Strumpet City

CHAPTER EIGHT

It was raining. Mulhall, taking his breakfast by candlelight, heard the sprinkling of drops against the window as he ate.

‘Is it bad?’ he asked.

His wife went over to peer out. In windows down the length of Chandlers Court the light of candles wavered above a pitch black street. A squall rattled the window pane as she looked, taking her by surprise.

‘It’ll be bad enough,’ she said.

He filled his pipe, feeling the cold of the morning in his fingers. It would be two hours to the first of the light and by that time he would have the horse yoked and the cart loaded for the first delivery of the day.

‘Wear the sack about your shoulders,’ she advised him.

She was now on her knees in front of the fire, preparing to light it.

He puffed at his pipe.

‘Call Willie,’ she said, busy.

‘In a minute.’

He was thinking of the day ahead; yoking up, driving through wintry streets, hoisting wet sacks and labouring up and down stairs with them. He was in no humour.

‘There are times,’ he said, ‘when I think Hennessy above has more sense than any of us. He only works when the weather is fine.’

‘Call Willie for me, like a good man,’ she urged.

‘It’s too early to call him.’

‘No it isn’t,’ she said. ‘He wants to practise for half an hour before he goes out.’

‘Wouldn’t you think he had enough of it last night?’ he grumbled.

He took the candle and went into the small room at the back. His son was deeply asleep. On a chair beside the bed was the music he had been practising the night before. On top of the music lay his fife.

‘Willie,’ he called.

There was no stir. He leaned down until the candle lit up the sleeping form. The boy was nineteen now, tall. If all went well he would be as big in the body as well. He shook him by the shoulder.

‘Get up. The fire is lit and your breakfast is ready.’

The boy sat up, shaking his head to get rid of the sleep.

‘Playing that damn thing all night—and then not able to stir in the morning,’ Mulhall grumbled to his wife when he came back to the main room.

‘He’s anxious about the competition,’ she said.

It was to be held in the Queen’s Theatre that night—a Grand Fife and Drum Band Competition. They were going together to it. She would have her husband’s navy serge suit laid out airing for him when he came home, so that he could change quickly. She herself would wear her best dress, and in addition Mrs. Fitzpatrick might have something nice to lend her. They were friendly and she would call over during the course of the morning to enquire. The thought made her happy.

‘Be home early,’ she told him, ‘it’s not often we get out together.’

He pinned the sack about his shoulders and took his lunch parcel from the table.

‘Have you everything?’

She had asked the same question every morning of their lives—on weekdays as he went out to work, on Sundays when he made ready for mass. As he settled his cap on his head he smiled at her and said: ‘When me hat is on, me house is thatched.’

But as he went down the steps his moment of good humour left him. He was dispirited and reluctant to face the day, and wondered if he was starting a cold. The hall smelled dankly; on the steps the wind lifted up the sack so that he had to take his hands from his pockets to hold the ends in position. He bent his head against the rain and went down into the street. There were footsteps in the darkness ahead of him and behind him, echoing with the lonely sound of early morning. They were his mates and fellow-workers, a multitude moving through a dark dawn to earn their bread. In all the meaner streets of the city they were turning out to face the winter day.

In Brunswick Street, where the lighting was better, and he could see as well as hear the hurrying figures, a placard outside the Queen’s Theatre announced the evening’s attraction:

‘Tonight

Grand Fife & Drum

Band Con . . .’

That was as much as he could read. Rain had loosened the lower portion, which made a flapping noise in the wind. Was it ‘concert’ or ‘contest’? Not that it mattered. The tickets were at home and he knew all about it. No wonder, with Willie practising night after night for a full week.

Further down the street the Antient Concert Rooms promised music of a different kind. Holding the sack ends across his chest like a cloak he stopped to read:

‘Tonight (Friday) 13th December 1912

Dublin Philharmonic Society

Hymn of Praise

Athalie

(Mendelssohn)

Conductor Charles G. Marchant Mus.D.

Madame Nora Bonel

Miss Edith Mortier (Feis Gold Medallist)

J. J. Maltby (Principal Tenor, Chester Cathedral)

Full Band and Chorus

Prices: Reserved & Numbered seats 4s.

Balcony 2s.

Area 1s.

Booking at Cramer’s, Westmoreland Street’

Swanky stuff. Women in white and men in evening dress, reading the words out of books. He had seen them once, though not in full regalia, when he went in during a rehearsal to ask about delivering a load of coal. He had stood at the back, wondering whom to approach, while the voices of the chorus and the orchestra filled the hall with music. That was not in the Antient Concert Rooms, but in a hall attached to a convent school. A nun told him to sit and wait until the interval, but he felt self-conscious and slipped out again when she left him. Despite the convent, he felt they were a very Protestant-looking crowd.

A cold wind raked the quayside, driving the rain in squalls. Above the loading yard the windows of Mr. Doggett’s office and those flanking it were blank. It was too raw and early as yet for the owner and his henchmen. The air in the stables, comfortingly warm, smelled strongly of horse urine. The stableman greeted him. He was tossing hay by the light of a paraffin lamp, a shadowy presence in its inadequate glow.

‘Seasonable weather.’

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

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

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

‘Rheumatism, maybe,’ Mulhall suggested.

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

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

Mulhall continued to stroke the horse.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Is this the lot?’ he asked.

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

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

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

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

‘It’ll take the whole morning.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘She’ll enjoy her little outing.’

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

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

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

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

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

‘So is the Liffey near Sally Gap.’

‘Where’s Sally Gap?’

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

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

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

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

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

‘What cap?’

‘The bandsman’s cap.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Can you read music yourself?’ Hennessy asked.

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

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

Rashers felt he was being pinned down.

‘In a class of a way,’ he evaded.

‘Who learned you?’ Hennessy persisted.

‘How do you mean—who learned me?’

‘Who was your teacher?’

‘I taught myself.’

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

‘Jaysus,’ he said, ‘I’m in flames!’

‘What’s wrong with you?’

‘Me beard went on fire.’

Hennessy frowned, wrinkled his nose and sniffed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Composing?’

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

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

‘He works as a messenger boy in the despatch department of the Independent Newspapers.’

‘Hairy oul messenger boy,’ Rashers said.

‘I expect he’ll get the push one of these days. They have to at a certain age.’

‘He won’t knock a living out of music anyway,’ Rashers said. But almost immediately he felt he was being over-severe. He gave a great sigh.

‘What is he, when all’s said and done, only a boy. It’s all before him.’

Hennessy approved the change to tolerance.

‘Live and let live,’ he said.

‘You’re right,’ Rashers said. Then he repeated it. ‘You’re right.’

Unanimity reigned. There was no use in rancour, they both now felt. Be patient. Endure. Willie Mulhall was only a little less advanced on the road to infirmity and loneliness and God knows what tribulation.

‘Play something else,’ Hennessy prompted.

Rashers, after an interval of thought, complied, resuming the meandering air with its trills and turns while Hennessy, staring into the red coals, let his mind wander. They had sat like this on another occasion, in the boiler room under St. Brigid’s Church, he recollected, drinking port and eating turkey and ham. That was around the Christmas time too. No, after it, he now remembered. Rashers was misfortunate to lose a good job like that. He had thought of going to the parish priest and applying for it himself, but as he considered it, it began to seem a traitorous sort of thing to do. Rashers, rightly or wrongly, felt he had been dealt with harshly. It would be disloyal to offer to work in his place. But Rashers was a stubborn and bitter oul oddity too, refusing to chance the effect of an apology, refusing even to go to St. Brigid’s for mass. They said the parish priest was kindly enough, although a bit abrupt. He could have gone to him. But no. Pride.

It would have been nice to walk in through the door and say: I’ve landed a steady, respectable job. Seasonable, but steady while it’s there. With the clergy. That would impress. The clergy. As boilerman. St Brigid’s. She would respect him then . . . as she used. You could make a career out of a job like that if you minded it. Aloysius Hennessy, Boilerman to St. Brigid’s.

‘A nice morning, Mr. Hennessy.’

‘A lovely morning, ma’am, thanks be to God.’ And then, when he had passed, but was not quite out of earshot: ‘Who’s that, Alice?’

‘Who?’

‘The man in the overalls you just said hello to?’

‘Oh, that’s Aloysius Hennessy, the boilerman from the church.’

The charcoal had grown so hot that the sides of the bucket glowed with a pinkish colour. He turned up his collar against the draught at his back. Firelight and meandering music interweaving in the half-light drew him dreaming into their labyrinth. He heard her voice remotely. He heard it a number of times before he realised with a shock she was in the room beside him.

‘So this is where you are.’

It was his wife, arms on her hips, a small, emaciated woman with a strident voice. The music stopped.

‘Idling and gossiping while your children go hungry.’

‘A few words with a good neighbour and a friend, Ellen,’ he said. ‘I was on my way up in a minute or two.’

She began to scream at him.

‘A nice article I married. Sitting on his arse while he should be looking for work.’

‘I searched high up and low down,’ Hennessy said earnestly, almost in tears. ‘I’m going to try again in the evening.’

‘You will. When every gate is closed and they’re all gone home for the day.’

Her voice was so loud that the dog began to bark.

‘And this article beside you,’ she said, referring to Rashers. She turned her anger fully on him.

‘You’re no better than he is,’ she shouted at him. ‘There’s a pair of you well matched.’

Rashers began to rise to his feet. He did so, as always, with difficulty because of his leg. He was stiff from sitting and had to hold on to the fireplace for support. He stared at her and she moved back a little, afraid of him; afraid of his eyes, his unkempt beard, his infirmity.

‘Ma’am,’ Rashers said, ‘he’s your husband and I suppose he has to listen to you. I don’t. Now clear off out of my premises and conduct your barney on your own battlefield.’

‘Ellen,’ Hennessy pleaded, ‘we’ll go upstairs and leave Mr. Tierney in peace.’

‘That’s what you’ll do, ma’am,’ Rashers said, ‘because if you delay another second I’ll set the dog on you.’

‘You would too—you bloody oul cripple.’

‘Rusty,’ Rashers called.

The dog came to his side.

‘Ellen,’ Hennessy appealed, ‘leave when you’re asked.’ He was distressed and took her by the arm, but she pushed him away.

‘Bloody oul cripple,’ she screamed.

Rashers raised his good arm threateningly above his head and immediately the dog snarled.

‘Jesus,’ she said, in terror of its bared teeth.

‘Go with her,’ Rashers told Hennessy. He was holding himself very straight. His anger and hatred made his beard stiff and his eyes malignant. She backed through the door, Hennessy following. When they began to climb the stairs Rashers shouted after her:

‘Blame God for the cripple part of it—not Rashers Tierney.’

His voice set the dog barking furiously.

‘Do you hear me, ma’am,’ Rashers shouted after her again, knowing she was terrified to answer. ‘The cripple is God’s handiwork. Criticise Him.’

He heaved violently against the door with his shoulder so that it slammed. Then he leaned against it, trembling with rage.

‘Once upon a time,’ he said to the dog, ‘that was a comely young girl with a gentle voice. She was all pink and milky white. Now she’s as yellow as a drain.’

His rage overwhelmed him once more. He jerked open the door and bawled up the stairs.

‘Do you hear what I said, you consumptive oul bitch—you’re as yellow as a drain.’ His voice beat on wall and ceiling. It carried his anguish through all the passageways of the house.

The rain became heavy sleet when he reached the Park, and the road climbed until there was no shelter from the gale, which drove the sleet against him until his hands were locked about the reins with the cold, and the flakes took a long time to melt on his eyelids and left him travelling blindly. When at last he reached shelter he found he had either forgotten, or lost, his lunch. The load was delivered and the docket marked ‘Priority’ signed without anyone in the house offering him a cup of tea. But a tip of sixpence had been left for him. He was tempted to spend it on something hot when he got back into the city. He resisted. It would provide a treat tonight for his wife when they went to the theatre. He worked through his city loads until three o’clock and returned to the loading yard to find his lunch parcel waiting for him at the checker’s office.

‘The stableman found this after you’d pulled out,’ the clerk said, ‘you left it behind you.’

Mulhall took it without saying thanks. He was too tired.

‘There’s one more load for you’, the clerk said, ‘a near one this time—Morgan & Co.’

‘Nothing after that?’

‘Nothing at all.’

An early finish would suit him down to the ground. He stuck his lunch in his pocket. It would be better to get loaded and complete the job and make for home. He could sit in comfort at the fire.

‘Here goes,’ he said, his mood brightening for the first time since morning. He delayed to light his pipe before leaving the shelter of the office. A smoke would help to keep his hunger at bay.

The winter dusk was settling as he passed through the gates and into the yard of Morgan & Co. It was large, with gas-lamps at intervals which a man was lighting with a rod.

‘Single load,’ he said to the gateman.

‘That’ll be for office use,’ the gateman answered.

‘I know,’ Mulhall said. A single load was always for the fires in the offices. For some reason they liked to keep their office heating expenditure separate.

‘You know where to leave it.’ It was a statement, not a question.

‘I do,’ Mulhall said. He had been delivering to Morgan’s most of his life. But when he pulled up outside the office block the caretaker stopped him from carrying the sacks through the hallway.

‘There’s a Board meeting on up above,’ he explained. ‘They’ll be coming down any minute.’

Mulhall understood. The passageway was unusually spick and span. It would not do if the departing directors found it marked with a trail of coal-dust.

‘Where will I leave it?’

‘I’ll show you,’ the caretaker said. He led him to an open space by the further wall of the building. Then he got three men to give a hand.

‘Is Bob Fitzpatrick on shift?’ Mulhall asked, when the unloading was completed.

‘He’s in No. 2 House,’ the caretaker said. Then, conspiratorially he asked: ‘Union business?’

‘That’s right’, Mulhall said.

‘Good stuff,’ the caretaker approved. ‘We’ll keep the Red Flag flying. I’ll get him for you.’

‘Tell him I’ll wait for him beside the new mechanical hoist.’

There was accommodation beside it for tethering horses. He would be less conspicuous there.

The men working at the hoist recognised him and hailed him. Since his gaol sentence he was one of their leaders, a militant Larkinite. He acknowledged with a wave of his hand. Communication was too difficult. They worked on a platform about the machine. Steel ropes, biting into the grooves of great wheels, kept an endless chain of steel buckets moving, charged with coal on their upward journey, empty and ready to be refilled as they descended. The noise of rattling steel was continuous.

Mulhall heard his name being called again and peered for some moments through the dusk and the drizzling rain before fixing on a man at the winch who was beckoning to him. He climbed on to the platform and went across to him. It was a man named O’Mahony.

‘How’s tricks?’ Mulhall said.

‘I have a bit of news for you about the Tram Company,’ the man said, ‘I can’t tell it to you here because it’s a long story, but I’d like to meet you outside and have a talk with you. Are you free tonight?’

‘Not tonight,’ Mulhall said, ‘I’m going to the Queen’s with the missus. How about tomorrow night?’

‘I’ll see you at Liberty Hall,’ O’Mahony agreed.

‘Can you give me the gist of it now?’

The Tram Company was of very special interest. William Martin Murphy, its chairman, had refused to meet Larkin.

‘I heard the tram men will be invited by the management to a secret meeting and they’ll be bribed to leave the union. It was all discussed in a certain house.’

‘How did you hear this?’

‘I can’t tell you now, but it’s reliable.’

‘How reliable?’

‘It’s from my own sister—she’s in service.’

‘Good man,’ Mulhall said, and turned to go.

The man, pleased with his approval, grinned and stepped back towards the wheel. It was a careless movement that brought him too close to it. He stumbled against it, threw out his arms to find balance and shouted. Mulhall ran back and found him groaning with pain. His right arm was pinned firmly between the steel rope and the winch, which, despite the obstruction, continued very slowly to rotate, gripping the arm more and more tightly as it did so. Mulhall threw all his weight against it and shouted for help. No one seemed to hear. The buckets continued to rattle as they descended and the slack rope, no longer being drawn in by the winch, began to pay out about the platform. Mulhall, exerting all his strength, kept the winch from moving and shouted again. No one responded. The dusk had grown deeper, the rain heavier, the jingling of buckets seemed to increase every moment.

‘Jesus,’ the man beside him said. Mulhall’s strength was failing and the winch had moved a fraction more.

‘Switch off,’ he shouted, ‘switch her off.’

Fitz, arriving a moment later, found Mulhall agonised with effort.

‘Tell them to switch her off,’ Mulhall said to him. Fitz went to the middle of the platform and shouted up to the control cabin. At first they failed to understand. Then the message reached them. The buckets ceased to move. The wheels stopped. There was silence. The men gathered about the winch and forced it backwards until the rope slackened and the man’s arm was free. They took him down from the platform.

‘Are you all right, Bernie?’ Fitz asked Mulhall.

‘Gameball,’ Mulhall said. He leaned against the winch. Every muscle in his back ached; his lungs laboured for air.

‘Rest a bit,’ Fitz advised. He went down to examine O’Mahony. The arm was badly bruised but otherwise it was sound. Somebody shouted down from the cabin above and a voice shouted back.

‘All clear now. Start away.’

The sound of the buckets beginning to move again drew Fitz’s attention. He looked back at the platform. What he saw horrified him. Mulhall had moved away from the winch and was swaying with exhaustion. The winch, with no weight dragging against it, was hauling in the slack rope that lay in coils about the platform at a pace that increased each second. Fitz saw the danger and shouted out: ‘Bernie—watch the ropes. Jump.’

Mulhall straightened and looked out at him. Fitz shouted again. It was too late. The loop of steel rope that Mulhall was standing in rode up about his legs at a terrifying speed, tightened, and pulled through. When Fitz reached Mulhall he was lying in blood.

‘What happened, Fitz?’

‘Lie still,’ Fitz said. But Mulhall raised himself with a great effort and saw lying beside him his own dismembered feet. They had been amputated from just below the knees.

‘Lie back,’ Fitz said gently. He took off his coat and began to tear his shirt. With another man he made a tourniquet for each leg. They wound them as tight as their strength allowed. They knelt there in the rain, under arc lamps that the men had rigged up, holding on doggedly until the ambulance arrived, and Mulhall, now unconscious, was carried away. Fitz picked up the two feet, grotesque and horrible, and wrapped them in a sack. An ambulance man took them from him. When they had gone Fitz leaned against the side of the platform, shivering.

‘Are you all right?’ a strange voice asked him, very gently.

‘In a moment,’ Fitz said. Suddenly his stomach turned over and he was violently and repeatedly sick. A hand gripped him by the shoulder and when the bout of sickness had exhausted itself the same strange voice said:

‘Where do you live?’

Fitz automatically gave his address.

‘I have a motor car at the gate. I’ll take you home.’

Fitz looked round and found his companion was Yearling.

‘I’ve to finish my shift.’

‘Nonsense,’ Yearling said, ‘you will come with me.’

He led Fitz down the yard. In the car he found that Fitz was trembling and produced a silver hip flask.

‘Take some of this,’ he said, ‘good stuff for shock.’ Then he gave the address to the driver, who said he would need directions.

‘Yearling is the name—I’m a director.’

‘You’re very kind,’ Fitz said.

‘It was a dreadful accident. How did it happen?’

Fitz described it as they drove. As he talked he realised it would never have happened only for the fool who had signalled the cabin men to restart the machine. But he said nothing of this to Yearling, in case it might implicate one of the men. The damage was done. Mulhall, whether he died or lived, was finished. At Chandlers Court he got out, and thanked Yearling again.

‘Never mind that,’ Yearling said. ‘Have a rest when you go in. And don’t come to work tomorrow. I’ll see you don’t lose anything on that account.’

When he got in Mary knew already. Word had been brought and the house from top to bottom was astir with the news.

‘I was just going over to Mrs. Mulhall,’ Mary said, ‘she’ll need somebody with her.’

‘I’ll go with you for a moment,’ he said.

They knocked on the door and a quiet voice said, ‘Come in.’ She was sitting at the table, dry-eyed and shocked. On the bed in the corner lay the clothes Mary had lent her earlier in the day. At the fire, spread out to air on two kitchen chairs, were Mulhall’s good suit and a clean shirt, awaiting his return. She rose as Mary came across to her and the two women embraced.

‘My poor Bernie,’ Mrs. Mulhall said in a whisper, ‘my poor, darling Bernie.’

She began to cry. Mary held her tightly. There was no other comfort she could offer.

Over a fortnight later, on New Year’s Eve, while Mulhall in hospital still hovered between life and death, Fitz came home with news that he had been made a foreman. Mary knew it was Mr. Yearling who had done it and that it was Mrs. Bradshaw’s influence. She spent a long night writing a letter of thanks. Fitz went up to the hospital to see Mulhall. Carrington, who had been promoted to superintendent and whose place Fitz was filling, had said to him:

‘You’d be well advised to leave the union. It’s no longer in your own interest to meddle about with Larkinism.’

‘Thanks for the tip,’ Fitz said, ‘but I’m not opting out now.’

‘Well, keep quiet about it anyway,’ Carrington said. ‘I’m not trying to get at you. This is just a friend’s advice.’

‘I know that,’ Fitz said, ‘there’s no misunderstanding between us.’

He was allowed in briefly to see Mulhall, who was asleep. He peeped behind the screen at the great body that would march in no more processions and battle no more through cordons of police. He would never let down the trust of that ageing and wounded man.