Strumpet City

CHAPTER FIVE

For two months Father O’Connor ministered in his stricken city. It had become a world of picket lines, thundering speeches, convoys that moved under police protection, bitter outbreaks of street fighting that were followed by day after day of apathy and misery. They were reaping now the fruits of their disobedience. They shook collection boxes at him: ‘Help the locked-out workers.’ God helped those who helped themselves. If they signed the undertaking to obey the lawful instructions of their employers there would be an immediate end to collection boxes and violence. But no. They listened only to Larkin. Pride it was.

Hunger was in the sky. Rashers, limping on his rounds, read it above him in large letters. As the weeks of the lock-out passed it continued to surprise him that a condition he had grown to regard as exclusively his should have become so general. Even the Fitzpatricks were selling their sticks of furniture. He had spotted the wife a couple of times already in the queue at The Erin’s Isle and that yellow-faced bitch of a Hennessy one with her. Giving her a helping hand with the bargaining, moryah—in return never doubt it for a cut out of what was coming.

Yearling, walking the city too, found it all as he had predicted. The challenge of the employers’ ultimatum had been taken up, as he had known it would be. Now there was deadlock. They would fight it out through the autumn; perhaps into winter. By banding together to break Larkinism the employers had turned an industrial struggle into a crusade. That, of course, was what William Martin Murphy had wanted. He heard the revolution call from the lips of the little children as he walked to the foundry. They had new songs about it and they sang one of them for him to the air of the latest ragtime thing about Alexander’s Band.

‘Come on along, come on along

And join Jim Larkin’s Union

Come on along, come on along

And join Jim Larkin’s Union

You’ll get a loaf of bread and a pound of tea

And a belt of a baton from the D.M.P.’

They knew him well now and were no longer in any way afraid of him, and when he shared his loose change with them they gathered about him and they all talked at once. They told him their mammies got food packs from Liberty Hall where a countess and other ladies were making up parcels of bread and cocoa and giving them out to them and they said there were ships full of food belonging to Jim Larkin and they were coming from England today, all the people had marched down to meet them. He asked them if they knew where England was and one of them said yes it was over the sea in Liverpool and the rest said yes that’s where it was. So he said he would go down to see the food ships too if they would tell him the way and they led him along. But at the outskirts of the crowd he stopped them and said they must all go back now so as not to get hurt among all the people and he pushed his way through on his own.

The crowd was tightly packed. But his height gave him the advantage over most of the others and because he was well dressed and carried a cane under his arm and said excuse me with a voice of authority they made way for him.

The ship was covered from bow to stern with slogans and coloured bunting. Along the rails, smoking and talking and watching the activity, leaned several men whom Yearling recognised. They were members of the British Trade Union Congress. Jim Larkin was among them. He was a fine-looking man, full of confidence. There had been the usual speeches, you could feel it in the air. And whenever the men guided the laden trolleys down the gangplanks and pushed them through laneways of people to the waiting floats great cheers broke out. All this could be related with excellent effect to Ralph Bradshaw. Better, in a way, than that horse tram. The crowd cheered again and the bowler-hatted figure immediately in front of him joined in wildly. When it died away he tapped his shoulder. The head turned slightly. He had a glimpse of a thin excited face. Under the bowler a bandage showed bloodstains that were being gradually effaced by time and weather.

‘Has Mr. Larkin spoken?’

‘He has, sir.’

‘Pity . . .’

A conversational opening occurred to him and he said: ‘You’ve been injured recently, I see.’

Hennessy stiffened. He turned around as fully as the crowd permitted. The broad shoulders, the light cane tucked firmly under the well-tailored armpit, convinced him. He hedged.

‘Just a little knock, Superintendent.’

Yearling hid his surprise.

‘A baton charge, no doubt?’

Hennessy thought quickly.

‘Ah no, Superintendent, nothing like that. A wardrobe I was moving for a lady fell on me.’

Yearling looked severe and squared his shoulders.

‘I hope so,’ he said. ‘Take my advice and keep well away from the other thing. Our chaps are well equipped to deal with trouble.’

‘I know that,’ Hennessy said. ‘I seen it often enough.’

The crowd cheered again. This time Hennessy remained silent.

‘What name has the foodship?’

‘The Hare, Superintendent.

‘The Hare,’ Yearling repeated. ‘And your own name?’

‘Hennessy. Aloysius Hennessy.’

The face looking up at him reminded him of a small dog waiting to be struck. Yet there was refinement in it. And the eyes, large, long suffering, had liveliness and intelligence.

‘How did you know I was a superintendent?’ he asked, dropping his severity and becoming conversational.

‘The build,’ Hennessy said immediately, ‘and the cane. Sure what would you be doing here otherwise?’

As he spoke Hennessy smiled. Yearling responded. His deception shamed him a little. Had he not enough advantage, without this. The crowd cheered again, still without help from Hennessy. Yearling, troubled a little by what he had done, said in a friendly tone:

‘Cheer away and never mind me. There’s no law in the book against cheering.’

‘I suppose there isn’t,’ Hennessy agreed. But he stayed silent. It would be unmannerly, to say the least, in front of a plain clothes superintendent.

That evening on the train to Kingstown he met Bradshaw. Opening his paper and sitting beside him he said:

‘Do I look like a superintendent?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Today I was mistaken for a superintendent of police. It’s a useful thing to know.’

He spread out the paper. There was a long report about the ship and the speeches. Larkin, thanking the workers of England for their magnificent support, had said:

‘You have broken the starvation boom.’

‘An odd name—The Hare,’ Yearling remarked.

‘I’ve been reading about that,’ Bradshaw said, ‘why don’t they mind their own business over there and leave us to mind ours. They are only prolonging the thing.’

‘It cost five thousand pounds.’

‘And a ship. Surely from their own point of view that’s a criminal waste. Why not send the money?’

Because a name on a subscription list meant nothing. But a ship sailing in with food while the bands played and the flags and the slogans waved above cheering crowds, that was poetry. Dublin—a besieged city. ‘You have broken the Starvation Boom.’

‘Do you remember Mary Murphy?’

‘Mary Murphy?’ Bradshaw repeated.

Yearling quoted:

‘Down by the river where the green grass grows

Where Mary Murphy washes her clothes . . . you remember?’

‘Ah,’ Bradshaw said, mystified.

‘She’s found a new sweetheart,’ Yearling confided. He returned to his newspaper and became engrossed, unaware it seemed, of Bradshaw’s occasional, anxious side-glances.

At the food kitchens of Liberty Hall Catholic families were selling their souls to self-professed socialists for a bowl of soup. Father O’Connor saw them frequently, for he found it difficult to stay away. They stood for hours, some of them from his own parish, with mugs, jamjars, anything at all that would serve to carry away what was being given out. Sometimes, instead of soup, they got small parcels of bread and tea and sugar. There was the usual joking, most of it vulgar, as was to be expected from them. He leaned on his umbrella at times to listen. He would have admonished them publicly, but he had been forbidden to intervene. He was not even allowed to give them counsel in his sermons.

‘I want no pulpit-thumping,’ Father Giffley had replied when he spoke to him about it. ‘Let them fight it out between them.’

That was early on in the trouble, when the three of them were seated, as was customary on Sunday evenings, in the depressing common room with its great centre table and heavy black armchairs and its enormous painting of the Crucifixion. The evening was warm and the fire made the air in the room stifling.

‘The situation is so critical,’ Father O’Connor pressed, ‘should they not be instructed in the dangers of socialism?’

‘They are very fully instructed in the dangers of socialism. The press instructs them daily. The Catholic papers do so weekly. The Jesuits have all relaxed throats running retreats. Every half-baked sociologist with a Roman collar thinks he does a service to Christ by upbraiding the destitute.’

‘I do not pretend to be a sociologist,’ Father O’Connor said coldly.

‘You must find it very lonely,’ Father Giffley snapped.

His face was red and the telltale vein in his temple was purple. He had been drinking heavily again. Father O’Connor struggled with his anger. It turned to contempt. He fought that too. The man was sick. In a reasonable tone he said:

‘If we learned that proselytisers were distributing food and preaching in the parish we would take action. The socialists are doing the same thing.’

‘No, it is not the same thing,’ Father Giffley said. ‘They do not pretend to show the road to heaven.’

‘Their principles are a danger.’

‘To whom—to Kingstown?’

Father O’Connor mastered himself.

‘To souls,’ he said quietly, after a brief pause.

‘There is a more real danger to souls and to religion than any socialist,’ Father Giffley said, rising. He walked over and stood above Father O’Connor. ‘And it is my present duty to tell you what it is.’

Father O’Connor dropped his eyes.

‘A heavy-handed pastor,’ he finished and strode away.

Father O’Connor kept his eyes on the fire, anticipating the violent slam of the door. He waited, confident. But there was nothing further until he felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Father O’Sullivan.

‘Has he gone?’ he asked, looking up. Without waiting for the answer he looked around at the door. It was wide open. Beyond it he could see the hallway, which was empty. He looked back to Father O’Sullivan and said:

‘Was I in any way unreasonable?’

‘No, no indeed,’ Father O’Sullivan said, ‘not at all unreasonable.’

‘Then why am I treated like this?’

‘He is unwell. Please don’t let it upset you.’

‘I can endure the insults—they don’t matter. But what of our duty. If every parish and every Catholic publication is warning against Larkinism, surely it is our duty to give guidance to our own parishioners. Is that being a heavy-handed pastor—as he calls it?’ He appealed directly to Father O’Sullivan.

‘Are you yourself satisfied to remain entirely silent?’

‘His mind is better than mine,’ Father O’Sullivan answered simply. ‘I am content to leave it to his judgment.’

‘Judgment,’ Father O’Connor repeated. He looked up. ‘Is it judgment—or John Barleycorn? The man is half crazy. And you know it.’

Father O’Sullivan made a quick signal, cutting him off. The parish priest stood in the doorway. He had a hammer and a sheet of cardboard in his hands.

‘Am I?’ he said to Father O’Connor. He strode into the room.

‘John—a chair, if you please. Over here.’

Father O’Sullivan fetched the chair and placed it against the wall.

‘Now—your hand.’ He helped Father Giffley, who climbed on to it and swayed unsteadily for a moment.

‘This will serve to remind others, John, of my instructions.’

He placed the cardboard to the right of the picture of the Crucifixion and began to nail it to the wall. His shoulders hid it from their view. He grunted as he drove each nail home. Then he turned and said:

‘John—your hand.’

But while Father O’Sullivan was moving to his assistance he swayed and fell from the chair. The impact of his fall made the floor shake. They both rushed to him. There was a small cut above his eye, which bled a little. His face had gone pale. Then he opened his eyes and said:

‘I fell, John.’

‘Are you all right?’ Father O’Sullivan asked, distressed.

‘Perfectly.’ He summoned his will, levered himself on his elbows and smiled.

‘The just man of the Scriptures never touched a drop, John, yet we are told he fell seven times a day.’ They helped him to his feet. He would not allow them to see him to his room. To Father O’Connor he said:

‘If I am crazy, then I am crazy in good company.’

He held out his hand to Father O’Sullivan for the hammer, took it and left them. His gait was unsteady. Father O’Connor looked at the cardboard on the wall. Father Giffley had written on it in large letters with the red marking ink they used for parish notices.

Notice

The Great St. Gregory has Said:

It Is Not Enough

To Have Learning. These Also

Are My Sheep.

They both looked at each other. Father O’Sullivan said:

‘I’ll open a window, if you don’t mind.’

‘Please do. The air is stifling.’

The frame screeched and bumped. When Father O’Sullivan returned to the table neither could find anything to say, until Father O’Connor, as though repeating an earlier question, said:

‘What are we to do?’

‘I don’t know,’ Father O’Sullivan said.

It was the first time he had ever admitted there was a question to answer. He tried clumsily to change the subject.

‘The fire is my fault,’ he apologised, smiling. ‘I should never have complained about rheumatism. Whenever he finds me working in here he immediately orders the fire to be lit. There were times throughout the summer, I can tell you, when I was almost stifled to death.’ He continued to smile, inviting Father O’Connor’s participation.

‘That is what I mean,’ Father O’Connor, unsmiling, said. ‘He is not . . . compos mentis.’

Father O’Sullivan gave up pretending to smile.

‘I think I should go to his room and see how he is now,’ he suggested.

Father O’Connor nodded. ‘Of course,’ he said.

The weather soon made the fires in the heavily furnished room welcome. The queues at the food kitchens became less talkative. The jokes, worn thin by repetition, fell out of currency. No one found new ones. It was work enough to keep alive.

She stuck her head around the door of the little room to see that all was in order; on the small table at the bedside two candles, as yet unlit, a basin with a clean towel, a delicate glass bowl lent by Mary and now containing Holy Water and a sprig of Blessed Palm which would act as a sprinkler, a white cloth also loaned by Mary, a crucifix. Was he sleeping? She called quietly:

‘Bernie.’

‘What is it?’

‘You won’t forget that Father O’Sullivan is coming?’

‘Huh.’

The room smelled of stale tobacco, but there was nothing she could do about that. Father O’Sullivan was not one to notice.

In the afternoon gloom of St. Brigid’s the candles on either side of the tabernacle wavered into life as the clerk tipped each with the taper. One—a pause and it lit. Two. Both now. He genuflected. He knelt on the bottom step, the felt hammer now in his hand, the brass gong within reach. Father O’Sullivan kissed the stole and lifted it over his head and about his shoulders all in one movement, inserted the key in the door of the tabernacle, removed a communion particle from the ciborium and genuflected. The clerk struck the gong once, a warning that Jesus Christ, Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, really present under the appearance of Bread, was exposed on the altar. Father O’Sullivan placed the wafer from the ciborium in a pyx and put the pyx in his inside pocket. He locked the tabernacle. His boots, which were new, creaked as he genuflected again and removed the stole. In the vestry the clerk handed him his street coat, black, faded by age, and his hat, a shapeless one. All this was in silence. There would be no unnecessary speech or gesture while Father O’Sullivan carried on his person the Living Presence.

The streets were sunlit and had a lazy air. Trams and commercial vehicles passed him, guarded by policemen who were bored or by soldiers who were embarrassed. It would take about fifteen minutes to reach Chandlers Court. In a fixed mood of recollection, his mind bent to the custody of eyes and ears, he passed the cab rank near the station, a public house, a series of garbage bins at the rear of an hotel. The smells were successively horsepiss, stale beer, decaying vegetable matter. The new boots squeaked at each step. They hurt him. The pain he could ignore. But the squeak, unseemly, incongruous, persistent, dragged his attention time and again away from his inward dialogue of veneration and love. In the end, being a simple man, he mentioned the matter apologetically. It became a joke. No longer embarrassed or distracted Father O’Sullivan for a while made fun of squeaking boots as he and Jesus Christ went together through the back lanes of the city. He never once mentioned the pain.

Patterns of October sunlight shimmered on the ceiling, holding his gaze for long stretches of unremembered time, trembling when a curtain stirred in a faint airy current or when a door somewhere down the afternoon house opened and slammed; delicate they were and voiceless, embodiments of drowsy things, of long past insubstantial summers. His mind in contemplation forgetting for long stretches his body without feet, forgetting pain forgetting the sentence of perpetual immobility, roamed among remote memories. In warm sunlight he stopped his horse and cart and jumped to the ground at a public house in a country lane where hedges brought the wild roses almost to the white-washed wall and insects were busy about them everywhere. He kept goal for Liffey Wanderers between white uprights in a sunny field and stretched and touched his toes to pass the time because for several minutes the play had stayed away down at the other end. He picked blackberries on a warm Sunday and when a butterfly settled on his boot, beautifully white against the polished black leather, he kept very still and let it remain there. He came out of the sea at Williamstown and walking to his clothes the deep footprints in the soft oozing sand behind were summer too, summer of childhood of youth of manhood. With a swift movement of his hand he knocked the wasp from Ellen’s neck and that was at the Scalp. It was the Liffey Wanderers’ outing when the coloured streamers flowed out in the breeze or sometimes drooped down and tangled themselves and broke in the wooden spoked wheels. How many drags were there? Nine. Who was present that he could now recall? Mick Reynolds, George Brierley, Jack O’Connor, Cap Callaghan, Alex Carr, Joe Kinsella. Others forgotten. Paddy Kelly the secretary he now remembered who had arranged the lemonade for the women, the sweets, buns, sandwiches, not forgetting the main thing which was the firkins of porter for the men. Winners of both the League and the Metropolitan Cup that year. Ellen yelled and the yellow-hooped body spun to the ground. He crushed it under his foot. Hard. Like that!

A dog barked in the basement. Father O’Sullivan went up the steps to the open halldoor, limped now through the hall, climbed the stairs, one landing, two landings, the third. The smells successively were woodrot from the basement, a privy odour in the hall, a conglomerate malodorousness of living as he climbed, individual stale airs, carbolic evidence of recent scrubbing. Limping still he came to a halt, rested briefly and knocked.

‘This way, Father,’ Mrs. Mulhall said in a whisper, reticent of speech and gesture, a lighted candle in her hand because of Christ Bodily Present. She led them without delay but also without haste across the scrupulously scrubbed and tidied room, knocked on the inner door to warn her husband, opened it, lit the candle on the table from her own and left her own on the table to companion the now lit candle on the table. Then without delay but also without haste because His present business was not with her she made her genuflection and withdrew, closing the door. She made a quick survey of the larger room for any impropriety of detail which might reflect on the throughness of her preparations. All seemed in order. She took out her rosary and knelt to pray. It was in no way remarkable to her that Jesus Christ Son of God the Father Creator of Heaven and Earth and of All Things should be one of the three people in the adjoining room or that He should come in person to the two pair back Three Chandlers Court. She had known Him a lifetime now and He was not by all accounts greatly taken with the Rich and He had been born in a humble house Himself. She was only sorry that He could not have seen her two china dogs. They were no longer on the mantelpiece. She had had to pawn them.

Having received Christ, Mulhall made his devotions quietly. After an appropriate interval of prayer and meditation Father O’Sullivan crossed himself, waited unobtrusively until Mulhall had done likewise, and snuffed the candles. Hearing sounds again in the room Mrs. Mulhall busied herself and brought in on a tray (also borrowed from Mary) two cups of tea and some biscuits.

‘This is trouble . . .’ Father O’Sullivan began.

‘What trouble, Father,’ she answered and left them alone again.

He drank. He was glad of the tea but the biscuits distressed him. They were a delicacy rare in his parish and meant sacrifice.

‘Ah—the women,’ he said to Mulhall, and elaborately selected a biscuit.

Mulhall selected a biscuit himself and he was at once amused and tender.

‘Biscuits, no less,’ he remarked, ‘she’d die or have style.’

‘Isn’t it a strange thing,’ Father O’Sullivan said, ‘I haven’t had a biscuit this long time—and they’re an item I’m very fond of. I must tell the housekeeper.’

‘What you lack is a wife, Father.’

‘It’s a great lack indeed,’ Father O’Sullivan acknowledged, ‘but then again—suppose I got a cranky one?’

They both laughed at that and Father O’Sullivan took another biscuit. Then he became grave and said:

‘Tell me, Bernie, are you at peace now with God?’

Mulhall hesitated and considered.

‘With God—yes, Father.’

‘I understand,’ Father O’Sullivan said. ‘Times are bad.’

‘Times is very bad.’

Father O’Sullivan nodded his agreement.

‘And I’d dearly love to be abroad—doing my bit.’

‘To strike a blow,’ Father O’Sullivan said, to show he understood.

‘Do you condemn us, Father?’

‘I go here and I go there,’ Father O’Sullivan said, ‘and the things I see would melt a heart of stone.’

‘Yet some of the priests is never done condemning us.’

‘And some don’t,’ Father O’Sullivan reminded him, ‘but at the same time you’d be the last to want them marching in procession with you.’

‘I want them all to keep out of it—that’s what I want,’ Mulhall said vehemently. Then he added: ‘That’s what I meant, Father. I’m at peace with God, but when I hear reports of what some of them say, I’m far from at peace with certain of his clergy. Is that sinful?’

‘Do you think you know better than they do?’ Father O’Sullivan asked, but not offensively.

Mulhall set his face.

‘I do, Father.’

‘You have first-hand experience of it, anyway,’ Father O’Sullivan agreed. Then he said:

‘But do you think you’re a better person than they are?’

‘No,’ Mulhall said, ‘that’s another matter entirely.’

‘In that case,’ Father O’Sullivan said, ‘I wouldn’t worry unduly about a difference of opinion with them.’

‘I’m glad you say that, Father.’

‘The only danger I see in it is that it might lead you into hatred. Differences of opinion often do. First bitterness—then hate. That’s the fellow I’d watch—Hate. That would be very sinful.’

‘I see, Father,’ Mulhall said. He was listening carefully.

‘No matter what a man—or a priest for that matter—says or does, you can oppose him certainly, but you must love him all the same.’

‘It’s asking a lot,’ Mulhall said doubtfully.

‘Don’t I know it is,’ Father O’Sullivan agreed. ‘And in times like this particularly. But there’s no way out of it.’

‘I know,’ Mulhall said. It was the truth. Neither priest nor bishop had invented that one. It had come from Higher-up.

‘That’s the one I’d watch,’ Father O’Sullivan concluded.

Mulhall frowned.

‘Ah well,’ he said, ‘so long as we’re not expected to give in to them.’

Father O’Sullivan carefully gathered the tea things on to the tray.

‘I’ll leave these with herself,’ he said, taking his leave.

It was easy enough to give counsel, he told himself when he was again in the street, but an ounce of example was worth a ton of advice. Clothe the naked, feed the hungry, visit the sick. Well, he had done the last. But what of the first two. Father O’Connor had argued that charity only made things worse by prolonging the struggle without doing very much to relieve the suffering. The work was there for them; they were idle—destitute through their own choice. That was too glib and pragmatical. You had only to visit the tenements.

His feet hurt, his boots still creaked. He was limping noticeably. A cab driver drew in alongside him and hailed him.

‘Are you going back to St. Brigid’s, Father?’

‘I am,’ Father O’Sullivan said.

‘Then hop in. I’m on my way back to the rank.’

‘God bless you. Isn’t it Tom Mangan I’m talking to?’

‘That’s right, Father.’

He got into the cab. It was a relief to be driven. It was also something of a novelty. He was not a man to spend money on cab fares. He had visited Mangan’s wife about a month before, a sick call. The cab passed the rank and stopped at St. Brigid’s. Mangan was going out of his way.

‘You shouldn’t have done that, Tom, the rank would have done fine,’ he said when Mangan opened the door for him.

‘A few yards—what’s that,’ Mangan said. ‘Besides, your call brought us great luck altogether.’

‘Is she coming on?’

‘Famous,’ Mangan said. ‘I mentioned your visit to a regular passenger of mine, a doctor, and he said he’d come along and have a look at her. He’s been calling twice a week since and whatever it is he gives her she hasn’t had pain or ache since. He says she’ll be fit to get up and about in a week or so. And it won’t cost me a ha’penny.’

‘I’m delighted to hear it.’

‘You might know him, Father. He’s a head man in the Rotunda, Dr. Hayes.’

‘I don’t then,’ Father O’Sullivan said, ‘but he’s a good man to do that.’

‘There’s few like him,’ the cabman agreed.

Father O’Sullivan waved his gratitude as the cab went down the street. The thought of the doctor’s charity edified him. It was not, after all, a city of unrelieved bitterness or indifference. A man of learning regularly brought his skill to the bedside of a poor woman in the slums, and did so out of pity alone. He creaked his way towards the house. Father Giffley met him at the hall door.

‘I see you came home in style, John,’ he said. The tone was humorous.

‘I did. A good Samaritan offered me the lift.’

Father O’Sullivan groaned without meaning to. ‘I’ll have to take off the boots for a while. They’re killing me.’

He creaked his way through the hall. Father Giffley laughed. It was sympathetic at first but it grew too loud. He stood still in the hall, frightened for himself, as its echo died away.