Sometimes Molly would stand in the scullery and cry for Katie, while at the same time experiencing a feeling of relief that Katie was gone; for she would never have been needed had Katie still been here; and she was needed—they couldn’t do without her. Why, she told herself, she was the only one in the house who hadn’t lost her mind . . . except Mick; and he was no help, one way or the other. All he could do was to stand among awe-struck groups of lads, bragging that he knew where Dominic was hiding . . . He didn’t! She tucked her apron more firmly about her as she thought that, of all the youngsters, she was the only one who really knew—Dominic was taken into a house at the top of the street when they carried him from the stackyard; but when John started to search they moved him. It was Peggy Flaherty’s idea. They did it in the night and John hadn’t found Dominic yet.
Thinking of John, Molly looked again at the screwed piece of paper in her palm . . . After attending her father, the doctor had said, ‘Look, my dear; take heed of what I’m going to say to you. Now do you think you can make your brother John some tea when he comes in and put these two tablets in without him seeing you? Be very careful of them; they are strong and will soon put him to sleep.’
She felt very proud it was she who was asked, for her mother was sitting there and he never asked her to do it. So there was a rising of excitement on Molly when she saw John and Father O’Malley coming up the backyard. She’d make the tea now, and offer a cup to the priest; and perhaps he would bless her and say she was a gift of God to her mother and them all at this time.
But the priest did not bless Molly, nor speak to Mary Ellen, but continued to talk to John, who was sitting with his elbows resting on the table and his hand covering his eyes.
Mary Ellen listened while she looked into the fire. Did he never tire? Would he never stop? Why did he persist that the Bracken man was accountable for all this, when it was she herself who had brought it about? Hadn’t she prayed on her bended knees to God, and asked Him to make something happen to stop her lad from going to America? Well, He had made something happen . . . John would never go to America now. God was laughing out of the side of His mouth at her, she felt, and He was waiting for the climax between John and Dominic. The regret she felt in the stackyard when she knew that Dominic was not dead had soon changed to a dread that John would find him. By now, he must have been in every house in the place bar one, and if he were not half demented, that one would surely soon present itself to him. She cast her eyes towards the ceiling . . . How much longer would Dominic remain there, hidden amongst the old furniture, the crocodile, and the poss tubs? She felt like his jailer, sitting outside the prison door, protecting him from a vengeance that hunted him. Had the hunter been anyone but John she would have let him in to do his work.
She turned to look at the priest drinking his cup of tea, and she wondered what she would do if he should propose that they kneel down and say the Rosary, for she was feeling hostile towards a God who had done this to her . . . using her own prayers to bring her to grief! Her eyes moved slowly to John—he was drinking his tea at one go. Soon he would be asleep, if Molly had done what the doctor told her. How long would he sleep? Long enough to get the other one away? And when would he go back to work? There would be only him to work now, for it was doubtful whether Shane would do a hand’s turn again . . . No. John would never now go to America.
She turned to the fire once more, and her old dominant self made an effort to oust the apathy . . . Get up and see to Shane! it ordered. And that lass is wasting the food trying to cook it. You can’t expect neighbours to go on bringing stuff in . . . But the apathy lay heavily on her and she allowed it to settle about her again as a protection.
The priest’s voice was going on and on, and she was listening again. He was saying, ‘You’ve been godless for years, and then you wonder why tribulation like this comes upon you. Can’t you see, man, you can’t defy God and get away with it; the ignoring of His Holy Mass Sunday after Sunday brings its tribulation. Make up your mind to turn over a new leaf . . . Throw off all undesirable companions, and come to Mass.’
The priest’s voice was falling to an almost sympathetic tone, it was quiet and even; and, as Mary Ellen listened, the wonder was born in her that he could be capable of such gentleness. As his voice became slower still, she turned to look at him. His eyes half closed, he was leaning across the table, for all the world like someone drunk, and he was emphasizing each laboured word with a wobbly shake of his finger.
Mary Ellen rose sharply to her feet, staring at the priest, her eyes wide and her mouth open. As Father O’Malley lifted his head and slowly comprehended her astonished look, he pulled himself upright . . . What in the name of God had come upon him! This great, great tiredness. He shook his head in an endeavour to throw it off. Holy Mother of mothers, had he caught something? . . . But what could he have caught? Where had he been today? . . . The Flannagans . . . and the child with the suspected sleeping sickness . . . In the name of God, it couldn’t be! God wouldn’t let his faithful servant suffer such a thing. But he had surely caught something—never before in his life had he felt so tired.
As Mary Ellen began to laugh, the priest rose slowly to his feet. These people! What were they? Ignorant hooligans, who could be driven to do the right thing only by fear . . . Oh, God, don’t let this thing fall upon me! he appealed. By the use of my strong will I will bring these people to You . . . Only take this from me . . . that woman laughing! She was mad! . . . He must get home and to bed. He turned and staggered through the front room, with the terrified Molly behind him and Shane, half raised up in bed, following his erratic course in bewilderment and Mary Ellen’s laughter becoming dimmer in his ears.
Mary Ellen had no power to stop the laughter; it swelled inside her, like the fire did a few days ago . . . or was it years? It shook every fibre of her body. She held one hand tightly against her stomach and a forearm across her wobbling breasts. John was standing over her, his glazed eyes blinking, and saying, ‘Stop it, Ma! Look; steady on.’ He was holding her by the shoulders, and her wide-open mouth and grimacing face were doing more to bring back his mind to normality than all the reasoning in the world. It only wanted his mother to go mad to complete the whole thing. ‘Look, be quiet!’ His voice cracked hoarsely on the words.
‘I . . . I can’t, lad.’ She moved her hands to her sides, where the pain of her laughter was tearing at her. ‘The . . . the pills! she p-put them in the wrong . . . c-cup.’
John could not understand what her words were meant to imply. He shook her again: ‘Ma! Ma! Stop it, I tell you!’
Shane’s voice came weakly from the front room, calling, ‘What is it? What is it out there? Why are you laughing? For God’s sake!’
Slowly Mary Ellen’s laughter subsided, and she gazed up into John’s dirty, stubbly face, and for a second her own smoothed out into an expressionless mask before crumpling under the release of her tears; and her broken words, ‘Oh, me bairn! me bairn! me bonnie bairn!’ cut through John, and completed his awakening.
He put his arms about her, holding her tightly, and her emotion rocked its way through him, and the burning of his eyes became unbearable. Like the rush of water when the main dock gates were opened to admit a ship, the tears came to him too. Silently flowing, they fell on Mary Ellen’s brow; and their raining, more than her own, restored her, and set her once again in her rightful place as pivot of the house. And so, as always, they balanced each other.
Mary Ellen’s body still shaking and her tears still falling, she drew away from John, and taking his arm, saying, ‘Come, lad,’ she led him to the bedroom. When he sat on the bedside she lifted up his feet, and as she unloosened his boots he groaned and, turning his face into the pillow, sobbed, with the tearing, heart-rending sobs that only a man in sorrow can cry.
As Father Bailey hurried up Fadden Street he kept telling himself that this was not the time to be amused; tragedy had stalked this street, and was still doing so. But, nevertheless, only the darkne
ss hid the twinkle in his eye and the quirk on his lips. The story the child Molly had brought to him was fantastic . . . giving Father O’Malley the tea with the drug in! And him staggering out into the street to be confronted by Peter Bracken, of all people. And then to be taken into Bracken’s house! Oh, it was the limit of limits. In the wildest stretches of imagination, Father Bailey could not see his pastor allowing himself to be even touched by the hand of Peter Bracken, apart from being led into his house.
When Peter Bracken opened his door, Father Bailey said, ‘You sent for me?’
‘I did,’ said Peter. ‘Will you come in?’
Nothing more was said until they reached the kitchen, and even then not immediately; for the sight of Father O’Malley stretched out on the mat, with his head on a pillow and a blanket covering him, was almost too much for Father Bailey. Father O’Malley looked less prepossessing in sleep than he did awake. He looked, Father Bailey thought whimsically, as though he might be dictating to the sender of dreams as to their type and quality.
Father Bailey suppressed his mirth and left till later the relish this situation would provide, particularly for those times when his superior would be most overbearing . . . Oh, the laughs he would get from this would last him a lifetime!
‘How did it come about?’ he asked Peter, without daring to raise his eyes from the floor in case this man who was also in sorrow, should detect his mirth.
‘I happened to be coming up the street,’ replied Peter, ‘and found him slumped against the wall near my door. Molly was with him and she told me what she had done. There was no-one about at the time, but I knew that should anyone see him it would be said immediately that I’d put the evil eye on him.’
Without looking up, Father Bailey nodded.
‘Or should he have been seen staggering about,’ went on Peter, ‘some people would have said . . . well, that he was drunk. People only need to see a shadow to create the substance.’
Father Bailey slowly brought his gaze up to this man . . . How many terrible substances had been created from shadows for him! And not a few by the priest at his feet. And yet he had endeavoured to save Father O’Malley from the stigma of drunkenness!
‘You can get a cab and take him home,’ Peter Bracken went on: ‘Or you can leave him here till he wakes.’
Yes, he could get a cab, Father Bailey thought, and take him home. But then again, should he be seen being carried from the house, this man would be blamed for putting some ’fluence on him . . . No; he would leave him here. And please God, he’d be here to see him wake . . . he wouldn’t miss that for a bucketful of sovereigns.
‘Would it be putting you out,’ he asked, ‘if he stayed?’
‘Not at all,’ said Peter Bracken quietly.
‘And myself too?’ added Father Bailey. ‘I have some things to attend to, but I’ll come back later if I may . . . And I’d better look in on the doctor who issued those tablets.’
‘There’s something I’d better tell you,’ said Peter . . . ‘It was important that John should have taken those tablets’—he nodded down at the sleeping priest—‘for tonight it is arranged that . . . that’—he couldn’t bring himself to speak Dominic’s name—‘the other one is to be got away.’
‘You know where he is then?’ said Father Bailey, with interest.
‘Yes. But he can’t remain there much longer. John will shortly regain his senses, and he will surely guess; for he’s upstairs above him in the only house he hasn’t searched.’
‘Good God!’
‘John is too good a man to suffer . . . for him. He must be got away!’
The priest nodded again, and asked, ‘Where is he going?’
‘I can’t tell you that. I can only tell you he’ll be put aboard a tramp steamer.’
‘Will he be fit to work his passage?’
‘Not for a time; but that has been arranged.’
Peter Bracken said no more, but Father Bailey knew that sick men weren’t taken, even on tramp steamers, for nothing. And the man before him was the only one around these parts who could supply the money and arrange the whole thing. He shook his head . . . Here, indeed, was a good Samaritan; and under such circumstances as to make the act heroic. He looked at Peter’s shrunken figure and at the face, which during the last three days had drooped into deep lines of age, and he said: ‘I think you’re a very brave and forgiving man.’
The old man turned away, his lips trembling: ‘I am not brave; it is that I can bear my sorrow easier than the others, for my child is near me. Death to them’—he nodded towards the wall—‘even with their religion, is a severance that only death can join again. But to me there has been no parting, the main part of her is still with me.’
For the moment, the priest experienced a tinge of envy for this man’s faith . . . Here was faith as it should be. Would any Catholic think like this? No, he thought regretfully. Christ Himself was in the blessed sacrament of the altar for them, but their faith was so limited that it could not reach over the boundary to Him . . . so there were few miracles. They prayed to God to come to them, instead of boldly going to Him.
‘Can I help in any way?’ he asked. ‘Is there anything I can do?’
Peter turned to the priest again: ‘You can, if you will. John wouldn’t suspect you. You could get more tablets and see that he takes them. If the men don’t get the other . . . this done tonight, there may not be another chance for days. And then it may be too late.’
Father Bailey looked steadily at Peter Bracken: ‘Why are you taking all this trouble over someone who has done you such a terrible injury?’
Peter’s eyes closed, and his face set in lines of pain. He had lost the mainspring of his life and hopes, for Christine would have carried on his ideas. She had been brave; more so than him in some ways, for he was vulnerable to jibes—how many deaths had he died these past three days because of the attitude that had been taken towards Christine. It was as if his girl did not count . . . as if she too had not died the same death as the child, even the blame for the tragedy, in some subtle way, had been laid on her, while the perpetrator of it had even come in for a modicum of sympathy from a section of the people, and he himself was more hated and feared than before . . . and his heart was sore within him.
But he answered the priest calmly: ‘Because I believe in the Great Plan of Life. I believe all that has happened had to happen. What I am doing I must do, for I feel also that it isn’t in the Plan for John to commit a crime and suffer for it. There are other things for him, he has begun to think, and nothing can stop him evolving.’
As if expecting some deprecating remark, Peter’s eyes held those of the priest for a moment before he went on: ‘I believe he will eventually do something for the betterment of his people . . . I know he will, for Christine has told me; and she knows, for, you see, she loved him.’
Father Bailey’s gaze was almost tender, as he looked at this old man, who, strangely enough, held views which were in exact keeping with some of his own; did he himself not always say that the path was all mapped out for each one of us from the day he was born, that the great Creator knew the shape of every pebble to be trodden by our feet. This man was a thinker, and was possessed of a spirit that wasn’t un-Christlike. He preached that he was part of Christ in his understanding and in his power, and although the doctrine he taught was divided by insurmountable barriers from his own, nevertheless the essence was very much the same. And he must talk to him; for whether he knew it or not, at this moment his need was great. Father Bailey knew that to extend to Peter Bracken the hand of friendship would be a herculean task; the main stumbling block would be, not so much the difference of their religions or opinions, but the priest now lying on the mat between them; and not him alone, but others of his breed, who with a little learning packing the narrow channels of their minds, set up theories bred of their own enlarged egos and used them under the stamp of the Church . . . Well, this was one time he was going to make a stand. If this man and he could n
ever see eye to eye, they would have gone far if each could respect the other’s point of view . . . A flash of enlightening candour through the priest’s mind told him that the trying would be his work alone, for this man in his humility was advanced far beyond him.
He put out his hand and touched Peter Bracken’s sleeve: ‘I’ll fix up that lad next door; then perhaps we can have a talk.’
After Father Bailey had gone, Peter, his eyes bright and head raised, stood by the side of the sleeping priest. He spoke as if to someone near: ‘You were right, my dear; your going had a purpose. Never could this have come about otherwise. Will you ask all the guides of tolerance to help this man here? I, too, will work on him, that he may become more like him just gone.’
While Peter Bracken was sitting at the head of Father O’Malley the priest jerked violently—it was as if his spirit was up in arms at this outrage. From time to time his lips and cheeks would puff out and emit sounds like ‘Pooh! poo-pooh!’
Peter did not smile—it needed Father Bailey to appreciate the humour of the situation.
The tin alarm clock on the mantelpiece showed twelve-thirty. Father Bailey sat looking at it, and from time to time he wondered whether it had stopped. But as he stared, the hand would give a slight movement, and once again he would tell himself that these were the longest three hours he had spent in his life . . . and the oddest. Was there ever such a situation! Here he was, sitting in this kitchen, after midnight, with this toil-worn woman opposite, so still she might be dead; and three cups on the table, the largest holding the white powder already mixed with the milk. And there on the hob was the teapot, stewing its inside out. They would likely all die from tannin poisoning if they were to drink the stuff. Well, pray God there would be no need. Less than half an hour now, and the men would be here and gone, and John could remain asleep or wake up just as he pleased, and no harm done . . . And for himself, he would go next door, where at least there was a comfortable chair to recline in while waiting for the grand awakening, as he termed it, of his superior . . . Was there ever such a situation! There next door was lying the man who was the sworn enemy of all spiritualists, and of Peter Bracken in particular and being tended gently by the man himself.
The Fifteen Streets Page 20