Strumpet City (52 page)

‘Do you think they’ll change their minds?’ Carrington asked.

‘Hardly,’ Fitz said.

He surveyed the empty house. The line of furnaces, charged by the night workers before they left, glowed dimly down its length. The silence was oppressive.

‘We’ve to bank down all the fires,’ Carrington said. ‘You’ll know what’s to be done. Take the heats down slowly. We’ll have to do that over two or three days or the brickwork may crack. The office staff will be down in an hour or two to give a hand.’

‘You’ll need more than the office staff.’

‘Some of the workers will come back to sign,’ Carrington said. ‘We’ll put them at it. Then we’ll recruit casual labour.’

‘If you do that,’ Fitz said, ‘there’ll be serious trouble.’

‘The police will give protection. We can’t let the bloody plant get damaged. That wouldn’t be in anyone’s interest. Your job will be to direct operations in here. You’ll have a crowd of clerks working under you and they won’t know what they’re supposed to be about. You’ll have to keep a sharp eye on them.’

‘What time will the office staff report at?’

‘In about an hour—or even less. They’re being rounded up at the moment.’

‘I’ll be here for them,’ Fitz said.

‘We’ll boil up a can of tea while we’re waiting,’ Carrington suggested. ‘Have a fag.’

‘No,’ Fitz said. ‘I’m going up aloft to look after the reserve water supply. It may be needed and I’ve found nobody else has ever been able to put it in working order.’

He climbed laboriously up steel ladders and felt his way by handrails that were covered with a thick coating of dust. Below him the light from the untended furnaces threw tiny pools of red along the empty floor. He felt his way along the galleries, the handrails guiding him where the gloom was thick, an occasional rooflight easing the strain with a dusty shaft of sunlight. He trod gingerly through the remote and intricate web of steel until he found the water reserve which was located above No. 4 House. He remembered testing it many times before, when the coal-stack went on fire and Mulhall was one of the carters called in to help. He went through the same drill with it now, until the pipes began their agitated dance and the gallery trembled with the sudden outburst of noise. Satisfied that the reserve would work if called on, he followed the catwalk until it led him through a doorway and on to the roof.

He looked about him, grateful for the fresh air. Below him the works yard was empty. There were no carters leading their horses, no labourers piling coal. The telpher, its arcing rail empty, no longer sent blue sparks flying from its trolley. The new loading machine, to which Mulhall had sacrificed his legs and his manhood, was abandoned and untended and bathed in lonely sunlight. Beyond the yard, at a distance of a few intervening streets, was the river. Here and there smoke curled from the funnels of ships. None of the cranes was working. Either it was the hour between tides, or the lock-out had spread to the riverside. He delayed for some time, looking at the empty yard and considered his own position. He had not been issued with a form. Probably they assumed that he had left the union when they made him a foreman. Carrington then, had been decent enough to keep his mouth shut.

When he got back the office staff were assembled already in No. 1 House.

‘You organise this lot,’ Carrington said. ‘I’ll look after No. 2 House. There’s a cup of tea ready for you when you get them working.’

‘Right,’ Fitz said.

He divided them, putting some on the skips and giving shovels to others. Then he explained what was to be done, and at what times. He appointed a senior clerk to direct the rest. He watched them charging the furnaces and showed them how to dress the fires lightly. The heat was to be brought down, he told them, a little at a time and with care. They understood what was at stake and grasped the system quickly. When the initial confusion and awkwardness had been overcome, he left them at it and went to find Carrington.

Carrington’s gang had not yet arrived. He poured tea from a billycan for Fitz and asked:

‘How’s it going?’

‘Smoothly enough,’ Fitz said. ‘They’ll get the heats down without damage.’

‘Fine,’ Carrington said.

Fitz took the tea. It was thick and brown. Carrington made tea in the way of the workers: tea leaves and sugar all in together, with a lacing of condensed milk. It had the taste of the job off it, of coal fumes, of sweat, of furnace-house gossip. Carrington said:

‘You’ll have to keep an eye on them, just the same.’

Fitz drank his tea, thinking his way ahead.

‘They’ll fold up after a while, of course,’ Carrington pursued. ‘Enthusiasm is no substitute for experience.’

He took his tea.

‘Muscles too soft,’ he explained.

‘They’ll manage,’ Fitz said.

‘With a bit of guidance,’ Carrington said, indulgently.

‘Well,’ he added, when Fitz did not seem disposed to talk, ‘better get back on the job I suppose.’

Fitz examined his cup. There was a residue of liquid in it, enough to wash the tea leaves from the sides as he tilted it about and about. He considered carefully and said:

‘I won’t be going back to the job.’ He had the feeling of pushing a bolt on a door firmly home, or making a will. Carrington said nothing for some time. He, too, was feeling his way.

‘You realise what you’re doing?’ he said at last.

‘Perfectly,’ Fitz said.

‘There’s a chance, sooner or later, they’ll show a little mercy to the others. But they’ll never forgive a foreman. If you quit now you’ll walk through that gate for the last time. You’ll never get back.’

‘I know that,’ Fitz said.

‘Then why do you have to be such a fool?’

Why? Personal pride, or the hope that at the end of so much travail, somewhere in the unseeable future, there would be a change in the world. He had seen a man suffer and afterwards he had picked up two dismembered feet and wrapped them in a sack.

‘I couldn’t leave the union now,’ he said. ‘People who were never in it and never intended to be in it are locked out because they won’t sign a bit of paper promising never to join it.’

‘They’ve the prospect of getting back,’ Carrington said. ‘You’ve none.’

‘We’ll cross that bridge when we meet it,’ Fitz said. He pushed the cup away from him and stood up.

‘See you sometime,’ he said.

Carrington offered his hand. Fitz shook it.

‘Thanks,’ he said.

He left the house, crossed the empty yard and went through the gateman’s hut into the street. The notice of the lock-out was still posted on the main gates, which were closed.

By the end of the week Bullman had assembled the facts for his Board. The four hundred firms in membership of the Employers’ Federation had stood firm, thirty-two trade unions had joined with the Larkinites in refusing to sign the form. The lock-out was general throughout the city. They must act from now on in consort with the rest of the employers. They would have financial support from employers in England. Gates closed, machinery came to a standstill. The city of Dublin was practically paralysed. It was reckoned that about twenty-four thousand men were involved. In a matter of days the streets filled with the hungry hordes Rashers had feared.

C
HAPTER
F
OUR

Mary, alone with the sleeping children, sat at the window overlooking the street and felt the dusk growing in the room about her. At first she had been occupied by the children playing in scattered groups below, until in twos and threes they were called away and there was nothing left to watch except the changing tones of pavement and housefront as the shadows of late evening began their transformation. It was September and already the dusk came perceptibly earlier. Soon the women, meeting each other, would remark: ‘God bless us, but aren’t the evenings closing in.’ Soon would come the colder weather and the need for fires. With half the city idle, what was to happen then?

The thought remained to trouble and preoccupy her. Fitz’s promotion to foreman had brought not only extra money and a little more comfort but a place in the world that was better and more secure than any of her neighbours. He could have left the union when he was promoted. Foremen, she had thought, were above unions. Yet he had come out with the rest, and in doing so put everything she had and all she hoped for in jeopardy—her children’s future, the possessions she had gathered to make a home with, the small weekly amounts she was beginning to save. It was not in her nature to question his decision, yet the consequences of it distressed her. Hunger and want were again part of her world, twin possibilities that threatened in her moments of solitude and were now calamitous presences in the shadowed corners of the street.

A tapping at the door roused her. She realised that someone was calling her.

‘Mrs. Fitzpatrick, are you within?’

She recognised the voice and for a moment hesitated. Then she called, reluctantly.

‘Come in—Mrs. Hennessy.’

The woman opened the door and poked her head around it, peering into the gloom.

‘Your husband is out?’

‘He is,’ Mary said.

Mrs. Hennessy, entering the room, let the shawl down from her head and settled it in folds about her shoulders.

‘Them oul stairs has me killed,’ she said conversationally. She was small and thin, with dark hair that was greying and a drawn yellow face. Her eyes, inquisitive and watchful, challenged the world to do its worst.

‘Can I help you?’ Mary said, waiting for the customary flow to start.

Mrs. Hennessy produced a jug from beneath her shawl.

‘I was wondering if I could borrow the loan of a sup of fresh milk for the baby,’ she said, ‘she’s too young for the condensed.’

Mary went to the press.

‘Wait till I tell you what happened,’ Mrs. Hennessy said. ‘There was a terrible commotion some hours back. Some bowsie put a brick through the window of Kerrigan’s dairy and there’s not a sup to be had there. Only for that I wouldn’t trouble you at all.’

Mary poured milk into the jug. Mrs. Hennessy, watching the operation closely, said: ‘The blessings of God on you.’ Then, as a quick afterthought, added: ‘You might lend me the loan of a cupful of sugar as well.’

Mary took the cracked cup which also appeared from under the shawl and filled it with sugar.

‘You’re far too generous,’ Mrs. Hennessy said, ‘and you’ll have it all back as soon as the tide turns.’

‘It’s nothing,’ Mary said, ‘don’t think of it.’ The quick and inquisitive eyes were taking in the room.

‘Did you hear what the police is up to?’

‘I did, indeed,’ Mary said.

‘Depredation and damage—that’s their programme now,’ Mrs. Hennessy said. ‘They’re breaking into the houses and smashing things and manhandling defenceless women and children. I know several this night that hasn’t a stick of furniture left whole—everything the poor souls ever had smashed into smithereens.’

‘God forgive them,’ Mary said. But she got no chance to say anything more.

‘God forbid they’d ever break in here,’ Mrs. Hennessy continued, ‘and you with everything a body could want for. Sofas and chairs and table and nice pictures. They’d make short work of it all. Thanks be to God they’ll find little of value to damage in Ellen Hennessy’s caboosh, and what little there ever was is safely stored by now in The Erin’s Isle Pawnbroking Establishment. That’s the advantage of having nothing. You can’t lose it.’

Then, after a breath she said: ‘Still—God is good.’

Mary said sympathetically: ‘Your poor husband is out of work again, I’m told.’

‘Is he ever
in
work,’ Mrs. Hennessy broke in. ‘He had a nice little job and, as usual, wouldn’t mind it.’

‘It was unfortunate,’ Mary said.

‘Wait till I tell you,’ Mrs. Hennessy said. ‘He goes off to Sackville Street a few weeks ago to see will Larkin turn up and comes home to me with his head in a bandage and his arm dislocated. “What happened to you Hennessy?” say I, when he came in the door. “I was caught in a charge in Sackville Street,” says he, “and got a belt of a baton. And when I fell I think I was walked on be a horse.” Right enough, when he took off his shirt he was black and blue all over. “That’s what you get,” says I, “for playing the Red Hand hayro. Now your wife and your unfortunate children can go hungry.”’

She gathered her shawl about her head once more.

‘I’ll go up now,’ she said, ‘and look after them. They’re all alone and like a bag of cats for want of a bit to eat. I’m more than obliged for the loan of the milk and the sugar.’

Then she surveyed the room again. Her eyes went from item to item, assessing each.

‘You have enough here to stave off the hunger for many a long day,’ she assured Mary, ‘and if the time ever comes when you have to start shifting some of it, just give me the word. Ellen Hennessy will see you get the right price in any pawnshop in the city. Don’t forget now.’

‘I won’t forget,’ Mary said.

She closed the door after Mrs. Hennessy and stood for a moment to wonder whether kindness or envy had inspired the other woman’s offer. God help her, she had little in her life to prompt her to generosity, with her husband who seldom worked and a family that kept increasing. Her life was a succession of childbirths, her days dependent on the pawnshop and reluctant little charities wheedled from her neighbours. If she was envious or grudging she had every reason to be.

Mary sat down at the window again, determined to be patient while she waited for Fitz to return from his meeting, trying not to lose hope among the ever deepening shadows of the street. What Mrs. Hennessy had looked upon as her guarantee against misfortune would be the misfortune itself, to part with the things she had gathered, to break up the home she had made through personal sacrifice and with the sympathetic help of Mrs. Bradshaw. That help, at least, would continue. Mrs. Bradshaw was a kindly woman. When she knew of the trouble she would do little things to help. For Mrs. Bradshaw had everything except children. That was the strange way the world worked. Mrs. Hennessy had too many. But that was the Will of God.

Sometimes she had tried to imagine what it would be like to change places with Mrs. Bradshaw, to sit in a beautiful house looking out at the garden, with a bell near at hand to summon a servant to open the windows when the room grew warm with the sun, or to close them when the evening air became cool. To give orders about the meals. And to arrange the flowers—saying this should go here and that should go there. To play the piano when there was company. To dress elegantly for the theatre. To wash with delicate soaps. To carry a pretty purse of notes and sovereigns. And she would have education. And she would speak with a beautiful accent. But she would have to have been born differently, never knowing her father, or her mother who was dead. And she would have no children. And she would have Mr. Bradshaw. No.