Strumpet City

by James Plunkett

‘The rat is sagacious.’

  ‘Highly sagacious. I believe the crowd in the College of Surgeons would rather have a rat to experiment on than a guinea-pig. More like the human.’

  ‘I can believe that,’ Rashers said. ‘Some humans is remarkably like the rat.’

  ‘Now you’re talking,’ the man agreed.

  They considered the pigeon’s activity for a while longer.

  ‘Did you back anything in the Derby?’ the man asked.

  ‘I gave that up a long time ago,’ Rashers said.

  ‘You’re wise. I had two bob on Sweeper myself and he’s still running. Are you stepping up the road?’

  ‘No,’ Rashers said, ‘I may as well rest here a while longer.’

  He wanted to see the result of the pigeon’s labour. There was nothing better to do. The man lingered a while longer out of politeness, then he went off.

  Father O’Sullivan noted in the Irish Catholic that a new publication had been issued from the office of the Messenger of the Sacred Heart. He went off to consult Father Giffley about it, finding him in his study.

  ‘What is the title of this latest evidence of religious fervour?’ he was asked. Father O’Sullivan, reading from the paper said:

  ‘The Litany of the Sacred Heart, with commentary and meditations.’

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘By Father Joseph McDonnell, S.J.’

  ‘Ah—an S.J. Don’t you think it might be a bit on the intellectual side for St. Brigid’s?’

  Father O’Sullivan smiled, knowing that he was not being asked a question.

  ‘I would like a few copies for the church pamphlet box.’

  ‘And why not,’ Father Giffley said. He closed his eyes and spoke aloud the verses of the Litany that came to his mind. ‘Heart of Jesus, filled with reproaches: Heart of Jesus, bruised for our crimes: Heart of Jesus, made obedient unto death.’

  He stopped and gestured to a chair.

  ‘Sit down, John.’

  Father O’Sullivan took the chair. He was always at ease in his parish priest’s presence, even when Father Giffley used him as the butt of his humour.

  ‘I want to tell you that I am going mad, John. Will you join me in a glass?’

  ‘Not now, thank you,’ Father O’Sullivan said. He looked to one side, not to evade, but to hide the sadness which he knew might show itself.

  ‘Why don’t you look at me, John?’

  ‘I took back the veils and the surplices from the children tonight,’ Father O’Sullivan said gently. ‘All the surplices were returned, but two of the veils were not.’

  ‘The boys’ surplices are always fully accounted for, aren’t they?’ Father Giffley said. ‘The veils are more uncertain. The little girls steal them. They woo men as they woo God—with raiment. I am not disturbed. Buy two more.’

  Father O’Sullivan watched as the other rose and took whiskey from a cabinet. He saw him pour a measure and then add a little water from the jug on the table. As he did so, Father Giffley said:

  ‘Heart of Jesus, desire of the everlasting hills

  Heart of Jesus, patient and full of mercy.’

  He drank. He regarded Father O’Sullivan over his glass with amused affection. ‘You have no pamphlet of your own published yet?’

  ‘When I finish them they are never good enough.’

  ‘Will you be here during the evening, John?’

  ‘All of it.’

  ‘Then go and bring me your last effort and I’ll read it and send for you and we’ll discuss it. I’ll give you a frank opinion.’

  Father O’Sullivan was surprised. Father Giffley had never offered to read anything of his before. Pleased, he went to his room and returned with the neatly written pages, to find Father Giffley pouring himself another glass. His mood had changed. He was staring through the window at the bunting which decorated the path about the church which the Corpus Christi procession had followed.

  ‘Leave it with me,’ he said. Father O’Sullivan placed the manuscript on the table beside him and withdrew.

  Fitz washed when he got home, made tea for himself, then attended a meeting of his section that had been called to organise support for a strike in one of the timber yards. Mulhall took the chair, while Joe sat beside him on the platform making notes. It was becoming a routine now: the resolution of support, the decision not to pass pickets and not to handle goods moved from the yard by non-union labour. There were three further resolutions of sympathy and pledges of support for comrades on strike in England. Then they retired to Tobin’s of Townsend Street, because Pat had backed the winner of the Derby and offered to treat them.

  ‘Tagalie,’ Pat said, when they were sitting with pints of porter in front of them, ‘it was a certainty.’

  ‘The only filly in the race,’ Joe pointed out.

  ‘What price?’ asked Mulhall.

  ‘One hundred to eight,’ Fitz supplied. He had read the results on the job:

  1. Tagalie 100-8

  2. Jaegar 8-l

  3. Tracery 66-1

  Sweeper, an American horse, had been favourite at two to one.

  ‘You had courage, anyway,’ Mulhall said, ‘backing the filly.’

  ‘He has a weakness for fillies,’ Joe commented.

  ‘The jockey was J. Rieff,’ Pat challenged, ‘and I wonder if the name conveys anything to any of you?’

  They thought about it but eventually had to admit that they could find no particular significance in it.

  ‘What was the winner of the 1907 Derby?’ Pat asked.

  ‘Boss Croker’s horse, Orby,’ Mulhall answered. Then he clapped his fist against his knee and added: ‘Begod, I remember—it was ridden by J. Rieff.’

  It came back to the rest of them then. Joe said it was only a fluke that a filly should win against nineteen others—all colts.

  ‘Fluke or no fluke,’ Mulhall said, raising his glass again to Pat, ‘we’re all having a drink out of it.’

  He looked over to Fitz for approval. Increasingly now, Fitz had noted, Mulhall, who took the lead in most of their discussions and decisions, looked to him for support and approval. They began to talk about the court of inquiry which was investigating the Titanic disaster of the previous April. Joe said the captain had brought the curse of God on his ship by boasting that even God couldn’t sink the Titanic. The Orangemen who built it had let loose the most terrible blasphemies against the Catholic Church. It was a well-known fact that the Titanic job was labelled No. 3909. If you held the number 3909 up to the mirror it read POPE. That was done deliberately so that the Titanic would be built under the slogan of ‘No Pope’. Mulhall said they were a notorious anti-Catholic crowd, the mob up in the North.

  They were beginning to discuss this when a man who was not of their company intervened and said: ‘I hope I’m not interrupting . . .’

  Then he said he had heard their talk about the Titanic and asked if anyone of them could say how many people had been drowned. When no one could remember precisely, he told them the number had been one thousand five hundred and ninety-four.

  ‘And here’s a very interesting thing a man showed me,’ he said. Taking out a cigarette packet, he wrote on the back the figures 1594 and showed it to them.

  ‘Now,’ he asked, ‘what’s the first, fifth, ninth and fourth letters of the alphabet?’ Without waiting he wrote them down under the numbers.

  1594

  AEID

  Then he said that by a remarkable coincidence these letters spelled out an answer to the pro-British attitude and anti-Nationalist sentiments of the Orange shipwrights. ‘A.E.I.D.’ he said. ‘All England Is Damned.’

  They agreed that it was an extraordinary coincidence.

  ‘It ties in with your friend’s information about the “NO POPE” slogan,’ he said. ‘I thought I’d show you.’

  When he had gone Mulhall said there was something very queer about the whole business of the Titanic; pride always went before a fall. Fitz smiled quietly. Joe said the owners and the work
ers flew in God’s face. Pat looked at him pityingly and said:

  ‘All England is damned. Do you believe that nonsense?’

  ‘It may be nonsense,’ Joe insisted, ‘but it’s a very extraordinary coincidence.’

  ‘That fellow made it all up out of his head,’ Pat said. ‘He’s one of Arthur Griffith’s mob—a bloody Sinn Feiner.’

  ‘What’s wrong with Sinn Fein?’

  ‘They’re against you and against Larkin!’ Pat shouted at him. ‘That’s what’s wrong with them.’

  Mulhall intervened.

  ‘If you don’t keep your voices down,’ he warned them, ‘you’ll get us all flung out.’

  Mrs. Bradshaw attended the Corpus Christi procession at Kingstown Church and after it she had a number of the children for a little party. She had sandwiches and cakes and jellies for them, all prepared by herself. Making such things for children gave her great pleasure. At first she meant to have fruit as well, but decided against it on the advice of her husband, who reminded her that fruit was golden in the morning, silver in the afternoon, but lead at night. It had been a maxim of his mother’s, he said. Yearling had agreed to take them all home afterwards in his motor car. Games were in progress in the garden when he arrived and as he opened the gate a small boy tumbled out of a tree above him and landed at his feet. Yearling picked him up, made sure he was undamaged, and gave him a shilling to be good in future. He found Mrs. Bradshaw trying very hard to supervise the proceedings.

  ‘If you don’t watch them all the time,’ she said to him, ‘they get quite out of hand.’

  Bradshaw greeted him from a porchway and invited him to have a drink.

  ‘Florence loves this sort of thing,’ he said, as he poured whiskey, ‘but what happens if there’s an accident?’

  Yearling laughed and said children and animals had charmed lives.

  ‘Did you see the procession?’

  Yearling had not. It would be enough to shepherd two or three carloads home.

  ‘I walked by the seafront,’ he explained. The activities down there had been more to his taste—the yachts in the harbour, the promenaders, the pier fishermen, a gull resting on the water which had stayed all the time in the same place, bobbing gently up and down and up and down. He had watched it a long time and now he could recall the scene vividly. The water had been green and sluggish, the seaweed clinging to the wooden supports of the landing stage moved perpetually, the water made lapping sounds all the time. It had been pleasantly hypnotic to stand quite still and watch, to feel that Time, trapped between him and the seagull, had been unable for some moments to move forward.

  It would be useless, however, to try to convey anything of that to Bradshaw who, with thumbs in the waistcoat pockets that accommodated the twin strands of his watch-chain, awaited conversation.

  ‘I walked by your houses on the way back,’ he said instead, ‘you should do something about them.’

  The houses were now supported by great timber props, their hall doors open, their fanlights broken. From each window a pole protruded, displaying the tenants’ laundry. The props and the poles and the laundry gave the place a military air and reminded Yearling of medieval drawings of beleaguered cities. If the tenants had poured boiling pitch on the passers-by it would not have surprised him.

  ‘It’s the damned railway,’ Bradshaw complained. ‘The trains going past all these years have loosened the foundations. I’ve written to the company several times but they disclaim responsibility.’

  ‘If you don’t do something soon,’ Yearling warned, ‘the authorities will take a hand in it. They are threatening action in the city.’

  ‘They’ve been sending me letters. I’ve told them it’s the railway’s responsibility,’ Bradshaw said. Then he smiled tightly and added: ‘However—they won’t get very far with me.’

  The smile conveyed that he had influence in the right quarter. Local politicians were vulnerable and yielded to pressure. Yearling did not like the smile. Placing his glass on the table, he joined his hands and asked:

  ‘How many tenants are in them?’

  ‘God knows,’ Bradshaw said. ‘Certainly not enough to make an economic proposition of them. Why do you ask?’

  ‘When I passed by this evening,’ Yearling said, ‘I wondered how many would be killed if they collapsed.’

  Bradshaw looked surprised.

  ‘What a damned peculiar notion,’ he began.

  But Yearling stood up. ‘I must see that the children get home,’ he said. He went to the door. It was an extremely abrupt departure. Bradshaw saw him crossing the lawn and a little later he was shepherding the first group of children towards the garden gate. Mrs. Bradshaw was waving after him and calling out something which made him wave back reassuringly. The glass of whiskey on the table beside Bradshaw was untouched. That was damned unusual.

  Fitz arrived home late. Mary and the children were staying at her father’s small farm in the country, so there was nothing to bring him home early. As he mounted the steps he heard Rashers’ dog barking in the basement. He knew by its loneliness and persistence that Rashers was still out. The windows of the empty flat were letting in the last of the evening light. The air was warm, a cup and saucer and teapot remained on the table as he had left them. Through the windows he could see the mountains, dark now but still visible in the distance. A jumble of roofs and chimney-pots spread out on all sides, angled and broken and awry, a battered brotherhood enduring with the city the incurable disease of old age. These bricks were returning once more to dust, one by one these walls would bulge outwards, crack, collapse into rubble. They were despised and uncared for, like the tenants they sheltered, who lived for the most part on bread and tea and bore children on rickety beds to grow up in the same hardship and hunger. Larkin was thundering his message of revolution, organising strikes, leading assaults on a shocked society, but the immediate gains, where they came at all, made little difference. The comfort that Mary and himself were beginning to enjoy had come by accident, through the regard of a wealthy woman, who bestowed on them the furniture and clothes she would otherwise have thrown out. Patronage, not organisation, had given them anything they possessed. Watching in silence the jumble of roofs under the darkening air, he thought again of countless people in drab rooms. The trouble was there would never be enough patrons to go round.

  He brought the tea things to the basin and began to wash them, using cold water. In some strange bedroom many miles to the south, in a house surrounded by fields, his children were asleep. Mary too, perhaps. It was odd not to know. Later, as he lay in bed waiting for sleep, he continued for a long time thinking gravely about Mary, their children, the world they would live in, their future together.

  Tagalie had won the Derby, Rashers knew. At a hundred to eight. If you had a shilling on that you’d collect—what would it be? A hundred to eight that was twelve and a half to one—twelve and sixpence. But you never had luck like that anyway. Once in a blue moon, maybe, after you’d lost ten times over.

  That was why he gave it up. When you were destitute nothing lucky ever happened. The more you were in want, the more you’d go without. Mrs. Molloy, the only mother he had ever known, used to say that. The more you’re in want, the more you’ll go without. And she used to say to him: Rashers, me heart, if it was raining soup, you’d have nothing but a fork.

  That was a long time ago now, and somehow the sunset colours in the water and on the stone of the granary wall and on the distant railway bridge brought it all sadly back to him. In the open doorway of the granary the pigeon, after a long respite, was again at work. Fine dust floated in the shaft of light that struck the floor beside it and coloured it like a rainbow. It was a hard way to gather food. And unnecessary. Further down the street, near the entrance to the bakery, grain in plenty lay scattered on the cobbles. Perhaps thievery was a sauce.

  ‘More power,’ a voice said behind him. It was the man who had spoken about the horses earlier on, the man who had backed the favou
rite. Rashers remembered the sum he had worked out.

  ‘I was thinking,’ he said, ‘if a body had a shilling on the filly he’d win twelve and sixpence.’

  ‘Damn nearly a week’s wages,’ the man agreed.

  If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

  ‘And I was wondering,’ Rashers continued, ‘why you’d want to back the favourite.’

  ‘Putting it where the big money is—taking a lead from the crowd with the information.’

  ‘What information—wasn’t he beaten?’

  ‘Something went wrong,’ the man said. ‘There’s many a slip—if you follow me.’

  He sounded as though he had personal knowledge of some piece of trickery that had failed to come off. Then, dismissing his bad luck, he slapped Rashers on the back and went off.

  ‘There’ll be another day,’ he said, with a great show of confidence.

  Rashers turned away from him in time to see the pigeon being killed. It happened very simply. First the pigeon hopped back as the break in the sack became wide enough to let a trickle of grain fall on to the floor. As it began to eat, three or four companions joined in. The breach in the sack widened under the weight of the sacks which were piled above it. The trickle of grain became a steady stream. As the broken sack emptied, those relying on it for support began slowly to shift position. The movement, beginning at the bottom, travelled upwards. Rashers saw those on the top tilting. The movement was very slow. For some seconds he waited, knowing what was going to happen. Then, quite suddenly, the whole pyramid collapsed. The floor shuddered as sacks tumbled about it, a cloud of dust filled the granary and cut out the sunlight. Somewhere beneath the tumble of sacks the pigeon and his companions lay crushed and dead.

  When the dust had cleared and the workmen had begun to rebuild the sacks Rashers turned for home. It was one of those never-ending June evenings, with long reaches of sky from which the light seemed unable to ebb. Rashers moved slowly. The rumble of the collapsing sacks and the great cloud of dust had set his heart beating in a way that now made him breathless. His bad leg made movement very difficult, his chest pained him. He began to curse the pigeon, for its thievery, its unnecessary death, the shock that was making the road home interminable, the delay that would send him hungry to bed. It was too late now to ask Mrs. Bartley for bread. Rusty would go hungry too. At Chandlers Court he stopped to get his breath and to look up at the sky. It was never ending, with never fading light. He thought of Death and felt it was waiting for him somewhere in the sky’s deeps, cold Sergeant Death, as the song said, Death the sad smiling tyrant, the cruel and remorseless old foe. He listened to his heart and heard it speaking to him of Death, not in words, but with a sound like sad music. He listened for some time. Then he stepped into the hallway, where his feet echoed on the wooden floor. At the third footstep the dog below in the basement began to bark.