The Young Wan (6 page)

“See this? This is what Jim Larkin brought back from America. The Charter of Workers’ Rights. Think about that now—workers’ rights.”

Another voice came from the crowd: “Larkin was a madman.” There were a few grumbles among the crowd.

Bosco smiled. “Was he? Was he mad? Was he mad to want a worker to have more than the right to barely feed his family? Was he mad to want the worker to have paid rest days? Was he mad to want
you,
the workers, to go about your business, with your head held high, a sense of dignity about what you do, and a sense of pride in knowing that you were making the workplace a better place and a safer place for you, your own children?” He looked to Pat Casey. Casey nodded. Bosco carried on.

“This Charter of Rights was not written by Larkin, it was written by American workers. People just like you. It talks about safety, looking after the health of the worker, protection from unemployment, proper training and education, giving the hardworking man the dignity he deserves.” Bosco pushed the papers back into his pocket. He took a deep breath, and his shoulders sagged. When he continued his tone had calmed.

“The Constitution of the United States of America opens with the words ‘We the people’; the Proclamation of Independent Ireland started with ‘people of Ireland.’ They are just like us, and we are just like them, and if they can do it, we can do it. I urge you now, all of you . . . join the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union and unite with other workers who are trying to help make the workplace a better place for everybody, including the employers. Thank you for listening.” Bosco stood down from the chair. There was slight applause but not much. Surprisingly, one of those applauding was Constance Parker-Willis. She was totally captivated by the young man. Someday, she thought, I would like to sit and chat with him.

CHAPTER FIVE

It was a huge surprise to all. The announcement was made on a bright Sunday afternoon in the glass-paneled sunroom that overlooked the rear garden of the Parker-Willis home. The gardens themselves were beautiful and rivaled any garden in the area. Constance was sitting in one of the four huge wicker chairs that surrounded the African ebony table in the sunroom. Her legs were tucked beneath her, and an open copy of Charles Dickens’ short stories lay on her lap. Constance’s mother, sitting across from her, was concentrating on some needlework. As it was the game season, lunch had consisted of marinated pheasant, roasted and served in a peeled-grape sauce. Tasty but heavy, and Constance had intended to sit in the glass room and relax while the meal settled. She tried to relax but could not, tried to read but could not. Her concentration seemed to be all over the place, and she found herself reading the same paragraph over and over. Her mind seemed determined to wander in the quiet of the warm afternoon. Her father, Geoffrey, invaded the silence and the room.

“Excellent lunch, eh? I knew the moment I bagged that cock he would be delicious.” He laughed loudly. He was of course referring to the bird he had just devoured. During the game season Geoffrey liked to go hunting quite a lot. The truth, of course, was that these hunts were mostly an excuse for him to get out of the house and meet up with his latest tart. On the rare occasion that Geoffrey did actually join in the hunt drive, he would become so drunk that he couldn’t hit a bull’s arse with a banjo.

“Yes, dear,” Constance’s mother gave her standard reply to all Geoffrey’s statements.

“Gin and It, dear?” He asked his wife a rhetorical question, for as he asked it he was standing over her with the drink already prepared.

“Yes, dear.” Constance’s mother took the glass from her husband and placed it on a glass incidental table beside her. In studious mood, Constance watched all of this. Gin and It. This was the latest fashionable drink. The drink of the moment. The “It” referring to “IT”—“Indian tonic water.” It seemed that the officers of Her Majesty’s Forces in India found it difficult to take the required quinine on its own. So, instead, some bright spark had added a dash of tonic water and a dash of gin, to make it easier to swallow. Thus gin and quinine tonic was now the “in” drink. Constance thought about the gin now, her mind wandering again. Gin, she recalled, was once the drink only of prostitutes and mendicants, its consumption only seen in the brothels of London and bigger towns. In fact, “gin house” was a common term for a brothel. And yet here it was now, the same drink, regarded as a drink of class, upper class. Things change.

“I’m getting married.” The words echoed about the glass room. Constance lifted her head from her book and glanced quickly around the room in search of the speaker of those words. Her mother looked up, needle poised mid-air. Her father was standing in one of the windows, looking over one of the gardens, at the gardener Murty, who was trimming some rosebushes. It was a couple of seconds before Constance realized that the words had come from her own lips. Her father didn’t even turn from the window.

“Indeed, dear. Someday, someday. For every old sock . . .” he began, but Constance cut him short.

“The autumn. I’m getting married in the autumn.” Again her brain was screaming out the words without her permission. Geoffrey turned from the window; his face was steely. Constance smiled at him demurely, and when her father spoke there was more than a hint of sarcasm.

“Hear that, Mother. Poppy here is getting married.” He took a sip of his drink. “In the autumn.”

“Yes, dear.” Mother did not even blink. Geoffrey paced the room.

“And who, may one ask, is the lucky chap? Or will you wait and introduce us all at the wedding ceremony?” he asked, again sarcastically.

“Bosco Reddin; you don’t know him.” Constance said, again following an argument between her brain and her lips. But Constance was wrong: her father did know him—well, at least he knew
of
him.

“The union activist?” he asked quietly. Then repeated the question at screaming pitch: “The
furking
union activist?” Even with the blood beginning to rise in Geoffrey’s face, his pronunciation of “fucking” was old-school. The rage was becoming visible.

“Did you hear that, Mother? Your daughter thinks she is going to marry the union activist.”

“Yes, dear,” Mother answered, and did not take her eyes from her daughter’s face. Now Geoffrey addressed himself directly to his daughter.

“Well, she can think again, Mother. Think again, I say!” Geoffrey downed the rest of his drink and began pouring another, his hands shaking with rage.

“I don’t have to think again. I’ve made up my mind.” Constance spoke with a firm voice. She was terrified but didn’t show it. Now her father went into an absolute fury.

“Made up
your
mind? You don’t have a mind in this house, missy!
I
make up
your
mind.” He now struggled even to speak. He began to take deep breaths, an effort to calm himself. It didn’t work.

“Why set your sights so high, dear? Why not the office boy, or that . . . shit shoveler out there?” He pointed out the window at Murty, the old gardener. Constance did not speak. She held her father’s gaze. Her fear suddenly left her. She took in the sight of her father bent over, the veins throbbing across his forehead, his arm outstretched, pointing at the gardener.

“I think they may both be already married,” she answered seriously. Her father spun and roared. He flung his drink across the room, the contents emptying over his wife. Both the window and the gin glass smashed when they met, the thick stump of the drinking glass being all that made it through the garden window. Bizarrely, Murty looked up, smiled, and waved.

With his entire body shaking spasmodically, Geoffrey now made to leave, and his parting words were calm, although his rage was very visible. He pointed and wagged his finger at Constance. “You. You do this, you do this, and you will leave this house with
nothing.
Do you hear me?” He screamed,
“Nothing,”
and he was gone. There was silence again except for the singing of the birds in the garden, which could now be heard through the broken window.

“Think about what you’re doing,” Constance’s mother said softly. Constance looked at her mother sitting there. Her once-beautiful face, dripping in the gin that had spilled from her husband’s glass. Constance stood and wiped her mother’s face.

“I have, Mother. I have,” she said softly. Constance’s inner voice was speaking to her again:
You may have thought about it, but someone should tell Bosco Reddin about it.

CHAPTER SIX

Bosco slid his clock-in card from the slot that next Monday morning. His eyebrows rose. His card had a note pinned to it. The note was folded and marked “private.” Bosco looked about him, clocked in his card as normal, and, without reading the note, put it into his pocket. He replaced his card and made his way across the yard toward the casting shed. Halfway across the yard, he removed the note and unfolded it. It read, “Please call to see Miss Parker-Willis in Accounts at your earliest convenience, today.” It was unsigned. He looked up to the windows of the accounts office.

“What’s this about?” he said aloud. He decided to make his way to the casting shed first and let his supervisor know that he was here, before finding out the answer to his question. From two different upstairs windows his every action was being watched. Constance was watching. She was half hiding and peeking out her window, being most nervous as she had seen him unfold her note. As if she had written the whole story on that piece of paper. At another window Geoffrey Parker-Willis was watching. No hiding and peeking for him. He stood filling the window frame, his hands dug deeply in his pockets, his eyes fixed on Bosco.

When Bosco arrived at the casting shed, he waved to his supervisor. The supervisor came over. Bosco began to tell the man of his errand.

“I’ll be back in a minute. I have to go to the office,” Bosco roared over the noise of the machine and pointed at the office building.

“I know,” the supervisor roared back. He pulled a rag from his pocket and wiped his perspiring brow with it. “What’s that about?” he asked.

Bosco shrugged his shoulders and waved the note. “I don’t know, but if it’s Accounts it must be about wages?”

“Accounts?” The supervisor frowned.

“Yeh, Accounts,” Bosco roared. He again opened the note and read it. “Yeh, that’s right, Accounts,” he confirmed.

The supervisor was shaking his head. “No. I was told to send you up to
his
office the moment you arrived.
His
office, not Accounts,” the supervisor roared and pointed to the sky, as if the boss was indeed some kind of deity. Bosco was puzzled. He left the shed.

Constance watched Bosco re-enter the yard. She called out to her assistant. “Mary.”

The girl stuck her head in the doorway. “Yes, Miss Constance?”

“Bring me some tea. Two cups, please.” Constance smiled.

“Yes, miss.” And the girl was gone.

Constance returned to the window to follow Bosco’s progress, but he was no longer there. She scanned the yard quickly, and when she finally spotted him she paled. Instead of coming to see her, Bosco was now making his way up the steel stairs that led to her father’s office.

“No,” she cried, “no,” and she banged on the window. But Bosco closed the door to the office, and she could see him no more.

Bosco didn’t know what he had really expected. A secretary maybe, to ask him whom he wished to see? Or some suited people, scurrying from room to room, carrying piles of papers. Bosco had never been in any offices before, so his expectations were based on what he imagined they would be like. Whatever. He certainly didn’t expect this. Nothing. He was standing in a kind of reception area alone. There was no sound of typing machines. Nor voices from behind doors. Nothing. He did notice that he couldn’t hear any noise from the foundry itself. It was quiet. He wondered how they did that. Bosco was looking around the room and taking in the luxury of it all when he heard the rattle of a brass doorknob. It was the knob on one of the big mahogany doors. The big mahogany door opened and a man stepped into Bosco’s area. The man was tall, high cheekbones. He wore his greased hair slicked back and sported a perfectly shaped and waxed mustache. He wore a tweed jacket into which he had just half his hand stuck with the thumb outside. Bosco didn’t know who this man was, but he felt an instant dislike of the man and he could see it was mutual.

“Mr. Reddin?” the mustached man asked. His voice was crisp.

“That’s me,” Bosco advised.

“Do you know who I am?” The man wore a wry grin.

“No. But I’ll bet you’re not the janitor.” Bosco winked.

“Ah, Dublin humor, where would you get it, eh?”

“Dublin?” Bosco offered as an answer.

“That was a rhetorical question, Mr. Reddin.”

“And that was more Dublin humor, Mr. . . . ?” Bosco now knew the man’s name, but he wanted the man to introduce himself.

“Parker-Willis. I am Mr. Parker-Willis,” Geoffrey announced. Bosco took a casual look about the luxurious walnut-paneled offices.

“Of course you are.” He smiled.

“Come into my office, Mr. Reddin,” Geoffrey ordered as he turned his back and walked in ahead of Bosco. Bosco entered the lavish office and walked to and sat in the leather chair. Geoffrey turned, a little surprised to see the man seated without invitation. Geoffrey spotted the door to the office still ajar. He pointed to the door.