Strumpet City (62 page)

Is it yours, by any chance?’

B. Yearling

Mathews answered:

Dear Yearling,

It is true that the two ladies in question have been arrested and are being held on the charge which you rightly describe as preposterous. It cannot possibly stand up, but it will keep them out of the way and I suppose the authorities find this a convenient device for upsetting our plans. It shows the lengths they are prepared to go to support the employers. To hell with them. I have volunteered with some others to conduct the children to the ships and the railway stations. Would you care to join us?

The verse you quote shocks me. Naked children?

Here is one from the pen of a humble, working class scribe. I read it in
The Worker
the other day.

‘A toiling and a moiling

O what a life of bliss

They’ll promise you heaven in the next life

While they’re robbing you in this.’

Robust and down-to-earth—isn’t it? He has all this religious hocus-pocus in shrewd perspective.

T. Mathews

Yearling thought about it. He decided to write again:

My dear Mathews,

Yes, I will join you. But as an observer. Let us arrange it.

Yearling

C
HAPTER
N
INE

Father O’Connor, having fortified himself with a substantial lunch against a day that he felt was going to be exacting and distasteful, went out into the streets of Dublin to do battle for God. He had rehearsed his motives meticulously to make certain they were sincere. They were. Catholic souls needed his intervention. Although the children of his parish might be of little consequence to the world they lived in: lowliest of the lowly born, illiterate, ill-used even, each was as precious to God and had as much right to salvation as the highest and noblest in the land. In that belief he would play his priestly part. He regretted only that Father O’Sullivan had not seen fit to join him.

Proselytism was rife. He had known cases of it personally, where families attended bible-readings because soup and bread were given in return. One child had told him of being enticed into the house of a lady who had the servants put him in a bath and scrub him with carbolic soap before feeding him and handing him tracts which, fortunately, the child could not read. Perhaps God had His own purpose in the general illiteracy of the poor. A more experienced colleague had made that shrewd observation to him. Father Giffley wouldn’t listen to stories of that kind. But then Father Giffley was in the grip of an addiction which had already gone far towards unbalancing his mind. These people had money and leisure. They had even learned the Irish language to spread their heresies among the peasantry in the remote wildernesses of Connemara. During his novitiate a friend had shown him one of their bibles in the Irish language.

His first call would be on Mrs. Fitzpatrick. If it were true that she intended to send her children away he must take every step to dissuade her. She had been trained in a good house and was intelligent enough to understand the harm that must follow. Through the kindness of Mrs. Bradshaw she had had plenty to be grateful to God for. Would she repay the debt in this way? That was the question to put to her. His line of approach was clear.

The next thing was to remember where she lived; not the house, which he knew fairly well, but the particular room. He did not want his presence to be known to everybody. That would be indiscreet, even unjust.

He picked his way through streets which were threatened with an assault against the Motherhood of the Church and citizens who by and large did not seem particularly to care. They pursued their own lives and bent their thoughts to their own narrow affairs. They raised their hats briefly to him as they passed him on the pathways. They held up public house corners and spat at intervals to pass the time. They thronged the shops and carefully counted their change. And every so often a tram passed guarded by police, or a convoy of lorries guarded by police, or simply a cordon of police on the way to guard something not as yet equipped with the protection applied for. That was the pass the city had come to: hatred, strife, hunger, ambush, disobedience.

There were men now who made violence their everyday concern. They planned assaults on the police and attacked those who were replacing them at their work. In the county of Dublin farm labourers who had been locked out were burning outhouses, spiking fields, maiming cattle and forcing the farmers who had once employed them to go about armed. The socialists were the instigators, but the masters themselves were not without blame. They had been wanting in justice and, above all, in charity. He had told them so from the pulpit before he left Kingstown, warning them that Christ Himself had said He would not be found in the courts of Kings, where men were clothed in soft garments, but in the desert. The slums about him were the desert. Among the poor who inhabited them must Christ be sought out. That was where the masters had failed. And because of that failure the devil had now taken possession.

His parish engulfed him, spinning its web about him of malodorous hallways, decaying houses, lines of ragged washing. His work had not been very fruitful. He had failed to learn how to love them as brothers and sisters. But he could love them as a father by instructing them and protecting them against temptation and weakness. At least he had walked their grim streets and entered their unsavoury rooms. In time he would learn to communicate with them.

Chandlers Court acknowledged his presence. Here and there a head appeared at a window; the children stopped their play to stare at him; one or two men saluted him. He stood still, recollecting. Number 3? While he tried precisely to remember, two figures whom he recognised emerged from a hallway. One was the scarecrow of a man he had had to dismiss from the post of boilerman. He felt reluctant to approach him. They came nearer to him. Tierney, that was the name. Father O’Connor, detecting pride in his attitude towards a poor, crippled oddity, put himself to the test. He waited, his stance one of enquiry and irresolution, until they came near him.

‘Good evening, men,’ he said.

Hennessy raised his hat and said, ‘God Bless you, Father.’ Rashers said nothing.

‘Tierney, my man,’ Father O’Connor said, ‘I would like you to show me to the room in which Mrs. Fitzpatrick lives—if you can spare the time.’

‘I can do that, Father, Hennessy volunteered.

‘Just a minute,’ Rashers said, ‘I’m the one that was asked.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Hennessy said.

‘And I’d like to tell Father O’Connor what he can do,’ Rashers continued.

Hennessy looked at his face and became alarmed.

‘Now, now, Rashers,’ he pleaded. He put his hand on Rashers’ arm.

‘Shut up,’ Rashers said. He turned his attention to Father O’Connor. He leaned forward on his stick to be closer to him.

‘That’s the first civil question you’ve addressed to me in a number of years, Father,’ he said, ‘and I’m not going to answer you. But I’ll give Hennessy here a message he can deliver to you.’

‘Now, now,’ Hennessy implored. ‘Remember Father O’Connor is one of God’s holy anointed.’

‘He is indeed,’ Rashers agreed, ‘and I’ll tell you what to answer him on my behalf, because I wouldn’t insult one of his cloth up to his face.’

Rashers looked back at Father O’Connor.

‘So you can give the Reverend Gentleman this message from Rashers Tierney. Tell him to ask my proletarian arse.’

He turned and hobbled away. When Hennessy found his voice he said: ‘For God’s sake, Father, don’t pay any heed to him or take any offence at all.’

‘I am not offended,’ Father O’Connor said quietly.

‘The poor man has been out of his wits this long time.’

‘I am not angry,’ Father O’Connor said. His face was white.

‘Then let me do what little I can by showing you the Fitzpatrick’s apartment,’ Hennessy offered.

Father O’Connor kept his voice under control.

‘Thank you,’ he said. He followed Hennessy, who continued to apologise. Father O’Connor made short but quiet replies to all he said. The insult had found its way to his stomach. He felt chilled.

‘Do you intend to drive all the way?’ Mathews asked. He was uneasy.

‘I have been wondering should I,’ Yearling answered.

‘Not quite to the hall door, perhaps.’

‘A bit ostentatious, you think?’

‘Well . . . Better not.’

‘Pity. If I had thought of it, we could have rigged up a Red Flag on the bonnet.’

‘Just as well you didn’t.’

Yearling looked disappointed. ‘For a poet,’ he said, ‘you lack a taste for the dramatic. Shelley scattered pamphlets on the heads of passers-by from his lodgings in Grafton Street.’

‘The pamphlets were in support of Catholic Emancipation.’

‘Oh—that’s rather different.’

‘In fact he later gave great offence in his speech to the Friends of Catholic Emancipation by arguing that one religion was as good as another. Both Catholics and Protestants were outraged.’

‘Quite understandable,’ Yearling said. ‘To be persecuted by a fellow-Christian is understandable. To be liberated at the hands of an agnostic, unbearable. I think I’ll park here.’

They stopped near St. Brigid’s.

‘Do you plan to pick up the children at Liberty Hall?’

‘Yes.’

‘Have we time for a drink?’

‘Plenty,’ Mathews said. But when they were ordering he would only take a ginger beer.

‘A hint of alcohol on the breath and Larkin would ask me to go home,’ he explained.

‘Oh—and what about me?’

‘Perfectly all right,’ Mathews said, ‘the children won’t be in your charge.’

‘You sound smug, Mathews.’

‘To tell the truth, I’m just a bit frightened,’ Mathews answered.

They strolled down to the North Wall. A large crowd had gathered at the Embarkation sheds, respectably dressed men and some women too, with a sprinkling of priests. Their banners read: ‘Kidnapper Larkin’: ‘Save the Children’: ‘Away with Socialism’. When a car approached they spread across the road and stopped it. They questioned the driver and searched inside before letting him drive on, then grimly resumed their watch for God. One of the priests moved constantly from group to group, a purposeful man with a heavy face.

‘That reverend gentleman is Father Farrell of Donnybrook,’ Mathews remarked, ‘an actionist if ever there was one. Yesterday the children were seized when they tried to board the mail boat at Kingstown. In fact some of the children were with perfectly respectable parents who had a deal of trouble getting them back into their custody. I’m told that one lady was obliged to open her box to show her marriage certificate.’

Yearling had read of these things and found them rich in human absurdity. Now he looked at the reality. It was shoddy. It was worse. It was unbelievably ugly. He took Mathews by the arm and both turned away.

‘Let us get on to Liberty Hall,’ he suggested. Humour had deserted him.

Father O’Connor climbed the stairs and knocked on the door Hennessy pointed out to him. He waited. At first Hennessy’s footsteps, sounding on the stairs, filled the house with noise. When they had receded Father O’Connor became conscious of great stillness. There were children’s voices somewhere above him, but at a great distance it seemed, so faint and intermittent that they made the stillness about him hard to endure. He knocked a second time and knew from the sound that the room was empty. Was he too late? The thought that the Fitzpatrick children might be on their way to the boat already, alarmed him. He began knocking again, his time with his umbrella, with such force that the handle broke off. It rebounded off the door and made a clattering noise on the wooden floor. The sound brought him to his senses. He must control himself and think. As he searched in the half-light to recover the handle of his umbrella a door on the other side of the landing opened and an elderly woman came out. She was frightened until she recognised him.

‘It’s yourself, Father,’ she said, reassured. He searched for the handle and found it before answering her.

‘Who have I here?’ he asked.

‘I’m Mrs. Mulhall, Father,’ she said. He peered at her.

‘Ah yes—of course.’ He remembered her now as the woman whose husband had recently died. She might be able to give him the information he was looking for. He stuffed the umbrella handle into his pocket and said: ‘I’d like to have a word with you, if I may—immediately.’

‘Certainly, Father.’

She led him into a room in which upturned boxes were serving as table and chairs. The linoleum showed unworn and unfaded patches here and there in places once occupied by furniture. An easy chair at the fireside stood out in incongruous luxury. She dusted this and offered it to him. He sat down. She was, he remembered, a good and devout woman. Father O’Sullivan had spoken most highly of her. The death of her husband must have been a cruel blow. He would have to refer to it. Presently.

She sat on one of the boxes opposite him and he found an opening.

‘You are going through hard times,’ he said, looking about at the evidence of the room.

‘We’re all having the bad times, Father,’ she answered. Although he was agitated he found time to have pity for her, an ageing woman sitting on a box in a home without a fire. Whoever might be responsible for the evils of the times, it was not she. Exercising patience, he said:

‘Your husband’s death was a sad blow, I’m sure.’

‘It was at first, Father, but now I’m happy God took him when He did. He was lying there all those months breaking his heart because he couldn’t be out and about with the rest of the men.’

‘You are very brave.’

‘If nothing could ever give him his two legs back to him, why should I wish God to keep him lying there fretting and suffering.’

Father O’Connor nodded. He remembered more precisely now. They were speaking of the man who had assaulted Timothy Keever and whose conduct he had deplored from the pulpit. The woman was not embarrassed. Father O’Sullivan, no doubt, had made it his business to reassure her in her time of trouble. It was a gift which most puzzled him in that humble and otherwise very ordinary priest. ‘Your resignation is a great credit to you,’ he said. ‘It is indeed.’