Strumpet City (15 page)

‘Is he wild?’ Mary asked.

‘A bachelor and fancy free.’

‘He seemed to have plenty of money.’

It’s some windfall or other,’ Fitz said, ‘most of the time he hasn’t a cigarette.’

‘He needs a woman’s hand,’ Mary said. ‘You’d think he’d have a girl friend.’

‘He has,’ Fitz said. And then, as an afterthought he added, ‘A sort of a one.’

‘Who is she?’

‘A girl named Lily Maxwell. When Pat knocks himself about in a spree he usually ends up in her room. She looks after him.’

At eight o’clock the Mulhalls arrived and by nine they had been joined by Mr. and Mrs. Farrell. Joe came later and later still Pat surprised them by arriving in presentable shape. He had a heavy parcel which he immediately deposited in a corner, and a bottle of whiskey which he pressed into Fitz’s hands.

‘There’s my welcome,’ he whispered. The local publican had loaned glasses. Fitz offered port to the women. The men played their expected part by pressing them and coaxing them. Mrs. Farrell gave in first, remarking that she would be a long time dead. Mrs. Mulhall also agreed, on condition that Mary did likewise. When everybody had a full glass Pat proposed the toast of the bride and groom and after that there was no further reluctance.

An hour later Rashers paused on the steps and looked up at the lighted windows. Pat’s voice drifted into the dark street, his song winding past gas-lamps and growing faint and being swallowed altogether in other sounds. He was singing ‘Comrades’.

‘Comrades, comrades ever since we were boys

Sharing each other’s troubles, sharing each other’s joys.’

Rashers, conscious suddenly of the emptiness of the street, looked down sadly at his dog and petted it before going in. Mrs. Mulhall, troubled by some memory or other, wept a little as she listened.

‘That was lovely,’ she said, when Pat had finished.

‘Hasn’t he a grand voice altogether,’ Mrs. Farrell remarked.

‘He’d draw tears from a glass eye,’ Joe said.

‘A few bars from yourself, ma’am,’ Pat invited. But Mrs. Mulhall said she had no voice.

‘You’ve voice enough when it comes to giving out the pay to me,’ Mulhall assured her.

Everybody took a hand in encouraging her and at last she gave in and began to sing ‘If I were a Blackbird’. Her voice was thin and had a quiver in it, but Mulhall regarded her with a proud look. They were a kindly couple, Fitz thought, unbroken by hardship. He hoped he would reach Mulhall’s age with as much of his courage and his world intact.

When the song finished Fitz raised his glass and said: ‘Here’s to ninepence an hour.’

Mulhall, delighted, repeated ‘Ninepence an hour’ and drank.

‘How is it going?’ Farrell asked.

‘They’re marking time,’ Pat said. He was elaborately complacent.

‘Larkin wrote and said we won’t deliver to the foundry,’ Mulhall explained. ‘We’ve heard nothing more since.’

‘They haven’t paid,’ Joe put in.

‘Any day now they’ll load us and tell us to deliver to the foundry. We’ll all refuse.’

‘Amen,’ Pat said.

‘If they lock you out we’ll stand by you on the quays,’ Farrell said.

‘I wonder,’ Mulhall said, challenging him.

‘It’s a certainty,’ Farrell assured him.

‘That’s worth drinking to,’ Pat declared.

‘I’m sure Mrs. Fitzpatrick doesn’t want to begin married life with a session about strikes,’ Mrs. Farrell protested.

‘I’m not listening,’ Mary said lightly.

She was making tea. There was something about her which set her apart from the others, a way of moving, of lifting things, of using her features and varying her intonation when she spoke.

‘That’s the proper way to treat them,’ Mrs. Farrell agreed, ‘don’t listen.’

The women were having tea and cake when Hennessy tapped at the door. Fitz invited him in. He stood uncertainly and said to Mrs. Mulhall:

‘I was knocking at your room, ma’am, this while back. Then I chanced to hear the voices and guessed you might be here.’

Is there something I can get you?’

‘Herself was wondering if you’d oblige her with the loan of a cup of sugar.’

Mrs. Mulhall rose, but Fitz looked at Mary and she went to the cupboard.

‘I hesitate to trouble you . . .’ Hennessy protested.

‘We have it to spare,’ Mary assured him.

Fitz invited Hennessy to drink and he sat down.

‘My respects and wishes for a long and happy life,’ he toasted.

‘How is the work with you?’ Mulhall asked.

‘Not too bad,’ Hennessy said. ‘I’ve landed a bit of a watching job. Three nights a week.’

‘You’re a great man at the watching.’

‘I’ve a natural gift for it,’ Hennessy said. Then he added: ‘I suppose you all heard about Rashers and his stroke of fortune?’

‘What was that?’

‘He swears he owes it all to yourself, ma’am.’

Mary, finding the voice directed at her, put down the cup of sugar.

‘The night of poor Hanlon’s funeral he showed the two of you the way to the presbytery and on the road out he dropped in to say a few prayers. He met the curate and landed the boilerman’s job. Ten bob a week. Wasn’t that a stroke of good fortune?’

‘It’s only seasonal,’ Joe said.

‘It’ll keep him going through the winter.’

‘Ten bob is a scab rate,’ Pat said, with disgust.

Mary said: ‘The curate is Father O’Connor. I knew him in Kingstown.’

‘Is that a fact?’ Hennessy said, happy to gather a further piece of information.

Pat, with obvious satisfaction, remarked: ‘St. Brigid’s must be a bit of a change for him.’

‘It was his own wish to work here,’ Mary said.

‘Imagine that now.’ Hennessy was greatly impressed.

‘Only a saintly soul would make such a change,’ Mrs. Mulhall said.

‘Every man to his taste,’ Pat said.

Hennessy noted there was full and plenty and lingered. He accepted a second drink and agreed to sing a song. Later he recited a ballad about a young man who gambled away his inheritance and died all alone in the Australian bush, where he was found with a locket in his hand containing a lock of golden hair. Was it his own, a relic of the lost innocence of his childhood or had it been cut from a sweetheart’s golden hair before sin sullied the hopes of youth? Or was it, perhaps, a sweet mother’s tresses, carried to the ends of the earth by an erring son and fondled with remorse when Death laid its chill hand on his brow? The poet was unable to say and Hennessy, having posed the question and moved everybody by the light, nasal style of his recital, let his eye rest on the cup of sugar and suddenly remembered his wife.

‘She’ll think I’m lost,’ he said, springing to his feet.

‘That’s the greatest oddity in Dublin,’ Mulhall remarked.

‘He has the gift, mind you,’ Joe said. The rest had been equally impressed and agreed with him.

Mrs. Mulhall, thinking of the peaky face with its short moustache and small chin, and the far-away look in the eyes during the recital, sighed and said: ‘The poor soul.’

‘I think it’s time we all went,’ Farrell suggested. He had a long walk home before him and a six o’clock start the next morning.

‘That’s a thought,’ Joe said.

They gathered their belongings and began to renew their wishes for happiness and good fortune. They were halfway down the stairs when Mary, who had gone back into the room to tidy up, noticed the parcel in the corner and called to Fitz.

Fitz shouted down the stairs: ‘Pat—your parcel.’

‘Never mind it.’

‘You’ve left it behind you.’

Pat returned a little from the rest and said: It’s for herself—a bit of a wedding present. There’s no need to waken the house over it.’ He was gruff and embarrassed.

‘Did you rob a bank or something?’ Fitz said, smiling.

‘Never mind what I robbed,’ Pat said. He turned and went down to join the rest.

‘Thanks,’ Fitz shouted after him, but he got no reply and went in and closed the door.

Mary was still tidying. Already, he noticed, she had given the room a touch of home.

‘What was ninepence an hour?’ she asked, working busily.

‘I told you about it. The job I called Farrell for.’

‘The night I was asleep and you didn’t waken me?’

Something had happened to him that night that had nothing to do with their love. He remembered the sharp morning wind and, far off, the shouts of the men. Isolated in the top gallery of the house, just before the water pipes rattled into life, he had felt the inward drag of compassion and responsibility, linking him with the others below. Some part of him had become theirs. It was a moment he had no way of explaining to anybody, not even to Mary. He said, ‘It may mean trouble for us.’

‘But it’s so long ago.’

‘So far we’ve been able to keep going at the foundry by drawing from stock. But if the carters don’t deliver to us soon we’ll have to close down. And if non-union men deliver to us we’ll have to refuse to handle the coal.’

‘Maybe they’ll give in and pay them.’

‘That’s what we’re hoping for.’

She had finished her work and was removing her apron. He remembered.

‘The parcel Pat left is a wedding present.’ He took it from the corner and put it on the table. It was heavy. He unwrapped it. It was a marble clock, with the figure of a wolfhound on either side. The gilt on the hands had worn thin in places, but when they wound it and moved the hands it had a low, musical chime.

‘It’s lovely,’ Mary said. They set it on the mantelpiece and stood back to admire it.

It’s a bit on the elegant side for the rest of the room,’ Fitz said.

‘It’s beautiful.’ Her pleasure touched Fitz.

‘That’s two beautiful things to look at every day,’ he said.

‘I’m sure he spent a fortune on it, it’s too much to give.’

‘In a way it’s just as well,’ Fitz said, ‘he’ll have less to act the tin elephant with.’

‘Does he never try to save?’

‘He’d rather give it away.’

‘You have generous friends,’ Mary said. She stood back to look at it once more.

‘Let me hear it chime again,’ she asked.

Fitz moved the hands and the clock responded.

‘It has a happy sound,’ she pronounced.

Fitz took the lamp and they went into the bedroom together. They undressed. Everything had gone well: the ceremony, the breakfast, the afternoon expedition around Howth Head, the customary wedding party. They lay together in the darkness, two lovers in a dilapidated world, knowing each other for the first time. They were near enough to the river to hear, faintly, the siren of a ship. The city grew quiet. Before they slept the clock in the outer room chimed once again.

‘Listen to it,’ Mary whispered.

They listened together. Fitz covered her mouth with his. They forgot the clock and the plaintive siren and the house which was peopled above and below them.

Pat left the rest at Ringsend Bridge and watched them go down past the Catholic church. Its back wall overhung the Dodder. From the bridge he saw the masts of the sailing ships that lay close against the church. They had a derelict look. The water about them gleamed faintly, gathering what light reached it from the few, scattered stars. The stars had a misty look of imminent rain. Under the great hump of the bridge the river, already swollen, moved towards the intricate system of docks and canals which would conduct it deviously to the Liffey and so to the sea. The breeze carried the taint of salt water, a forlorn smell.

As he walked back towards the city the rain began. It was late. The last trams were arriving at Ringsend Depot. They swung into the sheds with a great rattling and clanging, with trolleys that hissed and sparked as they crossed the wire intersections. They left a taste of metal in the street. Machinery vibrated behind the grey walls of Boland’s Mills, and the little, lighted cabin of the overhead telpher made a blurred circle above the foundry yard before it disappeared into the awning of one of the furnace houses. Pat turned into Townsend Street and crossed Butt Bridge. The rain began to seep through his clothes. He had been sharing with Fritz and had neglected to make provision for a bed now that the arrangement had come to an end. But he was contented with drink. He knew what he was going to do.

In the shelter of Amiens Street Bridge he uncorked a bottle of whiskey, drank and went on. The streets were badly surfaced. Already muddy pools were beginning to form. There were lights in occasional windows and once he heard a piano playing

‘For in his bloom

He met his doom

Tim Kelly’s early grave.’

A policeman with his cloak fully buttoned and the great collar covering his ears turned to stare at him as he passed. Pat went on, changing the song.

‘O girl of my heart you are waiting for me

Mora, my own love

Mora, my true love

Will you be mine through the long years to be?’

He turned into a narrower, muddier street and climbed the stairs, still singing, his boots and his voice making a rowdy din. Someone jerked open a door.

‘I thought so,’ Lily Maxwell cried.

‘Lily, my own.’

‘Come in out of that,’ she grumbled at him.

‘Lily, my true love.’

‘Do you want to bring the whole bloody Metropolitan Constabulary in on top of me?’ she shouted at him.

Pat held out his arms to her and begged, ‘Will you be mine through the long years to be?’

She pushed him in and closed the door.

‘Will you look at the cut of him?’ she said, appealing to one of the pictures on the wall.

Water was running from his hat. His coat was sodden and shapeless. She took it off him. She sat him down at the fire. Lily’s room was small. An enormous iron bed with brass fittings took up most of the floor space. The fireplace, which was deep, was well filled with glowing coals, in spite of the general shortage. Lily had friends among the humble. Intimate garments were scattered haphazardly, as though Lily had been unable to make up her mind about what she was going to wear and had given it up.