Strumpet City

CHAPTER FIVE

It was summer when Mulhall left prison. He had to stand for some moments to adjust himself to the space and noise of the early-morning streets. Even the sunlight seemed loud. Then he began to head towards the centre of the city, where the crowded pavements bewildered him, until he remembered again that he was a leader among all the people. He had been in gaol for them. He would be in gaol again. He squared his shoulders when the floats and carts rattled past him. While he had been in gaol for them they had not let him down. The dockers had tied up the port rather than work with non-union labour. The Viceroy had invited Larkin to Dublin Castle to discuss ways and means of settling with the men. That was a new measure of recognition. Now the railway men were on strike in sympathy with their comrades in England.

Mulhall saluted the pickets as he passed and was saluted in turn. They knew him as a leader too. These were part of his great army, an army that would grow and grow until wealth and eminence would bow to its banners. There would be no more slums, no more rickety children, no more hunger and cold. Because he, and others like him, would refuse to be defeated.

‘I declare to God,’ Rashers said, ‘will you look who’s here?’ Mulhall paused to greet Rashers on the steps. Rusty the dog sniffed at his trouser legs. That, more than anything so far, assured him that he was back in the world again. Mulhall patted the dog.

‘All present and correct,’ he said.

As he went into the house Rashers stared after him. So did the dog.

‘I might do worse than go to gaol myself,’ Rashers said to the dog, ‘but if I did what the hell would happen to you?’

The dog flexed his ears and sat down again. Neither of them had very much to do.

Mulhall found his wife making their son’s bed. She turned round slowly when the door opened. He stood for a moment, waiting for her to overcome her surprise. The room was familiar and yet new. The chairs and the table, the statue and its lamp, the pictures on the wall, seemed to turn with her to regard him.

‘You’re back,’ she said.

‘Like a bad ha’penny.’

She let the blanket fall from her hands and came to him. He embraced her.

‘We missed you, Bernie.’

He knew they had—his wife, his son, the statue and the lamp, the pictures and the furniture. He was a leader in a great army, but he was king also here, in a little world where everything was moulded to serve him.

‘I know,’ he said. While he had been dreaming of conquering a city, they had been lonely for him and wishing him home. He released her and found tears covering her face. It was her way. She cried for sorrow and for joy, a tender, ageing woman easily moved. She wiped her face with her apron as she went over to the stove.

‘I’ll make you a cup of tea.’

That was her answer to every visitation of woe and joy, her response to an unexpected call, the preliminary to all departures.

‘No hurry,’ he said. He was over at the window and looking down at the street. The sight gave him pleasure. It was sunny and quiet. He saw Rashers and the dog turning the corner, two inseparable questors. Then he looked at his pipe-rack. There were four pipes stuck in it, all old, acquired over a lifetime. He kept them clean with methylated spirit which the watchmen in Doggett & Co. saved for him from time to time. He went over and took one down. He was examining it when she came over to give him the plug of tobacco.

‘I’ve a head like a sieve,’ she complained.

‘Where did this come from?’

‘I bought it to keep for when you came out. I knew it’d be the first thing you’d want.’

‘God bless the thought,’ he said. He sat down and began to cut it. As he filled his pipe he asked:

‘And how’s Willie?’

‘He missed you.’

‘Damn the miss,’ he said gruffly, to hide his pleasure. The smell of his tobacco drifted about the room.

‘I’ve a job for Willie,’ he said presently, when they were sitting at table, ‘and that’s to get them messengers and parcel boys organised in the union.’

‘You’ve got thin in the face,’ she said, when she had scrutinised him closely. ‘Did they treat you bad?’

‘I didn’t mind it.’

‘It used to worry me all the time, thinking of you locked in there with rogues and robbers.’

He had known that would worry her. She could not be expected to understand what it had taken himself a long time to find out. There were worse rogues.

‘Gaol isn’t so bad,’ he said, ‘the real criminals are outside.’

After a while he went out again, roaming for an hour or so at will. He walked the docks and saw, piled along the quayside and outside the sheds, the accumulation of goods that the rail workers and the dockers had refused to handle. At the gates of Doggett & Co. some of the carters reined in and greeted him.

‘When are you starting back, Barney?’ they asked him.

‘That’s what I’m here to see about.’

‘If there’s any mullarkey, let’s know.’

They took pains to show him they would stand by him if Doggett made any difficulties. He waved them on and went through the gate, pausing for a moment in the yard as affection stirred in him for the familiar coal-heaps and the black dust which formed odd patterns on the ground. He had worked here a long time and knew every corner of it. He could recognise every horse in an instant and recall its name. Horses, when you worked with them for a long time, he thought, were like any other working mate. Some were lazy and forgetful, some had good humours and bad, some were inexhaustible and patient and long suffering, pulling loads without flinching until the great heart inside them burst.

The timekeeper said Mr. Doggett would see him. He was to wait. They talked about gaol and what it was like. The timekeeper told him of small changes.

‘Who took over my horse?’ Mulhall asked.

‘Gibney,’ the timekeeper said.

‘Gibney is a butcher, not a carter,’ Mulhall said, ‘he’ll pull the mouth off her.’ The timekeeper took a delivery docket off the table and stuck it on a hook behind him, over a key that was numbered fourteen.

‘Who the hell gave her to him?’ Mulhall demanded.

‘You seem to forget,’ the timekeeper said, when he had completed his business, ‘that his nibs Gibney is related to the foreman.’

‘Since when?’

‘Married to the daughter, less than six weeks ago.’ Then, as though Mulhall ought to have known, he added: ‘That’s been going on a long time.’

A clerk came in and said Mr. Doggett would see Mulhall. They went together through the door at the back of the office and up a carpeted staircase. Doggett was standing at the window overlooking the yard. He turned and said to the clerk: ‘You may go.’ Then he sat at his desk.

‘I expect you’ve come for your job back.’

‘I’ve come to find out when do I start,’ Mulhall corrected. There was a difference.

‘And if I say you can’t start?’

‘Why should you say that?’

Doggett paused before answering. He was alert and cool. If what stood before him was simply a man, he could smash him by merely deciding to do so. But he was not confronted by a man. He was face to face with a movement. He did not want Mulhall back. On the other hand, it would not be worth facing a strike to get rid of him. The thought ran through Doggett’s mind that things had changed. Three years ago it would have been a simple matter.

‘I don’t know if you’re aware of it,’ he said, ‘but there is a railway strike and several smaller strikes too. We haven’t the work for a full staff.’

‘No one’s been laid off.’

‘Not yet—but the situation changes day by day.’

‘And what about Gibney?’

‘Gibney?’

‘He’s got my horse and he isn’t a carter at all. He hasn’t twelve months’ service.’

‘And what service had you?’

‘I was jobbed in Mr. Waterville’s time,’ Mulhall said, ‘and that was neither today nor yesterday.’

‘In the meanwhile,’ Doggett suggested quietly, ‘you’ve been in gaol—on a criminal charge.’

Mulhall smiled. They were getting down to brass tacks. He went over to the window and looked down. Three carts had pulled up in a line and were waiting their turn to ride on to the tare scales.

‘Those men below wouldn’t consider it criminal,’ he answered.

Behind his back irritation had brought Doggett to his feet. His workmen did not usually behave so casually in his presence. He mastered his ill humour. There would be a time to put this man back in his place. To do so too obviously now would be a mistake. He went over quietly and they both stood shoulder to shoulder. Below them lay the yard, peaceful in the sunlight. To Doggett it was not unlovely. Anything he had he owed to it. For Mulhall it meant bread and butter and, now that he had been away from it for half a year, something more. It was a familiar plot, as much a part of him as the street he had played in when he was a child, or the school he had gone to for so short a while, or the walks he had walked with his father when he was still small enough to be led by the hand.

‘You’d like to own it, wouldn’t you?’ Doggett said.

Mulhall looked round in surprise. It was a thought that had never entered his head.

‘I only want to work in it.’

‘You must understand that there may not be room—not at present.’

‘Because I’ve a criminal record?’

‘Not at all,’ Doggett said, ‘we’ll forget that part of it.’ He went back to his desk and thought carefully for some moments. Then he said:

‘You can enquire later in the week. It will give us an opportunity to see how things are going.’

He began to arrange the articles on his desk. Mulhall went to the door, but Doggett’s voice again stopped him.

‘You mustn’t think I am holding anything against you.’

‘No,’ Mulhall said.

He closed the door and went down the stairs. The timekeeper asked him if he was starting, but Mulhall shook his head. He did not stop to talk.

Mulhall walked with his hands tucked in his belt and his hat tilted forward over his eyes to protect them from the sun. He went thoughtfully. The meaner streets smelled badly because of the heat; all the doors stood open, revealing, down hallways that were foul and dark tunnels, the small sunlit yards, each with its communal lavatory. At first he thought he would go to the union office, but the idea of stating a case for himself put him off. It would come better from the men themselves. He decided to see Fitz and turned down the quays again. At Morgan & Co. the gateman told him Fitz was on shift.

‘I’d like to see him, if I could.’

The gateman said he would ask Mr. Carrington, the foreman.

‘Fitzpatrick is well got with him,’ he explained. ‘I don’t think there’ll be any objection.’

‘Thanks,’ Mulhall said.

The gateman delayed. He knew Mulhall, who often delivered coal to Morgan & Co.

‘How are you after your spell away?’

‘Gameball,’ Mulhall assured him.

‘We cleaned up a few scabs ourselves the other night,’ the gateman confided.

‘Where was that?’

‘In Tobin’s of Thorncastle Street. Four of them were drinking together. There’s not a pane of glass left in the place after it.’

‘What about the police?’

‘They didn’t show up until it was all over—like sensible men.’

The gateman rubbed his hands briskly together and said with relish: ‘By God, we gave them a bellyful.’ Then his attention fixed on a distant figure crossing the yard.

‘There’s Carrington going into the house now. I’ll ask him.’

Mulhall lit his pipe and waited. Men were unloading coal into an endless chain of buckets which rose in procession up an open tower before moving along a belt and into one of the furnace houses. It was the newest house, machine fed. A few more of these, Mulhall thought, and there would be less work for furnace hands. It was one of the things he had given thought to while in gaol. Machinery would improve and replace labour. The motor car would replace the horse, and do the work of three carters. What would happen then? He had argued about it with another prisoner.

‘The motor will never be a success,’ the prisoner said, ‘because they can’t invent a wheel to suit the roads.’

Mulhall knew better than that.

‘If the wheel won’t suit the road,’ he said, ‘they’ll make the roads suit the wheel.’

After some time Fitz came out to him. He smiled broadly and held out his hand.

‘Welcome home,’ Fitz said.

Mulhall shook his hand and then gestured towards the tower and the moving buckets.

‘That’s new, isn’t it?’ he asked.

‘They put it up about two months ago.’

‘Has it done away with labour?’

‘It’s servicing the new house, so no one’s been laid off. But more would have been taken on if the furnaces were hand fed,’ Fitz admitted.

‘Suppose they start feeding the old houses in the same way?’

‘Too bad for some of us,’ Fitz said.

But you couldn’t stop them using machinery. Machinery meant more profit, and profit was the beginning and the end of everything. Roads and bridges and buildings would be reduced to rubble wherever they impeded profit. Men would be laid off and children would go hungry. For the sake of the machines families would know want.

‘We’ve got to keep a watch on new machinery,’ Mulhall warned. Then he told Fitz about his interview with Doggett.

‘Have you seen Larkin?’

‘I’d rather someone else saw him for me.’

‘I’ll go down with Joe Somerville tonight,’ Fitz promised. ‘We’ll call a meeting and state your case.’

‘What’s Joe Somerville got to do with it?’

‘He’s acting secretary for the carters’ section,’ Fitz explained.

‘That’s a new one,’ Mulhall said.

Things had changed in his short absence.

The next day, before knocking-off time, there was a notice scrawled on the gate of Doggett & Co. which read:

‘Stand by Bernad Mulhall

No Victimisation’

It was in white chalk. Doggett, who read it on his way out, instructed the gateman to clean it off. He noticed, without surprise, that the name Bernard had been misspelled. Neither was he very much perturbed. If the pressure became dangerous he could settle it by reinstating Mulhall. He had consulted with the manager of Nolan & Keyes, with the Chairman of Morgan & Co. Foundries, with a number of other employers. There were wider issues than that of Mulhall. There was the question of curbing Mr. Larkin himself. Doggett’s colleagues were evolving machinery for doing so.

Later that night Joe Somerville, acting secretary of the carters sub-section, settled down by candlelight and began the labour of composing the minutes of the meeting.

Minutes of Meeting of Carters’ No, 3 section re Bernard Mulhall, held in Beresford Place . . .

He paused and consulted Pat, who was stretched on the bed in the far corner.

‘What was yesterday’s date?’

Pat, glancing first at the top of the newspaper he was studying, told him.

Joe continued:

Opening the meeting, J. Somerville explained that R. Fitzpatrick was a Foundry worker who was here only to deliver a message about the position of B. Mulhall, who was speaking to him. The meeting agreed there was no objection to a Foundry member being present for this purpose. R. Fitzpatrick and J. Somerville then reported how B. Mulhall had applied for reinstatement to the firm of Doggett & Co., he had been released from gaol that day where he served six months hard labour for his class. The answer he got was to say the least evasive and the question arose what further action was to be taken to secure his rights as he was a carter with long service.

J. Brady said there should be an immediate heel-up, that Comrade Mulhall was a solid trade union member, one of the first in Doggett’s, and it was up to each and all to stand by him now. T. Williams asked who was it chalked the message on the front gate, this was no use to anyone and only showed our hand to Mr. Doggett. The general secretary asked what message and when he was told he said he would do the talking to Mr. Doggett and the men must await his instructions. J. Brady said everyone had confidence in Mr. Larkin and they were sure he would call out the men when the time came. After further discussion it was agreed unanimously to call out the men if his talk with Mr. Doggett did not bring quick results.

This business being completed P. Forde said he wished to raise the question of a collection for the railway men who were on sympathetic strike with their comrades across the water. It was agreed there would be a weekly collection, P. Forde to collect from the men in Doggett’s and P. Bannister to look after the levy from Nolan & Keyes men. The meeting concluded.

Joe read over the minutes to Pat, who listened with half an ear. He was thinking of Lily. He had met her a few times since their walk in the Park, but although she was friends with him once again it was always hard to persuade her to come out with him. When she did it was never into the city. She was afraid to meet people she had once known.

‘I think the cupboard will stretch to a cup of tea for the supper,’ Joe suggested. He had laboured hard in the literary field. It was up to Pat to look after the menu. Pat left down his paper and began to prepare the tea without enthusiasm.

‘I wish it was as easy to make a pot of porter,’ he said, when the water had boiled at long last and he began to pour it over the two spoons of tea that lay on the bottom of the blackened can.

Doggett met Yearling at a special employers’ meeting. It was a large meeting, representative of most of the industrial and manufacturing firms in the city. The objective was to form a combination to fight the continuous strikes and threats of strikes. One of the speakers described it as an effort to form an Association of Employers to present a united front to Larkinism. The speeches bored Yearling but Doggett gave them his shrewd attention. On a number of occasions over the past three years he had succeeded in keeping his coal-carting concern open when others were closed down. It had paid off well in increased profit, but it had cost him much in goodwill. In the case of Morgan & Co. it had almost cost him an important contract. It became clear from the tone of the meeting that his technique of settling demands and then sweeping the market while the other coal concerns remained stubbornly closed would not work much longer. The leaders were appealing for consultation and concerted action. When the proposition was put ‘that a Company, to be called the Dublin Employers’ Federation Limited, be formed, with the object of affording mutual protection to and indemnity of all employers and employees’, Doggett raised a reluctant hand in favour of its adoption. He felt it only politic to do so and wondered when the man beside him kept his arms folded.

After the meeting Doggett went out alone into the summer evening. The red glow of sunset was in the sky and the odour of evening flowers accompanied him as he passed the railings of St. Stephen’s Green. It was a little bit early as yet to take a cab home; on the other hand the clubs and hotels in the area were almost certain to be occupied by groups of employers, some of whom he had no great desire to meet. Doggett turned down Grafton Street and then left into the snug of a public house. It was a place he knew well, with pictures of royalty and racing prints on the wall.

‘A baby Power,’ Doggett ordered, when the shutter in the partition opened.

‘I’ll have the same,’ a voice behind him said. He turned to find himself in the company of Yearling. Yearling smiled at him and said: ‘Interesting meeting.’

‘Very,’ Doggett answered.

‘The name is Yearling.’

‘Mine is Doggett.’

‘How do you do.’

‘How do.’

The curate brought the drinks.

‘Allow me,’ Yearling said, and paid for both.

‘Thank you.’

‘You’re Doggett & Company?’

‘That’s right,’ Doggett said. ‘And you?’

‘Morgan & Company—on the Board.’

‘Oh,’ Doggett said. This was the very thing he had tried to avoid. He still held his contract with the foundry, but his conscience was not altogether clear. He remembered that Yearling had not voted for the proposition. Yet the chairman of Morgan & Co. had been on the platform.

‘I’ve two minds about this combination business,’ Yearling confessed.

Mr. Doggett agreed, but waited a while for the other to give reasons. He was not quite sure where he stood. When Yearling failed to say anything further he decided to chance a sentiment that had been expressed at the meeting.

‘In a way,’ Doggett said, ‘I suppose if the rabble of the city can combine there’s nothing wrong in principle if we employers do the same thing.’

‘Nothing at all—if you want industrial warfare,’ Yearling said grimly.

‘We seem to have that already.’

‘We’ll have more of it.’

‘It may make Larkin draw in his horns.’

Yearling grunted in disbelief.

‘He’s more likely to paralyse the whole country,’ he pronounced. That was Doggett’s own assessment.

‘Personally,’ he confessed, ‘I’ve had to decide between Mr. Larkin’s threats and the threats of my own colleagues. That’s why I voted for the resolution. I wonder who’s behind all this.’

‘Can’t you guess?’

‘I’ve thought it might be Sibthorpe or Jacob. It’s hard to know.’

‘A certain gentleman who refused to be knighted?’ Yearling hinted.

Doggett thought for a moment until the name and the association joined somewhere in his shrewd skull.

‘William Martin Murphy.’

‘I may be wrong.’ Yearling conceded, but only out of politeness.

Doggett nodded.

‘He’s certainly the strongest,’ he said.

In the morning he sent for the yard superintendent.

‘We could do with an extra carter,’ he said. ‘Send for Bernard Mulhall and tell him he can start in the morning.’

Doggett was prepared, under pressure of self-interest, to combine, but he was damned if he was going to be the first in the firing line.

Joe Somerville had the pleasure of reporting to a meeting of carters that Bernard Mulhall had been reinstated unconditionally. For Doggett it meant only temporary respite. He read with sinking heart of the general rail strike in England, of riots and bloodshed and the interruption of Irish supplies. Then the Irish rail workers brought the trouble to his doorstep by walking out in sympathy. Doggett saw this with his own eyes. They marched past him in the street, singing ‘Fall in and Follow Me’, a ditty which, being a music-hall fan, he recognised as George Lashwood’s. That evening the police patrolled the city in unprecedented numbers. They guarded railway stations, they stood in strong formations at the entrances to principal streets. Their presence filled the city with uneasiness. Yet beyond the rallies and the speeches nothing much happened. Three days later a general settlement in England put an end to the dispute. The trains began to run again.

Yearling, travelling from Kingstown to the Imperial Hotel, was glad. He liked travelling by train, especially on the Kingstown line. He liked the yachts with coloured sails in the harbour, the blue shape of Howth Hill across the waters of the bay, the bathers and the children digging sandcastles. These were pleasant to look at in the last hours of an August evening. Yearling loved his city, her soft salt-like air, the peace of her evenings, the easy conversation of her people. He liked the quiet crossings at Sydney Parade and the Lansdowne Road, simply because he had swung on them as a schoolboy. The gasometers near Westland Row were friends of his. He could remember passing them many a time as a young man making amorous expeditions to the city. When he looked at these things they in some way kept the presence of loved people who were now dead or in exile; his father and his mother, a favourite aunt whose eccentricities once delighted him; a sister long married and settled in the colonies, a brother killed in childhood. These were melancholy thoughts, but for him melancholy had a rare flavour. It united him with his childhood and his youth. It gave him a reason for continuing to explore life with interest. It was like repeating the part of a story one had already read, in order to savour the more the part that was about to happen.

‘It makes it easier to abide the end,’ he explained to Father O’Connor, with his large eyebrows lifting upwards a little in self-mockery.

He had been explaining his mood after their meal together. The windows of the Imperial Hotel overlooked Sackville Street. Opposite them, when they averted their heads to look, the fronts of buildings were tinged with the orange glow of evening.

‘I think often of childhood myself,’ Father O’Connor confessed, ‘and the person I remember most is my mother. The love of a good mother is the most precious experience granted to man.’

‘The other kind of love is not to be sneezed at either,’ Mr. Yearling said robustly.

‘Of course not. The love of a good wife is precious too.’

‘Wife or lover, good, bad or indifferent, false or true, it’s a damned exciting experience. I’ve known a few of them and I wouldn’t have missed one.’

Father O’Connor looked at him curiously. These were loves he had never experienced and to which he had given little personal thought. But he knew the pitfalls. Sometimes in the confessional he had to warn against ill-advised matches, to put the brake on too passionate responses, to sound warnings against immoderate love-making, whether casual or in serious courtship. Penitents had wept in the darkness next to him because of love and its entanglements, because of shame at the sins it led to, because, when he refused absolution unless there was a sincere promise to abandon an association, the penitent struggled between the desire for forgiveness and the human frailty that made the promise impossible. The world of passion could be dark and terrible. Surely the man next to him must know it.

‘Surely all love is not the same,’ he suggested. ‘Surely what is bad leads to sin and shame and suffering?’

‘I did not mean it was all the same. I said that even the bad was exciting.’

Yearling smiled sadly at the street. It, too, reminded him of adventures long past. He had once, with some other students, stolen a horse tram, filled it with young ladies and driven it to Howth. They were bad young ladies, no doubt, but extremely agreeable. They shouted at passers-by and cheered at puzzled policemen. Ralph Bradshaw, he remembered, had refused to be involved.

‘Love,’ he added, ‘is a much misused word. It ranges emotionally from the boy and girl skylarking behind the haystack to the extravagances of Héloise and Abélard.’

It had been worth it, pinching that tram. He could still feel the traces in his hand and hear the clip-clop of hooves. That was something—after God knows how many years. He could feel the sunshine too. He could smell the warm salt air of the sea. He could taste the tea and the sticky buns they had bought on the hill. He could remember a young man’s appetite.

‘I hope Mr. and Mrs. Bradshaw are enjoying the theatre,’ Father O’Connor offered. They had gone to the Abbey to see Mr. Yeats’s Kathleen ni Houlihan and a play called The Eloquent Dempsey by a Mr. Boyle. Later they would call to the Imperial for a light supper with Yearling and Father O’Connor. Father O’Connor’s cloth forbade him to enter a playhouse. Yearling had been disinclined.

‘They’re welcome to my share of Mr. Yeats,’ he said, rising to look more closely at the street and to remember more clearly the affair of the horse tram. What he saw drove the thought from his mind. There was no traffic to be seen in the street below. At the end near the bridge a cordon of police stood with batons drawn.

‘Come and look,’ he said to Father O’Connor. They both stood and watched. Yearling opened the window a little. From the streets to their right came the sounds of people shouting and glass breaking.

‘My God,’ Yearling said, ‘a riot.’

Father O’Connor, peering over his shoulder saw the advance guard of the crowd moving steadily down the street. They were brandishing sticks and shouting. A plate-glass window on the far side quivered under a barrage of stones and gave way with an ear-splitting crash. Glass tumbled out on to the pavement. Under Father O’Connor’s alarmed eyes, men and women and urchins clambered over the glass and began to strip the shop of its contents. While the looters did their work the front ranks kept the police at bay with a bombardment of stones. Lamps along the sidewalks shattered and went out one by one.

Yearling, opening the windows wider, drew Father O’Connor with him as he stepped out on to the balcony.

‘Bradshaw should have come here,’ he remarked, pointing to the milling crowd below. ‘There’s the real Kathleen ni Houlihan for you.’

The police, moving in close formation, advanced against the mob. Bottles and stones rattled and fell short of their targets as the crowd retreated. Then the hand to hand fighting started and for fifteen or twenty minutes police and people struggled for possession of the street. Already the roadway was strewn with injured rioters. Yearling, turning to address a remark to Father O’Connor, noticed that his face was white and sick looking. He took him by the arm and led him back to his chair.

‘You must have something to drink.’

‘No . . . please.’

‘Something to settle the nerves.’

Father O’Connor shook his head.

‘I’ll be better in a moment.’

Yearling went out on the balcony once more, delayed a little, then re-entered.

‘The mob has gone back up the side streets,’ he said.

‘Perhaps I should go down,’ Father O’Connor said. ‘Somebody might be dying in the street, in need of the priest.’

He half rose, but Yearling pushed him back. ‘You are not well enough,’ he advised. ‘There is plenty of help for anyone who needs it. The ambulances are looking after the injured.’

Father O’Connor gave in. Unruly crowds terrified him. The sight of violence made him weak and useless. He remembered the night he had followed the marchers to Beresford Place and the weakness which had overcome him when the speeches and the cheering had reached their climax. It had not been the wine, after all. It had been the near presence of evil. Agitators were working on the diseased parts of the city, spurring obscure poor souls to hatred and bloodshed. Yearling went over and closed the window.

‘All quiet once more,’ he announced cheerfully, and rang for the waiter, who brought two stiff brandies.

‘This will settle it,’ he said in a kindly way, ‘and then I’ll drive you home.’

Father O’Connor accepted the glass, but said he ought to wait to see Mr. and Mrs. Bradshaw.

‘I wouldn’t venture abroad yet, sir,’ the waiter advised.

There were rioting mobs in a ring about the principal streets and the situation was likely to get worse as darkness descended.

‘It’s very bad, sir,’ the waiter assured them. ‘I’d stay put until the police have got things under control. I’ll keep you advised.’

Father O’Connor thanked him and said to Yearling: ‘Is this more of Mr. Larkin’s handiwork?’

‘Hardly,’ Mr. Yearling said.

The strike had been fixed the day before. What was there to riot about? They settled back in their chairs and after half an hour the waiter came to attend to the lights. It was dusk now outside the windows. The situation in the city was very bad, he told them. There were pitched battles raging in the side streets near at hand. Yearling opened the window again. The noise of fighting could be heard, far-off, but unmistakable.

‘They are coming out of their hovels,’ Yearling announced. ‘Listen to them.’

Father O’Connor did so. He heard glass breaking and knew they were still looting. In the streets he had seen little children clambering with bare feet across broken glass. He said: ‘What can they hope to gain?’

‘That is the mob,’ Yearling said, still standing by the window. ‘They are searching for justice.’

‘Hooligans,’ Father O’Connor protested.

But Yearling did not agree. They were ignorant, uncouth, deplorably unwashed. They were also miserably poor and downtrodden, despised by the articulate city. Yet they had minds to judge injustice and hearts to be broken by the contempt of their fellows. Yearling did not waste pity on them. But he could see their point.

‘Let’s hope they confine their search to the side streets,’ was all he said.

Then he came over to finish his brandy and order another.

In the streets behind them, Pat, trying to return to Nolan & Keyes after delivering a late load, ran into the thick of the trouble. It caught him unawares. The unusual quietness of the street puzzled him. The metal-shod dray made more noise than usual. He drove on into a section of complete darkness and heard the splintering of glass under the wheels. As he reined in to investigate, a piece of iron crashed against the wooden side of the dray. He looked behind him and there was nobody; he peered ahead and made out at last the glint of police helmets about a hundred yards away. Something thudded beside him, then the air became thick with missiles. He jerked the reins to make a turn away from the police and found dark figures surrounding him. Voices shouted obscenities. From the windows on either side stones and broken bottles descended on the advancing police. They began to retreat. The rioters, crushed about the dray, dragged the reins from his hands. When he tried to resist he was pulled from his seat and went down struggling. The horse and dray moved up the street, a new piece of equipment in the onslaught. People loaded it with the ammunition that lay scattered about. Pat, fighting and swearing, struggled to his feet and tried to follow it. Somebody struck him from behind with a bottle and he went down once more. He felt warm blood on his head and neck. The noise of the rioting receded to a distance although legs and bodies still milled about him. He felt behind him and touched a low stone step. Guessing a doorway, he dragged himself backwards and crouched between the pillars. He remained there, unable to see or hear anything now except a roaring noise that he knew was in his own head.

When he became conscious again the ambulances were clearing the street. They searched the darkness with their lamps while the running motors echoed against the dark houses. Pat tried to call out but found it made the pain in his head unbearable. After a while he saw the lamps go out one by one, heard feet receding and the slam of ambulance doors and the revving of engines. The cars lumbered away one by one.

‘They’ll never get here,’ Father O’Connor said, ‘the whole city must be in chaos.’

Yearling looked at his watch.

‘Not time yet,’ he said, ‘they are still watching Mr. Yeats.’

Once again the rioters had invaded Sackville Street. The sounds of fighting could be heard distinctly. Father O’Connor refused to look. Yearling, although he would have liked to indulge in a balcony-seat view, remained in his armchair out of sympathy.

‘We were talking earlier about love,’ he remembered. Father O’Connor, unsure of the absolute propriety of the theme, acknowledged uneasily.

‘Have you seen the Parnell statue, Father?’

Father O’Connor, wondering what that could have to do with it, confessed that he had not.

‘It was put in place a few weeks ago, and I went specially to see it.’

‘You were a follower of Parnell?’

‘Not at all. It amused me to see our principal street dedicated so entirely to love.’

Father O’Connor’s pale eyebrows shot up.

‘Parnell at the top—an adulterer,’ Yearling explained. ‘Nelson in the middle—another adulterer. And at the end O’Connell—a notorious wencher.’

The thought amused Yearling afresh. He chuckled agreeably to himself. Father O’Connor indicated polite disapproval by shaking his head and assuming a deliberately unamused expression. Parnell’s sin had split the Irish Party. Nelson was English—an outsider and unrepresentative. O’Connell may have been all Yearling said—a young man given to wenching and duelling. But in maturity he had become the instrument of Catholic emancipation. Yet it did seem odd. Three of them—all solemnly pedestalled. Trust Yearling to remark the coincidence. Frowning, Father O’Connor said:

‘They are honoured for their worthy acts, not for their human frailty.’

‘A pity it’s not the other way round,’ Yearling speculated.

‘The inscriptions would make more interesting reading.’

Father O’Connor, feeling the limit had now been reached, held up his hand and begged him not to pursue the subject.

Yearling apologised. ‘Forgive me,’ he said, ‘I meant no disrespect to your office.’

They fell silent. For Father O’Connor it was difficult. Beside him a man made light of a sacred matter, refusing the distinction between lust and love. Love was capable of being blessed, a stimulus, the natural end of which was to produce souls for Christ, souls that would fill in heaven the places left vacant by the angels who had fallen from grace and were now among the legions of the devil. Lust led also to hell. It was the flesh; lewd flesh, lascivious flesh, unbridled, passionate, self-destroying flesh. Love too, if unsanctified. Paolo and Francesca, betrayed by a book.

Having stopped the conversation, he felt obliged to introduce the next topic. But nothing occurred. The room became oppressive. Outside the shouting seemed to have died away.

‘I must look through the window,’ he said.

‘You’ll distress yourself.’

But he rose. From the window nothing could be seen and from the balcony only the occasional patches of the street, where the few lamps not quenched by the rioters threw their weak circles of light. Was somebody lying down there in the darkness, dying? There had been so much tumult.

‘I feel I should go down.’

‘Nonsense. Everything is over.’

Yearling was now at his side. The breeze from the river was cool and came fitfully. Peaceful. No more dreadful oaths, thuds of stones and sticks, that black milling tide tossing and shrieking. Had they fought to exhaustion or was it still going on in the side streets, in the smelling alleyways, men and women and little children transformed into obscene beasts?

‘What a dreadful night,’ he said. His distress was so obvious that it moved Yearling.

‘I am sorry if my remarks have upset you,’ he said.

‘Not at all. I meant the fighting and the looting.’

Yearling knew that. But his broadness on the subject of love had not helped.

‘What I said was prompted by a very genuine and beautiful memory,’ he explained. ‘May I tell you?’

‘Of course.’

‘I’ve met many women in my time—and the least said now the better. But there was one in London—I mentioned this before.’

‘I remember,’ Father O’Connor said. ‘You met her at the first performance of The Yeoman of the Guard.’

Yearling smiled. It was Father O’Connor’s tone, meticulously interested. It was his face, so young, gravely composed, moulded to convey sympathy. He remembered clearly and wanted to tell about it, realising that indeed there was nothing to tell.

‘Yes. Or rather afterwards, while at supper with some friends.’

Father O’Connor nodded, waiting.

Now—what was there to say. That she was beautiful? That she had golden hair? There were millions with golden hair. That she turned to him frequently during the meal, smiling, sympathetic, favouring him? He could remember the face so well, bending towards him in the light of the table lamps, the clear eyes and delicately toned skin. And her first question: ‘You are Irish—aren’t you?’ put flatteringly, as though to be Irish was to be special and exclusive. That had been in October 1888, and yet he could remember vividly, with a sensation that was like the throbbing of an old wound.

‘For some months we went about together. We got on like a house on fire, except on the subject of drink. She had a set against drink, I think because her father had been an alcoholic, and we used to argue about that. Or, rather, we used to talk about it—the English are too polite to argue. To tell you the truth, I was always pretty expert at hitting the bottle, and I never tried to hide it from her. She cared enough for me to try like the devil to be tolerant about it, but it was no use. Drink frightened her—she couldn’t help it. We had good fun, just the same. We went three or four times to the Yeoman, we liked it so much, and when we were together we sang it for one another. We did rather more serious things too, of course—but I won’t distress you with the details. Then, on the evening I was leaving, quite suddenly she told me she was engaged—some chap on foreign service. She hadn’t mentioned this before and it was quite a shock. I asked her to break it off and marry me and she said she’d let me know. I was sure she would, because she wept a lot. She even pleaded with me to stay on longer while she thought about it, but that was impossible. Anyway, I got a letter some weeks later to say she was going to marry this other chap after all. And that was the end of it.’ Yearling smiled. ‘I wonder why I should tell you such a remote little piece of autobiography.’

‘I am honoured,’ Father O’Connor said with sincerity. Then, groping to phrase the question delicately, he asked:

‘Would it have been so difficult, to meet her wishes—to give up . . . ?’

‘I had an instinct about that,’ Yearling said, ‘and the years have proved me right. For me, memories and alcohol are necessary defences. This is a dunghill of a world.’

It was a surprising sentiment from Yearling, who so seldom betrayed pessimism.

‘Perhaps if you had married this girl,’ Father O’Connor suggested gently, ‘the defences would be unnecessary. You would have had her companionship.’

‘There is no such thing as companionship,’ Yearling said, ‘when it comes to coping with the melancholy intimations of Anno Domini.’

His voice had the familiar note of self-mockery, and, as he spoke, he put his arm companionably about Father O’Connor’s shoulder. As they turned to re-enter the room the waiter approached.

‘Father O’Connor?’ he enquired.

Father O’Connor nodded.

‘A telephone call.’ The waiter led the way.

It was Bradshaw. He was very agitated. There was uproar in the streets about the theatre, he said, and it would be quite impossible to risk travelling to the Imperial. The cabman had advised strongly against it. They would have to be excused.

‘Of course,’ Father O’Connor said. ‘I hope Mrs. Bradshaw is not too upset.’

‘Please explain to Yearling.’

‘He is here beside me.’

Father O’Connor handed the earpiece to Yearling, who shouted: ‘You missed a grandstand seat.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘At the riots.’

‘I am entirely surrounded by rioters,’ Bradshaw shouted back, ‘blackguards and hooligans who are looting and destroying. I daren’t risk bringing Mrs. Bradshaw across.’

‘Of course not,’ Yearling agreed.

‘Where are the military?—that’s what I’d like to ask Asquith,’ Bradshaw added. He sounded outraged, as though it had all been arranged for his sole inconvenience. Then he repeated that he was sorry to disappoint them.

‘Don’t worry about that. We had quite a pleasant evening. Do you remember the horse tram?’

‘The what?’

‘The horse tram. Do you remember the time I stole the horse tram. You refused to come with me.’

‘I am not interested in damned horse trams at the moment. I am entirely occupied with the problem of getting Florence and myself home in safety.’

‘Sorry,’ Yearling explained. ‘I’ve been thinking about it on and off all evening. Well—safe journey.’

‘And to you. Wish the same to Father O’Connor.’

‘I’ll do that,’ Yearling assured him.

Bradshaw rang off. His wife, who had heard only one side of the conversation was curious.

‘What did he say?’ she asked.

‘I think it typical of Yearling,’ Bradshaw complained. ‘I tell him the city is in the throes of a revolution and he asks me if I remember the time he stole a horse tram.’

‘What horse tram?’ Mrs. Bradshaw asked. Bradshaw went purple.

‘Damn it, Florence,’ he exploded, ‘you are every bit as bad as he is.’

Pat found himself after an unreckonable time at the door of Lily’s house. At first the rioting stopped him from crossing to the south side of the city. He wandered northwards instead, dazed and without any particular goal. His horse and cart had disappeared altogether, the blood had caked hard on his collar. At some point he took off his scarf and wound it tightly about his head, hoping in that way to stop the flow of blood. He was weak, his wound throbbed, but for most of his journey he felt light and happy. The streets he passed gave him the idea that he was calling on Lily to take her somewhere, to a music-hall, or to the Park—he could not quite remember where. He would apologise for the blood and dirt on his clothes. She would understand. Lily nearly always understood. Yet when he reached her door he stood for a long time, undecided whether he should knock or go away again. The feeling of lightness and happiness left him. There was something wrong. She was not expecting him. He was not dressed to take her out. He had forgotten his money. He should be back at Nolan & Keyes, to unyoke and stable his horse, to collect and sort his delivery dockets for the next day. He leaned his back against the door and began to think it out.

The street was dark and untrafficked, the air soothing and warm. A cat, methodically investigating the line of refuse bins, took a long time to approach and pass him. It moved with great stealth, a furry silence, strangely soothing to watch. When it had gone he made up his mind and knocked on the door.

At first Lily thought he had been drinking. She warned him to be quiet and led him into the parlour.

‘Give me a match,’ she said.

She lit the gas and turned to take stock of him.

‘Jesus,’ she said, ‘you’re destroyed!’

At her words his hands went automatically to the scarf on his head.

‘You’ve been in a fight. Was it a policeman?’

‘Not a policeman, Lily. It happened down the city.’ He looked around.

She took his arm and said: ‘Sit here—you look terrible.’

He began to tell her what had happened. The throbbing made it difficult. She undid the scarf as he spoke and gently lifted the matted hair away from the wound. It was long and jagged. Blood oozed very slowly from it.

‘Come down to the kitchen, I’ll wash and dress it for you.’

‘Where’s the household?’

‘The landlady is in bed. I’ll have to tell her you’re here.’

‘Give me ten minutes. Then I’ll go.’

‘Don’t be daft,’ Lily said, ‘you can’t go travelling home with that.’

She cleaned the wound and washed the blood from his neck. For the hundredth time he noted how small and delicate her hands were. They were the hands he had always loved. They soothed more than the mere physical pain. Because they were Lily’s hands he closed his eyes, the hurt that had nothing to do with bottles and broken flesh dying away under their compassionate movements.

‘I’m only getting you into trouble,’ he said.

‘I’ll go up and explain to her. She can’t turn you out the way you are. Wait here.’

Lily was gone a long time. When she came back she had a couple of blankets on her arm. She led him into the parlour again.

‘She says you can sleep here.’

Lily arranged the blankets about him and settled cushions under his head.

‘Now I’ll make tea.’

‘Lily . . .’ he began.

‘Don’t stir.’ She went back down to the kitchen.

He found a cigarette and lit it. Lying on the carpeted floor did not bother him. He had slept on harder beds. The room was heavily furnished. There was a picture of Queen Victoria on one wall and photographs of uniformed groups. Souvenirs and trophies in the china cabinet recorded domestic comings and goings that had finished with the Boer War.

He sat up when Lily brought him tea and bread and butter. In an effort to conceal how he felt he asked. ‘How do you stick that oul wan?’

Lily, thinking he meant the landlady, said sharply: ‘I like that. She’s been good enough to let you stay.’

‘I mean her nibs,’ Pat said, indicating Queen Victoria.

Lily dismissed the picture with a shrug.

‘That oul wan let Ireland starve,’ Pat insisted.

‘She’s dead and Ireland is still starving,’ Lily said, ‘so I don’t see that you can put all the blame on Her Majesty.’

‘Ireland will be free one day. Royalty will go and the employers will go.’

‘You should have explained all that to your comrades-in-arms that gave you the clatter with the bottle.’

He gave up pretending.

‘God, Lily,’ he said, ‘I feel awful.’

‘Then lie back,’ she advised.

She took away the tea things and settled him comfortably.

‘I’ll take away your jacket and wash the collar.’

He took her hand and said: ‘Don’t go, Lily.’

She hesitated. Her face became sad. Then she disengaged her hand and touched his cheek.

‘I must,’ she told him gently, ‘you know I must.’ She put out the light and closed the door. Some time later he heard footsteps moving back and forth on the floor above his head. He knew it was Lily going to bed. He listened until at last they ceased. Then he lay thinking about her. It was hard to sleep, knowing her to be so near. It was hard not to rise and go searching in the darkness. His love for her had been like that for a long time, a lonely desire searching vainly for a room. When he closed his eyes the air became heavy and hard to breathe. He dreamed fitfully, knocking on door after door in search of Lily. Each in turn was opened by Queen Victoria.

‘This will do me,’ Father O’Connor said.

The cab stopped and he got out.

‘Sleep well,’ Yearling said, lowering the window.

‘Thank you for a most hospitable evening.’

‘A great pleasure,’ Yearling assured him and waved benevolently as the cab jolted forward again.

The night was mild and starless. In front of Father O’Connor the railings of the church were faintly visible and behind them the bulk of the church rose darkly. It had been a distressing journey through streets that looked as though they had been hit by a hurricane. Shop windows had gaping holes, lamp-posts were shattered and bent, the wheels crunched over scattered glass and skidded against bricks and debris. In Father O’Connor’s memory nothing like it had happened before. Yearling had refused to agree that it was the handiwork of the strikers. If not, then it was an indirect effect. The lowest elements of the city were prepared now to engage the police, challenging the law and social order in pitched battles. It was a sign that revolt had percolated to the degraded depths of slumland. Here was proof, if indeed proof were needed, of the evil fruits one must be prepared to expect. The challenge to God and religion would not be long delayed.

Opening the hall door he let himself in quietly and turned up the gas light. He put his hat on the hallstand and arranged his umbrella, taking care that it would not fall during the night, as Father Giffley’s so often did. As he turned the hall door opened and Father O’Sullivan stepped in. With a shock he saw that there was blood on his face and his hands and on the white band of his collar.

‘Father,’ he said, ‘you are hurt.’

‘Hush,’ Father O’Sullivan said, ‘don’t waken Father Giffley.’

Father O’Connor lowered his voice.

‘You were caught in the riots?’

‘Not at all,’ Father O’Sullivan said. ‘I’ve been out seeing what I could do. There were some who were badly hurt. A little soap and water will clean it all away.’ When Father O’Connor continued to look doubtful, he became concerned and said apologetically.

‘I assure you, Father, that I haven’t a scratch. Please don’t worry.’

He went past and down the hall. The shoulders of his coat were stained and there was dust on its skirt. Father O’Connor stared after him. He stood in the hallway for some minutes after Father O’Sullivan had gone. It was very quiet and he could hear the buzzing of the gas mantle. His face, reflected in the mirror of the hallstand, was suddenly haggard, his jaw tense with pain.