Strumpet City (10 page)

‘You haven’t had any luck?’ Fitz asked.

‘Nor won’t,’ Farrell said.

‘What about Larkin?’

‘There’s been no word.’

‘Maybe there will be, soon.’

‘What can Larkin do, when the rest didn’t stand by me?’

Very little, Fitz thought. The shipowners gave each unloading job to the stevedore on contract. Who the stevedores employed after that, or how they paid them, was not the shipowners’ concern. The custom of paying the dockers in public houses had been accepted for years. It seemed impossible to Fitz that the lonely, elderly man walking beside him could alter it. There were too many who were jobless and willing to take his place. Farrell was beginning to look at it that way too. It had been painful to see his eyes light up at the prospect of a casual night’s work.

Farrell walked in silence for a while. Then he said, more hopefully:

‘What’s the foreman at the foundry like?’

‘Carrington is his name. He’s as hard as nails, but he has no favourites. All he cares for is a good worker.’

‘Does he job casuals often?’

‘Two or three times a week, usually for a day at a stretch.’

‘I’ll go out of my way to bring myself to his notice tonight,’ Farrell said. ‘I’m finished as a docker, anyway.’

They worked without rest through a night of continuing sleet and wind; the labourers digging and hauling, the carters loading, dumping, re-loading. Steam rose in dense clouds beneath the water from the hoses and fanned about the yard so that the sleet itself tasted of cinder and ash and the clothes of the labouring men smelled strongly and sourly. At last it became so dense that the men digging on the leeward side could work no longer. It had become impossible to breathe as the wind bent it downwards in an impenetrable fog.

Carrington, who was directing the carters, left off and came over to Fitz. It was a habit of his. Fitz was his unofficial deputy.

‘What now?’ he asked.

Fitz had been thinking about it. They had tried taking the hoses off for intervals and digging when the steam cleared. But when the hoses stopped the strong wind fanned the fire into life again.

‘We could try screening the fire and see if we can dig it out.’

There were large screens in No. 2 house, which were used in summer to cut off the heavy draught when both ends of the house had to be left open because of the heat.

Carrington felt it was worth trying.

Fitz gathered some labourers and half a dozen carters, one of whom was Mulhall. He set the furnace hands disassembling the screens so that the carts could carry them to the yard. While they were working Mulhall said to him:

‘Are you deputy gaffer here?’

‘No. Just senior hand.’

‘Union man?’

‘National Union of Dockers,’ Fitz said.

‘Same as us. Is the whole job union?’

‘Half and half.’

‘Ever met Larkin?’

‘No,’ Fitz said.

‘He fixed an overtime rate some time ago—ninepence an hour. It’s in the carters’ agreement.’

‘I wouldn’t know about that,’ Fitz said. He was a furnace hand. The carters had their own set conditions. Lately, one section or another of the carters was always in trouble.

‘Maybe you’d ask the head bottle-washer,’ Mulhall said, then backed up and drove off. They got the screens into position and after a while they shut off the hoses. The wind no longer had direct access to the fire, but it bundled over the top and caught the coal at its higher level. The steam too, was clear of the ground and the men could work in the lee of the stack. They loaded the carts without respite. Meanwhile other workmen had begun to dig towards the ignited coal. Fitz saw Farrell among them, working steadily and easily, the relaxed technique of the docker showing in every movement of his body. He was one of the small number selected by Carrington for a special and difficult operation. Fitz was glad. It would give Farrell hope—and for the moment hope had become his desperate need. Pat Bannister was among them too, working steadily, absorbed as he always was, in the job that confronted him. Further away, in among the general collection, Hennessy stood idle, with a long-handled trimmer’s shovel which was almost as tall as himself.

‘Don’t kill yourself,’ Fitz said as he passed him.

‘I’m a delicate framed man,’ Hennessy said, ‘and I’m crucified with rheumatism of the back.’

‘You’d better look as though you were working,’ Fitz advised him. ‘If Carrington puts his eye on you he’ll give you your papers.’

Hennessy sighed and dug his shovel into the coal.

The night passed slowly. As they grew exhausted it took on a dreamlike quality; the figures of men bent under the lamps; the sleet thickened and slackened, died and found new reserves; the scrape of shovels and the creaking of carts filled the darkness incessantly. For a while Fitz found himself beside Carrington and remembered Mulhall’s enquiry.

‘The carters want to know what’s the freight?’

Carrington thought and then said:

‘Sixpence an hour, I suppose.’

‘They seem to expect overtime rate.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Ninepence.’

‘My bloody eye,’ Carrington said.

His tone angered Fitz, but it did not seem to be the moment for argument. In the upper end of the yard a new coal-stack was rising as the men moved more and more coal.

‘Better keep them hosing as they build the new stack,’ Carrington said, ‘otherwise we may have another bloody fire on our hands.’

‘We’ll need the reserve water supply,’ Fitz said.

‘That’s all right. Go ahead and turn it on.’

‘Who’ll look after the hosing?’

‘There’s a couple of likely looking casuals. I’ll get one of them to take charge.’

Carrington’s eyes searched among the working figures. He walked over towards the group near him and singled out Farrell.

‘You,’ he said, ‘what have you worked at?’

‘Docker,’ Farrell said.

‘Name?’

‘Jim Farrell.’

‘Out of work?’

‘This past few months.’

Carrington hesitated. Then he said, dismissing Farrell, ‘All right, carry on.’

When Farrell had gone Carrington turned to Fitz.

‘I know who he is now. I couldn’t use him.’

‘Why not?’

‘Dangerous. That’s the fellow who tried to start some trouble with the stevedores.’

Carrington shouted again. ‘Hey, you,’ and another man approached.

‘I’ll turn on the reserve water cock,’ Fitz said.

Fitz climbed into the top gallery of No. 4 house where in a wing overlooking the river the reserve pump was located. The bare metal was painfully cold to touch and the wind, bullying fiercely through the glassless apertures, had almost scoured the floor clear of coal-dust. Fitz threw his weight against the release wheel. It was an unreliable piece of mechanism at the best of times.

He had carried the image of Farrell with him and the words of Carrington remained in his head as he waited. Farrell’s moment of rebellion was known now along the length of the dockside. They were going to hound him, even people like Carrington, who had no conscious determination to do so. It was a comfortless city.

Below the catwalks and weblike ladders the men still on duty sweated over the furnaces. Here there was a forsaken, steel-cold emptiness, a half-lit gloom. To his right the river was grey and wrinkled under the wind, the waiting ships as yet not clearly discernible. Fitz noted with surprise that it was almost dawn. He imagined he could smell it: a distinctive odour of metal and river and many cargoes, the cold and hungry smell of the dockside. A ship hooted, getting up steam. That meant an early tide. The sound hit the iron roof above him, then drifted off across streets and alleyways, startling the sleepy gulls and foraging cats. It had barely died away when the pipes near Fitz lurched suddenly and began to dance. The pump was working. He took his time negotiating the ladders. They were narrow and dangerous for someone who had been eighteen hours on duty.

When Fitz reported to Carrington again it was morning. The lighting set had been dismantled, the men looked haggard and hungry. Looking at them as they worked, Fitz was filled suddenly with pity. The wind and the cold had been an unremitting hardship, the steam and ash had attacked their eyes and added their own brand of torture. Yet except for Mulhall’s enquiry they continued to work without questioning what they were to get at the end of it. For most of them anyway, anything earned would be regarded as a godsend.

‘How about payment?’ he asked Carrington.

‘I’ll leave the list with the pay clerk before I go home. Tell them to call back about four o’dock.’

‘What am I to tell them about the overtime rate?’

‘Up in Nellie’s room,’ Carrington said.

‘There’ll be trouble.’

‘The casuals don’t matter—they’ll take what they’re given. The carters are more dangerous. But they have no case. They’re only entitled to overtime if they’ve worked for us during the day. These didn’t. They were working for Doggett & Co.’

‘I hope they understand that piece of reasoning,’ Fitz said.

‘There’s nothing they can do about it, anyway,’ Carrington said. ‘They’re not employed normally by us, so they can’t very well go on strike.’

Fitz went home with Pat Bannister. They made tea, washed and lay down to sleep. Meanwhile the rest of the city got into the swing of yet another day.

‘You wished to see me?’ Father O’Connor said.

His new parish priest, Father Giffley, looked around and said testily: ‘Please don’t stand with the door knob clasped in your fist—it’s a habit I detest.’

He saw Father O’Connor’s flush of embarrassment and added: ‘It lets the raw air into the room. Come in and sit down.’

He was seated in a leather armchair with a high back, his feet stretched out to the fire. On a table, which for comfort he had drawn over to the fireplace, the remains of his breakfast lay scattered: the peeled skin of an orange, a porridge bowl with its milky residue; a plate with egg stains and the stringy rinds of bacon.

Father O’Connor sat down facing him. Through a high window opposite he could see the walled yard at the back of the church and a section of railway line. The Church of St. Brigid lay near the railway and the canal. It was an unattractive view which the overcast sky and the spattering sleet did nothing to improve. The glass wore a thick grime, the inescapable grime of the neighbourhood.

‘Yes,’ Father Giffley said. ‘I wanted to see you—would you care for some whiskey?’

‘No, thank you,’ Father O’Connor said.

‘A follower of Father Mathew?’

‘No, Father.’ He was about to add that eleven o’clock in the morning seemed a little on the early side for heavy spirits, but realised in time that that might be interpreted as a reflection on his superior’s habits. He found them disturbing.

‘Then you might pour some for me,’ Father Giffley ordered. ‘The bottle is at your elbow.’

He had grey, spiky hair and a red face which the heat of the fire had roused to a steaming glow. Father O’Connor poured the whiskey and shuddered at the smell. In a few weeks he had grown to associate the smell of whiskey and the smell of peppermint sweets. His superior’s breath was always heavy with one or the other—or both.

‘You treat it very gingerly, very gingerly indeed,’ Father Giffley boomed at him. ‘Liberality, man. Don’t stint it.’

Father O’Connor withdrew the glass he had been in the act of extending to his superior and poured in a further supply.

‘That’s better,’ Father Giffley said. ‘That’s a more likely looking conqueror of a raw morning.’ He screwed up his eyes, regarding the glass with approval. He had water beside him with which he diluted the sizable measure. Then he drank, made an approving sound with his lips and pursued:

‘You have been with me for some weeks, Father . . .’

‘Six,’ Father O’Connor supplied.

‘Six,’ Father Giffley repeated. The number seemed to give him material for reflection. He gazed for quite a while into the fire, his eyes bulging and bloodshot. He had the habit, when thinking, of grunting and breathing laboriously.

‘The thing that puzzles me is how you came here.’

‘It was my own wish, Father.’

‘So I have been told—but why?’

‘I felt the life in a rich parish too easy. It was not what God called me to the priesthood for.’

‘Do you find the work here more . . . elevating?’

‘It is more arduous, Father. It requires more humility.’

Father Giffley stared at him over his whiskey and left it down without tasting it.

‘Ah—I see. Humility. So that’s the coveted virtue.’

‘I beg your pardon, Father?’

Father Giffley made a sound of impatience. This time he compensated for his previous abstinence and almost emptied the glass.

‘You are full of polite catch-phrases. You beg my pardon; you ask may you come in; I offer you whiskey and you act as though I had told you a bawdy story. I asked you to see me this morning because, frankly, I found it quite impossible to understand what brought you here.’

‘I don’t follow you, Father.’

Father O’Connor was trembling, not with rage, but confusion. His superior terrified him.

‘I am bound to tell you that if you think you’ve come to a good place for the exercise of your priestly office you’ve made a stupid mistake. It is my duty as your parish priest to put you on the right track.’

‘I was not aware that I was displeasing you,’ Father O’Connor said.

‘Displeasing me? Not a bit. Thank God I have not lived in the stink of one slum parish after another without finding ways and means of insulating myself. I am merely warning you of the situation. You have met Father O’Sullivan?’

Father O’Connor had. It was Father O’Sullivan, not Father Giffley, who had instructed him in the parish routine, shown him where vestments and vessels were kept, wished him a happy stay in the parish and hoped he would like the parish priest. He had said that with a sad, shy smile which betrayed that he found Father Giffley just a little bit odd. He was a stout, grey-haired man himself, much given to vigils at the Altar of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception. After that first, routine exposition of the workings of St. Brigid’s his conversations with Father O’Connor, though pleasant and friendly, were few.