‘You go back, and I’ll see to them,’ he said to her. But she shook her head.
As they turned down the cut, the shouting came to them, and John sprang away from the girl and ran on ahead.
With the intuition of the young, his coming was noted and the boys crowding round the disused boathouse on the edge of the gut gave the cry, ‘Look out! Scatter!’
The size of John looming out of the gathering dusk and the fear of being caught and held responsible gave aid to their legs. They made for the opening near the boathouse, and like dots of vapour they disappeared across the disused ground adjoining the slacks.
John pulled up at the slipway. There was no sign of the boy. Likely, he had taken refuge on the wall round the corner. The wall supporting the slipway turned sharply at right angles, bordering the gut for a considerable distance, and ended abruptly where the gut was deepest, for the swirling tides had by slow degrees loosened its large granite stones, and many of these now made only a row of pin-points in the mud. The wall was just above ground level and was eighteen inches wide on the top, but from its back edge arose a six-foot fence of stout sleepers.
John walked sideways along the wall, pressing his back against the sleepers, and as he turned the corner he saw the boy and Mick.
The boy was standing up against the last sleeper of the fence, Mick was lying flat along the wall; and there was no sound from either of them, except the whack of the stick as Mick hit at the boy’s legs, trying to dislodge him into the black, oozing mud. So lost was Mick in the relish of the moment that he did not hear John’s approach. The first he knew was the sound of harsh breathing over him; then he was whipped to his feet and for one sickening second he was hanging in mid-air over the mud. John brought him to his feet and shook him until his head rolled on his shoulders.
‘Get home and stay there! If you’re not in when I get back it’ll mean twice as much when I find you.’
Mick clutched at the sleepers to steady himself, and growled, ‘You hit me and I’ll tell me da.’ Then he retreated hastily along the wall, and John went on to the boy.
In the dim light the white face shone at him, and he said soothingly, ‘It’s all right, sonny, it’s all right.’
The boy did not answer, and John said, ‘Come on, give me your hand.’
But the boy still did not move; he seemed petrified into dumbness, and his fingers held on to the sleeper as if glued to it. The wall ended directly below this sleeper, and the rising tide was already creeping towards its fallen stones.
As John unbent the boy’s fingers he saw that they were bleeding, and he wished for the moment he would have Mick under his hands. When he picked him up the boy lay stiff across his arms like something frozen hard. The girl was standing at the corner, her face as white as her brother’s, and she clutched at them both, saying, ‘Is he all right? Oh, David, are you all right?’
‘Steady!’ John said. ‘Let’s get off here.’ And she went before them along the wall to where it met the ground.
As John put the boy down she drew David into her arms, crying, ‘Oh, my dear, what have they done?’
The boy shuddered, and his body fell against hers, and she soothed him, saying, ‘There! There! . . . We’ll go home—Grandfather will soon be in and everything will be all right.’
But when she took his hand to walk him up the bank his legs gave way beneath him, and he fell forward. John picked him up again, saying, ‘You’d better get him to bed.’
As he strode up the road with the girl trotting by his side and holding on to her brother’s ankle, he thanked God that most of the people were indoors having their tea and that the corners of the streets were deserted by their usual batches of men, for he felt self-conscious in doing this rescue act.
The door was open and the house lighted just as she had left it; and as John passed through the front room and into the kitchen he had the impression that his home next door was a hundred miles away. He became conscious of his big, dirty boots on the carpet, and when he laid the boy in a chair, drawn up to the fire, the comfort of it was conveyed to him by his hands sinking beneath the boy into the upholstery.
The girl ran into the bedroom, and returned with something in a glass. David drank it, then asked, in a thin, small voice, ‘How long will Grandfather be?’
‘Not long, darling.’
The girl was kneeling by the chair, and John, looking down on her, repeated to himself, ‘Not long, darling.’ Never before had he heard the word spoken, except in derision. How strange these people were.
He was turning to go, saying, ‘I hope he’ll be all right. My brother will be dealt with,’ when the girl sprang to her feet.
‘What are you going to do to your brother?’ she asked. ‘Thrash him?’
‘What else?’
‘Oh please!’ her words tumbled over one another—‘Please don’t do that! It won’t do a bit of good . . . not the slightest, just the opposite.’
John frowned down on her in perplexity: ‘What do you expect me to do? Let him off? He might have killed the lad there—’ He nodded towards the chair.
Her eyes, set deep in her white face, looked black and enormous, and she began to plead with him as if her life depended on it: ‘But he didn’t! You must talk to him, point out where he was wrong . . . Will you? . . . Please. But don’t thrash him; you’ll only thrash it into him.’
‘Thrash what into him?’ John’s brows drew closer together.
‘The fears, the inhibitions . . . all the things that drove him to do what he did.’
John stared at her. What was she getting at? Was this part of the spook religion? She was strange, not in sayings alone, but in her looks; her curveless body, like a lad’s, was as attractive as any bulging bust and wobbling hips.
He turned away from her and went towards the kitchen door, but she hastily blocked his exit: ‘Please! . . . Oh!’—she closed her eyes and moved her head from side to side—‘if only Grandfather was in he’d explain so much better than me . . . But you mustn’t thrash him.’
Looking down into her strained face, John saw that for the moment, the thought of Mick being thrashed had entirely eliminated the worry for her brother—she was like no-one he had met before . . . she was really in earnest that Mick should be let off. But he knew Mick, and she didn’t, so he said, ‘Do you think he would understand a talking-to? No. The only thing Mick and his like understand is the thick end of the belt across their . . . ’ Somehow he couldn’t say ‘arses’ in front of her, so he ended lamely, ‘You see. You don’t know them.’
‘Oh, but I do,’ she said, smiling faintly, trying to override his last remark; ‘I’ve known dozens of Micks. Look—’ She put out her hands and caught hold of the lapels of his coat. The gesture was almost childish in its naturalness, and he looked down at her hands, then at her face close beneath his own; and an odd sensation passed over him . . . Hannah Kelly said, ‘Mind she doesn’t lay hands on you, lad.’ But this wasn’t the kind of laying on she was referring to. If a lass of the fifteen streets laid hold of him, there would be a particular meaning to it; they would lark about a lot before she did this though, and afterwards his arms would go round her. He had seen the process enacted at the corner ends and in dark places in the back lanes. Often, when a lad, he watched the climax with an envy that dissolved into loneliness. And now here was this lass with her hands on him, and the sensation he was experiencing was almost one of reverence, similar to that which he at one time felt for the Virgin . . . But he didn’t want to feel reverence for her, or any other lass. She was fetching and he wanted . . . He lifted his hand and covered one of hers—it wasn’t much bigger than Katie’s, but it was different. His blood began to warm with the feel of her, and he smiled slowly. Her soft, curving mouth was just below his, and as he watched it move, it fascinated him. He wasn’t fully aware of the words it was forming until she stepped away from him, taking her hand from his and saying, ‘If you had to treat a dirty wound, you wouldn’t rub more dirt into it, would
you?’
Still on about Mick . . . He came to himself, and said thickly, ‘I’m sorry; I’ll have to deal with him as I think fit.’ A feeling of bewilderment and frustration, mixed with annoyance was filling him; and he passed her, saying gruffly, ‘He’ll have to take what’s coming to him.’
It was with relief he entered his own kitchen. Here were people and things he could understand . . . and manage. Going straight to the wall by the side of the fireplace he unhooked the razor strop.
‘Is the lad all right?’ Mary Ellen asked.
‘Just,’ John answered briefly. ‘Come on’—he motioned with his head to Mick.
‘I’m not comin’. I’ll tell me da!’
‘Go canny, lad,’ Mary Ellen said to John.
Go canny. Here was another one. ‘Go canny!’ he rapped out at her with unusual irritation. ‘Do you know he nearly killed the lad! As it is he’s practically sent him out of his mind. It’s as well for you you got hold of Molly when you did, or you’d have something more than a thrashing on your plate the night. Go canny!’ He flung round from her and pointed to the door.
Mick began to snivel and cried, ‘Ma! Ma, don’t let him!’
Mary Ellen turned from Mick to the fire, and John seized him by the collar and pulled him to the door, there to meet Dominic coming in.
Dominic looked from one to the other before eyeing John through narrowed lids: ‘What you at? Playin’ boss of the house again?’
‘You mind your own damn business. If you’d had a little more of it there might have been an improvement in you!’
Mary Ellen hastily broke in, addressing herself to Dominic, ‘He’s nearly killed the little lad next door.’
After a moment, during which he glanced from one to the other, Dominic stepped aside, and John pushed Mick before him down the yard and into the wash-house.
Mary Ellen found herself staring at Dominic; she couldn’t quite take it in; he was sober, solid and sober; and it St Patrick’s Day! And added to this surprise was another; for when he took his cap off she saw that he’d had a haircut . . . a proper one; his thick, brown, curling hair was neatly trimmed up the sides, making him, even with the dust of the ore on him, look more attractive. He hadn’t come in to tea and she imagined him to be in the bars; but he must have been having a haircut!
She went to the oven to take out his tea, a plate of finnan haddock, but he said, ‘I don’t want that yet.’
With further amazement she saw him wash himself quickly, take off his yorks and change his coat. He was banging the dust from his trousers as he hurried past her to the front room.
‘Where you off to?’ she asked.
Dominic paused a moment, and the expression she hated, a mixture of scorn, cocksuredness and craft, came over his face. His eyes flicked over her, and her throat contracted with dislike of him. He said heavily, ‘Where d’yer think?’
She stood still, listening to him going out of the front door, and between Mick’s howls out in the backyard, she heard the knocker of the next door banging. Her fingers moved nervously back and forth across her lips . . . How would it work out? Candidly she wouldn’t care if Dominic left home tomorrow and she never set eyes on him again, but there was no such luck as that happening; he was here and he was going after that lass. It would have been bad enough had she been a Protestant—that was something you could lay your finger on—but what these people next door were was something beyond her ken, something dark and mysterious, something not far removed from the devil; for whoever heard anyone connected with God daring to say they could cure people! Even the priests wouldn’t dare. And then another strong point proving their ungodliness was all their fine things. God didn’t shower gifts on those He loved—He pointed out the road of poverty to them. Father O’Malley could be hard, but he was right in some things; if you got your reward here, then you could make sure it wasn’t from God.
From last Saturday, when they moved in, she had made up her mind to have no truck with them. At odd times she had stopped working and found herself listening to the girl singing. The first time she had heard her she was shocked; she felt it was indecent somehow, almost as bad as if she had seen her walking naked, for it wasn’t like a woman singing to a bairn, nor yet over her poss-tub, but was high and clear and without restraint. And the morning she heard the singing before breakfast she was bewildered; for even if you had something to sing about you wouldn’t do it before breakfast, unless you were prepared to cry your eyes out before supper . . . No, she wanted no truck with them. Yet here was John saving the lad and braying their Mick, and Dominic in next door pouring sympathy over the lass in his best manner. And he had a best manner, Mary Ellen knew; but she also knew it was an impossibility for him to keep it up. Well—she again fastened the errant button of her blouse and momentarily lifted the weight of her body—that was as far as things were going, if she could help it . . . not one of them would darken this door!
She crossed herself swiftly and murmured, ‘May the Lord bless us and preserve us from all evil, and bring us to life everlasting. Amen.’
4
The Conflict
Mary Ellen’s temper was fraying thin. The weather was bad enough with the rain pelting down and the wind howling as if it was December, but to have them all in the house except Mick and Molly, who were at school, was too much. Neither John nor Dominic had been set on this morning; a mail boat had come in with a cargo of fruit, but the gaffer had given the work to the men who had not been set on the recent boats. It was bad enough that they were off work, but to have them all stuck round her like this was too much of a good thing. And what was more, she was feeling a little sick with the heat of the oven and the smell of the dirty working clothes put to dry all round the kitchen . . . If only this other business were over. She was tired of it all—her body was so bairn-weary. She was feeling now that things were getting beyond her.
Even Katie could draw no kind word from her, and she pushed her to one side to get to the oven, saying, ‘Get out of me way, bairn.’
Katie was home from school because her boots leaked; and her eyes were streaming, not only as the result of a cold but with crying. She hated to be off school, more so now than ever, for Miss Llewellyn had said that if she worked hard she could sit for an examination, which might be the first step on the road to her becoming a teacher. She had tried to tell her mother, but Mary Ellen snapped at her, and even John did not seem interested.
She looked towards him now. He was sitting in the corner on the far side of the fireplace mending her boots. He had put odd pieces of leather on the soles and was now cutting up an old boot to get enough leather to sew across the slits. She returned to her book, the only one she possessed, a Grimm’s Fairy Tale, and she knew each word by heart.
The front-door knocker was suddenly banged, and without waiting she went to answer it. It had been knocked twice already this afternoon, once by a tally man and once by a man begging. The beggar wasn’t pleased when she brought him a slice of bread. He bent it up and put it in his pocket, and her mouth watered, for it was new bread from a flat cake just out of the oven; it was a long time till tea-time, and she had got out of the habit of asking for bread between meals for she remembered times when they all had bread at tea-time except her mother, and she was frightened that this would happen again.
It was Mrs Bradley at the door, and she asked, ‘Is yer ma in?’
Katie said, ‘Yes.’
‘Then tell her we’re gathering for poor Mrs Patton’s wreath . . . Here, take her the paper.’
Katie took the paper and went into the scullery to her mother. ‘It’s Mrs Bradley—she’s gathering for flowers, ma.’
Mary Ellen’s lips set in a tight line as she read down one side of the list and half-way down the other . . . shillings, sixpences . . . only two or three threepences. She gave a sigh, and lifting up her skirt took fourpence from the little bag and handed it to Katie, together with the list.
As Katie passed John he asked, ‘What’s that
for?’
But before she could reply, Mary Ellen called, ‘Go on, you, Katie,’ and Katie went on to the front door. Mary Ellen knew that John didn’t hold with gathering for wreaths, but what could she do . . . and that Bella Bradley collecting!
John knew what he would have done . . . the gathering for wreaths had always irked him. They would collect as much as two pounds and spend the whole lot on flowers, when the widow, if it was a man who had died, was more often than not destitute, and within a week the bairns would be crying for bread. They knew this only too well, the women who took it on themselves to gather, yet they still bought flowers to show respect for the dead. He snorted and banged the hammer on the last, sending a pain through his knee. It made him mad! He knew that, even if there was no insurance money, besides collecting for the flowers they would collect for cabs, to make the dead look decent. They didn’t collect for the hearse. No, that could be ticked, to be paid off at so much a week. But the undertakers weren’t so ready to tick cabs. And if it was for one of the Irish, the relatives would pawn, beg, borrow or steal, but they would have a bit of a wake. It was all crazy! And yet he understood from his mother that the funerals were nothing like they used to be, for in her young days, she told him, she longed for the Irish to die so she could go to the wake with her mother and have a good feed.
What had she put on the list, he wondered. Whatever it was, by this time next week they would be glad of it; for if they were not set on there wouldn’t be a penny in the house.
Many things were beginning to make him wild. And on a day like this, tied to the house, he had nothing else to do but think. Lately he had been feeling the desire for someone to talk to, someone who could answer questions. Once or twice he tried to talk to Father Bailey, and endeavoured to have the material in his mind formed into concrete questions; but when he was with the priest he found it was no use—he knew what he wanted to say but couldn’t get it out.
The Fifteen Streets Page 6
