Strumpet City (37 page)

‘It makes it easier to abide the end,’ he explained to Father O’Connor, with his large eyebrows lifting upwards a little in self-mockery.

He had been explaining his mood after their meal together. The windows of the Imperial Hotel overlooked Sackville Street. Opposite them, when they averted their heads to look, the fronts of buildings were tinged with the orange glow of evening.

‘I think often of childhood myself,’ Father O’Connor confessed, ‘and the person I remember most is my mother. The love of a good mother is the most precious experience granted to man.’

‘The other kind of love is not to be sneezed at either,’ Mr. Yearling said robustly.

‘Of course not. The love of a good wife is precious too.’

‘Wife or lover, good, bad or indifferent, false or true, it’s a damned exciting experience. I’ve known a few of them and I wouldn’t have missed one.’

Father O’Connor looked at him curiously. These were loves he had never experienced and to which he had given little personal thought. But he knew the pitfalls. Sometimes in the confessional he had to warn against ill-advised matches, to put the brake on too passionate responses, to sound warnings against immoderate love-making, whether casual or in serious courtship. Penitents had wept in the darkness next to him because of love and its entanglements, because of shame at the sins it led to, because, when he refused absolution unless there was a sincere promise to abandon an association, the penitent struggled between the desire for forgiveness and the human frailty that made the promise impossible. The world of passion could be dark and terrible. Surely the man next to him must know it.

‘Surely all love is not the same,’ he suggested. ‘Surely what is bad leads to sin and shame and suffering?’

‘I did not mean it was all the same. I said that even the bad was exciting.’

Yearling smiled sadly at the street. It, too, reminded him of adventures long past. He had once, with some other students, stolen a horse tram, filled it with young ladies and driven it to Howth. They were bad young ladies, no doubt, but extremely agreeable. They shouted at passers-by and cheered at puzzled policemen. Ralph Bradshaw, he remembered, had refused to be involved.

‘Love,’ he added, ‘is a much misused word. It ranges emotionally from the boy and girl skylarking behind the haystack to the extravagances of Héloise and Abélard.’

It had been worth it, pinching that tram. He could still feel the traces in his hand and hear the clip-clop of hooves. That was something—after God knows how many years. He could feel the sunshine too. He could smell the warm salt air of the sea. He could taste the tea and the sticky buns they had bought on the hill. He could remember a young man’s appetite.

‘I hope Mr. and Mrs. Bradshaw are enjoying the theatre,’ Father O’Connor offered. They had gone to the Abbey to see Mr. Yeats’s
Kathleen ni Houlihan
and a play called
The Eloquent Dempsey
by a Mr. Boyle. Later they would call to the Imperial for a light supper with Yearling and Father O’Connor. Father O’Connor’s cloth forbade him to enter a playhouse. Yearling had been disinclined.

‘They’re welcome to my share of Mr. Yeats,’ he said, rising to look more closely at the street and to remember more clearly the affair of the horse tram. What he saw drove the thought from his mind. There was no traffic to be seen in the street below. At the end near the bridge a cordon of police stood with batons drawn.

‘Come and look,’ he said to Father O’Connor. They both stood and watched. Yearling opened the window a little. From the streets to their right came the sounds of people shouting and glass breaking.

‘My God,’ Yearling said, ‘a riot.’

Father O’Connor, peering over his shoulder saw the advance guard of the crowd moving steadily down the street. They were brandishing sticks and shouting. A plate-glass window on the far side quivered under a barrage of stones and gave way with an ear-splitting crash. Glass tumbled out on to the pavement. Under Father O’Connor’s alarmed eyes, men and women and urchins clambered over the glass and began to strip the shop of its contents. While the looters did their work the front ranks kept the police at bay with a bombardment of stones. Lamps along the sidewalks shattered and went out one by one.

Yearling, opening the windows wider, drew Father O’Connor with him as he stepped out on to the balcony.

‘Bradshaw should have come here,’ he remarked, pointing to the milling crowd below. ‘There’s the real Kathleen ni Houlihan for you.’

The police, moving in close formation, advanced against the mob. Bottles and stones rattled and fell short of their targets as the crowd retreated. Then the hand to hand fighting started and for fifteen or twenty minutes police and people struggled for possession of the street. Already the roadway was strewn with injured rioters. Yearling, turning to address a remark to Father O’Connor, noticed that his face was white and sick looking. He took him by the arm and led him back to his chair.

‘You must have something to drink.’

‘No . . . please.’

‘Something to settle the nerves.’

Father O’Connor shook his head.

‘I’ll be better in a moment.’

Yearling went out on the balcony once more, delayed a little, then re-entered.

‘The mob has gone back up the side streets,’ he said.

‘Perhaps I should go down,’ Father O’Connor said. ‘Somebody might be dying in the street, in need of the priest.’

He half rose, but Yearling pushed him back. ‘You are not well enough,’ he advised. ‘There is plenty of help for anyone who needs it. The ambulances are looking after the injured.’

Father O’Connor gave in. Unruly crowds terrified him. The sight of violence made him weak and useless. He remembered the night he had followed the marchers to Beresford Place and the weakness which had overcome him when the speeches and the cheering had reached their climax. It had not been the wine, after all. It had been the near presence of evil. Agitators were working on the diseased parts of the city, spurring obscure poor souls to hatred and bloodshed. Yearling went over and closed the window.

‘All quiet once more,’ he announced cheerfully, and rang for the waiter, who brought two stiff brandies.

‘This will settle it,’ he said in a kindly way, ‘and then I’ll drive you home.’

Father O’Connor accepted the glass, but said he ought to wait to see Mr. and Mrs. Bradshaw.

‘I wouldn’t venture abroad yet, sir,’ the waiter advised.

There were rioting mobs in a ring about the principal streets and the situation was likely to get worse as darkness descended.

‘It’s very bad, sir,’ the waiter assured them. ‘I’d stay put until the police have got things under control. I’ll keep you advised.’

Father O’Connor thanked him and said to Yearling: ‘Is this more of Mr. Larkin’s handiwork?’

‘Hardly,’ Mr. Yearling said.

The strike had been fixed the day before. What was there to riot about? They settled back in their chairs and after half an hour the waiter came to attend to the lights. It was dusk now outside the windows. The situation in the city was very bad, he told them. There were pitched battles raging in the side streets near at hand. Yearling opened the window again. The noise of fighting could be heard, far-off, but unmistakable.

‘They are coming out of their hovels,’ Yearling announced. ‘Listen to them.’

Father O’Connor did so. He heard glass breaking and knew they were still looting. In the streets he had seen little children clambering with bare feet across broken glass. He said: ‘What can they hope to gain?’

‘That is the mob,’ Yearling said, still standing by the window. ‘They are searching for justice.’

‘Hooligans,’ Father O’Connor protested.

But Yearling did not agree. They were ignorant, uncouth, deplorably unwashed. They were also miserably poor and downtrodden, despised by the articulate city. Yet they had minds to judge injustice and hearts to be broken by the contempt of their fellows. Yearling did not waste pity on them. But he could see their point.

‘Let’s hope they confine their search to the side streets,’ was all he said.

Then he came over to finish his brandy and order another.

In the streets behind them, Pat, trying to return to Nolan & Keyes after delivering a late load, ran into the thick of the trouble. It caught him unawares. The unusual quietness of the street puzzled him. The metal-shod dray made more noise than usual. He drove on into a section of complete darkness and heard the splintering of glass under the wheels. As he reined in to investigate, a piece of iron crashed against the wooden side of the dray. He looked behind him and there was nobody; he peered ahead and made out at last the glint of police helmets about a hundred yards away. Something thudded beside him, then the air became thick with missiles. He jerked the reins to make a turn away from the police and found dark figures surrounding him. Voices shouted obscenities. From the windows on either side stones and broken bottles descended on the advancing police. They began to retreat. The rioters, crushed about the dray, dragged the reins from his hands. When he tried to resist he was pulled from his seat and went down struggling. The horse and dray moved up the street, a new piece of equipment in the onslaught. People loaded it with the ammunition that lay scattered about. Pat, fighting and swearing, struggled to his feet and tried to follow it. Somebody struck him from behind with a bottle and he went down once more. He felt warm blood on his head and neck. The noise of the rioting receded to a distance although legs and bodies still milled about him. He felt behind him and touched a low stone step. Guessing a doorway, he dragged himself backwards and crouched between the pillars. He remained there, unable to see or hear anything now except a roaring noise that he knew was in his own head.

When he became conscious again the ambulances were clearing the street. They searched the darkness with their lamps while the running motors echoed against the dark houses. Pat tried to call out but found it made the pain in his head unbearable. After a while he saw the lamps go out one by one, heard feet receding and the slam of ambulance doors and the revving of engines. The cars lumbered away one by one.

‘They’ll never get here,’ Father O’Connor said, ‘the whole city must be in chaos.’

Yearling looked at his watch.

‘Not time yet,’ he said, ‘they are still watching Mr. Yeats.’

Once again the rioters had invaded Sackville Street. The sounds of fighting could be heard distinctly. Father O’Connor refused to look. Yearling, although he would have liked to indulge in a balcony-seat view, remained in his armchair out of sympathy.

‘We were talking earlier about love,’ he remembered. Father O’Connor, unsure of the absolute propriety of the theme, acknowledged uneasily.

‘Have you seen the Parnell statue, Father?’

Father O’Connor, wondering what that could have to do with it, confessed that he had not.

‘It was put in place a few weeks ago, and I went specially to see it.’

‘You were a follower of Parnell?’

‘Not at all. It amused me to see our principal street dedicated so entirely to love.’

Father O’Connor’s pale eyebrows shot up.

‘Parnell at the top—an adulterer,’ Yearling explained. ‘Nelson in the middle—another adulterer. And at the end O’Connell—a notorious wencher.’

The thought amused Yearling afresh. He chuckled agreeably to himself. Father O’Connor indicated polite disapproval by shaking his head and assuming a deliberately unamused expression. Parnell’s sin had split the Irish Party. Nelson was English—an outsider and unrepresentative. O’Connell may have been all Yearling said—a young man given to wenching and duelling. But in maturity he had become the instrument of Catholic emancipation. Yet it did seem odd. Three of them—all solemnly pedestalled. Trust Yearling to remark the coincidence. Frowning, Father O’Connor said:

‘They are honoured for their worthy acts, not for their human frailty.’

‘A pity it’s not the other way round,’ Yearling speculated.

‘The inscriptions would make more interesting reading.’

Father O’Connor, feeling the limit had now been reached, held up his hand and begged him not to pursue the subject.

Yearling apologised. ‘Forgive me,’ he said, ‘I meant no disrespect to your office.’

They fell silent. For Father O’Connor it was difficult. Beside him a man made light of a sacred matter, refusing the distinction between lust and love. Love was capable of being blessed, a stimulus, the natural end of which was to produce souls for Christ, souls that would fill in heaven the places left vacant by the angels who had fallen from grace and were now among the legions of the devil. Lust led also to hell. It was the flesh; lewd flesh, lascivious flesh, unbridled, passionate, self-destroying flesh. Love too, if unsanctified. Paolo and Francesca, betrayed by a book.

Having stopped the conversation, he felt obliged to introduce the next topic. But nothing occurred. The room became oppressive. Outside the shouting seemed to have died away.

‘I must look through the window,’ he said.

‘You’ll distress yourself.’

But he rose. From the window nothing could be seen and from the balcony only the occasional patches of the street, where the few lamps not quenched by the rioters threw their weak circles of light. Was somebody lying down there in the darkness, dying? There had been so much tumult.

‘I feel I should go down.’

‘Nonsense. Everything is over.’

Yearling was now at his side. The breeze from the river was cool and came fitfully. Peaceful. No more dreadful oaths, thuds of stones and sticks, that black milling tide tossing and shrieking. Had they fought to exhaustion or was it still going on in the side streets, in the smelling alleyways, men and women and little children transformed into obscene beasts?

‘What a dreadful night,’ he said. His distress was so obvious that it moved Yearling.

‘I am sorry if my remarks have upset you,’ he said.

‘Not at all. I meant the fighting and the looting.’

Yearling knew that. But his broadness on the subject of love had not helped.

‘What I said was prompted by a very genuine and beautiful memory,’ he explained. ‘May I tell you?’