suddenly and slapped at his beard.

‘Jaysus,’ he said, ‘I’m in flames!’

‘What’s wrong with you?’

‘Me beard went on fire.’

Hennessy frowned, wrinkled his nose and sniffed.

‘It did,’ he said, ‘I can smell it.’ He took the butt from Rashers, lit it and handed it back to him.

‘It’s a complicated thing—music,’ he pursued, when Rashers had drawn a few pulls without any further accident. ‘Willie Mulhall was trying to explain it to me. He says there’s seven notes, called A.B.C.D.E.F.G.’

‘There is’ Rashers said, ‘and a hell of a lot more. What about H.I.J.K.L.M.N. and all those?’

‘He didn’t mention those ones at all,’ Hennessy said.

‘Of course he didn’t mention them,’ Rashers said, ‘because he doesn’t know them. Them amateur bands never teaches them further than G. But a professional like myself wouldn’t get very far with seven notes. Wait till I show you.’

He took the Superior Toned Italian Flageolet from his pocket, blew through it to clear it of fluff, and he played a chromatic scale in two octaves.

‘How many notes was that?’ he asked when he had finished.

‘I didn’t count them,’ Hennessy confessed, ‘but it was nearer twenty-seven than seven.’

‘And that’s without the help of a bandsman’s hat,’ Rashers boasted.

‘Natural aptitude,’ Hennessy repeated, convinced. His admiration was genuine. He thought it a perfect example of the Divine principle of Compensation. Rashers had been afflicted with a bad arm and a bad leg, but God had thrown in the gift of music as a make-measure.

‘Play us something,’ he invited. Rashers shook his head in refusal, but almost immediately changed his mind. He fingered a few notes thoughtfully, then he began a long, slow improvisation, decorating the air with frequent shakes and trills. Hennessy, staring into the brazier, thought it sounded very sad. The wind was driving the rain once again against the cardboard in the window. He could feel the cold of it on his back, although the fire was hot on his face and hands. There was no fire in his own flat upstairs, but the children had gone out to search for cinders and sticks and in due course, he hoped, would come back with something. Winter was a bad time always. For a whole week now he had searched for odd jobs but without success. In another week perhaps, when the Christmas spirit began to stir in the hearts of those who had the giving of it, there would be something. Christmas usually brought him a bit of luck.

The basement was in semi-darkness, partly because cardboard occupied such a large part of the window, partly because of the rainy skies.

‘That was very nice,’ he said when Rashers had finished. ‘What’s it called?’

‘It’s not called anything, because I was making it up as I went along,’ Rashers said.

‘Composing?’

‘Following my own thoughts,’ Rashers qualified. Then he said:

‘What’s young Mulhall doing when he’s not suffering from musical delusions?’