Proselytism was rife. He had known cases of it personally, where families attended bible-readings because soup and bread were given in return. One child had told him of being enticed into the house of a lady who had the servants put him in a bath and scrub him with carbolic soap before feeding him and handing him tracts which, fortunately, the child could not read. Perhaps God had His own purpose in the general illiteracy of the poor. A more experienced colleague had made that shrewd observation to him. Father Giffley wouldn’t listen to stories of that kind. But then Father Giffley was in the grip of an addiction which had already gone far towards unbalancing his mind. These people had money and leisure. They had even learned the Irish language to spread their heresies among the peasantry in the remote wildernesses of Connemara. During his novitiate a friend had shown him one of their bibles in the Irish language.
His first call would be on Mrs. Fitzpatrick. If it were true that she intended to send her children away he must take every step to dissuade her. She had been trained in a good house and was intelligent enough to understand the harm that must follow. Through the kindness of Mrs. Bradshaw she had had plenty to be grateful to God for. Would she repay the debt in this way? That was the question to put to her. His line of approach was clear.
The next thing was to remember where she lived; not the house, which he knew fairly well, but the particular room. He did not want his presence to be known to everybody. That would be indiscreet, even unjust.
He picked his way through streets which were threatened with an assault against the Motherhood of the Church and citizens who by and large did not seem particularly to care. They pursued their own lives and bent their thoughts to their own narrow affairs. They raised their hats briefly to him as they passed him on the pathways. They held up public house corners and spat at intervals to pass the time. They thronged the shops and carefully counted their change. And every so often a tram passed guarded by police, or a convoy of lorries guarded by police, or simply a cordon of police on the way to guard something not as yet equipped with the protection applied for. That was the pass the city had come to: hatred, strife, hunger, ambush, disobedience.
There were men now who made violence their everyday concern. They planned assaults on the police and attacked those who were replacing them at their work. In the county of Dublin farm labourers who had been locked out were burning outhouses, spiking fields, maiming cattle and forcing the farmers who had once employed them to go about armed. The socialists were the instigators, but the masters themselves were not without blame. They had been wanting in justice and, above all, in charity. He had told them so from the pulpit before he left Kingstown, warning them that Christ Himself had said He would not be found in the courts of Kings, where men were clothed in soft garments, but in the desert. The slums about him were the desert. Among the poor who inhabited them must Christ be sought out. That was where the masters had failed. And because of that failure the devil had now taken possession.
His parish engulfed him, spinning its web about him of malodorous hallways, decaying houses, lines of ragged washing. His work had not been very fruitful. He had failed to learn how to love them as brothers and sisters. But he could love them as a father by instructing them and protecting them against temptation and weakness. At least he had walked their grim streets and entered their unsavoury rooms. In time he would learn to communicate with them.
Chandlers Court acknowledged his presence. Here and there a head appeared at a window; the children stopped their play to stare at him; one or two men saluted him. He stood still, recollecting. Number 3? While he tried precisely to remember, two figures whom he recognised emerged from a hallway. One was the scarecrow of a man he had had to dismiss from the post of boilerman. He felt reluctant to approach him. They came nearer to him. Tierney, that was the name. Father O’Connor, detecting pride in his attitude towards a poor, crippled oddity, put himself to the test. He waited, his stance one of enquiry and irresolution, until they came near him.
‘Good evening, men,’ he said.
Hennessy raised his hat and said, ‘God Bless you, Father.’ Rashers said nothing.
‘Tierney, my man,’ Father O’Connor said, ‘I would like you to show me to the room in which Mrs. Fitzpatrick lives—if you can spare the time.’
‘I can do that, Father, Hennessy volunteered.
‘Just a minute,’ Rashers said, ‘I’m the one that was asked.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Hennessy said.
‘And I’d like to tell Father O’Connor what he can do,’ Rashers continued.
Hennessy looked at his face and became alarmed.
‘Now, now, Rashers,’ he pleaded. He put his hand on Rashers’ arm.
‘Shut up,’ Rashers said. He turned his attention to Father O’Connor. He leaned forward on his stick to be closer to him.
‘That’s the first civil question you’ve addressed to me in a number of years, Father,’ he said, ‘and I’m not going to answer you. But I’ll give Hennessy here a message he can deliver to you.’
‘Now, now,’ Hennessy implored. ‘Remember Father O’Connor is one of God’s holy anointed.’
‘He is indeed,’ Rashers agreed, ‘and I’ll tell you what to answer him on my behalf, because I wouldn’t insult one of his cloth up to his face.’
Rashers looked back at Father O’Connor.
‘So you can give the Reverend Gentleman this message from Rashers Tierney. Tell him to ask my proletarian arse.’
He turned and hobbled away. When Hennessy found his voice he said: ‘For God’s sake, Father, don’t pay any heed to him or take any offence at all.’
‘I am not offended,’ Father O’Connor said quietly.
‘The poor man has been out of his wits this long time.’
‘I am not angry,’ Father O’Connor said. His face was white.
‘Then let me do what little I can by showing you the Fitzpatrick’s apartment,’ Hennessy offered.
Father O’Connor kept his voice under control.
‘Thank you,’ he said. He followed Hennessy, who continued to apologise. Father O’Connor made short but quiet replies to all he said. The insult had found its way to his stomach. He felt chilled.
‘Do you intend to drive all the way?’ Mathews asked. He was uneasy.
‘I have been wondering should I,’ Yearling answered.
‘Not quite to the hall door, perhaps.’
‘A bit ostentatious, you think?’
‘Well . . . Better not.’
‘Pity. If I had thought of it, we could have rigged up a Red Flag on the bonnet.’
‘Just as well you didn’t.’
Yearling looked disappointed. ‘For a poet,’ he said, ‘you lack a taste for the dramatic. Shelley scattered pamphlets on the heads of passers-by from his lodgings in Grafton Street.’
‘The pamphlets were in support of Catholic Emancipation.’
‘Oh—that’s rather different.’
‘In fact he later gave great offence in his speech to the Friends of Catholic Emancipation by arguing that one religion was as good as another. Both Catholics and Protestants were outraged.’
‘Quite understandable,’ Yearling said. ‘To be persecuted by a fellow-Christian is understandable. To be liberated at the hands of an agnostic, unbearable. I think I’ll park here.’
They stopped near St. Brigid’s.
‘Do you plan to pick up the children at Liberty Hall?’
‘Yes.’
‘Have we time for a drink?’
‘Plenty,’ Mathews said. But when they were ordering he would only take a ginger beer.
‘A hint of alcohol on the breath and Larkin would ask me to go home,’ he explained.
‘Oh—and what about me?’
‘Perfectly all right,’ Mathews said, ‘the children won’t be in your charge.’
‘You sound smug, Mathews.’
‘To tell the truth, I’m just a bit frightened,’ Mathews answered.
They strolled down to the
North Wall. A large crowd had gathered at the Embarkation sheds, respectably dressed men and some women too, with a sprinkling of priests. Their banners read: ‘Kidnapper Larkin’: ‘Save the Children’: ‘Away with Socialism’. When a car approached they spread across the road and stopped it. They questioned the driver and searched inside before letting him drive on, then grimly resumed their watch for God. One of the priests moved constantly from group to group, a purposeful man with a heavy face.
‘That reverend gentleman is Father Farrell of Donnybrook,’ Mathews remarked, ‘an actionist if ever there was one. Yesterday the children were seized when they tried to board the mail boat at Kingstown. In fact some of the children were with perfectly respectable parents who had a deal of trouble getting them back into their custody. I’m told that one lady was obliged to open her box to show her marriage certificate.’
Yearling had read of these things and found them rich in human absurdity. Now he looked at the reality. It was shoddy. It was worse. It was unbelievably ugly. He took Mathews by the arm and both turned away.
‘Let us get on to Liberty Hall,’ he suggested. Humour had deserted him.
Father O’Connor climbed the stairs and knocked on the door Hennessy pointed out to him. He waited. At first Hennessy’s footsteps, sounding on the stairs, filled the house with noise. When they had receded Father O’Connor became conscious of great stillness. There were children’s voices somewhere above him, but at a great distance it seemed, so faint and intermittent that they made the stillness about him hard to endure. He knocked a second time and knew from the sound that the room was empty. Was he too late? The thought that the Fitzpatrick children might be on their way to the boat already, alarmed him. He began knocking again, his time with his umbrella, with such force that the handle broke off. It rebounded off the door and made a clattering noise on the wooden floor. The sound brought him to his senses. He must control himself and think. As he searched in the half-light to recover the handle of his umbrella a door on the other side of the landing opened and an elderly woman came out. She was frightened until she recognised him.
‘It’s yourself, Father,’ she said, reassured. He searched for the handle and found it before answering her.
‘Who have I here?’ he asked.
‘I’m Mrs. Mulhall, Father,’ she said. He peered at her.
‘Ah yes—of course.’ He remembered her now as the woman whose husband had recently died. She might be able to give him the information he was looking for. He stuffed the umbrella handle into his pocket and said: ‘I’d like to have a word with you, if I may—immediately.’
‘Certainly, Father.’
She led him into a room in which upturned boxes were serving as table and chairs. The linoleum showed unworn and unfaded patches here and there in places once occupied by furniture. An easy chair at the fireside stood out in incongruous luxury. She dusted this and offered it to him. He sat down. She was, he remembered, a good and devout woman. Father O’Sullivan had spoken most highly of her. The death of her husband must have been a cruel blow. He would have to refer to it. Presently.
She sat on one of the boxes opposite him and he found an opening.
‘You are going through hard times,’ he said, looking about at the evidence of the room.
‘We’re all having the bad times, Father,’ she answered. Although he was agitated he found time to have pity for her, an ageing woman sitting on a box in a home without a fire. Whoever might be responsible for the evils of the times, it was not she. Exercising patience, he said:
‘Your husband’s death was a sad blow, I’m sure.’
‘It was at first, Father, but now I’m happy God took him when He did. He was lying there all those months breaking his heart because he couldn’t be out and about with the rest of the men.’
‘You are very brave.’
‘If nothing could ever give him his two legs back to him, why should I wish God to keep him lying there fretting and suffering.’
Father O’Connor nodded. He remembered more precisely now. They were speaking of the man who had assaulted Timothy Keever and whose conduct he had deplored from the pulpit. The woman was not embarrassed. Father O’Sullivan, no doubt, had made it his business to reassure her in her time of trouble. It was a gift which most puzzled him in that humble and otherwise very ordinary priest. ‘Your resignation is a great credit to you,’ he said. ‘It is indeed.’
‘God was good to me,’ she answered, ‘and I had the kindest of neighbours.’
He could now move nearer to the enquiry he wished to make.
‘One of your neighbours is Mrs. Fitzpatrick—isn’t she?’
‘The kindest and best of them.’
This made it more difficult. He deliberated.
‘You have a very high regard for her—I can see.’
‘With good reason, Father.’
‘Then if I tell you I’m here to help her and to persuade her against making a very grave mistake, you’ll assist me?’ The woman hesitated. He sensed her uneasiness. Conscious suddenly of his own isolation in this poverty-haunted parish, he set his will to the duty before him.
‘You must trust me,’ he urged.
‘I was never much hand at meddling in another’s affairs.’
‘Sometimes it becomes our duty,’ he told her, ‘I’m sure you’ll understand when I explain to you.’
She nodded. He took up the umbrella to lean forward on it and rediscovered its lack of a handle. That upset him. He pushed it aside.
‘You know that there is an attempt at the moment to send children to England. And you know, I am sure, that the Archbishop himself has written to deplore it. God knows what sort of homes these children will end up in; Protestant homes, for all we know—or homes of no religion at all. I am told that Mrs. Fitzpatrick intends to let her children go. And I want to persuade her to remember her Catholic duty.’
‘Who told you that, Father?’
‘I am not at liberty to say. But it is a person I place trust in. Have you any knowledge of it?’
‘I know it couldn’t be true, Father. I’m the closest to her in things of that kind, and I’ve watched the children for her many a time. If the thought had ever entered her head, I’d know it.’
‘Where is she now?’
‘She’s out walking with her children, a thing she always does when the afternoon is fine.’
‘Did she ever speak to you of sending her children away?’
‘She did, several weeks ago. But it was to her father in the country she was thinking of sending them.’
‘I see,’ Father O’Connor said. The woman was very sure of herself. He knew she was telling what she believed was the truth.
‘Did she say this to anyone else?’
‘She may have, Father, but not to my knowledge.’ A thought occurred to him which he knew he must express delicately. He found it hard to spare the time to do so. The children might at that moment be on their way.
‘Times have been so very hard with all of you,’ he suggested. ‘Could it be that she intended to send them to her parents if the necessity arose, but found when the time came that she could no longer afford to do so?’
The woman hesitated again. It took her some time to answer.
‘It could have happened that way,’ she said at last. She appeared upset. He felt he was near the truth.
‘In that case, she might well have been tempted to take part in this Larkinite scheme instead.’
The woman began to cry.
‘Please don’t be upset,’ he said. ‘I have to say such things because of what is at stake. Do you know if she had money to send them to her parents?’
‘She had indeed, Father . . . but she gave it to me.’
The woman was weeping bitterly now. Suspicion of the cause made him rise and go to her. She was not telling him all she knew.
‘Are you holding something back?’ he asked. ‘If so, I command you as your priest to let me know the truth. Is she taking part in the scheme?�
��
‘No, Father, I’m certain of it.’
‘We cannot be certain.’
‘She’d have told me.’
‘She might not. Why did she give you the money?’
He was now standing over Mrs. Mulhall. Suspicion and anxiety had swamped his pity. She turned her head away from him.
‘When my husband died I had no money in the world. She gave me hers.’
‘Why?’
The woman struggled to answer. He repeated himself.
‘Why?’
‘So that I could bury him with decency,’ she said.
The reply took him by surprise. He understood now why his questions had upset her. But the fact remained that he could still not be sure that the scheme was not the desperate alternative.
‘What she did was edifying and Christian,’ he said, ‘but if it has led her to such despair that she has allowed her children to be taken away from her, then it would have been better for all of us if she had kept her money.’
The woman’s sobbing became uncontrollable. He took the broken umbrella under his arm.
‘Forgive me for the upset I have caused you,’ he said. He went to the door. What he had said struck him as bald and unpitying. He had not meant it that way.
‘Please don’t feel I am too harsh,’ he added. ‘The fate of these little children is an urgent and terrible charge on all of us.’
He closed the door and strode across the landing to knock once again at the Fitzpatrick’s apartment. There was still no answer. Enough time had been lost already. He went down quickly into the street.
Merchandise cluttered the South Wall of the river. At the berth of the one shipping company which had remained open by refusing to join the Employers’ Federation a single ship was working. To the right and left of it idle ships waited through flood tide and ebb tide. Larkin had said they would be left there until the bottoms were rusted out of them. Across the river, about the Embarkation sheds of the North Wall, crowds had gathered. Father O’Connor made for Butt Bridge. There were crowds at Liberty Hall also, he noticed. If there was to be a battle for the children, his help would be even more important. No room for shirkers now.
Strumpet City Page 50
