Strumpet City

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Pat was passing the shop with its display of religious goods when the little foreman stopped him on the pavement and said:

‘I don’t seem to have seen you around lately?’

‘I’ve been in gaol,’ Pat said.

‘When did you get out?’

‘This morning, about two hours ago.’

‘And what was it like?’

Pat considered.

‘A bit confined,’ he decided.

‘Come over here with me, for the love of God.’

‘What is it?’ Pat asked.

The little foreman insisted on dragging him over to the window.

‘Have a look at that,’ he invited, pointing at it. Pat looked in.

‘Well—I’ll be damned,’ he said.

Inside the window, with a pencil behind his ear and a roll of dockets peeping from the breast pocket of his shop coat, Timothy Keever was struggling to put a statue of St. Patrick on display. The statue was heavy and the window space already crowded.

‘Watch this,’ said the little foreman. Pat had met him from time to time in various bookmakers’ shops, where his fellow-punters knew him as Ballcock Brannigan. He now banged with his fist on the glass to attract Keever’s attention. Neither could hear the other because of the thickness of the glass, so Ballcock began to convey his instructions in dumbshow. Keever, indicating that he understood, moved first a statue of St. Christopher and another of the Little Flower. But the rearrangement was unsuccessful. He looked out for further instructions.

‘Move the other stuff first.’ Ballcock shouted in at him. Keever shook his head.

‘Did you ever see such a thick?’ Ballcock asked Pat. He gave the instruction again, this time in dumbshow. Keever acknowledged and set to work again. He shifted a heavily mounted candle, Paschal in design; then a set of purple vestments, appropriate liturgically to the seasons of Advent and Lent; then a shroud which would provide for the last sartorial decencies of some deceased Brother of the Third Order of St. Francis. In his struggle with these complexities he banged his head severely against a sanctuary lamp, a pendulous one with a red bowl and a brass container.

‘Holy Jaysus,’ Ballcock said. Keever, reaching up to steady the lamp which was swaying from the blow, nearly toppled the statue nearest to him. Ballcock hammered furiously on the glass.

‘You clumsy bastard,’ he shouted. Keever looked out, puzzled.

‘Deaf as well as everything else,’ Ballcock decided. He turned his back to the glass and lit a cigarette.

‘That’s what you get for employing ex-scabs,’ Pat said.

‘No choice of mine,’ Ballcock said. ‘Clerical influence—that’s what has Keever in his job. Here, have a cigarette.’

‘Thanks,’ Pat said.

‘I suppose you haven’t been doing the horses lately?’

‘They didn’t encourage it,’ Pat said. ‘What’s any good today?’

‘I’ll tell you what’s good,’ Ballcock confided. ‘Packleader at Leicester in the two-forty. It’s information which I got from a priest that’s a customer—a most Reverend punter.’

‘I haven’t done a horse for months,’ Pat told him.

‘Nor nothing else neither,’ Ballcock said, ‘not if gaol’s the same as in my day.’

‘That’s right,’ Pat agreed. ‘Nothing else.’

‘Well—be true to the Church and back Packleader. Follow your clergy. Have you a job?’

‘I don’t know. I’m on my way down to Nolan & Keyes to find out.’

‘If you don’t pick it up right away,’ Ballcock offered, ‘drop back to me. I have three days casual I can give you.’

‘I’d be glad of it.’

‘Welcome,’ Ballcock said. He flung away his cigarette butt and looked again at the window. Keever was doing his best to rearrange the display.

‘Excuse me,’ Ballcock said, ‘I have a few things to discuss with mahogany skull there.’

He strode in and called Keever from the window. They both disappeared into the back of the shop.

It was a cold, blustering day, with a sky that was too bright and too wide after his months in prison and streets that were noisy and suddenly unfamiliar. The shop window was better. It was neatly framed and, now that Keever had left, comfortingly devoid of speech and movement. St. Patrick, the National Apostle, occupied a central position. In green robes and bishop’s mitre he gazed past Pat at the streets of the capital city. Snakes at his feet cowered in petrified terror of his golden crozier and in his right hand a stone shamrock symbolised the mystery of the Unity and the Most Holy Trinity. St. Patrick’s Day, Pat calculated, was almost exactly a week away. He was glad to make the calculation. It brought him into touch with everyday life for the first time since his release.

There was a second fact to be absorbed. Tonight, all going well, he would sleep in the House of the Boer War Heroes. Lily’s letter to him had said so. While he finished his cigarette he took it from his pocket and read it again:

. . . you will have nowhere of your own to stay after all those months will you but don’t worry the landlady here is away I have the house all to myself and I can put you up for the night which will give you a bit of a chance to look around for somewhere but don’t come until after seven o’clock so as I will be home from my work. Everything with me is all right hospital was a great rest and I have good news for you Pat which is why I want you to come as well but watch out for the neighbours if they as much as well you know what I mean be careful for God’s sake or we are both sunk . . .

At seven o’clock, about ten hours away, he would see her and be staying with her again. The thought made him restless. He returned the letter to his pocket and began to walk. There was his job to be enquired about. There was this suddenly unfamiliar city to be considered. They were not the streets of a few months before. No collection boxes rattled, no pickets were on patrol, the trams ran without police protection. It seemed a tame end to eight months of struggle. He wondered how his mates on the job would feel about it. He quickened his pace.

Gulls circling above the river gladdened his heart. That and the strong smell of the sea. His spirit now welcomed all sounds, those of crane and ship, dray wheel and bogey. The width of the sky exalted him. He stopped and was overjoyed at the sight of the unloading gangs along the wharf. To men he did not know he shouted.

‘Hi, mate—more power.’

They grinned and waved back. There was no defeat in the faces he passed. They sweated familiarly, were dust-coated, had ready answers. They had spirits that recovered easily from adversity. A few weeks’ work and everything was as it had always been. More or less. There was little to be lost that was worth pining about.

The gates of Nolan & Keyes stood wide open, a sunlit space where the air smelled of tar from the nearby gasworks. It was noonday now. The carters were either off on their rounds or gathered in the shed near the stables having their midday food.

Suddenly unsure, he stepped into the gateman’s hut and found the yard foreman drinking tea and smoking his pipe by the gas fire. The foreman looked around, then rose slowly.

‘Pat Bannister,’ he said. To Pat’s surprise he held out his hand.

‘Back again,’ Pat said, taking it.

‘When did you get out?’

‘This morning.’

‘You should have let me know.’

That was hopeful.

‘They weren’t greatly in favour of letter-writing,’ Pat said.

‘You’re looking for a start?’

‘I came down here first thing.’

‘Certainly,’ the foreman said.

‘When?’

‘Right now, if you like. There’s a half-day left.’

‘That’d suit fine.’

‘Quinn has your horse I’m afraid,’ the foreman said, ‘but Mulcahy’s out sick so you could yoke up his. Come on the scales with the rest of them after the meal break and I’ll have a half-day made up for you.’

Pat hesitated. He wondered about the form, but there seemed to be nothing else.

‘No formalities?’

‘Not here,’ the foreman said. ‘Nolan & Keyes and Doggett’s want to get on with the bloody work. But don’t go shouting out loud about Larkin. Give it a rest for a while.’

‘Are the lads below?’

‘They are,’ the foreman said, ‘you’ll find them chewing the rag—as usual.’

‘I’ll be glad to do the half-day,’ Pat confessed.

‘It’ll be waiting for you,’ the foreman assured him.

He thanked him and made his way across the yard. He was hungry and the light but pungent smell of tar aggravated it. He strode out and began to sing. It was a great joy to be able to walk freely. He knocked ceremoniously on the door of the men’s shed and then pushed it inwards.

All the faces turned around. There was Joe and Harmless, Quinn and Mick. There were three or four others as well. Mick jumped to his feet and came forward.

‘Pat,’ he shouted and threw his arms about him.

The others stood up.

‘Well—I declare to God,’ Joe said as Mick dragged him over to the fire, ‘they let him out.’

‘And bloody nearly time,’ Quinn told them.

Harmless expressed agreement.

‘Just so,’ he said.

They shook hands with him in turn. Then they all settled down to fire questions at him.

‘When are you starting?’

‘What was it like?’

‘Did you do the full stretch?’

‘How do you feel after it?’

Pat looked at the cans of tea and the food.

‘I’ll tell you how I feel,’ Pat said, ‘I’m starving with hunger.’

They plied him with sandwiches. Harmless made a special show.

‘Take this one,’ he said, ‘there’s two nice rashers in it.’

‘Showing off,’ Mick said.

‘By reason of the missus taking in two lodgers recently,’ Harmless explained modestly, ‘they don’t always finish their breakfasts.’

‘I’m starting this afternoon,’ Pat said, answering an earlier question.

‘Dammit,’ Quinn said, ‘I’m using your horse.’

‘It’s all right. I can yoke up Mulcahy’s. The yard foreman said so.’

‘I wish you luck with it,’ Joe told him, ‘it won’t pass a pub.’

‘A sagacious beast,’ Harmless remarked. ‘I seen Mulcahy and that animal many a morning—and both of them with a hangover.’

The food tasted real for the first time in a long score of weeks. The tea was strong and sweet and hot. The stove blazed with familiar cheerfulness. There was an all pervading smell of horses.

‘What’s all the news?’ Pat asked.

‘Terrible weather. Floods all along the Shannon. You were well off to be inside.’

‘There’s bad foot-and-mouth disease down the country too. We’ve been keeping a sharp eye on the horses.’

‘That’s why Mulcahy’s out.’

‘Mulcahy hasn’t got foot and mouth,’ Harmless objected.

‘I mean the rain,’ Quinn explained, ‘too many severe wettings.’

‘They say Home Rule is coming.’

‘So is Christmas,’ Harmless remarked, looking sceptical.

‘I’m going by what’s in the papers every day.’

‘And I was remarking with regard to Sir Edward Carson.’

‘You think he’ll get Ulster excluded?’

‘Just so.’

‘Home Rule or no Home Rule,’ Joe said, ‘you and me won’t notice any great difference.’

‘Certainly,’ Harmless agreed.

‘And the union?’ Pat asked. ‘What about the union?’

‘Down, but not out,’ Quinn told him, ‘we’ll rise again.’

‘When the fields are white with daisies, we’ll return,’ Mick prophesied.

‘We’ve the members and the Hall still, anyway.’

‘All we’re short of,’ Joe commented, looking cynical, ‘is the money.’

‘Like myself,’ Harmless added.

The yard foreman blew his whistle.

‘Yoke up mates,’ Quinn said, shaking the wet tea leaves from the can into the fire, which sizzled and hissed and spat out angry spurts of steam at him.

He took his afternoon easily because he had to. The knack of shouldering sacks had not deserted him—after three or four journeys he was back again into a rhythm of lifting and turning that had been perfected over a lifetime. But his back and shoulder muscles gave him trouble and his legs, after a couple of journeys up narrow stairways, protested painfully at the weight of the load he had to carry. He also discovered that it was no slander to put it around that Mulcahy’s horse was fond of its beer. It stopped outside three public houses where it had come to regard itself as a regular and refused to budge until one of the curates brought out the dregs of porter from the pan.

‘A grand animal,’ one of them said, stroking it while it drank, ‘cute as a Christian.’

‘Cuter,’ Pat remarked, ‘a Christian would be expected to pay for it.’

He remembered Ballcock’s tip and tied the reins to a lamp-post.

‘Watch her for me,’ he said, ‘I won’t be a minute.’

The bookmaker’s office smelled of sweat and stale smoke. He studied the board over the shoulders of several others, then decided on a double—both at Leicester. He wrote, laboriously as always, a slip which backed two shillings win on Packleader and decided to double it with Revolution in the three fifteen, both at Leicester. Revolution took his fancy. He put the docket which the clerk gave him in his pocket and felt that the day was now normal.

Mulcahy’s horse was tonguing its lips appreciatively. He untied her and she moved off contentedly. He let her take her own pace while he rested his aching muscles and observed the ordinary life of the streets with affection and tenderness. He felt kinship with his city; with his fellow carters who always waved a greeting, with the trams and their hissing trolleys, with the ramshackle houses and the humble people who trudged on humdrum errands. At the end of the day he unyoked in the stables by lamplight. He was back now in the place fortune and habit had ordained for him. It was more than bearable. It was desirable. Joe came to him and said:

‘If you’ve nowhere to stay tonight, you could doss down with me.’

‘Thanks. I’m fixed up already.’

‘Sure?’

‘All arranged.’

‘What about money?’

‘That’s a different matter.’

Joe fumbled in his pocket and put a two shilling piece into his hand.

‘I can spare it,’ he said.

Pat watched the glint of it in the lamplight.

‘You’re a brick.’

They left the stable yard together and Joe told him about Fitz.

‘We were luckier here,’ he said, ‘there was never any mention of signing any form.’

‘Poor Fitz,’ Pat said, ‘he gets the rough end of everything.’

‘If we ever reorganise, it’s someone like Fitz who will have to do it,’ Joe said. It was one of the few ungrudging thoughts Pat had ever heard him express. He nodded agreement and decided he must see Fitz, if only to mention the possibility of three days casual work with Ballcock Brannigan.

At Chandlers Court his mood changed. There was a deadness about it now that evening had fallen. He hesitated to face the reproach of the bare room. Optimism had come easily to his mates. They had more time in which to adjust to the collapse, more days of routine to get used to streets without placards announcing meetings and flaunting the name of Larkin. In their company his renewed contact with the bits and pieces of everyday had filled him with joy. Now, in the evening light and the emptiness of the familiar street, pity possessed him for the people of his city and their defeat.

A dog shambling along the opposite pavement caught his attention. It was the first he had seen in months. It was old and wore the look of defeat too. A bent and bearded old man followed at a distance. He did not recognise Rashers until the dog had mounted the steps and disappeared into the hallway of Number 3. The name floated like a ghost into his memory.

‘Hi—Rashers,’ he shouted.

The bearded figure made no response. He peered more closely to be certain he was not mistaken. The change in Rashers shocked him. He shouted again. Rashers mounted the steps slowly and unhearingly.

‘How’s the Bard of the Revolution?’ Pat yelled.

It had a momentary effect. Rashers, now in the open doorway, paused briefly. Then he turned his back and with the same slow gait disappeared into the house.

‘Do you know him?’ the lamplighter asked. He had pulled up in front of Pat and was parking his bicycle against the footpath.

‘Rashers Tierney,’ Pat said.

‘That’s the label.’

‘Has he gone deaf or what?’

‘Not deaf,’ the lamplighter distinguished. ‘Disinclined. I’ve known Rashers this many a year.’ He reached upwards, expertly engaging the gas tap with the hook on the side of his long stick. He pulled downwards, then touched the mantles with the thin blue flame which danced at its tip. The gas popped. A pool of light surrounded them.

‘Do you know the people in Number 3?’

‘The most of them,’ the lamplighter answered, appraising his handiwork, professionally critical.

‘The Fitzpatricks?’

‘Two pair front,’ the lamplighter said immediately.

‘I’ve got a message for them but I don’t want to go in with it myself. Will you oblige me?’

‘Certainly,’ the lamplighter said.

Pat found the stub of a pencil but nothing he could write on. He took out the betting docket.

‘Half a minute,’ he said.

He wrote on the back of the docket:

Just out this morning and back at work in Nolan & Keyes. There is three days’ casual going with Broderick’s of Merchants Quay. Ask for Mr. Brannigan say I sent you. This docket is a Double Packleader and Revolution good name at Leicester if it comes up collect and use the cash. I’m fixed all right. See you on the Christmas tree. Pat Bannister.

As he read it over a thought struck him and he added: I warn you Keever is working there but what about it.

The lamplighter took the docket and promised to leave it up immediately.

‘I’m greatly obliged,’ Pat assured him.

He watched him crossing the street and climbing the steps. As he entered the hall its gloom engulfed him so that there was nothing to see except the flame at the tip of his stick floating like a little star in the darkness. It too disappeared. It was time at last to visit Lily. He stood for a while looking up at the window of Fitz’s apartment, still tempted, still afraid. He turned at last and headed for O’Connell Bridge. He was sad. Once again the streets were too spacious. He wanted shelter and companionship.

The footsteps of the lamplighter echoing in the hall and on the stairs above caused the dog beside Rashers to stir restlessly.

‘Easy,’ Rashers whispered.

He lay on the floor on his bed of straw and accumulated rags. A little of the light from the street lamps found its way through the broken window. It touched the ceiling and the upper part of the wall, leaving the rest of the basement in darkness. The dog settled briefly but stirred again, a fidgeting movement that for the moment was unbearable.

‘It’s nobody for us,’ Rashers told him. Silent, cold, pale yellow in colour, the reflection on the wall compelled his attention. It had appeared quite suddenly some moments before. It had a soporific effect. He let his eyes dwell on it in the hope that it might soothe him into sleep. But the dog whimpered again, dragging him back to the dampness and darkness, reminding him that they were both sick and cold and hungry. He did not want to move. It had been a mistake to lie down the moment he got in. It made it harder than ever to resume responsibility.

‘In a minute,’ he pleaded, ‘give me a minute.’ He groped without enthusiasm for the sack which was somewhere in the darkness beside his bed. He failed to find it.

‘Sweet Mother of Jaysus,’ he moaned.

He sat up and located it near his feet. There was some bread in it he had retrieved from a bin. It smelled a bit from contact with the other garbage but he was past caring about that. It was the best he could do. He broke some off and held it towards the dog which sniffed at it for an unbearable length of time and kept turning its head away. Losing patience Rashers flung the bread on the floor.

‘Like it or lump it,’ he shouted.

The shout exhausted him. He lay back and began to nibble at what was left. It tasted sour but his body demanded it. His bad leg and his arm were becoming numb with the damp and the cold which was rising through the straw. It would be better to move about, to light a fire with the few sticks he had foraged, to boil a can and beg a few spoons of tea from someone in the house above him. No. Not from those who lived with him. If they gave—well and good; he would not ask. He returned to contemplation of the pale yellow strip of light on the ceiling.

It brought him down green lanes to race meetings of long ago. He saw white railings and coloured shirts and tents and three-card-trick men; the Curragh with its short grass and bushes of yellow gorse; the Park with its shading trees and the river to be glimpsed far below; Leopardstown by the railway line surrounded by blue mountains. He had been able for it then. A little luck and another summer and he would be able for it again. What was it Hennessy sometimes said? We never died of winter yet.

He bit again at the loaf but had to spit it out. The taste was abominable.

‘I’ll light my bit of a fire,’ he decided.

But he was so numb and weak that he was unable to rise. He tried different positions for leverage, grunted, gave up, forced himself to try again. There was no sound at all from the dog.

‘Rusty,’ he called, as terror overmastered him for a moment. The dog ambled across to him. He dragged himself along the floor until he reached the wall, which he used to lever himself at last into a standing position. He waited to get his breath back.

‘You were watching for them rats again,’ he accused the dog, ‘do you want to get yourself poisoned? How many times have I to speak to you?’

He had paper and sticks and two wooden setts saturated in tar which he had stolen from a pile where men had been digging up a road. When the fire had taken the tar in the setts bubbled and blazed furiously. The dog left off his vigil by the rat holes and came over to heat himself. Rashers boiled water, which warmed him and was better than nothing. Tomorrow he would beg at a few houses for sugar and tea. He took out the tin whistle and regarded it regretfully. The air hole at the mouthpiece was bent inwards, so that it was impossible now to get anything out of it beyond a shrill squeak. That had happened two days before. First he ran into trouble with a younger man called Morrissey when he went to search the bins on Pembroke Road. Morrissey had been there before him.

‘It’s my road,’ Rashers had said, ‘I’ve had this road since you were in petticoats.’

‘It’s mine now,’ Morrissey said.

‘You’re only an unprincipled bowsie,’ Rashers said. Morrissey gripped him by the beard, jerked him forward and struck him in the face with his free hand. The blow sent Rashers sprawling.

‘Clear off,’ Morrissey warned.

Rashers, his head reeling, refused to be silenced.

‘You’re only a bowsie,’ he said again. The dog snarled but it was an empty threat. It too had grown too old for fighting. He left Pembroke Road to Morrissey and tried playing his tin whistle outside the Church at Haddington Road. Here a policeman moved him on. In fury and impotence he dashed the tin whistle on the ground. When he cooled down sufficiently to pick it up, he found it was bent.

He drank the hot water and dwelt on the world’s misuse of him. Then he lay down again in the hope of falling asleep before the fire went out for want of fuel. It glowed on the walls, making grotesque shadows He was glad he had stolen the setts.

‘We never died of winter yet,’ he said to the dog. But his heart told him it was a lie.

‘Who is Keever?’ Mary asked.

‘The one Mulhall went to gaol for,’ Fitz told her, ‘he used to work as a carter.’

She remembered. ‘Will you try for the job?’

‘First thing in the morning.’

‘I’ll call you early.’

‘If I get three days with Broderick’s and the week Carrington told me about, that won’t be so bad.’

She was putting coal on the fire from a bucket Mrs. Mulhall had sent across to them earlier.

‘We’ll knock it out somehow,’ she said.

For how long, he wondered. There seemed no hope at all of anything permanent. He had been trying without any sign of success for three months. If he could get to England there would be some hope, but it would mean finding some way to keep Mary and the children alive while he looked around. He decided against mentioning it again. They had talked enough about it in the weeks that had passed. He turned the betting docket over and examined the message again. Packleader and Revolution: the combination amused him.

‘If this double turns up,’ he said, ‘we’ll buy a little place in the country.’

She smiled.

‘I wonder why he didn’t call himself,’ she said.

The House of the Boer War Heroes was unchanged and unchangeable. Souvenirs in the china cabinet still spoke of comings and goings that had ended at the turn of the century. The same uniformed groups occupied the mantelpiece and the top of the piano. Queen Victoria’s portrait on the sitting room wall stared down at Lily and Pat with longstanding disapproval. They had their tea at the fire and ignored her. With the landlady away the house was their own. Pat lay back on the sofa and smoked. To see a fire again was an adventure; to be with Lily a piece of good fortune he would never have dared to hope for. He watched her now as they talked and found her looking better than ever. Living in a house which was comfortable with an old woman who appreciated her as a companion rather than as a lodger had changed her. Her speech was less sharp, her manner more subdued and reticent. Life was no longer something to be fought.

‘I hated you being in gaol,’ she said, ‘all those criminals.’

‘There didn’t seem to be any criminals,’ Pat told her. ‘From the account of themselves they gave to me, every one of them was innocent. So far as I could find out, the only one guilty of the crime he was locked up for was myself.’

‘In that case it’s just as well they let you out,’ Lily decided, ‘you might have corrupted the rest.’

‘It used to worry me,’ Pat admitted.

‘And you have your job back?’

‘Started right away.’

‘I’m glad.’ She came over and sat beside him.

‘Pat—you must take it easy from now on. No more fighting and getting into trouble. Or heavy drinking.’

‘I’m not a heavy drinker,’ he objected, ‘you need money for that game.’

‘You seem to manage—somehow,’ she told him.

‘Are you going to nag?’

‘Listen to him,’ she begged, addressing Queen Victoria. But she relented and said, gently:

‘I thought you didn’t look well when you called. Gaol was no cakewalk, was it?’

‘It’s nicer to be out,’ Pat admitted.

‘It’s nicer for me too,’ she said softly. The tenderness that had been denied for so long overwhelmed him. He took her in his arms and she yielded warmly to him. His heart quickened with happiness.

After some minutes she moved a little away from him and said:

‘You didn’t ask me about my good news.’

‘I thought I’d let you come to that in your own good time,’ he said. He was a little bit apprehensive, wondering if she had got a job which would take her away, or if she had met somebody who meant more to her. He was not certain that he wanted to hear.

‘It’s about that thing which used to worry me.’

‘What thing?’

‘Oh, God!’ she exclaimed. ‘Do I have to use the deaf-and-dumb alphabet?’

He knew then what she meant. It had become so much a part of their knowledge of each other that he had not considered it.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘When I was in hospital there was this nun. She was very kind and I think she took a fancy to me. Anyway I screwed up the nerve to mention it to her and she insisted on me having all sorts of examinations.’

He waited. It was a subject he had learned not to discuss.

‘Pat,’ she said, ‘there’s nothing at all wrong with me. I’ve got a clean bill.’

He reached out and took her hand. But he knew it was better not to say anything. He was never sure on this score.

She said: ‘So—if you still want to marry me—everything seems to be all right.’

‘Lily,’ he said.

She laughed and came close to him.

‘I was a bit of a fool in those days, wasn’t I?’ she said. ‘I was going to be smart and make easy money. That’s what I thought. A bloody little fool. It’s just as well I got a fright that knocked a bit of sense into me.’

‘It’s a long time ago, Lily. I wouldn’t go on thinking about it.’

‘I suppose we’re both fools. That means we ought to suit each other.’

‘Down to the ground,’ Pat agreed.

‘Well—are you going to ask me?’

‘Ask you what?’

She appealed again to Queen Victoria.

‘Listen to him,’ she begged.

He realised what she meant and made amends.

‘Will you—Lily?’

‘Yes,’ she answered.

He looked in his turn at Queen Victoria and a thought struck him.

‘Do you want to ask her permission?’

‘I don’t recognise royalty any longer,’ Lily decided.

‘A Sinn Feiner?’

‘No,’ Lily said, ‘Workers’ Republic.’

‘Grand,’ Pat pronounced, ‘we’ll get on together like Siamese twins.’

He kissed her and they became serious again. There were no more barriers. Love and tenderness engulfed both of them. Rashers moaned in the darkness. The fire had burnt itself out. The streak of light had left the ceiling. A chill dampness filled the basement and settled on his beard and on the rags that covered him. The burning agony in his bowels was turning his insides into vapour and water. He tried to raise himself but found that in one arm and one leg there was no sensation at all. They hung with an immovable weight, pinning him down.

‘Sweet Christ,’ he repeated over and over again. ‘Sweet Christ.’

He listened for sounds that would tell how near it might be to morning. There were none. The house above him slept, the streets outside were empty. He felt his bowels loosening and ground his teeth as he fought to control them. If he fouled what he was wearing there was nothing he could change into. He made another desperate effort to get to his feet. It was useless. He had no power over his limbs. He was held by the weight of his ailing body.

‘Rusty,’ he called, the dog came to him.

‘Lie down,’ he said, ‘lie down.’

In the dense darkness he could see nothing, but he felt the weight of the dog as it settled against his side. For a moment there was comfort in that. He could hear it breathing in the darkness and feel the warmth of its body. The world was not entirely empty. Then the pains became worse. He felt his bowels melting and loosening in spite of his will. A burning hot liquid trickled incontinently. He made an agonising effort to stop it but failed. With a sudden rush his bowels voided their contents of foulness and gas. He felt his buttocks sticky and saturated. But he still could not move. He had an interval of complete numbness, without pain or thought of any kind. Then the slow agony inside him flickered into life and began its mounting torture all over again.

In the morning Pat slipped out of the house when Lily signalled to him that the way was clear. At the loading yard he found he had his own horse back again. He was pleased when it greeted him with signs of excitement. His first stop was at a bookmaker’s office, where he found his Double had turned up, Packleader winning by four lengths from Romer and Enoch at seven to two—Revolution by a length from Duke of Leinster and Prince Danzel at nine to four on. The collapse of the aristocracy was a good omen. Fitz, he reckoned roughly, would draw about fourteen shillings. He did not grudge it. Securing the sack about his shoulders with a large safety pin Lily had supplied he strode out to face the work of the long day. There would be other and better doubles. His heart told him he was on a winning streak.