Strumpet City

CHAPTER ONE

At fifteen minutes to midnight on the sixth day of May 1910, in the presence of Her Majesty Queen Alexandra, the Prince and Princess of Wales, the Princess Royal and the Duke of Fife, Princess Victoria, Princess Louise and the Duchess of Argyll, Edward VII breathed his last.

The Archbishop of Dublin had called for prayers for his recovery. When these were seen to have gone unanswered, the city did the next best thing. It went into deep mourning. Prescott’s, the cleaners, who claimed to have enormous facilities for such work, offered to dye all articles of clothing black at the shortest notice. Mrs. Bradshaw availed of their services and during his lying-instate she began to read the newspapers closely, keeping her husband well informed on the day-to-day events. The report of a storm, particularly, caught her interest. It occurred on the Wednesday and involved the historic scene at Westminster in a wild splendour. It broke about the heads of his loyal subjects who waited hour after hour to pay their last tribute. Vivid flashes of lightning streaked the sky and thunder crashed above the hall in which the King lay, guarded by his silent and motionless watchers. He was the least troubled of them all. The Liberals had threatened to abolish his house of peers; they could do so now without causing him the least pain. John Redmond had urged his Irish followers to hasten Home Rule by supporting the Liberal policy; he could now lean over to bawl it in the King’s ear and no flicker of the royal eyelids would reprove or admonish him. For months his subjects had wondered if in such a crisis the King could remain above politics. Death, with an unexpected gesture, had assured them that he would.

‘What a terrible storm last night,’ Mrs. Bradshaw said to her husband, when he had returned from his morning walk along the front.

‘A fog,’ he corrected. ‘I’d hardly call it a storm.’

‘I mean in London.’

‘Oh—that.’

‘It’s all here in the paper.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ he said, ‘the Kish was going all night.’

She had heard it too. All night the boom of the fog signal had disturbed her rest, a regular, disembodied moan that made the night restless.

‘There’s a thick mist at sea,’ he reported.

‘I felt there would be. How I pity the poor sailors.’

‘Didn’t stop the Navy. Part of the Home Fleet have anchored down below—I could make out the Lord Nelson.’ Bradshaw was very good at ships. He knew their names and could tell the difference between battleships and cruisers, gunboats and destroyers. The gentlemen of Kingstown, of course, took a very special pride in such things. Naturally so.

‘It’s a beautiful name—the Peacemaker.’

Bradshaw looked puzzled. Then he understood.

‘You mean the King?’

‘Of course. That is what they are calling him.’

‘Ah. For a moment I thought you meant one of the battleships,’ he explained.

The next day public departments, banks and business establishments closed. The Most Reverend Dr. Walsh, Archbishop of Dublin, presided at Votive Mass in the Pro-Cathedral.

Yearling, who was staying at a remote hotel in Connemara for the mayfly fishing, forgot the significance of the day until very late that night. He was drinking whiskey, not in the hotel, but unobtrusively in a little public house. One of the local people was playing a fiddle and Yearling had the seat beside the turf fire. There was a smoky oil lamp hanging from the ceiling which gave the room a small, shadowed look, and the men near him, to his delight, were speaking quietly together in Gaelic. Their voices, unaccountably, reminded him that this had been the day of the royal funeral. He thought of William Martin Murphy and, with the merest ghost of a smile, he remembered his refusal to be tapped on the shoulder by the dead king’s sword.

The high grey walls of the workhouse shut out almost everything; they were a fortification against the life of the city, a barrier against time, which passed yet did not seem to pass. The visitors who came weekly were few; the inmates were many. Carts passed in and out on stated days with a jingling of harness and a creaking of shafts and a stumbling of hooves on the uneven cobbles, but these meant little to the old women who hobbled about the grounds in shapeless grey dresses, and nothing at all to those lying in the close-packed wards, their eyes fixed on the high ceilings for hours of silence. Here, too, Death came most frequently and with no noise at all. From where, Miss Gilchrist sometimes wondered: through the great arched gateway whether closed or open, up from the deep earth or down from the insubstantial sky? Three times it had come for her in the space of almost three years: once in daylight, when from beyond the screens about her bed the voices of the others and the clatter of crockery told her it was tea-time; once in the small hours when the candle in the hand of the sister lit the priest’s bending face; once when a giantlike thumb stretched down to anoint her from a limitless absence of either light or darkness. Yet she struggled back to the world again and at breakfast time the old woman whose turn it was to be on ward duty said:

‘We thought you were gone on us for certain yesterday, Gilchrist.’

She was unable to speak. After a while she managed to assemble her surroundings once more; the rusted iron beds side by side, the high window, the bare uneven boards of the ward.

‘You’ll be off your feet for good this time, Gilchrist,’ the old woman said, coming back, ‘and you’re a lucky oul bitch in that. You won’t have to empty any more bedpans.’

Miss Gilchrist smiled again. She had a sharp tongue, once well stocked for use. But now she kept to herself the answers that occurred so readily. They were no longer worth making. In a day or in a week; or in another three years, it would be all the same, whatever had been said or unsaid.

She was content now to lie quietly and know nothing of what passed outside. She would not, she knew, ever again take her turn at emptying the slops or the bedpans, or scrub the walls down, or sweep the floors or attend at the morgue where Death laid out his conquests before they were carted off to the grave. Miss Gilchrist had taken her turn at washing them for their journey. One day in winter she had entered to do her work and screamed because there were seven dead babies on one of the slabs. She was to be reprimanded severely for her conduct, but nothing further was said to her because near dawn the next morning she had her second attack. After considerable thought she decided to speak to Father O’Connor about it. It was his habit now to make occasional visits. He had come first because Mrs. Bradshaw, her conscience still troubled about the servant she had been fond of, asked him. Then, seizing the opportunity for the exercise of Christian virtue, he decided to continue because he suffered each time he had to enter among the miserable and the destitute and it seemed good to him to offer it to God for salvation’s sake, for his own soul and that of his superior. It might be the means of saving Father Giffley from alcoholism; if not it was still part of his duty to practise the corporal works of mercy—to clothe the naked, to feed the hungry, to visit the sick and imprisoned and to bury the dead.

The thought of seven naked babies, side by side on the slab of the dead, was a terrible one. But then, everything about the workhouse was terrible; poverty and illness and loneliness and senility were its four guardian angels.

‘You must think of them as seven innocent souls,’ he told Miss Gilchrist, ‘seven new angels praising God in heaven.’

Without changing her expression she said: ‘I want you to speak to Mrs. Bradshaw for me.’

‘Certainly.’

‘I want her to know what will happen to me when I die here.’

‘You’re distressing yourself . . .’ Father O’Connor said.

‘They’ll take me with the rest and bury me in a pauper’s grave. I want her to claim my body and save me from that.’

He tried to say something, but it was difficult. Her face was grey and very small, her lips were colourless and ringed with dried spittle which cracked when she spoke. Her mind was fixed firmly now on what she wanted to say.

‘I’ve seen too many of them, Father, laid out there to be whipped off without a tear from a friend or a solitary soul to say goodbye. Do you know what I seen once?’

She turned her face away and for a moment he thought she was wandering back to the incident of the babies again. But it wasn’t that.

‘Sometimes they forget to lock the back door of the morgue—the one that leads into the laneway. Once when I went in there was a scattering of little boys. Do you know what they were up to, Father? They were stealing the pennies from the eyes of the dead.’

He had learned enough these past few years to feel only regret. The children of need were capable of deeds far worse.

‘I would like to think that when I go someone will claim my poor body.’

‘I’ll speak to Mrs. Bradshaw,’ he promised. As always, his temptation to run away almost mastered his will to help. He fought it; for over two years it had been the same battle, trying not to surrender to disgust.

‘You mustn’t give way to morbid fancies,’ he insisted. ‘You can be sure you’ll see many and many a long day yet.’ He looked over at the high window. He saw, at a great distance it seemed, the Dublin mountains. They were, as always, fresh and beautiful. In surroundings such as that, among fields and hills, the old lady near him had been born. He looked back at the bed. She was shaking her head from side to side, denying something he had said.

It was through Miss Gilchrist that he paid his first visit to Mary. He did so to ask Mary to visit the old woman. The meeting was embarrassing at first. Mary had been two years in his parish yet he had made no attempt to contact her, partly because of what had happened on the night she had called to the vestry with Fitz to arrange their marriage, partly because it was difficult to avoid reference to the world they had met in first. Mary offered him tea but he refused.

‘And have you children?’ he asked, letting his attention fix itself on his surroundings while he questioned her. He noted a table, a sideboard and some butter boxes. The clock on the mantelpiece seemed out of place.

‘Two, Father.’

He had to think hard to connect her answer and his question.

‘Two boys?’ he asked, relieved to remember.

‘A boy and a girl. The girl is only four weeks old.’

He had noticed she was looking unwell and had blamed poverty. Now he knew it was the usual combination of hunger and childbirth. The women had it hard. To ease the feeling of constraint he said: I’d like to see them.’

It was morning. Mary led him into the bedroom. Everything was clean. And they had two rooms. That was quite unusual.

‘Your husband is working?’

‘At the foundry.’

‘A blessing,’ he approved.

This made the extreme poverty hard to understand. Father O’Connor, turning the matter over in his mind as he talked, remembered there was an explanation. Mr. Larkin. Was this one of the homes that had refused the food parcels?

The children were wholesome and neat too. He put it down to the beneficial effect of training in a good house. The baby was sleeping, but the older child smiled at him. Father O’Connor crossed to the bed and then formally, gravely, he gave his blessing to both of them, touching each forehead lightly in turn, and murmuring the formula quietly but audibly. Mary moved to one side, knelt and crossed herself.

‘I must tell Mrs. Bradshaw you have a thriving family,’ he said, smiling and stretching out his hand to help her to rise. They were both suddenly at ease.

‘Give her my best respects,’ Mary said. Her voice trembled. At his blessing of the children she had felt a pang of emotion, an inexplicable happiness. For a moment, in a long barrenness, a vague hope filled her.

‘Of course.’ Her gratitude was moving.

‘I’ll visit Miss Gilchrist on Sunday.’

‘She’ll be delighted, I assure you.’ He held up his hand to prevent her when she moved to see him to the door.

He went down the stone steps and into the sunlight. The streets he passed through were familiar now; it was satisfactory to be able to name the side turns, to remember here and there a family to which he had ministered personally.

Father O’Connor paused to take a paper from a newsboy, who touched his hat and said ‘God bless you, Father’ when he waved aside the change. He put the paper in his pocket. The woman was unwell. As he walked he wondered what sting of the flesh could tempt a young girl to exchange service in a good house for a couple of rooms and a few butter boxes. He had been told something about Fitzpatrick. By Timothy Keever, was it? He could not remember what.

At lunchtime he said to Father O’Sullivan: ‘Would you oblige me in something, Father?’

Father O’Sullivan had been eating in silence, his eyes fixed more or less continuously on a devotional booklet. It was his mealtime habit. It took him a while to realise he had been spoken to, but when it penetrated he looked up and smiled pleasantly.

‘Certainly.’

‘I’d rather Father Giffley were here . . . I should really ask him, but it’s urgent and quite important.’

‘Father Giffley is still unwell.’

Father O’Connor, immediately suspicious, regarded the other closely. Then he said, casually, ‘Really. Today again?’

‘I went to his room to enquire, but he said he would rather be left alone.’

‘Was the door locked?’ Father O’Connor asked.

‘I didn’t try,’ the other said, looking surprised.

Father O’Connor paused. Then he said, in a confiding tone: ‘It might have been wiser to do so.’

‘I asked him if he would like a doctor, but he assured me it was unnecessary.’

Remembering other sessions behind locked doors and other refusals of his superior to leave his room, Father O’Connor pushed his plate roughly aside.

‘Are you so blind, Father,’ he asked, ‘do you not know as well as I do what is wrong with our Parish priest?’

‘He is not strong, the poor man,’ Father O’Sullivan said. Then, in almost the same tone, he added: ‘But you wanted my assistance, Father?’

This large, guileless man was either a saint or a humbug, Father O’Connor decided.

‘I would like you to take benediction for me this evening,’ Father O’Connor said, controlling himself, ‘I have some personal business.’

‘I shall be glad to, Father.’

Father O’Sullivan smiled. His soutane, with its faded, green-streaked sheen, its frayed cuffs and buttonholes that gaped loosely from long use, might have been the parish clerk’s second best, the one he did the heavy work in and from which he removed the dribbles of candle grease by scraping them with a knife. The booklet propped against the sugar bowl irritated Father O’Connor too. It was a gaudy-covered production dealing with the devotion to the Sacred Heart. But it intrigued him.

‘May I trouble you for the sugar, Father?’

‘Forgive me—how selfish.’

The Faith for The Family: ‘A series for the instruction of the Faithful simply rendered by “A Catholic Priest”, and approved by . . .’

As he had guessed, a popular concoction, aimed at the uneducated. But perhaps Father O’Sullivan was preparing a simple sermon. Or was he—at the unexpected thought Father O’Connor almost upset the sugar bowl—was he, perhaps, the anonymous priest who wrote them?

Yearling left his luggage at Westland Row Station and went across the street to the Grosvenor. There was a barmaid there he admired. In his hand he carried his two fishing rods, a green-heart and a split cane, both too precious to be left out of sight. After the serene quiet of Connemara, with its reed-grown lakes and blue, remote hills, the streets seemed more than usually airless. He dodged a hackney cab, winced at the rattle of trams and found the pavement. Almost immediately a hungry wretch thrust a collecting box under his nose. Yearling examined the letters on the side. They said: ‘Jim Larkin Defence Fund’. Mr. Yearling, with a magnanimous flourish, dropped in a shilling. He bowed when the man raised his cap.

Feeling much better, he entered the hotel and rang the bell. It was answered by an unfamiliar female. Disappointed, he asked her for a large Irish.

‘Yes, sir. Will you be wanting soda as well?’ He decided she was bulgy and unprepossessing.

‘Good God, no.’

The startled girl withdrew. She came back with whiskey and a small, stone jug containing water.

‘Where’s Rose?’ Yearling asked. He measured carefully the quantity of water.

‘Gone, sir.’

‘What do you mean—gone? Has she left?’

‘More or less, sir.’

The reply displeased him.

‘How much more than less?’ he snapped.

‘I beg your pardon, sir?’

‘Was she sacked?’ Yearling barked.

The girl jumped and said: ‘She was, sir.’

‘And why?’ He bunched his bushy eyebrows at her, terrifying her.

‘Miss Harrigan thought she made a bit free with the gentlemen, sir.’

‘I wouldn’t call that a fault—would you?’

‘I don’t know, sir.’

Yearling sighed.

‘Never mind. Please bring me the morning paper. And another whiskey.’

‘Yes, sir.’

The girl went off. Yearling sipped his drink and listened in a melancholy mood to the constant clip-clop of hooves outside the wide uncurtained window, missing the pretty face of Rose and the pleasure of making her laugh with his drolleries. He opened his paper and read it over his second whiskey until it seemed time to go back to the station for his train to Kingstown. When he was paying her he asked her name.

‘Alice, sir.’

‘That’s a song,’ Yearling told her. ‘“Alice, Where Art Thou?” Pretty air. I hope you won’t disappoint the respected Miss Harrigan.’

She laughed and delighted him by venturing, shyly. ‘Sure what harm is a bit of gas, sir.’

‘That’s the ticket,’ he boomed at her. As they laughed together he began to see that she was pretty, after all. For her show of spirit he tipped her a shilling and went out in better humour.

At the entrance to the station he stood courteously aside to let a figure in clerical dress go first and discovered, with an exclamation of pleasure, that it was Father O’Connor.

‘My dear friend.’

Startled by the bellow, Father O’Connor swung round. He came to a standstill.

‘This is unexpected . . .’ he began.

Yearling pumped inordinately at his extended hand while he asked: ‘Are you going to Kingstown?’

Father O’Connor was.

‘Excellent,’ Yearling said. ‘So am I.’

Father O’Connor found it necessary to excuse himself while he went to the booking office. They rejoined each other and when the gateman had checked each ticket and raised his cap with great respect to Father O’Connor they searched out an empty carriage and took their seats. Conversation proved difficult. Clouds of steam, hissing upwards, coiled and were trapped under the great glass awning. Father O’Connor saw Yearling’s lips moving, but could not catch what he was saying. He had to raise his voice as though he were in the pulpit and say: ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Milkcans,’ Yearling shouted.

Father O’Connor looked puzzled.

Yearling shouted: ‘I said I have never entered this station yet but they were shifting milkcans—millions of damned milkcans.’

Father O’Connor leaned towards the window, smiled and nodded. Porters were rolling the empty cans from one end of the platform to the other. The din was ear-splitting. It was a relief when the coaches jerked and bumped and the train moved slowly towards open day. Sunshine came leaping into the carriage, the backyards with their lines of washing slipped past, there was motion and peacefulness. In the basin by Boland’s Mill, an old-time schooner lay to. Near one bank, where green reeds leaned in delicate clusters above their own reflections, three swans rested.

‘What a beautiful picture,’ Father O’Connor said.

‘A serene and beguiling lie,’ Yearling answered. Father O’Connor looked surprised. Yearling, with unexpected gravity, said:

‘I sometimes despair of this city of ours.’

‘Its poverty?’

‘Its contradictions.’

‘I work in its back streets every day and when I lie down to sleep I am conscious of its squalor being on my doorstep. But I don’t despair.’

‘You have one eye fixed on heaven,’ Yearling said, ‘try looking at it with both eyes sometimes.’

‘I assure you I’ve looked at it closely.’ Father O’Connor spoke the truth. He did not despair. But there were days after days of depression, of feeling lost in a nightmare. The excuse of business or good manners brought him now and then to the Bradshaws. They were welcome retreats.

‘What do you think of Larkin’s sentence?’

A little confused at what appeared to be a sudden change of subject, Father O’Connor hesitated before asking: ‘Has he been sentenced?’

‘To twelve months with hard labour, it’s in today’s paper.’ Yearling held out the paper he had been reading over his whiskey.

Father O’Connor, remembering having bought a paper himself at some stage, searched vaguely and found it stuck in his pocket, unopened and, until now, completely forgotten.

‘I hadn’t seen it,’ he explained.

‘Savage,’ Yearling pronounced.

Father O’Connor spread out his hands.

‘If he was dishonest . . .’ he began.

‘He collected money from one city and gave it to the wretches who were on strike in another. The only case against him is that the money should have been sent on first to Liverpool. Where’s the dishonesty?’

‘It was irregular . . .’ Father O’Connor suggested.

‘If it was, who are collecting for his defence? The very people he’s accused of defrauding. One of them shook a box under my nose less than an hour ago.’

That was what Timothy Keever had told him. Fitzpatrick had been collecting for Larkin—he remembered now. ‘I haven’t followed the trial very closely.’ As he said so he remembered a detail which had shocked him early on. It was a newspaper interview in which Mr. Sexton, the general secretary who had come over from Liverpool to give evidence against Larkin, confessed that he had had to go through the streets armed with a revolver.

‘They’ve bungled,’ Mr. Yearling said, ‘and bungled badly. First they delay the trial for two years. Now they convict him on a technicality and give him twelve months’ hard. They’re determined to make a popular martyr of the most dangerous man of our time. They’ll have the dregs of the city flocking to him.’

‘They seem to be flocking to him already,’ Father O’Connor said.

‘That is no reason why the law should become his recruiting sergeant.’

‘Is that what you meant when you said you despair of the city?’

‘I despair of the law and the Government,’ Yearling confessed, ‘and of the men who are supposed to be my business colleagues. They’re fools—all of them.’

They had stopped at Booterstown. On their left the tide was advancing towards the wall, a thin edge of foam along its border. A light breeze found its way into the carriage. It tasted of salt. Looking across towards Howth Hill, Father O’Connor said: ‘Men bungle and make mistakes. But you must at least agree that the city is beautiful.’

‘It depends on where you live and how much you earn, doesn’t it?’

‘I think we are talking of different things.’

‘What is your answer to poverty?’ Yearling challenged. He was not yet prepared to leave the subject alone.

Father O’Connor sighed and after a moment of reflection said: ‘From those who have wealth, charity for the sake of God; from those who suffer poverty, resignation for His sake also.’

‘Marx has a different answer. He says the expropriators must be expropriated. That means me,’ Yearling pointed out.

‘We condemn socialism, of course.’

‘I have read your condemnations, Father. But for all their hat-raising to you, I am beginning to doubt that they will always listen to you. Does that sound offensive?’

‘Not at all. We’ve pointed out already that Larkin is a dangerous man; he’s a self-professed socialist. He doesn’t hesitate to criticise the priests, yet the people still help him and listen to him.’

‘And you will leave it like that?’

‘I am not the Hierarchy,’ Father O’Connor said, with a modest smile. ‘My duty is to be obedient.’

‘You broke Parnell,’ Yearling suggested.

‘I wonder did we?’ Father O’Connor said. ‘Do you not think it was his own party that broke him? After all, many of the people continued to follow him.’

‘You condemned him,’ Yearling insisted. ‘Yet, as you say, many of the people remained loyal to him. They didn’t listen to you—that’s my point.’

Did Yearling speak with sympathy of Parnell because he, like the fallen chief, was a Protestant. Why was he questioning about Larkin? Did he wish the Church to condemn openly and at once? Or was it possible that Larkin’s methods had his sympathy? Surely not. If the Church commanded absolute obedience Yearling would say the country was priest-ridden; if it did not he would taunt the Church for its failure. A note of sadness crept into Father O’Connor’s voice as he answered, generally:

‘There are other, more important matters in which they sometimes do not listen to us either. That is why we have to spend so much of our time hearing confessions.’

To his surprise Yearling began to laugh.

‘Have I said something amusing?’

‘You are like all the others of your cloth,’ Yearling explained. ‘I point out the very real threat of social revolution to you and you are only concerned about it because it may, perhaps, be a sin.’

‘Surely,’ Father O’Connor said earnestly, ‘that is the only thing which is worth being concerned about.’

At Kingstown Father O’Connor was persuaded to agree to drop in on Yearling when he had concluded his visit to the Bradshaws. They parted. Father O’Connor allowed himself the pleasure of a walk along the front. The elegance of the houses pleased him, the frequent carriages, the manifestations of polite living. It was a world in which he had once held an honoured place. He turned into the back streets, where the passage of a couple of years had left their less kindly traces. Mr. Bradshaw’s set of houses near the harbour, he discovered, were now in need of support and had great beams slanting against them to prop the front walls. But their poverty was not like that of the central city; their squalor kept itself to itself. The township remained elegant.

He refused Mrs. Bradshaw’s invitation to stay for dinner, and explained that he was already committed. As an alternative she was happy to have him accept tea and scones. She hoped he was contented still in his parish and wondered why he seemed to have abandoned the relief fund idea. She had thought it such an excellent one. Father O’Connor explained that it had not proved so straightforward a matter as, in his early enthusiasm, he had believed it to be. He would not vex her with details. She thought his uneasiness was a sign that their efforts had fallen short of his expectations. He assured her that that was not the case.

‘Our help was so small it wasn’t worth while,’ she suggested.

‘Everything is worth while,’ Father O’Connor insisted, ‘even the smallest thing we do.’

‘I’ve often thought of visiting myself,’ Mrs. Bradshaw confided, ‘but my husband is very much against it.’

‘He is right,’ Father O’Connor said.

‘And Miss Gilchrist. I’d like to speak to her even for half an hour.’

Father O’Connor insisted that it was out of the question. He told her again about the kind of place it was, about the inmates, their coarseness, the overpowering combination of age and ignorance and illness. Mrs. Bradshaw would find it too distressing.

‘Is she very ill?’ Mrs. Bradshaw asked.

‘Last week there seemed little hope for her. But on Sunday she seemed as well as ever.’

‘She was always very strong,’ Mrs. Bradshaw said. She seemed to be considering something. In order not to intrude, he took his time putting milk and sugar in his tea, stirring it, tasting it. He was glad he did so. Her next question led without embarrassment towards the topic he had come to discuss.

‘When they die,’ Mrs. Bradshaw asked, ‘what are the arrangements?’

He chose his sentences carefully.

‘The relatives are notified—if there are any. If there are and they claim the body they have the option of making the customary funeral arrangements—at their own personal expense, of course.’

‘And if there are no relatives?’

‘In that case, I’m afraid, it’s an institutional burial in a pauper’s grave.’

‘I shouldn’t like that to happen to Miss Gilchrist,’ Mrs. Bradshaw said.

Father O’Connor saw that the moment had come when he should be frank.

‘She spoke to me about it last Sunday. The thought seems to be constantly at the back of her mind. It has made her very unhappy—so unhappy that she asked me, as a great favour, to mention it to you.’

His words so affected Mrs. Bradshaw that he wondered for a moment if he had been too brutal and direct, if he had assaulted her feelings instead of appealing to her charity. She set his mind at rest almost at once.

‘I’m very glad you told me this. Please let Miss Gilchrist know that if I’ve failed the living I’ll at least do my duty by the dead.’

She began to weep. They were the tears of a kind-hearted woman and they distressed him greatly. It was not her fault that Miss Gilchrist had been cast off.

‘You are very generous,’ he offered. It was the best he could think of.

‘We should have looked after her ourselves. She was such a loyal poor soul—and she was with us so long.’

‘Your husband had to be practical.’

‘Do we fulfil our obligations by being practical all the time?’ she asked.

Her bitter tone caught him on the wrong foot. He had only meant to console, not to begin a discussion on the morality of a dismal affair. The main thing was she was prepared to meet Miss Gilchrist’s wishes.

‘I’ll tell Miss Gilchrist. It will make her very happy. And grateful.’

‘For so little?’

‘It is not by any means little,’ he said, earnestly.

‘It seems so to me.’

‘I assure you it isn’t. You are a generous woman. You must stop reproaching yourself. And you must not blame your husband.’

‘He is not to know,’ she interrupted quickly. ‘Please don’t mention anything to him.’

This mild woman surprised him. He had thought her incapable of bitterness, an imperturbable woman at the centre of a small, smoothly enamelled world. Yet she criticised her husband and was prepared to disobey him because in her heart she felt a greater power at work. He knew how hard that must be for her, a woman shaped—to the raising of a teacup—by the conventions of her class.

‘You need have no fear,’ he told her, in his quietest and most reassuring tone.

Then, to ease her mind further, he told of his call on Mary. She questioned him about Mary’s circumstances, her husband, her children. He began to understand how lonely and unhappy she was, this woman without children of her own who brooded too much over the misfortunes of those for whom she felt the tug of responsibility. She did not brush shoulders often enough with reality to know that these were commonplace hardships. There was nothing to be done about them that Father O’Connor could see, except to suffer them with patience and to offer, where possible, some negligible but well-intentioned relief. Her kindness impressed him, but he was glad, nevertheless, when he could look at the clock and say, without lying, that it was really time to go if he was to spare a little while for Mr. Yearling before getting back to the duties of his parish.

Hennessy, about to climb the steps to 3 Chandlers Court, heard the tin whistle and cocked his head to listen. The notes, creeping from behind the basement window, shaped a slow air that was barely audible, although the street was enjoying one of its rare interludes of quietness. Where were the men? Hennessy wondered. Where were the women, the children, the dogs that should have been searching the gutter with noses nursing the remote hope of something edible? Off to gape at some moment’s diversion, he decided; off to follow a German band, maybe, or a parade of military passing on its way to join a ship. It was disappointing. There was no one to pass on his news to, no one standing on any of the steps, no one leaning against a lamp-post; only a street in the evening sunlight and a melancholy air meandering down its emptiness. The basement window had no glass in it. Instead, pieces of cardboard filled in its frame, leaving a small panel at the top for light and air.

‘Rashers,’ he shouted.

The air continued. It was slow; it was a personal, unorganised kind of air that could meander on for ever. Hennessy saw a stone, stooped for it, then let it fly at the window. It made a sharp sound on the cardboard. For a moment the melody broke off, then started again. Irritated, Hennessy searched once more. He found a larger stone which hopped back off the cardboard and fell into the area space with a thud. The music stopped abruptly and a voice from inside yelled in anger.

‘Who flung that?’

‘Rashers,’ Hennessy shouted again.

‘Go home, you little bowsie. Flinging stones at a decent man’s window. I know you. I’ll tell your mother—honest to God I will.’

‘It’s me, Hennessy.’

‘Who?’

‘Hennessy.’

‘Wouldn’t you think you’d have more sense at your age,’ Rashers yelled.

‘I want to talk to you.’

‘You could knock at the bloody door.’

‘A bit of news.’

‘Like a bloody Christian. That cardboard cost money.’

‘Come on up,’ Hennessy invited, ‘I want a word with you.’

He sat on the steps. The stone under his skinny behind felt warm. The day had been good. He had spent it travelling between the office of Bates & Sons, Contractors, in Merchants Lane and a gang of men who were working in Phoenix Park. Twice he had pushed a handcart across the city to them with supplies. But he had taken his time, pausing when he wanted to watch anything of interest, enjoying the sunlight, happy to have a few weeks’ work as a runner. Two rosy spots on his normally sallow face showed the benefit of good weather and exercise. He took a cigarette from his waistcoat pocket, lit it with an air of luxury and waited. When Rashers joined him he had the tin whistle still in his hands.

‘What’s the commotion?’ Rashers asked, taking a seat beside him.

‘Where’s everybody gone?’

‘To hell, for all I know.’

‘Not even a stray cat . . .’

‘Or out of their minds for the want of sense.’

Rashers absentmindedly raised the tin whistle to his lips.

‘Don’t start on that again,’ Hennessy appealed.

‘You’re unmusical as well as being a bowsie,’ Rashers commented.

‘It was a sad sort of tune you were playing.’

‘I was thinking,’ Rashers said. He laid the whistle aside.

‘Have a cigarette,’ Hennessy invited. He drew one from a packet of Woodbines and passed it over to Rashers, who said:

‘Thanks be to God someone’s earning,’ and lit it.

‘Are you in a bad way?’

‘Bloody terrible.’

‘I’ll get the missus to send down one of the kids with a few cuts of bread and a cup of tea,’ Hennessy promised.

‘You’re earning, then?’

‘A few weeks.’

‘It makes all the difference,’ Rashers said.

Summer was now his bad time. Father O’Connor no longer needed a boilerman. There were too many beggars. People like the Gaelic League and the Larkinites, the St. Finbar’s Hurling and Football Club or the charitable societies were all joining in the competition for stray pennies. Besides, he was not as good at the walking as he had been. It was his chest. Sometimes in the heat he found it hard to get air into his lungs. Often he had to stop, his hand against a wall for support, while he struggled to breathe.

‘That’s what I was thinking about,’ Rashers said, not knowing that so far he had said nothing to Hennessy of what he was thinking about.

‘What was that?’

‘I’m getting the bronchitis bad.’

‘The weather will soon fix that up.’

‘I wouldn’t be too sure. Look at King Edward. Weather or no weather, it bloodywell killed him.’

‘His heart was bad,’ Hennessy consoled.

‘And what’s to stop my heart getting bad?’ Rashers asked in a reasonable tone. Finding he had silenced Hennessy, Rashers dragged the cigarette and offered:

‘If a fellow only had a bit of capital he could set himself up comfortable enough.’

‘That’s right,’ Hennessy said. ‘I often thought myself if I had enough to buy an old ass and cart I’d be made.’

‘What would you do?’

‘Removals. Or selling coal blocks—there’s good profit in coal blocks.’

‘You’d have to hump all them sacks up all them stairs. Up and down and up and down all day. What I’d do is buy a barrel-organ and a monkey,’ Rashers said. ‘There’s great money in it and only a modicum of exertion.’

‘Monkeys is very hard to rear. I knew a man was put out of business by it. Three of them in a row kicked the bucket on him.’

Mary, sitting at the open window above them, heard the exchange and leaned out to identify them. She recognised Rashers first. He came in and out at such odd hours and kept so much to himself that she seldom saw him. Whenever she did she thought of the coloured favours and the blood on his mouth.

‘There’s a catch in everything,’ Rashers said, when he had considered the triple tragedy.

Nothing ever worked out. You went up with your tin whistle to a polo match in the Park, expecting a crowd, and found there was a reception at the Castle or cricket in Trinity College. The theatre queues were overworked and, worse still, overwatched by policemen.

‘There’s nothing but bloody beggars in this misfortunate town,’ he complained, ‘and what’s more, the half of them is illegitimate beggars, a crowd of amateurs with boxes for the Jim Larkin Defence Collection. It makes shocking inroads on the Rashers Tierney Fund.’

‘You won’t be troubled much longer from that quarter,’ Hennessy told him. ‘Larkin got twelve months’ hard today. That’s the news I had for you.’

‘Holy God—you’re codding me.’

‘Here’s the very man will tell you.’

Fitz had turned the corner. They watched his approach, but when he came abreast of them and climbed the steps he passed them with a nod. He had a collection box under one arm.

‘That’s another that’s in on the collection box act,’ Rashers said.

‘If I was you,’ Hennessy advised, ‘I’d make up another ballad. About Larkin going to gaol.’

‘Do you think they’d like it?’

‘They’ve gone so mad about Larkin now,’ Hennessy assured him, ‘they’d get down on their knees to lick it off the streets. That’s what I wanted to suggest to you.’

‘You’re a man of unusual sagacity,’ Rashers told him, admiringly. He began to finger the tin whistle again. Already his mind was at work. He was thinking hard. Hennessy, catching sight of Mulhall and Pat Bannister, rose and went down the street to join them.

Mary arranged a meal of bread and stew on the table while Fitz left the collection box on the dresser and went into the kitchenette to wash. When he was working she could manage, with difficulty, to provide three meals a day. They had tea and bread for breakfast and supper. The main meal followed a pattern she had picked up from the wiser among the older women—meat on Sundays, cold scraps on Monday, stew on Tuesday. On Wednesdays and Fridays she got herrings cheap. She usually managed to have bread and potatoes. Several times in their few years of marriage they had gone to bed hungry. It took a long time to recover from a strike, to pay off grocers, to clear themselves with moneylenders. She herself was always the first to go short and the arrival of the children made it harder. She watched them as carefully as she could. Whatever else suffered she had tried to give them fresh milk all the time, but once or twice she had found it necessary to water down the condensed milk for them, despite the advice of the doctor in the hospital. Advice was one thing—finding money another. When Fitz returned and sat down she took a little of the food herself and said to him: ‘I had a visitor today.’

‘Not Mrs. Hennessy again?’

Every other day Mrs. Hennessy came to borrow something—a sprinkle of salt, a few spoons of tea or sugar.

‘You’ll never guess,’ she challenged.

It was seldom she had news. She smiled, waiting for him to question her.

He thought and then said: ‘His Excellency, the Governor General.’

‘You’re not even trying.’

Because she wanted him to guess he made an effort, but after some further thought he said: ‘I give up.’

‘Father O’Connor.’

The news was unexpected. With satisfaction she saw him lay down his knife and fork. Then he said, critically, ‘It’s taken him long enough to find his way.’ He had never forgotten Father O’Connor’s advice to Keever.

‘He came about Miss Gilchrist. She’s in the workhouse.’

‘So that’s where they put her.’ He said it grimly. They had often wondered about her.

‘How long is she there?’

‘Over two years, he tells me. He wants me to visit her. I was thinking of going on Sunday.’

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I’ll mind the youngsters.’

‘You won’t have a meeting or anything?’

‘I’ll mind them whether I have or not,’ he promised.

‘She always liked a pinch of snuff,’ Mary remembered, ‘I’ll bring her some.’

He nodded. She wondered what he had been doing all day. Walking the main streets with a box in his hand, sticking it under people’s noses, being told to move on by policemen, who were always ready to make trouble. She found it hard to understand what attracted him in the speechmaking and the upheavals or to see the sense in strikes which always lasted too long and brought too little in the end. It seemed more sensible to take the steady work when it was going and leave the quarrels to others. There were children now to suffer. But she said nothing of that to him either. He knew his own mind and she trusted him to do what was best. It was not her business. She took her empty plate to the dresser and as she shifted the collection box she noticed its weight.

‘You did well today,’ she remarked.

‘They sentenced him to twelve months this morning,’ he said. ‘The whole city is on our side since the news came out—even the silk hats. We’re having a protest march tonight.’

She heard his plate being pushed aside and went over to take it.

‘Are you going?’

‘I couldn’t miss it.’

That meant he would go on straight to the job. He was on night work.

‘I’ll make up your supper for you before I wash the dishes,’ she said, accepting his decision without comment.

He went over to sit at the window, which she had opened at the bottom. On summer evenings they often sat there together, watching the skies growing darker, listening to the life of the street. It was not possible any more to go walking on the strand or swimming together, because of the children. They had tried to get a pram, but there was always something else to be bought first. She tried not to mind. In a way it brought them closer together. While she was making up his supper parcel he said:

‘It was very quiet when I came in. What happened to everybody?’

‘Two policemen were taking a drunken sailor down to his ship. The whole street went off to gape.’

‘I’m surprised Hennessy wasn’t with them.’

‘He was late for it,’ she said, laughing.

He rose again and went into the bedroom, opening the door quietly so as not to waken the children. Almost immediately the room became lonely. He had left his cap beside the collection box and she touched it gently for no conscious reason. She hoped Mulhall was going with him to the protest march. Mulhall was huge and capable. If they stayed together Fitz would be safe. She heard him entering again and found she was holding his cap. He was amused.

‘Are you going out?’ he asked.

‘The dresser is no place for it,’ she said, pretending annoyance. He took it from her and pushed it into his pocket.

‘Nor your pocket,’ she added. He took it out again and placed it solemnly on her head.

‘Maybe you’d like to wear it yourself.’ He kissed her lightly and drew her over to the window.

‘I’m sorry to be going out tonight,’ he said. His voice was tender.

‘Will Mulhall be with you?’

‘He’s to call across for me.’

She said she didn’t mind.

They had half an hour together before Mulhall knocked at the door. Pat was with him. They had slogans painted on sheets of cardboard which they had mounted on sticks. Mulhall’s read: ‘Release Larkin’. Pat’s was general. It said: ‘Arise, Ye Slaves’.

‘What do you think of it?’ he asked, holding it up for inspection.

‘It has a Salvation Army smack about it,’ Fitz criticised.

‘We’d better hurry,’ Mulhall advised.

‘Onward Christian soldiers,’ Pat said.

‘I’ll be after you,’ Fitz promised.

They left. Mary gave him his supper parcel and pressed her cheek against his.

‘Watch yourself,’ she said, earnestly, ‘don’t go where there might be trouble.’

She looked down at the three of them from the window. They stepped out strongly together and were joined on their way by another neighbour. The boards with their painted slogans lent them an air of unfamiliarity. She felt a distance growing between her and them that was greater than the street’s. She stood, the loneliness creeping out from every part of the room. In the flat above a door banged, sending a tremor through the floorboards. She heard the baby beginning to cry and went in to it.

‘Won’t do you a bit of harm,’ Yearling assured him. He left his ’cello lying on one side, placing the bow carefully along it.

‘Well, then . . . but very little.’

It would be his third glass of port, an unprecedented gluttony for Father O’Connor. But Yearling was persuasive and, besides, the evening had been pleasant. Rising from the piano, he went over to the window while Yearling found the bottle of port. The windows looked out on a long, well-kept garden.

“I’ll have whiskey myself,’ he heard Yearling say, from somewhere behind him. ‘It goes better with the last of the day.’ Then he heard him say, ‘Do, please sit down.’

‘I mustn’t delay too long,’ Father O’Connor answered. He sat down, just the same. The piano was an excellent instrument. It had been such a pleasure to play on it. There was none in St. Brigid’s and he had not gone near the harmonium there since his difference with Father Giffley. Yearling, too, had acquitted himself admirably.

‘You play very well,’ he said, still looking at the garden. Shadows lay across it and the night dew was already settling. If he walked down it the grass would keep the imprint of his feet. A good dinner, an hour’s music, a little wine. He was far away now from Father Giffley’s hostility, Father O’Sullivan’s frayed soutanes and common-or-garden mind, from the straw on the floor and the candles in bottles. Here summer came to shed grace and beauty where houses and gardens received her condescendingly, as they would a favoured entertainer. The windows wore tasselled shades, the doors had gay canvas covers to protect their paintwork; ladies with parasols welcomed her as they strolled along the front. Father O’Connor, made daring by the wine, remembered their earlier discussion and put his mood into a question.

‘I omitted to ask what was your answer to poverty?’ He heard the clink of a glass as Yearling moved something and almost immediately his good-natured laugh.

‘Man will conquer poverty just as he will conquer the problems of disease and war—by his own determination and intelligence.’

‘Without Christianity?’

‘I don’t know what you mean by Christianity,’ Yearling said. ‘There are too many brands of it.’

‘Without God, shall I say.’

‘The spirit which informs mankind may be of God—I think it probably is; but what God I cannot say.’ Yearling handed him his glass of port and sat opposite to him. ‘Can you?’ he added.

‘Without any shadow of doubt.’

‘It doesn’t seem to make you any happier.’

‘Because I am not happy about what I see,’ Father O’Connor confessed suddenly.

He had not meant to say it. The sentiment surprised himself. It was the port, perhaps; it was the shadowed garden and its gathering in to itself all the sadness of the fading evening; it was the music, the Bach Arioso Yearling had played so tenderly on his ’cello, and the profound deliberation of the accompaniment which had sounded so well on the excellent piano.

‘You have a hard life,’ Yearling said, with uncharacteristic gentleness.

‘At this moment an old lady who is dying is unhappy because she does not know how she is to be buried. Tomorrow, thank God, I’ll be able to set her mind at rest.’

‘That, at least, is a reason for happiness.’

‘She is only one. What of the others?’

Yearling shrugged at that and said: ‘I don’t care a damn who buries me.’

‘You were never so destitute that the only piece of property you ever owned was your poor body.’

‘If I died,’ Yearling said, ‘I’d be going where the needs of the body didn’t matter any more. Certainly I’d rather not know who was going to bury me than wonder how I was going to live.’

‘There are so many like that too.’

‘And you feel sorry for them?’

‘Don’t you?’

Yearling’s moment of gentleness had passed.

‘Every time I think about them,’ he said, ‘which on average is about once every two years.’

‘You thought about them today.’

‘In times of upheaval. They may yet come out of their hovels in search of a better living—all together, a visitation from the locusts.’

‘After Larkin, perhaps?’

‘Very likely, if today’s sentence is indicative of the enlightened medicine we can expect the law to prescribe.’

‘I’ve been thinking a little about that since you spoke to me.’

Yearling was pleased.

‘So. You see the danger—I mean the social danger, not the spiritual.’

‘I walked past Mr. Bradshaw’s houses today. He has propped them up with wooden supports.’

‘You mustn’t blame him,’ Yearling said. ‘His tenants don’t earn enough to pay an economic rent, unless he crams them six in a room. Even that doesn’t leave him enough for major repairs.’

‘I haven’t blamed him at all,’ Father O’Connor said, ‘he’s not exceptional.’

Yearling tasted his whiskey and, in the half-light that lay about them, took in the sad, white face of the man he had been playing music with. In spite of the tired lines and the pallor, the face was ridiculously young. Did celibacy keep them that way? Or holiness? They read a lot of intellectual stuff which ought at least to give the eyes the set of learning. It had left no mark on this man. Nor had music. He was certainly musical. Tomorrow morning, the fingers that had been so competent on the keyboard and were now white about the stem of the wine-glass would break the wafer that they believed was the Body of Christ. If it was, how could they bear to break it. Cr-a-a-ck. Just like that. Yearling knew. The girl he had known in London had been a Catholic. He had seen for himself.

‘Shall we play some more music?’

‘There’s nothing I’d love more, but I really must watch the time.’

‘You’re not drinking your wine.’

‘I’m not used to it.’

‘Don’t you have it every morning?’

Father O’Connor’s understanding grasped the point slowly. ‘It’s not quite the same thing,’ he said. He spoke with difficulty. A great gap had opened between them, of which only he was aware. Yearling, faintly smiling in the twilight, relished his whiskey. It was loneliness, then. And for ever. No company in the Bradshaws, whom he admired only for good taste and smooth manners, none in Father Giffley, whom he tried hard not to despise or Father O’Sullivan who had a dull mind, none in the ragtag and bobtail of his parish, for whom he had a dutiful love which shrank at every physical contact. And in Yearling, below a now more clearly understood level, no companionship. No real understanding between himself and the poor, or between the world of poverty and the world of comfort. He had left a gracious way of life to do what his heart told him was God’s will, and all he had found so far was disrespect, humiliation, an inner disgust. The devil worked more successfully than he, and the people looked to agitators for deliverance. He had been on the point of telling Yearling about that, of expressing a little of his aloneness and disappointment. Now it was impossible. His unhappiness grew until it became physically painful.

‘I’ll play for thirty minutes,’ he said. It would stop the ache, a temporary sedative. Unintentionally he emptied his third glass of wine.

‘Excellent,’ Yearling said, moving for his ’cello. On his way he rang for lamps. He was nervous of gas and electricity had not yet attracted his consideration.

They jammed the street in front of the station, a jumble of torches and banners, a tightly packed array that had generated a soul and a mind of its own, capable of response only to simple impulses, able to move itself, to emit a cry, to swing right or left, to stop altogether. They had come out en masse from the hovels and tenements, disrupting traffic, driving the respectable off the sidewalks. Their sudden arrogance was astonishing. Here and there Father O’Connor recognised a face. He stood on the steps leading down to the exit, knowing it was useless to try to pass through. The dizzy feeling which had made him so uncomfortable in the train attacked him again. It was dark, yet the street seemed unusually bright and certain faces seemed larger than others. He recognised Fitzpatrick, whom he had known for a long time, without pretending to; he knew the big man who walked by his side; he knew Rashers and the sickly little man who kept him company. ‘Release Larkin’ the banners said. ‘Arise, Ye Slaves’. They turned confusingly this way and that above the shoulders that bore them. The flaring torches were a melodramatic touch and, he thought, dangerous. He wondered how they were made. He stood with the other passengers on the steps—behind him the station where gas-lamps with pendant chains spread a sickly light between the platform and the soot-blackened canopy—in front of him the mob, the torches, the banners.

‘Stick close to me,’ Rashers advised.

Hennessy, already pressed painfully against him by the pressure of bodies, his arms pinioned and his hat coming down over his eyes, answered obscenely. It was a rare thing in Hennessy.

‘I’m surprised at you,’ Rashers said. He had the whistle under his coat and wrapped around it the paper with the words of his new ballad.

‘Wait’ll I sing my song for them,’ he said.

‘You’ll never be able to sing in this mob.’

‘Passed unanimously.’

‘Then what the hell are we getting walked on for?’

‘To be ready with the song when they reach Beresford Place before the speechifying starts.’

‘Did you see who was on the station steps?’

‘Give over gasbagging. I’m putting the words through my mind.’

‘Father O’Connor.’

Rashers, disturbed by the information, hesitated for a moment and was trampled on immediately. When he had released his feelings in a flow of bad language he asked:

‘Did he see us?’

‘How do I know?’

‘If he did I’ll never get the job back.’

‘Of course you’ll get the job back.’

‘The clergy is always giving out the pay about us socialists.’

This was news to Hennessy.

‘I never knew you were a friend of the cause.’

‘In times of crisis,’ Rashers said, ‘I’m a stalwart.’

‘When there’s a bit of money to be made out of trials and tribulations, I suppose.’

‘As Bard of the Revolution,’ Rashers said, remembering Pat’s phrase.

They reached a street junction and the pressure eased. Those at the sides held back, then fell in ranks behind the main body, five or six abreast.

‘It’s a great turn-out,’ Mulhall said to Fitz. He was a mountain of satisfaction.

‘Half of them are gapers.’

‘Some of them will join up.’

‘How many?’

‘Enough for our purpose.’

At least there had been a swing in public opinion. It was easy to judge that in the suddenly increased response to the collection boxes.

‘Maybe,’ Fitz said.

Mary would be by herself, looking down on the quiet back street, the room in half light about her because she would be saving oil by doing without the lamp. For him there was the excitement to keep the anxieties from growing too powerful. Tonight, when he felt the drag of the loaded shovel on his shoulders and the sweat trickling down his body, there would be the roar of the furnaces and at break times the conversation of his mates. She would be alone, with the two children of their marriage near at hand to keep doubt and fear in her heart.

‘They’ve been slow enough about joining,’ he added.

‘After this they’ll flock to us,’ Mulhall said. He was smiling and full of confidence.

At Beresford Place they formed into a meeting before the derelict block of buildings that had once been the Northumberland Commercial and Family Hotel. The torches went out one by one, night crept up the river and spread over the city. People in trains that passed from time to time across the loop-line bridge leaned out of windows to look down at the packed street while for some moments the speaker gesticulated and was unheard because of the trundling carriages. At half past eleven Fitz said to Mulhall:

‘I’d better move. I’m due in at twelve.’

Mulhall nodded.

Fitz worked his way slowly through the crowd, which was still dense. He was tempted to go home, to pick up on the sleep he had cut short in the daytime in order to walk the streets with his collection box, but he could not afford to lose a night’s pay.

Touching his pocket to feel if his supper was still there, he began to cross the bridge. To his left there were berthed ships, lying idle and deserted on the low tide. At the far end of the bridge a figure leaned on the parapet. At first he paid no attention, thinking it was a down-and-out or a drunk, using the parapet to rest against, but when he came abreast he realised that it was a priest. He went over and touched the shoulder.

‘Can I help you, Father?’

After a moment the other raised his head and looked around at him.

‘It’s nothing,’ Father O’Connor said, ‘a little turn.’ He had never spoken to Father O’Connor before. He thought it strange that he should meet him like this on the day the priest had decided to call on Mary.

‘I could get a cab for you.’

‘No . . . please.’ He hesitated. ‘I know you, I think—a parishioner.’

‘Fitzpatrick, Father.’

‘That’s it. Your wife, I think . . .’

Fitz made no offer to fill in the long pause.

‘I followed your meeting from the station and listened for a while. I began to feel unwell . . . the heat, probably.’

‘You should let me call a cab.’

‘No—I feel better in the air.’

Fitz hesitated.

‘Then let me walk back with you to the church.’

It would mean being late for work, and for a moment he hoped the other would refuse. But Father O’Connor accepted and said:

‘Thank you, that’s very kind of you.’

Fitz took his arm lightly. They walked in silence until they had left the river behind and were in the main thoroughfare once more. Father O’Connor released his arm and said he felt much better. Yet his face was drained of colour and he walked with a slight uncertainty.

‘I followed your meeting because I thought I might catch a glimpse of Mr. Larkin.’

‘He’s in gaol, Father.’

‘Yes, I know,’ Father O’Connor said, attempting a smile. ‘The extraordinary thing is I’ve known that since early afternoon.’

‘We’re trying to get him released.’

‘It’s an extraordinary thing,’ Father O’Connor said again. ‘I knew that and yet I followed with the idea . . .’ He stopped.

‘It was being unwell, I suppose. I was unwell and didn’t realise it. However, I’m much better now—thanks to you.’

‘You’re more than welcome, Father,’ Fitz said. They had reached the iron railings which cut off the courtyard of the church from the footpath. Fitz tried the side gate and found it open. He held it for the priest.

‘I’ve kept you from your home.’

‘Not at all, Father,’ Fitz said.

‘Do you often attend meetings of this kind?’

‘Whenever I can.’

Father O’Connor appeared to make a great effort of will.

‘You must be careful,’ he said. ‘There are men who pretend to have sympathy with the working men and the unemployed in order to win power for themselves—power for the socialists.’

‘I don’t know very much about these things, Father,’ Fitz said. He wanted to avoid an argument.

‘It’s an evil doctrine. You must be careful who you set up as your leaders.’

‘It isn’t difficult, Father. We haven’t had many to choose from,’ Fitz said. He was already late for work. The delay would cost him a quarter—three hours’ pay.

‘Guard your faith and listen only to those who honour it,’ Father O’Connor said. He spoke gently and, to Fitz, like one who was hearing his own voice from a distance. He looked very ill.

‘You should go in, Father,’ he urged.

‘Thank you,’ Father O’Connor said. His tone was warm. ‘Thank you very much indeed.’

Fitz raised his cap. His feet sounded loudly in the street. It was after midnight.

They arrived back at Chandlers Court within minutes of each other—first Rashers and Hennessy, then Mulhall alone.

‘You did well,’ Hennessy said in the hallway, ‘you did magnificent.’

‘One and threepence,’ Rashers agreed, with modesty.

‘I mean the ballad,’ Hennessy corrected. ‘It was a great success.’

‘Success is one thing,’ Rashers reminded him, ‘money is another.’

‘You got both.’

‘For once,’ Rashers allowed. He fumbled. ‘Have a cigarette.’

‘It’s too late.’

‘I took one from you out of your plenty. Now you take one of mine.’

‘I’ll take it upstairs with me.’

‘Bring it to bed with you if the fancy takes you that way.’

Hennessy pushed the cigarette behind his ear. It was pitch dark in the hall and there was an evil smell. Hennessy wrinkled his nose and sniffed.

‘Some bowsie did his what-you-know,’ he complained.

Rashers wasn’t squeamish.

‘It’s an old Dublin custom—there must have been a queue for the jakes.’

‘I can’t stand that,’ Hennessy said. ‘It’s the one thing I can’t abide.’

‘You worked in too many high-falutin’ houses—feeding yourself on grapes and delicacies.’

‘They were right at that meeting tonight. We live and die like animals. I’ll go on up. I can’t stick it.’

Rashers chuckled. As he was going he said:

‘Mind you don’t walk in it.’

Hennessy, his foot feeling out for the first rung of the stairs, froze for a moment. He picked his way delicately.

The door of Father Giffley’s bedroom opened and his voice called:

‘Father O’Sullivan . . .’

The corridor seemed unfamiliarly long. A gas-lamp at the far end, turned low, cast a blue half-light. Father O’Connor stopped.

‘It’s Father O’Connor,’ he managed after a while.

‘Oh—you.’ The voice changed. ‘Isn’t it rather late?’

With a great effort of will Father O’Connor pushed aside the temptation to ignore the question, to walk on to his bedroom and leave his superior standing there. For the moment he felt physically unable to bear up to criticism.

‘I was delayed.’

‘Please step into my room.’ Father Giffley had a dressing gown over his nightshirt and, incongruously, his priest’s biretta perched on his head. He seemed to have been reading. A black-covered book lay open, but face downwards, on a bedside chair.

‘Father O’Sullivan was obliged to go out on a sick call,’ he reproved. Father O’Connor should have been available. It was his duty period.

‘I felt unwell when I got off the train and did something quite unaccountable.’

‘Indeed.’

‘There was a protest march—banners, slogans, torches; the street in front of the station was packed with them.’

‘Until this hour?’ Father Giffley commented. He smiled humourlessly.

‘They were demanding Larkin’s release. I followed them to their meeting place. There were socialists on their platform and they listened with respect and cheered them. I heard a vile diatribe from one of them against the Church. They cheered him. Later—I don’t remember how—I found myself standing on Butt Bridge.’

Father Giffley stared at him and then, knitting his brows, asked: ‘Have you been drinking?’

‘I haven’t that habit,’ Father O’Connor said. The contemptuous phrase escaped him before he could stop it. It stung his conscience. Besides, it was a lie. He cast around for some way to correct himself, to say he had taken a little wine, but had not been drinking in the sense implied by Father Giffley. It was too difficult. The room, like the corridor, had a bluish tint which made his stomach unwell. He narrowed his eyes so that he would see as little of it as possible. A wave of nausea made him tremble.

‘May I sit down?’ he asked.

Father Giffley, detecting the tremor, waved towards a chair and peered at him.

‘A bilious attack. You have a very bad colour,’ he pronounced.

‘Please forgive me if I . . .’

‘A small drop of brandy is what you need.’

Father O’Connor shook his head.

‘You look as though you could do with it.’ The voice had grown a shade kinder.

‘No—I think if I lie down . . .’

‘As you please.’ Father Giffley turned his back. The movement was formal, deliberate.

‘So you followed the rabble. That’s interesting. And singularly unlike you.’

The voice was no longer kind. There was a glass-fronted bookcase in front of Father Giffley. He stared at it, as though trying to locate something. Father O’Connor kept silence.

‘Why?’ his superior asked.

Quietly, the emotion of an earlier moment moving in him again, Father O’Connor said: ‘They are being led away from us.’

‘Did you imagine you could bring them back—even if they were?’

‘Please,’ Father O’Connor pleaded. ‘I must go to bed.’

‘By threatening to change them into goats. That day has passed. Do you know whose fault that is?’

‘I am not well enough to discuss . . .’

‘Ours,’ Father Giffley answered, swinging about suddenly, ‘because we’ve watched in silence while the others turned them into animals.’

‘The devil is at work among them.’

‘The devil is busy everywhere, always; at work on them and at work on the others. He was busy here all day too.’

Father Giffley paused. Then he said: ‘For once his efforts were not very profitable.’

Father O’Connor wondered was he speaking of himself. But he was too sick to care. ‘May I go to bed?’ he asked.

‘Don’t let me detain you,’ Father Giffley replied, lifting the black book from the chair and sitting down. As Father O’Connor closed the door he said, raising his voice slightly: ‘If you need help during the night, call out for me.’

At first it was a relief to get inside his own bedroom, but when he closed the door he began to feel he had walked into a tomb. The curtains were drawn, the window closed, it was completely dark. He crossed and opened a press, the wrong one. Some left-over tins of cocoa fell about the floor. He left them there. He felt unable to stoop. He found he had to stand quite still to remember where he was. He saw the placards twisting this way and that, white against the darkness, he saw the torches sparking and swaying, lurid red against the pitch darkness. He bumped against the bed, leaned heavily on it, heard the noise of its springs and groped with his free hand. He reached the chamber-pot in time to be violently and repeatedly sick. Then he knelt, his cheek against the coverings, until the trembling of his body ceased.

When he felt stronger he removed his collar and went over to draw the curtains and open the window. The sky above the church was a vast, night blue field, stars grew wild all over it, the breeze from the window touched his face with healing and coolness. It was a mild night of June, month of the Sacred Heart. The gardens of Kingstown would smell sweetly at this hour, full of flowers and leafy quiet. Along the coast, on miles and miles of fine wet shingle, about crusted rocks, against the wooden beams of piers, the sea was making night sounds, the tides building and turning in time with the laws of God who was the maker and regulator of all things. He had a sense of sin. Casting back over the day he remembered his lack of humility with the young woman who had once been a servant; the impatience that caused him to turn down Mrs. Bradshaw’s offer of hospitality; his three glasses of wine which, in him, might well count as intemperance; his delight in Yearling’s praise when he played well on the beautiful piano.

Troubled, he fingered his rosary and, leaning against the window jamb, his eyes fixed on the night sky, he began to pray—for his mother’s soul, for Miss Gilchrist, for each face that looked out at him from moment to moment as he examined his conscience and lived in retrospect through the events of the day. He remained so for almost half an hour until, his attention wavering, he became aware of the odour in the room. It was the smell of puke, of half-digested food and sour wine. Away from the window it was worse, an offensive and choking manifestation of infirmity, of uncleanness, of corruption. It was the wine then, that had made him sick.

He shrank from the ordeal of lifting the pot, but there was no help for it. Gingerly he opened the door and stole past Father Giffley’s room once again to the toilet on the upper landing. His stomach turned as he emptied the foul contents and rinsed out the remaining traces. He returned and got into bed, relieved that the unpleasant task was over and done with, relieved too that Father Giffley had not come into the corridor to investigate these latenight comings and goings. There were tins of some kind lying on the floor, he now remembered. Let them stay there.

He lay exhausted, yet sleepless. The retort he had made to Father Giffley returned several times to his mind: ‘I haven’t that habit, Father.’ He regretted it. He wished he could recall and erase it. He had been wrong in his earlier suspicions about the locked room. Father Giffley had been perfectly sober. As he watched the narrow strip of sky between the partly drawn curtains, accusing himself, asking for forgiveness, the meaning of Father Giffley’s phrase about the devil’s efforts not being very profitable—for once, suggested itself. Had he locked his door to shut out temptation? Had he called out for Father O’Sullivan because, at the end of the long day, from that simple, unnoticing man, there would flow the springs of consolation? ‘I haven’t that habit, Father.’ Had he asked for bread, and been given a stone?

Father O’Connor closed his eyes tightly, not in an effort to sleep, but the better to bear the self-accusation which desolated him.