Strumpet City (16 page)

‘I was at a wedding,’ Pat explained.

‘You needn’t tell me. I can smell the confetti,’ Lily said.

‘We’ll have a drink.’

‘Not any of mine, you won’t,’ Lily assured him, ‘it’s strictly for the paying guests.’

Pat produced the bottle of whiskey.

‘Out of this, Lily my own love.’

She took it. ‘Where did you find it?’

‘I bought it.’

Lily looked astounded. ‘There’ll be a blue moon tomorrow night.’

‘Will you pour the drink and not have so much bloody oul guff,’ Pat said.

The steam was rising from his trousers.

‘Take them off you,’ Lily advised.

‘Don’t be impatient.’

‘You’re full of smart answers, wherever you were.’

‘I told you, I was at a wedding.’

‘I suppose they gave you this to get shut of you,’ she said, taking the cork from the bottle.

‘You never say anything agreeable to me,’ Pat complained. ‘All the time you keep nagging.’

He was taking off his trousers.

‘Here,’ she said, throwing him a towel. He began to dry his legs.

‘Nag, nag, nag.’

‘For all the good it does. Just look at you.’

She hung his wet trousers near the fire and handed him a drink.

‘You’re not bad, after all,’ he said, sampling the whiskey. ‘How is business?’

‘Bloody terrible,’ Lily said. ‘How would you expect it to be of an Easter Tuesday. They’re all after making their Easter duty. Finishing up their retreats and mending their souls.’

‘What about the Protestants?’

‘It seems this is a Roman Catholic area.’

‘The Army?’

‘On leave. Or blew it all of an Easter Monday.’

‘And the students?’

‘They only come to be seen, most of them.’

‘Lily—you shouldn’t be in this game. I told you so.’

‘Maisie persuaded me there would be good money in it. She exaggerates a bit, the same Maisie.’

‘Then don’t settle to it. Get out of it.’

‘Back to what? To making biscuits or something for five bob a week? I had enough of that, thank you.’

‘You’d be happier.’

‘I wasn’t any happier. I was bloody well miserable, if you want to know.’

She consoled herself with a long slug of whiskey. She was sitting opposite to him at the fire, a thin, dark-haired girl with a slight figure. She had small features and neat hands that Pat liked to touch. His own had broken nails from humping sacks and coal-dirt which had settled permanently in the pores. She got up and began to twist the ends of his trousers. A stream of water fell from them.

‘You’ll wind up with pneumonia,’ she said.

‘I have money, Lily.’

‘That’s two blue moons tomorrow.’

‘The horses,’ Pat said. ‘Give me another drink and I’ll tell you about it.’

‘I can’t wait,’ Lily said. But she gave him the drink. While she squeezed his trousers she said to him: ‘Are you not staying?’

He had been about to tell her the story of his luck. Her remark surprised him.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You could take off your hat,’ she said. He groped and was surprised to find it poised on the back of his head. He dropped it at his feet.

‘I brought off a sixpenny treble at Fairyhouse: Axle Pin at sevens in the Farmers Plate, Lord Rivers in the Irish National at tens and all on to Little Hack the Second in the King’s Cup. He came up at sevens.’

‘What did you make?’

‘Fifteen pounds eight shillings,’ Pat said.

‘Out of sixpence?’ Lily asked.

‘Out of a little crooked sixpence,’ Pat said. He found it hard to believe himself. He held his glass up in front of him and nodded his head at it several times.

‘What have you left?’ Lily asked.

‘Count it,’ Pat invited. ‘It’s in my back pocket.’ She took the trousers down and emptied the contents on to the table.

‘I declare to God!’ she exclaimed. She counted eight pounds and some odd shillings.

‘What happened to the rest?’

‘I bought a wedding present for five pounds. A clock.’

‘You should have your head examined with what’s left,’ Lily said, outraged.

‘It was for a friend,’ Pat said.

‘Who’s the friend?’

‘Bob Fitzpatrick. They were married this morning and after breakfast they went out to Howth.’

A thought struck him.

‘Were you ever in Howth, Lily?’

‘What would I be doing in Howth,’ Lily answered.

‘It’s a beautiful place. It sticks right out into the sea. You can see the whole Bay from the cliffs, and the Dublin mountains all around it.’

‘I was there once or twice,’ Lily said. ‘The cliffs made me dizzy.’

‘Then the gardens,’ Pat said, ‘with the dandderodents, the rhodadandins . . . what the hell do you call them . . . the flowers.’

‘I’ve seen them,’ Lily said, ‘but it must be years ago.’

‘Come with me tomorrow.’

‘Are you retiring from business?’

‘There may be a bit of a lock-out tomorrow.’

‘You’d better wait and see,’ Lily suggested sensibly.

‘Or the day after. Or the day after that again.’

‘Or next Christmas,’ Lily prompted. She saw he was full of drink.

‘I’ll tell you what,’ Pat said, ‘hold four pounds out of that for me and we’ll go to Howth next Sunday.’

Lily took the four pounds.

‘I’ll keep it for you,’ she said.

‘If you have to spend some of it it’s all right. Give me another drink.’

‘You’re crooked already.’ But she poured it.

‘I’ve no bed for tonight.’

‘You can stay here. But no monkey business.’

‘You don’t love me any more,’ Pat accused.

‘I don’t love anyone any more,’ Lily said, suddenly weary. ‘I feel bloody awful.’

‘Have another drink.’

‘Two is enough. Any more kills me.’

This was unusual. Pat looked at her unbelievingly. Then he shrugged and said: ‘Please yourself.’ He began to take his own. The heat of the fire helped the effect of the alcohol. Lily was sitting opposite again. He was becoming drowsy and found it hard to keep her in focus. They had grown up together, played together, found out the usual things together. The boys liked Lily. She wandered around with them and when they dared her she stood on her hands for them. The boys shouted ‘I see Paris’ when her bloomers showed and the other girls tried to be scandalised. They both came from a world where very little ever remained to be known after the age of twelve or thirteen.

‘What’s the strike?’ Lily asked.

‘For a proper rate—three shillings.’

‘Three shillings a week?’

‘No—three shillings they owe us for overtime.’

‘A strike for three shillings?’

‘For principle.’

‘It takes a lot of principle to fill a pint,’ Lily said.

‘You never think of the world you live in, Lily,’ Pat said, ‘that’s what’s wrong with you.’

‘I know what’s wrong with me,’ Lily said, ‘but it isn’t that.’

‘You never ask yourself why the poor are poor. You see the quality going off to balls at the Castle and receptions in the Park. Will Lily Maxwell ever do that?’

‘I’d look well, wouldn’t I?’

‘You’d look as well as the next and better if you had their advantages.’

‘That’s the way God made the world,’ Lily said. ‘You’d better lodge your objections with Him, not with me. I have my own troubles.’

‘All that is going to be changed. We’ll have a revolution about that.’

Pat’s eyes were closing. Lily, watching the drunkenness slowly mastering his body and his thoughts, felt affection for him and asked: ‘Had you any definite date in mind?’

He opened his eyes and was puzzled. ‘What date?’

‘For all the changing you’re going to do.’

‘They’re going to lock us out. That’ll be a start.’

‘But no novelty,’ Lily said, thinking of the other strikes.

‘It’ll be changed. The expropriators are to be expropriated. Did you ever listen to that Connolly chap?’

‘Who’s he?’

‘Come to think of it,’ Pat said, ‘I haven’t seen him around this past couple of years. He wanted votes for women. That’s something should interest you.’

‘What would I do with a vote?’ Lily asked.

‘Vote for the socialists. I’m a radical socialist. I believe we should hold everything in common, even our women.’

‘Is your friend Fitzpatrick a socialist?’

‘Fitz is all right. He’s going to stand by us.’

‘For your three shillings? He must be as mad as the rest of you.’

‘He’s the heart of the roll—the flower of the flock.’

‘Try holding his woman in common and see what happens,’ Lily invited. ‘God, that’s an explosion I’d love to watch!’

‘Give me another drink,’ Pat said.

‘If you go to bed,’ she promised.

He was agreeable. She helped him to undress. When he had stretched out beneath the covers she made an elaborate show of pouring whiskey into a glass. But she kept it in her hand while she sat at the bedside and made no move to give it to him.

‘It’s a bitch of a city, Lily,’ he said to her.

‘It’s no great shakes,’ Lily agreed.

‘More babies die in Dublin than anywhere else in Europe—did you know that, Lily?’

‘All babies die,’ Lily said, ‘when they reach the right age.’

‘More men and women too. Does the Lord Lieutenant care? No. Does the Government? Do the employers? Does God?’

‘I’d leave Him out of it,’ Lily said.

‘All right. Leave Him out of it. Do the others?’

‘You should go asleep.’

‘If you get in beside me.’

‘I told you there’s something wrong with me.’ She half shouted it at him.

‘Where’s my drink?’

‘I have it here for you.’ But she kept it in her hand.

‘Take Lord Aberdeen. Does
he
care?’

‘I’ll ask him the next time I bump into him,’ Lily said.

‘You haven’t got into bed, Lily.’

‘Take your hour, can’t you.’

She was watching him, watching the sleep stealing over and through him. She was reckoning the moment of its victory. His speech became thick and blurred.

‘We’re going to tear it all down,’ he said, ‘tear it all down. Like that.’

He tried to make a descriptive movement with his hands. They barely stirred. Lily looked at him for some time with lonely affection. She said: ‘You couldn’t tear down wallpaper.’ He was asleep. The stupor had won. He lay stretched with his mouth wide open. She drew the covers to his chin and bowed her head against the bulk of his body.

‘Jesus help me,’ she whispered. ‘Jesus help me.’ She was crying.

C
HAPTER
E
IGHT

Mr. Doggett, of Doggett & Co., found himself with a problem. A letter, signed by James Larkin, Irish Organiser of the National Union of Dockers, warned him that if he instructed his carters to deliver coal to Morgan’s Foundry there would be a strike. A letter from Morgan & Co. demanded delivery immediately and warned him that the long-standing contract which he shared with Nolan & Keyes would be cancelled and given solely to Nolan & Keyes, if supplies were not despatched. He rightly guessed that his rivals had received a similar letter but had no way of finding out what they intended to do. He had no desire to face a strike. He had no desire either to lose the contract. It was a situation which kept his thoughts fully occupied. It was obvious that Nolan & Keyes shared his dilemma. For some weeks neither accepted the challenge by attempting delivery.

The situation troubled Timothy Keever too, but for a different reason. He worked for Nolan & Keyes and felt there was a moral issue. He decided to put it before Father O’Connor. His opportunity arose when the priest visited him as part of his parish work. Mrs. Keever spent more than she could afford in entertaining him to tea. After the meal Keever brought Father O’Connor into the yard at the back of the cottage to show him the shrine to St. Finbar he had built in his spare time. Father O’Connor seemed impressed.

‘Very beautiful,’ he said.

The shrine occupied the right-hand angle of the back and side walls. The statue was a small one, the tiny grass plot in front accommodated three jamjars with artificial flowers. Keever had distempered the wall behind in yellow and white and had contrived a kneeling board out of a packing case.

‘Maybe you’d say a prayer,’ Keever invited, diffidently.

The idea of kneeling in such surroundings horrified Father O’Connor. Tea with the Keevers, in itself, had been something of an ordeal.

‘Later, perhaps,’ he evaded.

The rest of the yard he noted, was occupied by a manhole cover and the pathway to the outdoor toilet. There was a large box.

‘What is this?’ Father O’Connor asked. It was an alternative topic to the shrine.

It’s for the dog,’ Keever explained. ‘He keeps the cats away. Especially at night.’

‘Ah,’ Father O’Connor said.

The back wall, which was enormously high, puzzled him, until he recognised it as part of the railway embankment. The railway line seemed to be everywhere in the parish of St. Brigid.

‘You have a comfortable home,’ Father O’Connor said. He was not quite sure, now that he had seen the shrine, what was expected of him next.

‘It was my father’s home,’ Keever said, ‘he was a carpenter.’

‘I see.’

‘In his time he was senior prefect.’

There was a strong tradition in favour of the skilled worker in parish activities.

‘Isn’t our present senior prefect a carpenter too?’

‘No, Father, Mr. Hegarty is a bricklayer.’

‘Of course,’ Father O’Connor said.

‘My own father intended me for a trade,’ Keever explained, ‘but God took him at an early age, so I became a carter. In fact I’m in a difficulty at the moment that Mr. Hegarty told me to ask your advice on.’

‘By all means,’ Father O’Connor agreed. He examined the box, found there was no dog present and sat down on it.

While Keever explained the situation in Nolan & Keyes Father O’Connor listened with half a mind. The man before him was, he thought, a model of what the Christian worker should be, accepting his social position with humility and making up for his lack of formal education by his persistence in good works of various kinds. He collected used stamps for the missions from the office staff of Nolan & Keyes and went among the carters on paydays gathering halfpennies for the same purpose. He carried a notebook in which he recorded each subscription as he received it and he handed over the total to Father O’Connor each week. He was constantly seeking recruits for the Church sodality among the men with whom he worked.