Strumpet City (58 page)

A policeman threatened to take him in for disturbing the peace. For a while a gang of children followed him, attentive and curious. When he got back to Chandlers Court it was dark. He met Hennessy and sat down wearily on the steps.

‘Sit down and have a chat.’

‘I can’t,’ Hennessy said. ‘I’ve got to go out to do a bit of a job.’

‘At this hour of the night?’

‘It’s a class of a watchman’s job,’ Hennessy said.

‘Whereabouts?’

‘Crampton’s near the Park.’

‘You’re well got there.’

‘I know one of the foremen.’

‘I thought Crampton’s men were locked out?’

‘This is only a casual class of a thing,’ Hennessy said uneasily, ‘a watchman’s job.’

‘I’d be careful, all the same,’ Rashers warned him. ‘You don’t want to be dumped into the Liffey for being a scab.’

‘There’s no picket,’ Hennessy said. ‘I’m not passing any picket.’

‘Are there polis guarding it?’

‘Not that I’ve noticed.’

‘That’s an ill-omened brood, the same polis,’ Rashers said. ‘One of them threatened to run me in today.’

‘What for?’

‘For ringing my bell in the pursuit of me juties. He asked me did I think I was a bloody fire brigade.’

‘A smart alec,’ Hennessy said with sympathy. ‘I’ve met that kind myself.’

Rashers became enraged.

‘In this kip of a city it’s regarded as a crime for a poor man to go about his lawful occasions. The rich can blow factory hooters and sirens and motor horns and the whole shooting gallery. But when a poor man rings a bell for his livelihood it’s regarded as illegal.’

‘I’d a brush with one of them myself some weeks ago,’ Hennessy said. ‘A fella in plain clothes that was watching the food ships arriving. Asked for my name and address.’

‘I hope you gave him his answer.’ Rashers spat from the steps into the basement and peered into the darkness as the glob of mucous made its silent descent. It relieved his hatred of policemen. Hennessy decided it was not the moment for the whole truth.

‘I took him very cool,’ he told Rashers. ‘“Who are you?” I asked him—“and may I see your credentials, if you have any?”’

‘Did he show them?’

‘He produced them for inspection right enough,’ Hennessy lied. ‘He was a superintendent.’

‘That’s where the public’s money goes,’ Rashers complained, ‘paying thick-looking gougers from the country for spying on native-born Dublinmen. Did he try to interfere with you?’

‘He was objecting to me cheering,’ Hennessy said, ‘but I took him up on it. “So far as my knowledge of the matter goes, and correct me if I’m wrong, Superintendent,” I said to him—“but I’m not aware of anything on the statute books that makes it a crime for a man to cheer.”’

‘That was right,’ Rashers approved, ‘the nerve of the bloody rozzers in this city is appalling. Did he take it any further?’

Hennessy felt his powers of invention flagging.

‘No,’ he said, ‘the matter rested at that.’

‘Jaysus,’ Rashers said, ‘it bates Banagher. First they open your skull with a cowardly blow. And then they want to know your name, address and antecedents.’

He tried another spit, which sailed in a graceful arc between the railings. It pleased him.

‘Were you down at the food kitchens at all?’

‘Once or twice for curiosity’s sake only,’ Hennessy answered. ‘I’ve no union card.’

‘Did you ever see the Right Reverend Father Vincent Holy B. O’Connor down there?’

‘I can’t say I have.’

‘Well—I did,’ Rashers said, ‘three times.’

‘What brings him to those parts?’ Hennessy wondered.

‘It’s not the soup anyway,’ Rashers decided.

‘No,’ Hennessy agreed.

‘It’s no charitable thought that moves him—that’s a certainty; a long cool drink of holy water is the most you’d ever get off that fella.’ Rashers screwed up his eyes. ‘It often struck me he might be a spy for the archbishop.’

‘Ah, I don’t know,’ Hennessy said, ‘Dr. Walsh is a decent man.’

‘They’re all the wan in this city,’ Rashers said, ‘condemning the poor and doing the unsuspecting Pope out of his Peter’s Pence. I suppose you wouldn’t have a cigarette to spare?’

‘Not till Friday—payday,’ Hennessy said.

Rashers nodded in sympathy.

‘The same as myself.’ He rose from the steps. It cost him so much effort that Hennessy had to help him.

‘Don’t get into any trouble over that job,’ Rashers warned him. ‘Watch yourself now. And make sure it’s above board.’

‘I’ll do that,’ Hennessy assured him.

But he was worried and decided to say as little about it as he could. Crampton’s men were locked out. But there was no picket and he was not replacing anybody. He brooded over it as he walked along the quays, the river keeping him company for almost a mile. When he turned eventually into the back streets they were dark and unusually quiet. They oppressed him with their air of misery and hunger. His own children were sleeping on the floor and his wife had only an upturned box to sit on because the last of their few chairs had now been sold. The stump of a candle that guttered in the centre of the table could not be replaced until payday.

The neighbours were no longer able to spare anything. Something had to be done.

In the foundry Carrington, with the help of the clerical and supervisory staffs, was still managing to keep the furnaces on slow heat. An unanticipated problem was rust. It attacked idle machinery with a persistence that defeated all his efforts. Where he discovered it, he got the staff to treat it with sandpaper and oily rags, yet it threatened always to gain the upper hand. The overhead wires that fed the Telpher became slack after a stormy night and had to be left that way. A faulty gutter caused a patch of dampness to disfigure the wallpaper in the boardroom. He could do nothing about it despite Mr. Bullman’s repeated instructions. There were ladders, but nobody who could be trusted to work at such a height.

Doggett, for the first time in his life as managing director, saw grass springing up between the cobbles in the loading yard. Winter would now arrest its growth, but its presence convinced him that, so far as he was concerned, things had gone far enough. The financial assistance he was getting from employers’ organisations in England helped him with the cost of keeping his staff locked out; it could not protect his premises and equipment from the ravages of disuse. He spoke about it at a meeting and framed a resolution calling for a determined plan to recruit free labour from England. There was no lack of support. He had the satisfaction of seeing his proposal adopted without having to stick his neck out by moving it himself. In the matter of militancy Doggett’s philosophy was to let others have the credit.

C
HAPTER
S
EVEN

Timothy Keever now toiled from seven in the morning until seven in the evening in the back portion of Xavier Broderick Sons & Company, Church Furnishers and Chandlers, Merchant’s Quay, for a weekly wage of fifteen shillings. After two weeks of the lockout Father O’Connor had used his kindly interest to secure the position for him. It was a non-union shop and the money was smaller than he had earned in Nolan & Keyes, but he was locked out with the rest and had no choice. There were compensations. He was out of the weather and the labour in the stores was mitigated by simple clerical duties which required him to carry at all times a heavy marking pencil and a fountain pen. These he displayed prominently in the breast pocket of his shop coat. There were disadvantages also. The clerical work, although it filled him with pride, took its toll in concentration and anxiety. His overseer was a foul-mouthed little man of atheistic and anti-clerical views and blasphemous observations to which he was provoked most frequently by the Holy Statuary that thronged both the stores and the shop. He passed discreditable remarks to Keever about the pious effigies of St. Joseph, the Little Flower, Blessed Martin of Porres, the Infant of Prague, The Virgin and even Christ the King. He suffered from stomach trouble and treated it by eating the charcoal which was sold for use in thuribles for the burning of incense, his belief being that charcoal was very good for flatulence. Keever shuddered at his talk and felt there could be no luck in a place where charcoal destined for a holy purpose was pilfered and consumed in such quantity. But he feared to risk his own security by objecting and had to be content to close his eyes and shut his ears.

Sometimes when Father O’Connor came in on business he was called into the shop to speak with him. These were proud moments. The lady assistants looked on with respect and even the floorwalker smiled and said: ‘Here is Mr. Keever for you now, Father.’ So among the statues and the priedieus, the ciboria and chalices, the lamps of brass and the vestments hued according to liturgical ordinance, Keever enjoyed for brief moments a world that could have been a cluttered anteroom to the real heaven into which, his duty earnestly done and his earthly life over, he hoped by the Mercy of God and the intercession of the Saints to be eternally translated.

Mostly they spoke of the affairs of the parish, who was on strike, who had given in, what was the prevailing temper of the people. With Mr. Hegarty he still visited certain of the aged and the poor, dispensing on Father O’Connor’s behalf what relief could be afforded out of the remnants of the fund. Father O’Connor had given up the hope of a regularly operating charitable society. The issues had become too complicated. It was impossible to distinguish between those who were suffering because of circumstances beyond their control and those who were hungry because they were in revolt against lawful authority.

But Keever could report that the suffering was spreading and growing more intense with each week that passed and that neither the strike fund nor the food kitchens could keep the condition of the mass of the people from deteriorating. One afternoon he told Father O’Connor that there were rumours of a new move, a plan to send the children of the strikers to working-class homes in England. The effect on Father O’Connor was quite astonishing. He began to tremble and had difficulty in speaking.

‘Are they out of their minds?’ he asked.

Keever was appalled at the effect of what he had reported.

‘Maybe it’s only talk, Father,’ he said contritely. ‘I shouldn’t have repeated it to you.’

‘No, no,’ Father O’Connor assured him, ‘this is an extremely grave matter. You did right to tell me.’

‘I hope so, Father.’

Father O’Connor became very serious.

‘Mr. Larkin may see nothing wrong in sending Catholic children to homes which are almost certain to be of the Protestant faith. But I’d expect Catholic parents to understand the grave danger. If you hear any further talk of this—even a whisper, make it your business to let me know immediately.’

‘I will indeed, Father,’ Keever said.

He returned to the stores, where, among the smells of colza oil and benzine, paraffin and brasso and beeswax, he made up parcels and filled cans and pondered on Father O’Connor’s reaction to what he had reported, until the overseer interrupted him to draw his attention to a new consignment of statues and gave him a price list.

‘I want you to mark these up’ he said. ‘Put a price code on one of each kind and bring it up to the shop for display.’

Keever took the list and unpacked the first of the statues. It was St. Michael the Archangel. He looked at it in some doubt and said: ‘Where will I mark it?’

The little overseer screwed up his face.

‘On the right cheek of his arse,’ he said.

Shock paralysed the hand in which Keever held the marking pencil. It refused to move.

‘Go on,’ the overseer said after a while. ‘Do what you’re told. There’s no fear he’ll sit down on it.’

Muhall’s face, once powerful and ruddy from the open air, grew smaller and became silver coloured. The bulk of his body under the bedclothes grew smaller too. More frequently now, as he lay between sleep and wakefulness the patterns on the walls cast by sunlight or lamplight drew him into the half-world of imagination, where he drove unearthly horses and humped weightless sacks in streets that were shadowed and soundless. He squared his great shoulders and led the processions and listened at vast meetings to voiceless speeches. The bands played in dumb show, the torches waved wildly to noiseless cheering, faces mouthed words at him that he could not hear. But the exultation ended always, whether he was carrying sacks up a stairs or marching with his comrades, when he looked down in sudden agony to discover that he was walking on stumps. Sometimes he wept, but only if he was sure he was alone. At times it was for pity of self. At times it was because of the things he could no longer do for Larkin and the union.

Whenever they visited him he was still militant. Pat he liked best to talk to, because Pat was one of the strong-arm element engaged in ambushes on the police and in teaching scabs that strike breaking would not pay.

‘That’s my man,’ he would say approvingly at the end of each account of a victorious clash, ‘into the river with them.’

‘That’s the motto, Barney,’ Pat would say. ‘The prospect of a watery end is a great deterrent.’

Once, when Fitz said: ‘One of these days you’ll find yourselves had up for murder’, Mulhall grew angry.

‘There’s a lot of ways of murdering people,’ he said, ‘and one is to starve them.’

‘That’s not the law,’ Fitz pointed out. Mulhall tried to pull himself up in the bed and roared at him:

‘Whose side are you bloodywell on?’

But Fitz took the outburst quietly. Mulhall’s anger with him was always brief.

When they got outside it was Pat who said: ‘He won’t last.’

‘No,’ Fitz said.

‘How are they managing?’

‘On Willie’s strike pay. That’s all they have.’

‘Christ help them,’ Pat said.

They went down the stairs together.

‘What do you know about Hennessy, the fella with the bowler hat?’ asked Pat.

Fitz became cautious.

‘What should I know about him?’

‘That he’s got a job somewhere.’

‘I didn’t hear that.’

‘To be precise,’ Pat said, ‘that he’s watching at night for Crampton’s.’