Strumpet City (51 page)

‘I don’t think he’ll turn up. Do you?’

‘I don’t see how he can,’ Hennessy agreed.

‘Even the Quality follow him around now,’ the stranger said. ‘There’s plenty of them about this morning.’ They surveyed the street together, noting the number of well-dressed citizens in the crowd. Cars and carriages passed up and down. Despite the efforts of the police, groups were gathering and swelling at various points in the street. There was an air of holiday.

‘What time is it?’ Hennessy enquired. The man produced his watch.

‘Wearing up to half past one.’

‘Time for a bit to eat,’ Hennessy said.

‘Have a look at his jills,’ the man said.

Hennessy looked. A stooped, frock-coated old man with a beard and a tall silk hat was being helped from a cab by the coachman and a young lady. He leaned on her arm and paused to look about the street.

‘Wouldn’t you think he’d have a bit of sense,’ the man remarked, ‘at his age.’

They watched as the old man, still leaning heavily on the arm of the girl, was led into the hotel.

‘The niece . . . would you say?’ Hennessy speculated.

‘I would. With an eye on the money, waiting for God to see fit to call the poor oul fella.’

‘He looks the sort that would have plenty of it.’

‘That’s what keeps them alive. No worries and plenty of money. Ah well.’

‘The good God made a queer division,’ Hennessy said. As they moved away people detached themselves from the crowd on the far side of the street and began to move towards them. Others joined in, until the whole street seemed on the move. Hennessy looked behind him. The figure of the frock-coated old man stood on the balcony above the street. Hennessy saw him straighten up and pull the beard aside. He flung out his arms in a gesture that by now was unmistakable.

‘It’s Larkin,’ the man beside Hennessy shouted. The crowd roared its recognition and surged forward. Larkin on the balcony shouted in triumph.

‘I promised you I’d speak to you in this street today. I’ve kept that promise. I’ll leave here only when they arrest me.’

Hennessy gazed upwards, thunderstruck, but in a moment the police had reached the balcony and Larkin was seized. He saw him being led out of the hotel and marched towards College Street Station. At the window of the cab in which Larkin had arrived, a woman screamed: ‘Three cheers for Jim Larkin.’

‘It’s the Countess Markiewicz,’ the man with Hennessy said. Police surrounded the carriage, ordering it to turn about. They began to manhandle the driver. The countess was forced back into her seat and the crowd surrounding the cab began to heckle.

‘Trouble,’ the man with Hennessy said, ‘let’s get out.’

But the pressure of the crowd tightened suddenly and lifted Hennessy off his feet. Over their heads he saw the first wave of police, their batons drawn, coming at the double towards the crowd. His heart jumped with horror. He thought of his bowler. A belt of a baton would ruin it for ever. He tried to raise his hands to take it off his head but they were pinioned to his sides. His ribs were caving in, every breath became an agonising struggle. He was almost unconscious when the impact of the baton charge turned the crowd and it began to break up. Hennessy dropped to the ground. He lay there for some moments, gasping, until the thought of his hat galvanised him once more. He felt his head. The bowler was gone. He searched about frantically on his hands and knees and found it again. Then, clasping it tightly to his chest, he stood up. He began to move down the street. There was no escape that way. Furious battles were being fought around O’Connell’s monument and across the length of the bridge. The victims of the first charge lay everywhere about him. He moved up the street cautiously, but only for a few yards. There was another charge in progress and hundreds of people, trying to escape, were running in his direction. As he set off diagonally towards Princes Street those in front of the fleeing crowd were already about him. He made Princes Street and slowed down, gasping for breath. For a moment the street seemed deserted and he thought he had found an escape route. He put the bowler back on his head, spat to clear the heavy phlegm from his gasping lungs, then suddenly snatched the bowler off again. Another section of police had appeared at the head of Princes Street and were preparing to charge. With police in the narrow street in front and police behind, there was now no escape. Police began to beat their way through from both ends. Hennessy dodged several blows before he was hit. He backed away from one policeman only to bump into another. The second struck him a blow on the shoulder which paralysed the right side of his body. The first raised his baton and, as Hennessy was falling, brought it down hard on the side of his head. Hennessy, the bowler still clutched firmly against his chest, went down like a log and lay still.

The ambulance men brought him round. They lifted him up and found the bowler under him. It was dusty, but intact.

‘Is this his?’ one of them asked.

‘Shove it in along with him,’ the other said. When Hennessy could speak he claimed the hat and thanked them from his heart.

‘It would have been better on your head,’ one of them said, examining the jagged wound.

Hennessy tried to smile. It wouldn’t. The head would mend, with the help of God. The man attending to him touched the right shoulder and Hennessy gave a gasp of pain.

‘Better bring him in,’ he advised.

The news was bad that night. Two workers had been killed, hundreds were hurt. The hospitals were thronged all day. At night the gas-lamps were extinguished and the side streets were loud with pitched battles. In one place the West Kent Regiment was called out to help to restore order. Hennessy was able to limp his way home around five in the evening. His shoulder was dislocated but the bowler still fitted. He was able to raise it with his left hand, exposing the bloodstained bandage, to salute Father O’Connor when they met near the corner of Chandlers Court. Father O’Connor raised his hat automatically in return.

The sight of a similar bandage on the priest’s head transfixed Hennessy.

Father O’Connor, flushing slightly, passed on. Hennessy remained rooted to the ground.

‘Holy God!’ he exclaimed. The world had turned upside down.

Yearling, making his way across town to a meeting of the Board, was held up by a procession. It was the funeral of a dead striker. It passed him slowly, with bands and torches and stewards with crêpe-covered staves who marshalled the thousands that followed into uneven ranks. At the front marched members of the British Trade Union Congress, including Keir Hardie, whom he recognised immediately. He would make the oration, Yearling surmised, in place of Larkin, who was now in gaol. At the very back a force of mounted police kept a watchful eye on the mourners. The music affected Yearling, as music always did, and the dense rabble marching in time to it looked to him like figures from the French Revolution. Most of them were ragged and many had bandaged heads and limbs. They were out in force once more, drawn from their lanes and warrens by a now uncontrollable discontent. He stayed to watch, even when the way was clear for him to continue with his journey. The thought that they were so many appalled him. He had a drink and read with particular care the newspaper reports of the disturbances. When he reached the foundry of Morgan & Co. the meeting was over. His brother-in-law invited him into his office.

‘I’m sorry you missed it,’ he said.

‘I was held up by a trade union demonstration,’ Yearling said.

‘More rioting?’

‘No. A funeral of one of the strikers. I’m sure it was the largest since Parnell.’

‘We’ve decided to move,’ Bullman said.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘We’re going to put a stop to all this immediately,’ Bullman explained. ‘No more Larkinism and no more broken contracts. I’ve reported to the Board on the meeting of the Employers’ Federation. They’ve agreed to a man to support the proposal.’

‘What proposal?’

‘The proposal of the Federation to outlaw Larkinism. We are issuing this tomorrow. Four hundred other employers are pledged to take the same action.’ He took the top copy of a form from a bundle on his desk and handed it to Yearling.

‘All employees must sign it—whether they belong to Larkin’s union or not.’

Yearling took the form and read it. It ran:

‘I Hereby Undertake
to carry out all instructions given to me by or on behalf of my employers, and, further, I agree to immediately resign my membership of the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union (if a member); and I further undertake that I will not join or in any way support this Union.

Signed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Witness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

He handed it back and said:

‘Who drafted this?’

‘Our chairman—William Martin Murphy.’

The undubbed knight was moving openly at last.

‘Suppose they refuse to sign?’ Yearling suggested.

‘That’s what we hope they’ll do,’ Bullman said ‘When the Larkinites refuse we’ll get rid of them.’

‘But you’re giving this to both Larkinites and non-Larkinites,’ Yearling said. ‘Suppose the non-Larkinites refuse to sign also?’

‘That’s unlikely,’ Bullman said. ‘Why should they fight Larkin’s battles for him?’

‘Why do they take sympathetic action and why do they refuse to handle goods they regard as tainted?’ Yearling pointed out.

‘Are you against the proposal?’

‘Isn’t it indiscriminate?’

‘Why didn’t you attend the meeting?’ Bullman asked irritably.

‘Fate,’ Yearling said. ‘I seem to miss the few important occasions.’

‘You’d have been in a minority of one,’ Bullman assured him.

‘Possibly. But I would have frightened them.’

‘I doubt it.’

Yearling recovered his hat from his brother-in-law’s desk.

‘You yourself would have been the hardest nut to crack,’ he said, ‘and you are frightened already.’

Rashers lit the candle and lay down between the rags he had accumulated during his long occupation of the basement of Chandlers Court. The dog stretched itself at his feet, the candle cast familiar shadows, all was as usual in his cellar below the city. In the street above him the day was still waning, although the hour was almost eleven. The weather of August was being kind that year, the light reluctant to quit the sky. But the cardboard in the window kept out what was left of it, making the candle a necessary expense.

Rashers drank water from a jamjar and chewed some dry bread from the rusted biscuit tin at his bedside. He was tired from tramping the streets and he was afraid of what might happen. The police were carrying out raids on the tenements, smashing furniture, breaking delph, beating up the inhabitants. They were wreaking a savage revenge on those who had ambushed them continuously from the windows of dark streets. Every tenement was an enemy now, a fortress furnished with bricks and bolts and chamber pots. It was unlikely they would visit a basement, but the stories he had heard were not reassuring. The police were angry. They were determined to spread terror wherever they could.

‘A gang of bowsies,’ Rashers said to the dog.

At the sound of his voice it stood up. It watched him as he ate, its eyes begging for its share. If they came Rusty would protect him. If he heard their feet coming down the stairs he would whisper, ‘Get them, Rusty.’ The barking was a protection in itself. But if they were too incensed or too drunk to be put off by that, then let them break in the door and face the music. Rusty would take them all on. Without hesitating to make a count of the helmets.

He called the dog to him and said: ‘Here, Rusty,’ and shared his bread with his bodyguard. The dog gulped it down and then licked his hand.

‘No more, Rusty,’ he said sadly. The biscuit tin was empty.

The poorer streets were keeping a wary eye on the possibility of disturbances. In the more respectable areas his rags marked him out as a representative of the hooligan element. People closed their doors on him or turned aside from him. He had thought of writing a ballad about the arrest of Larkin, but the words refused to come. The pockets he’d compose for were now likely to be as empty as his own.

‘What’ll you and me do if it becomes a general thing, Rusty?’ he asked.

If job after job is closed, and beggar after beggar invaded the streets, until the city became a vast hunting ground of unemployed?

‘So far as you and me is concerned,’ he said to the dog, ‘God never shut one door but He closed another.’

He lay back and tried to be calm about the threat of the dark hours and the uncertainty of the days that were coming.

‘Go to bed, Rusty,’ he ordered.

Once again the dog stretched himself at his feet. Rashers blew out the candle.

The bundle of forms was taken from Mr. Bullman’s desk for distribution. On the appointed day he waited, with anxiety, for their return. None came. He addressed enquiries of a discreet nature through the hierarchy of control. The answer was that his workers, Larkinites and non-Larkinites alike, were refusing to sign. He held council again with his Board. They decided to be resolute. The next day instructions were given to reduce the furnaces gradually and to set up slow fires. The men refused the instruction. Bullman, knowing that his supervisory staff could do this much for him, took the necessary steps.

In the morning Fitz entered as usual through the office and signed his name in the book left there for foremen. When he reached No. 1 furnace house the night shift was leaving. No one came to replace them. After half an hour or so he left and went across the works yard. He found the main gates closed. He heard the voices of men outside and let himself out through the gateman’s hut. A large poster on the gate declared a lock-out. Work would be available only for those who reported first to the office to sign the Federation form. No one went to the office. They stood about for a while or slipped in by the side gate to collect some personal belongings from the company’s lockers. They returned after a brief interval carrying teapots or cracked cups or overalls and working shirts bundled all together. Then they drifted away. Fitz, returning to No. 1 House to check if anything remained to be seen to, found Carrington waiting for him.