Strumpet City (8 page)

‘I fail to see why.’

‘I was thinking of the girl herself. We can’t give her a clear reference and without that she’ll find it impossible to get another position.’

‘She should have thought of that before she picked up with some young blackguard.’

‘They don’t have very much freedom. I’m sure it was all quite innocent.’

‘Innocent,’ Mr. Bradshaw repeated, bringing his newspaper down on his knees with a loud noise. ‘You mustn’t think these young girls are like yourself. They breed like rabbits. My God, woman, do you want her having babies all over the place?’

Mrs. Bradshaw changed colour. He noticed. Mistaking the reason, he apologised.

‘Forgive me if I sound crude, but we must face facts.’

It was not the crudeness which had upset Mrs. Bradshaw. In a small, dry voice she said: ‘I really don’t think it would arise.’

‘While there are hundreds of strong, willing and reliable girls to choose from, am I to sit by and see you saddled with an impressionable trollop. We pay for trustworthiness, my dear. We must make sure that we get it.’

Mrs. Bradshaw said, quietly: ‘I liked her. She suited me.’

‘You are being sentimental again. It is a constant fault of yours.’

‘Perhaps I am,’ Mrs. Bradshaw admitted. ‘I don’t think it so wrong to want to forgive.’

‘Nonsense. She goes back to her parents. A servant is not like an ordinary employee. One has moral responsibilities in the case of a servant.’

But Mary’s departure was delayed by the illness of Miss Gilchrist. The old woman’s collapse was gradual. In the course of the Christmas cleaning Mary helped her to shift the heavy furniture and noted the toll it took of her strength. She refused to rest on the grounds that the work had to be done. One day when they had moved the sideboard near the piano they discovered Father O’Connor’s beads, an amber and silver rosary in a worn purse. Miss Gilchrist put them in her apron pocket, saying she would return them personally later. Father O’Connor had become a favourite of hers and she recognised his property at once. She regarded him as something of a saint and never missed going to him for her monthly confession.

Less than an hour later she collapsed. Mary shouted for Mrs. Bradshaw and together they managed to take her to her room. They got her to bed. Mary lit the lamp and drew the curtains, cutting out the gloom of the December evening. The pallor of Miss Gilchrist’s face and her heavy breathing frightened her. They stayed watching her for a while until Mrs. Bradshaw said: ‘I think it would be as well to go for the doctor.’

During the next few days Mary, in between frequent errands, found an opportunity to contact Fitz again. She asked him to be near the gate at midnight on the following Sunday. Sunday was an early night in the Bradshaw household. When the rest had retired she would somehow get out to see him.

She made it a habit to sit with Miss Gilchrist during the night until after midnight. The old woman recovered a little, but remained too weak to be allowed up. On Sunday evening Father O’Connor called to see her. She had asked Mary to summon him. Mary left everything ready for the priest and withdrew. He gave no sign of being aware of the pending dismissal. When Miss Gilchrist had confessed to him he removed his purple stole, kissed it and folded it. He looked round the room. Miss Gilchrist smiled.

‘Haven’t I the height of comfort, Father,’ she said.

‘You have indeed,’ Father O’Connor said. ‘You’re the lucky woman.’

‘That shows you that I’m highly thought of.’

‘Are you long here?’ Father O’Connor asked.

‘Over thirty years.’

‘Then why wouldn’t you be highly thought of?’ he bantered, not without difficulty. He found it difficult to be easy and natural with a servant.

‘It isn’t always so,’ she said. ‘There’s some would dump you in an attic without fire or comfort.’

‘And who would have the heartlessness to do that?’ Father O’Connor reproved.

‘Many’s the one. I seen it and I know. Or pack you off to the Union the minute you showed a sign of feebleness. And why not, I suppose, when a poor body is not of their blood.’

‘Mr. and Mrs. Bradshaw are good people,’ he said.

‘That’s what I’m saying, Father.’

‘And most people are good too, but gossip doesn’t give them credit.’ He felt it might be no harm to slip in a few words about the danger of uncharitable talk. But he got no chance.

The old woman said next: ‘Hand me across my apron, Father.’

He looked around, searching, and saw it draped on a chair. A tiny wave of irritation at being commanded by the old woman moved inside him but was suppressed. He handed it to her. She rooted for the pocket and gave him the purse.

‘I found them for you when we were cleaning,’ she said, with wonderful pleasure.

He opened the purse and let the beads fall into his hands. To have them again choked him with happiness.

‘My rosary,’ was all he could say, ‘how can I thank you . . . ?’

‘You can say a little prayer for me.’

‘They were my mother’s. I’d rather lose anything than these.’

Miss Gilchrist lay still, taking in his happiness, smiling in sympathy with it.

‘God bless you,’ he said. On an impulse he placed his hand lightly on her head and murmured his formal blessing. She closed her eyes and barely opened them when he bid her good night.

‘What do you make of her?’ Bradshaw asked.

He had made a point of meeting the priest in the hallway.

‘I think she should be all right,’ Father O’Connor said. Priests, he knew, had the reputation of being good judges, but as yet he had had very little experience of the sick-room.

‘Can you step in here a moment,’ Bradshaw invited. He held open the door of the drawing-room. They sat down.

‘The doctor,’ Bradshaw began, ‘thinks it may have been a little . . . stroke.’

They always said little, Father O’Connor thought, remembering the old woman’s closed eyes and tired face. It was a little weakness, a little turn, a little upset.

‘The trouble is,’ Bradshaw continued carefully, ‘that it seems to have affected one of the legs.’

‘In what way?’ the priest asked.

‘Paralysis—at least partial. Of course, it may pass.’

‘Please God it will.’

‘On the other hand it may not.’ Bradshaw fixed his gaze on the far corner. ‘What are we to do if she is no longer able to work?’

He waited for the priest to answer. Father O’Connor, drawn suddenly into the problem by the use of the word ‘we’, felt he should answer that the Christian thing would be to look after the old woman. But no matter how he tried to formulate the sentence it sounded incredibly impracticable. He decided to play for time and, if possible, to put forward his view obliquely.

‘She has been a very long time in service with you,’ he began.

‘She’s been paid for her trouble, every penny.’

‘Of course. It was not my intention . . .’

‘And been treated with every consideration.’

‘I have personal evidence of that,’ Father O’Connor said, in a conciliatory voice.

‘Indeed, if Mrs. Bradshaw has a shortcoming, it is her indulgent nature, as I have bitter cause to know.’

Father O’Connor, intimidated by Bradshaw’s commanding tone, nodded his head.

‘It’s not that I mind her growing old,’ Bradshaw continued, ‘provided she can potter around and get her work done. But what if she is incapable? We can’t employ a servant to dance attendance on a servant. The thing would be absurd.’

‘Has she no relatives?’

‘None at all.’

‘That makes it very difficult,’ Father O’Connor found himself saying.

‘And worrying, very worrying,’ Bradshaw added. He sighed deeply, thinking that he was never quite free from ill fortune; troubles trailed him everywhere like kittens after a cat.

‘God knows I’m fond of the old woman, she is quite devoted,’ Bradshaw continued. ‘If she remains as she is and we have to part with her it will be a terrible upset.’

Father O’Connor wanted to speak for her. The suggestion that she should be kept in the house no matter what the outcome of her illness came several times to the tip of his tongue. He could not say it. He told himself it would do no good. It would only make Bradshaw regard him as an incorrigible fool.

‘We can only pray,’ Father O’Connor said. ‘Prayer works wonders.’

The dilemma haunted him as he walked home. It seemed insoluble. If the old lady remained incapable, only Bradshaw’s generosity would stand between her and the workhouse; and Bradshaw, Father O’Connor knew, was incapable of charity in so large a measure. Indeed, Father O’Connor reminded himself, God did not demand it of his children. And yet, given certain circumstances, was not something required, in all justice, over and above the meticulous discharge of a contract? St. Thomas had somewhere discussed the matter. Father O’Connor tried but failed to remember specifically.

The streets were deserted, the bulk of the church looked black and forbidding, the wind was cold and burdened with rain. Father O’Connor went through the side gate and heard it groan as it shut behind him. What he could have said on the old woman’s behalf he did not know. He only knew that he had not said it. He walked along the narrow, tree-lined approach, his shoulders hunched, feeling like Judas.

‘What time is it?’ Miss Gilchrist asked.

‘Almost midnight.’

‘You should get to your bed.’

‘Presently,’ Mary said, ‘when you’ve had your milk and settled down for the night.’

The wind was making a great noise outside, bullying the trees and driving the rain against the windows. Sometimes the lamp dimmed and then brightened again, sometimes a gust beat down on the fire and sent a puff of smoke into the room. Mary watched the saucepan of milk, which for convenience she was heating at the bedroom fire. Miss Gilchrist returned to her chosen topic, Father O’Connor’s visit.

‘Did he say anything to you?’

‘About what?’

‘About your trouble.’

That was the phrase she had found for Mary’s loss of favour.

‘Not a word. Perhaps he didn’t know.’

‘Nonsense,’ Miss Gilchrist said, ‘of course he knew.’ She lay staring at the ceiling, a whitewashed one on which the beaded lampshade cast restless patterns. They were faces, flowers, animal shapes.

‘He’s kind. If you’d mentioned it to him he would have put in a word with the boss about you.’

‘I don’t want him to.’

‘But what will you do?’

Mary did not know as yet. First she must see Fitz. The milk bubbled around the edges and she took it away from the fire. Fixing Miss Gilchrist’s pillows, Mary sat down at the bedside and they both drank. The room was cosy, yet in some subtle way it had changed. It was no longer a place in which she was accepted and approved. The furniture, the sick-room utensils, Miss Gilchrist’s rebel, were no longer part of her life. They surrounded her like enemies. She had a home no longer. Even outside the house everything had changed. At mass on Sundays she saw people she knew and thought they looked strangely at her. It made her hate them and brought her several times to the verge of tears.

‘What
can
I do?’ she said at length. Except get away. That meant home. She would feel unwanted at home too. And neighbours would gossip in the small townland.

‘Father O’Connor is the man to go to,’ Miss Gilchrist said again, just before Mary settled the clothes about her and she began to fall asleep. ‘He won’t let you down.’

Mary turned down the lamp. The clock said midnight. She took the glasses and left on tiptoe, pausing for a moment on the stairs to assure herself that the house was sleeping. It was hard to unbolt the kitchen door without making a noise, but she succeeded at last. She closed it behind her, hoping the latch, which often slipped, would hold against the wind. The cold sting of the rain made her catch her breath as she hurried down the length of the garden. She opened the garden gate and stared into the darkness. Coming from the lighted house made it impossible to see anything. She started with fright when Fitz stood suddenly close to her.

‘Mary,’ he said.

She turned to him and he folded her tightly in his arms. After a moment she said: ‘Not here. Come inside.’

They went up the garden together until they found cover under a tree. It was no longer much protection against the driving rain, but it held off the wind a little and hid them from the roadway. Fitz took her in his arms again and she said: ‘My darling, I kept you waiting, and you’re soaked.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Fitz said.

She kissed him in sudden abandon, his lips, his cheeks, his forehead, finding them cold and soaked with rain. Then she began to cry.

‘Tell me what has happened.’

She told him. For the first time in many days she found love offered to her in place of hostility. Under a dark tree, in the wind and the rain of a December midnight, there was the feeling of home. She had been exiled from that for longer than she could bear. She clutched him desperately and said: ‘What am I to do?’

He held her for a moment in silence. Then in a voice which was unexpectedly calm and firm he said: ‘You mustn’t go home.’

‘No.’

‘Because if you do they’ll keep you there. We might never see one another again.’

‘Where else can I go?’

‘You can stay with the Farrells and I can find some other place for a while.’

‘Will they agree?’

‘Of course they’ll agree.’

She had never had a problem of any importance to put to him before. His assurance was a new quality at which to marvel.

‘You can stay there until we can arrange to be married.’

‘I’ll do it,’ she said, ‘but how?’

‘Give me just a little time to arrange it,’ he said, ‘I’ll leave word for you and when I do all you’ll have to do is walk out as you did tonight.’

‘What about my father?’

‘You can write to him to tell him you’re safe. We’ll be married before they can do anything about it.’

She said: ‘It all seems simple now when you are with me. But when you’re not here I’m going to be afraid.’

‘Don’t you want to come with me?’

‘How can you ask?’

‘Then there’s nothing to be afraid of. From the moment you leave here I’ll be with you.’