Feeling much better, he entered the hotel and rang the bell. It was answered by an unfamiliar female. Disappointed, he asked her for a large Irish.
‘Yes, sir. Will you be wanting soda as well?’ He decided she was bulgy and unprepossessing.
‘Good God, no.’
The startled girl withdrew. She came back with whiskey and a small, stone jug containing water.
‘Where’s Rose?’ Yearling asked. He measured carefully the quantity of water.
‘Gone, sir.’
‘What do you mean—gone? Has she left?’
‘More or less, sir.’
The reply displeased him.
‘How much more than less?’ he snapped.
‘I beg your pardon, sir?’
‘Was she sacked?’ Yearling barked.
The girl jumped and said: ‘She was, sir.’
‘And why?’ He bunched his bushy eyebrows at her, terrifying her.
‘Miss Harrigan thought she made a bit free with the gentlemen, sir.’
‘I wouldn’t call that a fault—would you?’
‘I don’t know, sir.’
Yearling sighed.
‘Never mind. Please bring me the morning paper. And another whiskey.’
‘Yes, sir.’
The girl went off. Yearling sipped his drink and listened in a melancholy mood to the constant clip-clop of hooves outside the wide uncurtained window, missing the pretty face of Rose and the pleasure of making her laugh with his drolleries. He opened his paper and read it over his second whiskey until it seemed time to go back to the station for his train to Kingstown. When he was paying her he asked her name.
‘Alice, sir.’
‘That’s a song,’ Yearling told her. ‘“Alice, Where Art Thou?” Pretty air. I hope you won’t disappoint the respected Miss Harrigan.’
She laughed and delighted him by venturing, shyly. ‘Sure what harm is a bit of gas, sir.’
‘That’s the ticket,’ he boomed at her. As they laughed together he began to see that she was pretty, after all. For her show of spirit he tipped her a shilling and went out in better humour.
At the entrance to the station he stood courteously aside to let a figure in clerical dress go first and discovered, with an exclamation of pleasure, that it was Father O’Connor.
‘My dear friend.’
Startled by the bellow, Father O’Connor swung round. He came to a standstill.
‘This is unexpected . . .’ he began.
Yearling pumped inordinately at his extended hand while he asked: ‘Are you going to Kingstown?’
Father O’Connor was.
‘Excellent,’ Yearling said. ‘So am I.’
Father O’Connor found it necessary to excuse himself while he went to the booking office. They rejoined each other and when the gateman had checked each ticket and raised his cap with great respect to Father O’Connor they searched out an empty carriage and took their seats. Conversation proved difficult. Clouds of steam, hissing upwards, coiled and were trapped under the great glass awning. Father O’Connor saw Yearling’s lips moving, but could not catch what he was saying. He had to raise his voice as though he were in the pulpit and say: ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Milkcans,’ Yearling shouted.
Father O’Connor looked puzzled.
Yearling shouted: ‘I said I have never entered this station yet but they were shifting milkcans—millions of damned milkcans.’
Father O’Connor leaned towards the window, smiled and nodded. Porters were rolling the empty cans from one end of the platform to the other. The din was ear-splitting. It was a relief when the coaches jerked and bumped and the train moved slowly towards open day. Sunshine came leaping into the carriage, the backyards with their lines of washing slipped past, there was motion and peacefulness. In the basin by Boland’s Mill, an old-time schooner lay to. Near one bank, where green reeds leaned in delicate clusters above their own reflections, three swans rested.
‘What a beautiful picture,’ Father O’Connor said.
‘A serene and beguiling lie,’ Yearling answered. Father O’Connor looked surprised. Yearling, with unexpected gravity, said:
‘I sometimes despair of this city of ours.’
‘Its poverty?’
‘Its contradictions.’
‘I work in its back streets every day and when I lie down to sleep I am conscious of its squalor being on my doorstep. But I don’t despair.’
‘You have one eye fixed on heaven,’ Yearling said, ‘try looking at it with both eyes sometimes.’
‘I assure you I’ve looked at it closely.’ Father O’Connor spoke the truth. He did not despair. But there were days after days of depression, of feeling lost in a nightmare. The excuse of business or good manners brought him now and then to the Bradshaws. They were welcome retreats.
‘What do you think of Larkin’s sentence?’
A little confused at what appeared to be a sudden change of subject, Father O’Connor hesitated before asking: ‘Has he been sentenced?’
‘To twelve months with hard labour, it’s in today’s paper.’ Yearling held out the paper he had been reading over his whiskey.
Father O’Connor, remembering having bought a paper himself at some stage, searched vaguely and found it stuck in his pocket, unopened and, until now, completely forgotten.
‘I hadn’t seen it,’ he explained.
‘Savage,’ Yearling pronounced.
Father O’Connor spread out his hands.
‘If he was dishonest . . .’ he began.
‘He collected money from one city and gave it to the wretches who were on strike in another. The only case against him is that the money should have been sent on first to Liverpool. Where’s the dishonesty?’
‘It was irregular . . .’ Father O’Connor suggested.
‘If it was, who are collecting for his defence? The very people he’s accused of defrauding. One of them shook a box under my nose less than an hour ago.’
That was what Timothy Keever had told him. Fitzpatrick had been collecting for Larkin—he remembered now. ‘I haven’t followed the trial very closely.’ As he said so he remembered a detail which had shocked him early on. It was a newspaper interview in which Mr. Sexton, the general secretary who had come over from Liverpool to give evidence against Larkin, confessed that he had had to go through the streets armed with a revolver.
‘They’ve bungled,’ Mr. Yearling said, ‘and bungled badly. First they delay the trial for two years. Now they convict him on a technicality and give him twelve months’ hard. They’re determined to make a popular martyr of the most dangerous man of our time. They’ll have the dregs of the city flocking to him.’
‘They seem to be flocking to him already,’ Father O’Connor said.
‘That is no reason why the law should become his recruiting sergeant.’
‘Is that what you meant when you said you despair of the city?’
‘I despair of the law and the Government,’ Yearling confessed, ‘and of the men who are supposed to be my business colleagues. They’re fools—all of them.’
They had stopped at Booterstown. On their left the tide was advancing towards the wall, a thin edge of foam along its border. A light breeze found its way into the carriage. It tasted of salt. Looking across towards Howth Hill, Father O’Connor said: ‘Men bungle and make mistakes. But you must at least agree that the city is beautiful.’
‘It depends on where you live and how much you earn, doesn’t it?’
‘I think we are talking of different things.’
‘What is your answer to poverty?’ Yearling challenged. He was not yet prepared to leave the subject alone.
Father O’Connor sighed and after a moment of reflection said: ‘From those who have wealth, charity for the sake of God; from those who suffer poverty, resignation for His sake also.’
‘Marx has a different answer. He says the expropriators must be expropriated. That means me,’ Yearling pointed out.
&nb
sp; ‘We condemn socialism, of course.’
‘I have read your condemnations, Father. But for all their hat-raising to you, I am beginning to doubt that they will always listen to you. Does that sound offensive?’
‘Not at all. We’ve pointed out already that Larkin is a dangerous man; he’s a self-professed socialist. He doesn’t hesitate to criticise the priests, yet the people still help him and listen to him.’
‘And you will leave it like that?’
‘I am not the Hierarchy,’ Father O’Connor said, with a modest smile. ‘My duty is to be obedient.’
‘You broke Parnell,’ Yearling suggested.
‘I wonder did we?’ Father O’Connor said. ‘Do you not think it was his own party that broke him? After all, many of the people continued to follow him.’
‘You condemned him,’ Yearling insisted. ‘Yet, as you say, many of the people remained loyal to him. They didn’t listen to you—that’s my point.’
Did Yearling speak with sympathy of Parnell because he, like the fallen chief, was a Protestant. Why was he questioning about Larkin? Did he wish the Church to condemn openly and at once? Or was it possible that Larkin’s methods had his sympathy? Surely not. If the Church commanded absolute obedience Yearling would say the country was priest-ridden; if it did not he would taunt the Church for its failure. A note of sadness crept into Father O’Connor’s voice as he answered, generally:
‘There are other, more important matters in which they sometimes do not listen to us either. That is why we have to spend so much of our time hearing confessions.’
To his surprise Yearling began to laugh.
‘Have I said something amusing?’
‘You are like all the others of your cloth,’ Yearling explained. ‘I point out the very real threat of social revolution to you and you are only concerned about it because it may, perhaps, be a sin.’
‘Surely,’ Father O’Connor said earnestly, ‘that is the only thing which is worth being concerned about.’
At Kingstown Father O’Connor was persuaded to agree to drop in on Yearling when he had concluded his visit to the Bradshaws. They parted. Father O’Connor allowed himself the pleasure of a walk along the front. The elegance of the houses pleased him, the frequent carriages, the manifestations of polite living. It was a world in which he had once held an honoured place. He turned into the back streets, where the passage of a couple of years had left their less kindly traces. Mr. Bradshaw’s set of houses near the harbour, he discovered, were now in need of support and had great beams slanting against them to prop the front walls. But their poverty was not like that of the central city; their squalor kept itself to itself. The township remained elegant.
He refused Mrs. Bradshaw’s invitation to stay for dinner, and explained that he was already committed. As an alternative she was happy to have him accept tea and scones. She hoped he was contented still in his parish and wondered why he seemed to have abandoned the relief fund idea. She had thought it such an excellent one. Father O’Connor explained that it had not proved so straightforward a matter as, in his early enthusiasm, he had believed it to be. He would not vex her with details. She thought his uneasiness was a sign that their efforts had fallen short of his expectations. He assured her that that was not the case.
‘Our help was so small it wasn’t worth while,’ she suggested.
‘Everything is worth while,’ Father O’Connor insisted, ‘even the smallest thing we do.’
‘I’ve often thought of visiting myself,’ Mrs. Bradshaw confided, ‘but my husband is very much against it.’
‘He is right,’ Father O’Connor said.
‘And Miss Gilchrist. I’d like to speak to her even for half an hour.’
Father O’Connor insisted that it was out of the question. He told her again about the kind of place it was, about the inmates, their coarseness, the overpowering combination of age and ignorance and illness. Mrs. Bradshaw would find it too distressing.
‘Is she very ill?’ Mrs. Bradshaw asked.
‘Last week there seemed little hope for her. But on Sunday she seemed as well as ever.’
‘She was always very strong,’ Mrs. Bradshaw said. She seemed to be considering something. In order not to intrude, he took his time putting milk and sugar in his tea, stirring it, tasting it. He was glad he did so. Her next question led without embarrassment towards the topic he had come to discuss.
‘When they die,’ Mrs. Bradshaw asked, ‘what are the arrangements?’
He chose his sentences carefully.
‘The relatives are notified—if there are any. If there are and they claim the body they have the option of making the customary funeral arrangements—at their own personal expense, of course.’
‘And if there are no relatives?’
‘In that case, I’m afraid, it’s an institutional burial in a pauper’s grave.’
‘I shouldn’t like that to happen to Miss Gilchrist,’ Mrs. Bradshaw said.
Father O’Connor saw that the moment had come when he should be frank.
‘She spoke to me about it last Sunday. The thought seems to be constantly at the back of her mind. It has made her very unhappy—so unhappy that she asked me, as a great favour, to mention it to you.’
His words so affected Mrs. Bradshaw that he wondered for a moment if he had been too brutal and direct, if he had assaulted her feelings instead of appealing to her charity. She set his mind at rest almost at once.
‘I’m very glad you told me this. Please let Miss Gilchrist know that if I’ve failed the living I’ll at least do my duty by the dead.’
She began to weep. They were the tears of a kind-hearted woman and they distressed him greatly. It was not her fault that Miss Gilchrist had been cast off.
‘You are very generous,’ he offered. It was the best he could think of.
‘We should have looked after her ourselves. She was such a loyal poor soul—and she was with us so long.’
‘Your husband had to be practical.’
‘Do we fulfil our obligations by being practical all the time?’ she asked.
Her bitter tone caught him on the wrong foot. He had only meant to console, not to begin a discussion on the morality of a dismal affair. The main thing was she was prepared to meet Miss Gilchrist’s wishes.
‘I’ll tell Miss Gilchrist. It will make her very happy. And grateful.’
‘For so little?’
‘It is not by any means little,’ he said, earnestly.
‘It seems so to me.’
‘I assure you it isn’t. You are a generous woman. You must stop reproaching yourself. And you must not blame your husband.’
‘He is not to know,’ she interrupted quickly. ‘Please don’t mention anything to him.’
This mild woman surprised him. He had thought her incapable of bitterness, an imperturbable woman at the centre of a small, smoothly enamelled world. Yet she criticised her husband and was prepared to disobey him because in her heart she felt a greater power at work. He knew how hard that must be for her, a woman shaped—to the raising of a teacup—by the conventions of her class.
‘You need have no fear,’ he told her, in his quietest and most reassuring tone.
Then, to ease her mind further, he told of his call on Mary. She questioned him about Mary’s circumstances, her husband, her children. He began to understand how lonely and unhappy she was, this woman without children of her own who brooded too much over the misfortunes of those for whom she felt the tug of responsibility. She did not brush shoulders often enough with reality to know that these were commonplace hardships. There was nothing to be done about them that Father O’Connor could see, except to suffer them with patience and to offer, where possible, some negligible but well-intentioned relief. Her kindness impressed him, but he was glad, nevertheless, when he could look at the clock and say, without lying, that it was really time to go if he was to spare a little while for Mr. Yearling before getting back to the duties of his parish.
&nb
sp; Hennessy, about to climb the steps to 3 Chandlers Court, heard the tin whistle and cocked his head to listen. The notes, creeping from behind the basement window, shaped a slow air that was barely audible, although the street was enjoying one of its rare interludes of quietness. Where were the men? Hennessy wondered. Where were the women, the children, the dogs that should have been searching the gutter with noses nursing the remote hope of something edible? Off to gape at some moment’s diversion, he decided; off to follow a German band, maybe, or a parade of military passing on its way to join a ship. It was disappointing. There was no one to pass on his news to, no one standing on any of the steps, no one leaning against a lamp-post; only a street in the evening sunlight and a melancholy air meandering down its emptiness. The basement window had no glass in it. Instead, pieces of cardboard filled in its frame, leaving a small panel at the top for light and air.
‘Rashers,’ he shouted.
The air continued. It was slow; it was a personal, unorganised kind of air that could meander on for ever. Hennessy saw a stone, stooped for it, then let it fly at the window. It made a sharp sound on the cardboard. For a moment the melody broke off, then started again. Irritated, Hennessy searched once more. He found a larger stone which hopped back off the cardboard and fell into the area space with a thud. The music stopped abruptly and a voice from inside yelled in anger.
‘Who flung that?’
‘Rashers,’ Hennessy shouted again.
‘Go home, you little bowsie. Flinging stones at a decent man’s window. I know you. I’ll tell your mother—honest to God I will.’
‘It’s me, Hennessy.’
‘Who?’
‘Hennessy.’
‘Wouldn’t you think you’d have more sense at your age,’ Rashers yelled.
‘I want to talk to you.’
‘You could knock at the bloody door.’
‘A bit of news.’
‘Like a bloody Christian. That cardboard cost money.’
‘Come on up,’ Hennessy invited, ‘I want a word with you.’
He sat on the steps. The stone under his skinny behind felt warm. The day had been good. He had spent it travelling between the office of Bates & Sons, Contractors, in Merchants Lane and a gang of men who were working in Phoenix Park. Twice he had pushed a handcart across the city to them with supplies. But he had taken his time, pausing when he wanted to watch anything of interest, enjoying the sunlight, happy to have a few weeks’ work as a runner. Two rosy spots on his normally sallow face showed the benefit of good weather and exercise. He took a cigarette from his waistcoat pocket, lit it with an air of luxury and waited. When Rashers joined him he had the tin whistle still in his hands.
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