Strumpet City

by James Plunkett

  He shrank from the ordeal of lifting the pot, but there was no help for it. Gingerly he opened the door and stole past Father Giffley’s room once again to the toilet on the upper landing. His stomach turned as he emptied the foul contents and rinsed out the remaining traces. He returned and got into bed, relieved that the unpleasant task was over and done with, relieved too that Father Giffley had not come into the corridor to investigate these latenight comings and goings. There were tins of some kind lying on the floor, he now remembered. Let them stay there.

  He lay exhausted, yet sleepless. The retort he had made to Father Giffley returned several times to his mind: ‘I haven’t that habit, Father.’ He regretted it. He wished he could recall and erase it. He had been wrong in his earlier suspicions about the locked room. Father Giffley had been perfectly sober. As he watched the narrow strip of sky between the partly drawn curtains, accusing himself, asking for forgiveness, the meaning of Father Giffley’s phrase about the devil’s efforts not being very profitable—for once, suggested itself. Had he locked his door to shut out temptation? Had he called out for Father O’Sullivan because, at the end of the long day, from that simple, unnoticing man, there would flow the springs of consolation? ‘I haven’t that habit, Father.’ Had he asked for bread, and been given a stone?

  Father O’Connor closed his eyes tightly, not in an effort to sleep, but the better to bear the self-accusation which desolated him.

  CHAPTER TWO

  In October, whenever he walked along the Vico Road, the hills rising at the back of the city reminded Yearling of Connemara. They were turning brown now under evenings of long, yellow sunsets. Often the green sea below him set him thinking of the miles and miles of water and waste; of England; of the too-faraway years of youth. One day, when Father O’Connor strolled with him, he said: ‘I am getting old.’

  He stopped to lean for a moment on his cane. It was growing dusk. The sea had a strong, autumn smell. The air was damp.

  ‘Everybody does,’ Father O’Connor said, agreeably.

  ‘I begin to think that times are changing, that soon the world we knew will be finished and done with.’

  ‘There are new ideas,’ Father O’Connor admitted, ‘disturbing ideas, abroad. I feel it too and I’m younger than you are.’

  ‘And I begin to look back—to remember; that’s a bad sign.’ He knitted his heavy eyebrows and looked sharply at Father O’Connor.

  ‘Do you think I should have married?’ he asked.

  ‘There’s still time.’

  ‘I don’t think so—ah no.’

  He sighed and began to walk again.

  ‘Still,’ he said, after a while, ‘celibacy was never suited to me. I don’t understand how you fellows manage.’

  ‘We win it by our own means. For some it is easy; for others—it is painfully hard.’

  ‘Is it the same with drink?’

  ‘You are confusing what is sinful and what may only be unseemly.’

  ‘Yes,’ Yearling admitted, ‘you are more broadminded about drink than our crowd. Still, I was jilted for drinking—did I ever tell you that? She was a Catholic too.’

  ‘Once, when we were playing music with Mr. and Mrs. Bradshaw, you hinted at something. It happened in England, I think?’

  ‘A long, long time ago. The sea there reminded me of it. I must tell you about it some time.’

  ‘If you are unhappy at times there are other ways of considering life. There may be a plan, or a reason . . .’

  Yearling looked at him sharply.

  ‘Are you thinking of trying to convert me?’

  Father O’Connor did not return the look. But he said: ‘If I thought I could I would not hesitate.’

  ‘And do you?’

  ‘It is God who converts . . . not bunglers such as I am.’

  A little later Father O’Connor said: ‘When I spoke of drink as being unseemly I didn’t mean that it could not be sinful. It can. I’ve seen it become sinful and I’ve seen it lead to much human tragedy.’ He spoke generally. But he was thinking of Father Giffley.

  October brought work for Rashers once again. He piled paper on the cold bars of the furnace, spread sticks and a dressing of coke. Then he lit the first fire of another season, building it to give a slow heat which he could control. For the first week it required attention at night-time, so he decided to sleep in the boiler house. On the Saturday night, when there was a corpse in the mortuary chapel above, he brought the dog and played music on the flageolet to keep himself company. The dog was a mistake. In the morning, when Father Giffley passed near the entrance, it gave a warning bark.

  ‘In the first week of the season I have to sleep here at night, Father,’ he said. ‘I keep a slow fire so as not to do damage to the pipes.’

  ‘And is the . . . dog . . . very useful?’

  ‘In the matter of company, Father.’

  ‘St. Francis and yourself would get on well together, I can see that.’

  Father Giffley peered into the corners beyond the ring of candlelight. They were grimed with dust. The cobwebs looked solid.

  ‘Do you sleep on the coke?’

  ‘With a sack underneath.’

  ‘And it is comfortable?’

  ‘It could be worse.’

  Father Giffley noted the familiar phrase. Everything could be worse.

  ‘It could, indeed.’

  ‘Only I noticed it’s inclined to bring on the bronchitis.’

  ‘That would be the dust,’ Father Giffley said.

  ‘I hope you don’t think bad of me bringing the dog, Father.’

  ‘We could deduct something for its board and lodging,’ Father Giffley suggested, smiling to himself. ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Rusty, Father.’

  Father Giffley bent down to the dog and said: ‘Here, Rusty, that’s the fellow, that’s the good doggie.’

  The dog wagged its tail. It was a mangy-looking specimen, he thought, like its lord and master. Father Giffley wrinkled his forehead. He thought of a religious picture which had hung somewhere, of a saint who wept for his ox. The picture he remembered clearly—a great, bearded human face pressed in fellowship against the hairy face of the beast—but the saint’s name evaded him. Or—after all, was it called ‘The Peasant Weeps Over His Ox’? Father Giffley was unsure. He patted the dog’s head. Then he straightened and said:

  ‘You shouldn’t spend too much time in this place. The air is foul. Call into the housekeeper later—I’ll tell her to give you some breakfast, and some scraps for Rusty. Do you drink?’

  ‘Whenever good luck pushes a drop under my nose.’

  ‘I’ll tell her to give you a little something to take home.’

  ‘God bless you, Father.’

  ‘For your bronchitis, you understand,’ Father Giffley added.

  He climbed the steps and went out into the air, which was mild. When he had seen the housekeeper he came back again, circled the courtyard a couple of times and then went out into the street. With his hands behind his back and his head bowed forward he pushed through the people who were on their way to mass. They parted for him. Some of them who greeted him were acknowledged with an inclination of the head, others he did not see. He passed under the railway bridge, through side streets which were so far from the church that people wondered to see a priest dressed only in his soutane. Here and there he stopped to talk to children who were playing hopscotch and skipping outside the tenements which occupied so large a part of his parish. He came to the riverside at last and remained leaning against a capstan for some time. To the right and left of him ships lay to. Sunday ships, deserted, he would believe, were it not for the smoke streaming up from the galleys. The cranes were still and the buckets empty. Behind him the bells of Sunday were clamouring throughout the city, marking the arrival of each half-hour. Men passed him and saluted. One of them, a young man of average height, well built, had a grimy and unsabbath like face.

  ‘Good morning,’ Father Giffley said.

>   ‘Good morning, Father.’

  ‘Have you been working?’

  ‘At it all night, Father,’ Fitz said. He pushed his cap on to the back of his head and now that he had stopped, let his eyes travel with the river to the point where the north and south walls widened, disappeared and left it to the sea. It was sluggish and grey, but with a sheen here and there that acknowledged the sunshine.

  ‘Shift work, I suppose?’ Father Giffley questioned.

  ‘At the foundry, Father.’

  ‘How do you get to mass?’

  ‘Our mates come in an hour earlier on Sundays—we do the same for them in our turn.’

  ‘You’re a good bunch of men,’ Father Giffley said. ‘You’ll be off to a football match after the dinner, I suppose?’

  Fitz smiled and said: ‘No such luck today—I’m minding the kids.’

  ‘Letting herself out?’

  ‘For a change,’ Fitz said easily. Father Giffley, he realised, did not remember him.

  ‘You’ve a button in your coat,’ Father Giffley remarked, ‘and I haven’t seen one like it before.’

  Fitz said it was a trade union button.

  ‘Will they release Larkin, do you think?’

  ‘There’s great talk of it, Father.’

  ‘So they should,’ Father Giffley said. ‘Have you ever been on strike?’

  ‘Which of us hasn’t?’

  ‘Of course,’ Father Giffley said, ‘everybody in my parish has been, I suppose. They don’t treat you very fairly, do they?’

  It was not a question that needed answering. Father Giffley rose and put his hands behind his back once more.

  ‘No, indeed,’ he said as he went off, ‘they do not.’

  He went back again through the side streets. People who knew him thought it strange, not because he was walking in his soutane—he was odd and had peculiar ways—but because he was seldom known to stroll through his parish.

  The high windows let in the afternoon sun behind the girl at the bedside, giving lights to her smooth, black hair, leaving her pale face in shadow. She was the girl with the two children who so often brought her snuff, who in fact had just given her a small packet of snuff, which was now under the pillow somewhere, if she could find it. She quested with the fingers of one hand.

  ‘I’ll get it for you.’

  The lights in the hair went out as the girl who had left a good place to marry some poor chap or other leaned nearer the bed. Mary . . . that was the name she was searching for.

  ‘What were you saying, love?’ Miss Gilchrist asked.

  ‘I said I’ll get it for you.’

  The young face smiled. A pleasant girl, she now remembered, who always brought her snuff. Mary.

  ‘I mean before that.’

  ‘I was saying the days are growing short already.’

  ‘What day is it?’

  ‘Sunday.’

  Of course it was Sunday. It was on Sundays she got the snuff. If she used it carefully and watched that it wasn’t stolen it would last a week. Almost.

  ‘When I was a young bit of a thing in Dublin at first I never liked Sundays.’

  ‘Why was that?’

  ‘The bells. I never liked the sound of them.’

  ‘Yes. They make you lonely when there’s only yourself.’

  ‘Our own bells making a din the whole of the morning. And then the Protestant bells going in the afternoon. And the bells for devotion at seven or eight o’clock. They made such a commotion from morning till night I used to be glad when it was Monday.’

  ‘I was like that myself too, at first.’

  ‘When you looked out the window and saw everyone else parading it in their finery?’

  ‘Meeting each other and going to each other’s houses.’

  ‘That was it.’

  Lonely, that was it. In the winter it had not been so bad, though. There were more musical evenings. You got used to it. Sometimes, even, you enjoyed it. Guests got to notice you, gradually. They enquired after your health. They said, ‘Miss Gilchrist, you’re a treasure—you really are.’

  ‘Is it very warm out?’

  ‘It’s lovely—for October.’

  ‘Is it October . . .? Well, well.’

  She made a noise of disbelief.

  ‘That’s what I was saying. About the days growing short.’

  They always began to grow short in October, the days did. The leaves began to come down on the lawn; a bit of wind and you spent the day sweeping, unless Mrs. Bradhaw saw you and said leave them; a woman that liked leaves lying about, the colours beautiful, the sound as your feet brushed through them on the walks, a sentimental woman. If there was a sup of rain you could slip and break your ankle. Small comfort in the swish and colour then.

  The girl handed her the packet and said, ‘Take a little of your snuff.’

  It blurred the outer world with water, making the lungs larger inside and the air that entered them weighty and nourishing. She put it back carefully under her pillow.

  ‘They steal it on me when I’m sleeping,’ she confided. ‘The nurses do it or one of the patients.’

  ‘Perhaps you mislay it,’ the girl said in a gentle tone.

  ‘No fear—it’s stolen. If I find out who I’ll crucify her for it. Time and time again I reach under my pillow and it’s gone—spirited away—vanished.’

  ‘It’s a shame for them,’ Mary said. As she did so the dismissal bell began in a nearby ward. The sound came nearer. She rose, promising to come next Sunday.

  ‘If I’m still here,’ Miss Gilchrist said.

  ‘Of course you’ll be here.’

  Miss Gilchrist smiled a little and closed her eyes.

  They let her sleep through the evening meal. When she awakened she reached for the snuff immediately. It had gone. She raised herself with a great mustering of willpower and looked about her at the other beds.

  ‘Who took my snuff?’ she shouted. ‘Which of youse thieving trollops made love to my snuff?’ Nobody answered. When she shouted again a nurse came to quieten her.

  ‘Where did you put it?’ the nurse asked.

  ‘Here—under my pillow.’

  The nurse searched. ‘There’s no snuff,’ the nurse said finally, ‘you must have been dreaming.’

  ‘I wasn’t dreaming. It was brought to me today.’ The nurse patted the pillow into shape and arranged the bedclothes. Her face was stern.

  ‘Now, now,’ she said, firmly.

  Father Giffley took afternoon devotions. They consisted of rosary, sermon and benediction. While Father O’Sullivan preached the sermon Father Giffley, who sat to one side of the altar, his hands palms downwards on his knees, his head inclined forward, saw the altar boy with ginger hair nod off to sleep—as usual. After tea they sat together in a room on the ground floor which the three priests sometimes shared. Father O’Sullivan, writing at the table, found the matter difficult. He frowned frequently and bit the handle of his pen. At the fireside Father Giffley rested his black book on his knee. He wrote easily but slowly, pausing often to search his memory. He wrote: ‘Thomas A Kempis instructs us as follows: “I had rather feel compunction than know the definition thereof.” Father O’Sullivan, who is still trying to write a devotional booklet, if I recognise the signs, and I ought to be able to by now, is an illustration of what it means. “If thou knowest the whole Bible by heart, and the sayings of all the philosophers, what would it profit thee without love of God and without grace?”

  That hits at me, of course. Except that I don’t know very much by heart.

  “It is Vanity to desire to live long and not to care to live well.”

  My trouble is that I care to live too well. A Kempis means something quite different. There we are—the difficulty of communication. You do not care to live well. You only care to live well.

  “Call often to mind the proverb—The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.”

  That’s the best thing he has said. We see and we
hear. But it is the thing beyond the eye that we immediately wish to see. We hear and there is still something unheard even in what we hear. And it tempts us to seek a more complete satisfaction. What kind of satisfaction? Society, Power, Eminence—what? I do not know. We seek it, just the same. Of course it doesn’t exist, this S-A-T-I-S-F-A-C-T-I-O-N. Only the craving. Of course, a drop from the B. kills it. Temporarily.

  “For they that follow their lusts stain their own consciences and lose the grace of God.”

  Me again. The drop from the B. Lust of the Belly.’ He closed the book.

  ‘You are very quiet, Father,’ he said.

  Father O’Sullivan looked up vaguely. After a painful knitting of the brows he succeeded in relating the remark to himself.

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ he said.

  ‘What is the subject this time?’

  Father O’Sullivan left down his pen. He was diffident.

  ‘The Holy Family as a model for the ordering of the humble Catholic home.’

  ‘It’s always the humble Catholic home we dare to order, isn’t it?’ Father Giffley remarked. ‘Well, I’m glad you’re still trying.’

  ‘No longer very hopefully,’ Father O’Sullivan confessed.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. In the world of—ah—literature’ (Father Giffley stumbled unintentionally over the word) ‘I’m told it’s quite usual to fail, over and over again.’

  Father O’Sullivan smiled and looked embarrassed.

  ‘You mustn’t call it literature—that would frighten me off altogether.’

  ‘Pamphlets, religious exhortations, devotional booklets—they all have to be written, haven’t they? Though, having read my fill of them I must confess that frequently I fail to see why.’

  ‘They serve a very great need.’

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘I have no doubt about it. That’s why I keep trying to write them.’