Strumpet City (30 page)

‘That’s where we’re headed ma’am,’ he assured her.

They went down a long street, took a turn right and slowed to a walk.

‘Chandlers Court, ma’am,’ he shouted in to her, ‘Number 3.’

He drew back on the reins and the carriage came to a standstill. He opened the door.

‘Wait here for me,’ she instructed. He nodded. The steps that led up to the hall were uneven, the fanlight was broken, the door stood wide open. The area showed a basement window stuffed with cardboard. From each window of the four storeys above her poles stuck out and carried ropes which supported drying clothes. It was, she could see, wash day. She went uncertainly through the gloomy hall, climbed the stairs to the front room on the first landing and knocked.

At first Mary did not recognise her. She stood staring, until at last Mrs. Bradshaw had to say, gently:

‘May I come in for just a moment, Mary?’

‘Mrs. Bradshaw . . .’

Mary opened the door wide and her guest went through. The room was clean, Mrs. Bradshaw noticed. There was very little in it. A table and a couple of rough kitchen chairs, a dresser of sorts, a long couch with a clumsy, home-made look about it and on the mantelpiece, incongruously, a large, ornamental clock.

‘Please sit down,’ Mary invited. She chose a kitchen chair. There was a fire in the grate, warm enough to keep the cooking pot and kettle simmering but not big enough to heat satisfactorily the large room. Mrs. Bradshaw saw another door to the left and surmised a bedroom. Mary sat opposite. It was the first time she had ever been seated in the presence of Mrs. Bradshaw. She sat straight and still, waiting for the other to speak.

‘You are wondering why I’ve come,’ Mrs. Bradshaw said. ‘It’s about Miss Gilchrist. She . . . died yesterday.’

‘Oh,’ Mary said. The news was a shock. Death always was. Week after week you saw it in the eyes, yet week after week they opened and looked when your footsteps sounded across the floor of the ward. Recognition, a smile. Until you came to believe that it was going to go on that way, a part of the world, like making a bottle for the baby, or washing on Mondays and shopping on Saturdays. Mary nodded and said:

‘Poor Miss Gilchrist.’

‘You were very good to her.’

‘There was so little I could do.’

‘You visited her . . .’ Mrs. Bradshaw continued.

‘So little . . .’Mary repeated, not listening, and found herself crying.

Mrs. Bradshaw waited a while and then said:

‘I’ve come to ask you to do something more.’

‘Now?’

‘Miss Gilchrist will be taken from that terrible place. She will be put to rest in a proper and dignified way, with those who knew her in attendance. Father O’Connor will make the funeral arrangements. If it can be done at all, I would like you and your husband to attend. Would you do so?’

‘I’d like to,’ Mary said, ‘but we haven’t . . .’

‘Where does your husband work?’

‘With Morgan & Co.—the foundry.’

‘I’ll send a carriage for you. If your husband can’t be free, perhaps a neighbour would go with you.’

‘When will it be?’

‘In the morning to Glasnevin cemetery. I’ll go myself with Father O’Connor.’

‘I’m sure we’ll be able to manage,’ Mary said.

‘You were always a good girl,’ Mrs. Bradshaw said. She rose. Mary remembered that she had not been offered hospitality.

‘May I make you some tea?’

‘You have your children to attend to . . .’

‘They’re both asleep. It’s no trouble.’

Mrs. Bradshaw wondered what would be the right thing to do. What could this bare home offer without hardship to those who lived in it? The pale, pretty face with its dark hair waited uncertainly for her answer.

‘A cup of tea would be nice,’ Mrs. Bradshaw decided, ‘but in my hand—and, please, nothing else whatever.’

She saw Mary stirring the fire under the kettle and wondered what Mr. Bradshaw would have to say if he knew she was preparing to drink tea in a tenement room. And with the servant he had dismissed. Yet she was such a civil, warm-hearted girl. And clean. Everything was clean. That was a sure sign of character, one she had always looked for when engaging.

She was handed a cup and saucer. She reached her spoon for sugar and then waited. Mary hesitated and said:

‘I beg your pardon—milk.’

She went to the sideboard. She seemed to have trouble finding what she wanted. Mrs. Bradshaw, sensing a crisis, watched. She saw her empty some from a baby’s bottle into a jug. Mrs. Bradshaw was shocked. Mary returned, smiling and said, ‘Here it is.’

Mrs. Bradshaw pretended not to have noticed. But she took as little as possible.

Mary took up a tin of condensed milk from the table and said: ‘I’d rather have this myself.’ She was apologetic.

‘Of course,’ Mrs. Bradshaw said.

They drank tea in silence for some moments. At last Mrs. Bradshaw said:

‘You keep everything very nice, Mary.’

‘We haven’t much, indeed.’

‘You’ve two little children. Isn’t that a great deal?’

‘Yes’, Mary said. ‘Children are a blessing.’

‘Of course they are. Your husband is working with Morgan & Co. I do believe Mr. Yearling is a director. What’s your husband’s first name?’

‘Robert,’ Mary said, ‘he’s a shift worker.’

‘I see,’ Mrs. Bradshaw said. ‘I may find an opportunity to speak to Mr. Yearling about him—that’s why I ask.’

‘It’s very kind of you,’ Mary said.

Mrs. Bradshaw left her cup down and said she really must go. Before going to the door she opened her purse and fumbled in it. She put a pound on the table. Mary was embarrassed.

‘Please, Mrs. Bradshaw—I couldn’t.’

‘There may be little expenses to meet tomorrow which neither Father O’Connor nor I will be able to attend to for you. Your husband must not be out of pocket.’

Mary held open the door for her. A group of children had gathered about the cab. Many of them, Mrs. Bradshaw remarked, were in rags. Most of them were barefooted. They cleared a passage for her and stared after the cab as it turned in a wide circle and departed. Mary, from her window, watched it go. She took the jug from the table and returned what remained of the milk to the child’s bottle. It was all the fresh milk she had. But there would be no shortage. The pound note on the table was almost a week’s wages. The clock on the mantelpiece chimed, telling her it was noon already and that Fitz would soon be returning. ‘And what is your husband’s first name?’ If Mrs. Bradshaw was interested, even a little bit, God knows what good might come of it.

The cab took them at a smart pace to the workhouse. The morning was bright again, but mild. Mary thought they might have a window open.

‘Just a little,’ she suggested to Fitz.

He unhooked the leather strap from its brass stud, eased the frame down and re-secured it. He was wearing his stiff collar and a tie. It made him look stouter, somehow, but very handsome, she thought. Pat, who was off work, had come with them for company. She was glad. The children of the neighbourhood had gathered about the cab when it called for them. It was less embarrassing to step into it when there were three of them. Pat, she thought, looked very neat too, with his serge suit and butterfly collar and bowler hat. It was such a pity he was a bit wild at times, because underneath he had a warm, kind nature. Mrs. Mulhall, who was minding the children, had waved goodbye from the window and for a moment it had felt like setting off on a day’s outing. But she reminded herself that it was to see the very last of poor Miss Gilchrist, who had been so kind to her when she had no Fitz and no children. It would be unseemly to treat it like an excursion.

At the mortuary chapel they stood for a little while beside the coffin to pray. Mrs. Bradshaw was in the grounds, but did not go into the mortuary. It was not the custom among well-to-do ladies. Father O’Connor came in, took his stole from his pocket, kissed it, placed it around his neck and prayed. He sprinkled holy water from a tiny bottle which he also carried. He acknowledged their presence with a nod, then rejoined Mrs. Bradshaw. They got into a coach together. When the hearse was ready both cabs followed it, slowly as far as the gates, more briskly as they began the journey across the city. In the second coach Pat offered Fitz a cigarette.

‘Where are we off to?’ he asked.

Fitz looked at Mary. She looked blankly back at him.

‘I never thought of asking,’ she confessed.

‘Glasnevin, probably,’ Pat decided.

‘We’ll soon know,’ Fitz said, unconcerned.

In a minute or so the cab driver confirmed their guess by turning left. They reached the quays and travelled towards the city centre. Men stopped to raise their hats as the hearse passed, women crossed themselves. People searching through the shelves outside second-hand bookshops turned to pay their respects. At the rattle of their wheels the gulls loitering along the river wall rose lazily with outstretching necks and glided down to the safety of the water.

‘It’s such a fine morning,’ Mrs. Bradshaw said, leaning forward for a moment to peer through the window.

‘It would be so unpleasant if it rained,’ Father O’Connor agreed.

‘I’d no idea how truly destitute most of your parishioners were. Even your poor clerk . . .’

‘The clerk of the church can hardly be described as destitute,’ Father O’Connor suggested. But politely. Mrs. Bradshaw’s idea of destitution and his own were bound to be different.

‘He seemed to me to be in rags,’ she answered.

Father O’Connor was puzzled.

‘When did you meet him?’

‘When I arrived yesterday morning he was ringing the bell—a bearded, very odd-looking poor creature.’

That was not the clerk. Father O’Connor wondered who it could have been. He remembered the boilerman.

‘It must have been Tierney, our boilerman.’ The discovery irritated him. What an impression to give a lady visitor.

‘He shouldn’t have been ringing the bell,’ he explained, ‘his place is in the boiler room. I must speak to the clerk about it.’

A green wreath, the ribbons bedraggled, lay at the plinth which would soon support the Parnell monument, a tribute, now several days old, from the Parnell anniversary parade. What inscription did the pedestal carry? Something about the onward march of a nation. Something to the effect that no one had the right to say—this far shalt thou go and no further?

‘A tragic poor man,’ Mrs. Bradshaw remarked, surprisingly.

An adulterer. Nevertheless, a great leader. Unfortunate entanglement. Could he not foresee—probably not. A Protestant and a patrician. Outlook quite different. Behind the euphemisms and the sentimentalities Catholic Ireland had not failed to discern the real horror. They were laying wreaths just the same. Yearling had remarked on that.
De mortuis nil nisi bonum.

‘Ah yes, indeed,’ Father O’Connor said, as the laurelled sinner slipped behind.

The passers-by continued to raise their hats to Miss Gilchrist. She had joined the ranks of the dead, and commanded now their unanimous and ungrudging respect. Miss Gilchrist R.I.P. She was ennobled.

A hearse and mourning coaches stood empty outside the Brian Boru House waiting, while the mourners, their kinsman already buried, consoled themselves with alcohol. It was a custom deplored by Father O’Connor. They were talking about the dead one, praising him, exchanging remembrances of him. Sometimes they sang—an odd vehicle for the expression of grief. ‘The drunken funerals of Ireland.’ He shook his head, deploring it.

‘We are a strange people,’ Mrs. Bradshaw answered. Again her tolerance surprised him.

Inside the cemetery another funeral was in possession of the mortuary chapel. He bore the delay patiently, leaning on his umbrella as he waited. Mrs. Bradshaw beckoned Mary to come to her and enquired if everything had been as arranged. It had. She was pleased. She drew her apart and said: ‘I’ve been waiting to give you this note.’ She passed an envelope to Mary. Mary, knowing it would not be seemly at that moment to open it, put it in her pocket. Father O’Connor, turning his head for a moment, met her eyes and nodded in vague acknowledgment of her smile, which he thought had been meant for him.

Some distance away, Pat pointed out to Fitz the huge round tower which marked the resting place of Dan O’Connell.

‘Do you know what that is?’ he asked Fitz.

‘The tomb of the Liberator.’

‘They say in Kerry that you couldn’t throw a stone over a workhouse wall without hitting one of Dan’s bastards.’

‘They buried his heart in Rome, just the same,’ Fitz said. ‘It was his own request.’

Pat, who did not care for O’Connell, grunted and said: ‘I wonder where they buried his cockalorum.’

They found that the body of Miss Gilchrist was being moved into the chapel and followed. There were prayers. Then they followed the coffin down an avenue of trees, until they reached the new dug grave. The diggers passed their ropes under it and lowered it skilfully into the earth. Father O’Connor prayed, so quietly that all the time he did so they could hear the birds in the nearby trees. Soon there would be hardly any birds at all, Mary thought, soon the dead of winter would strip every remaining remnant. There would be no leaf and no wing. She wept when the first clod of earth bumped on the coffin. Then it was time to go back to the waiting coach.

They seated themselves.

‘The Brain Boru House,’ Pat suggested.

‘Please,’ Mary asked, ‘I wouldn’t like Father O’Connor and Mrs. Bradshaw to see you.’

‘We’ll let them go first then,’ Pat said.

He got out and spoke to the driver, who began to examine the harness inch by inch, as though tracing a fault. Mrs. Bradshaw’s coach passed them and went rattling down the road. The driver looked up and Pat shouted to him, ‘Coast clear.’

The driver climbed up, settled himself in the driving seat and cracked his whip. He looked very dignified.

Mary waited outside. She lay back against the padded leather and thought that she had not been in a coach since her childhood. It had been the funeral of an aunt, she remembered, on a day in summer when there were poppies spread through the grass in the country churchyard. She had been given biscuits and lemonade by her father. That was all she could remember, red poppies in long grass, worn headstones warm to touch, dust on the nettles and poppies red in the long grasses. Where was that day now? Where was the little girl in laced boots, a cousin of some sort, who had waited with her and played in the hot sun and got sick on the way home? She could not even remember her name. It was a strange thing, growing up and changing a little day by day, so slowly that you never noticed, so surely moving to maturity and old age and the front place at the funeral, having children to take in their turn the biscuits and the lemonade, to play in the sun and be sick in the evening. If you could be sure of heaven . . . She leaned towards the window and looked up at the sky. It was so high and blue it made her dizzy. One day she would close her eyes and fall into it. If she was spared to see the children reared and settled—that’s all she would ask of God. When that was done He could take her.