James Plunkett - Strumpet City

It brought him down green lanes to race meetings of long ago. He saw white railings and coloured shirts and tents and three-card-trick men; the Curragh with its short grass and bushes of yellow gorse; the Park with its shading trees and the river to be glimpsed far below; Leopardstown by the railway line surrounded by blue mountains. He had been able for it then. A little luck and another summer and he would be able for it again. What was it Hennessy sometimes said? We never died of winter yet.

He bit again at the loaf but had to spit it out. The taste was abominable.

‘I’ll light my bit of a fire,’ he decided.

But he was so numb and weak that he was unable to rise. He tried different positions for leverage, grunted, gave up, forced himself to try again. There was no sound at all from the dog.

‘Rusty,’ he called, as terror overmastered him for a moment. The dog ambled across to him. He dragged himself along the floor until he reached the wall, which he used to lever himself at last into a standing position. He waited to get his breath back.

‘You were watching for them rats again,’ he accused the dog, ‘do you want to get yourself poisoned? How many times have I to speak to you?’

He had paper and sticks and two wooden setts saturated in tar which he had stolen from a pile where men had been digging up a road. When the fire had taken the tar in the setts bubbled and blazed furiously. The dog left off his vigil by the rat holes and came over to heat himself. Rashers boiled water, which warmed him and was better than nothing. Tomorrow he would beg at a few houses for sugar and tea. He took out the tin whistle and regarded it regretfully. The air hole at the mouthpiece was bent inwards, so that it was impossible now to get anything out of it beyond a shrill squeak. That had happened two days before. First he ran into trouble with a younger man called Morrissey when he went to search the bins on Pembroke Road. Morrissey had been there before him.

‘It’s my road,’ Rashers had said, ‘I’ve had this road since you were in petticoats.’

‘It’s mine now,’ Morrissey said.

‘You’re only an unprincipled bowsie,’ Rashers said. Morrissey gripped him by the beard, jerked him forward and struck him in the face with his free hand. The blow sent Rashers sprawling.

‘Clear off,’ Morrissey warned.

Rashers, his head reeling, refused to be silenced.

‘You’re only a bowsie,’ he said again. The dog snarled but it was an empty threat. It too had grown too old for fighting. He left Pembroke Road to Morrissey and tried playing his tin whistle outside the Church at Haddington Road. Here a policeman moved him on. In fury and impotence he dashed the tin whistle on the ground. When he cooled down sufficiently to pick it up, he found it was bent.

He drank the hot water and dwelt on the world’s misuse of him. Then he lay down again in the hope of falling asleep before the fire went out for want of fuel. It glowed on the walls, making grotesque shadows He was glad he had stolen the setts.

‘We never died of winter yet,’ he said to the dog. But his heart told him it was a lie.

‘Who is Keever?’ Mary asked.

‘The one Mulhall went to gaol for,’ Fitz told her, ‘he used to work as a carter.’

She remembered. ‘Will you try for the job?’

‘First thing in the morning.’

‘I’ll call you early.’

‘If I get three days with Broderick’s and the week Carrington told me about, that won’t be so bad.’

She was putting coal on the fire from a bucket Mrs. Mulhall had sent across to them earlier.

‘We’ll knock it out somehow,’ she said.

For how long, he wondered. There seemed no hope at all of anything permanent. He had been trying without any sign of success for three months. If he could get to England there would be some hope, but it would mean finding some way to keep Mary and the children alive while he looked around. He decided against mentioning it again. They had talked enough about it in the weeks that had passed. He turned the betting docket over and examined the message again. Packleader and Revolution: the combination amused him.

‘If this double turns up,’ he said, ‘we’ll buy a little place in the country.’

She smiled.

‘I wonder why he didn’t call himself,’ she said.

The House of the Boer War Heroes was unchanged and unchangeable. Souvenirs in the china cabinet still spoke of comings and goings that had ended at the turn of the century. The same uniformed groups occupied the mantelpiece and the top of the piano. Queen Victoria’s portrait on the sitting room wall stared down at Lily and Pat with longstanding disapproval. They had their tea at the fire and ignored her. With the landlady away the house was their own. Pat lay back on the sofa and smoked. To see a fire again was an adventure; to be with Lily a piece of good fortune he would never have dared to hope for. He watched her now as they talked and found her looking better than ever. Living in a house which was comfortable with an old woman who appreciated her as a companion rather than as a lodger had changed her. Her speech was less sharp, her manner more subdued and reticent. Life was no longer something to be fought.

‘I hated you being in gaol,’ she said, ‘all those criminals.’

‘There didn’t seem to be any criminals,’ Pat told her. ‘From the account of themselves they gave to me, every one of them was innocent. So far as I could find out, the only one guilty of the crime he was locked up for was myself.’

‘In that case it’s just as well they let you out,’ Lily decided, ‘you might have corrupted the rest.’

‘It used to worry me,’ Pat admitted.

‘And you have your job back?’

‘Started right away.’

‘I’m glad.’ She came over and sat beside him.

‘Pat—you must take it easy from now on. No more fighting and getting into trouble. Or heavy drinking.’

‘I’m not a heavy drinker,’ he objected, ‘you need money for that game.’

‘You seem to manage—somehow,’ she told him.

‘Are you going to nag?’

‘Listen to him,’ she begged, addressing Queen Victoria. But she relented and said, gently:

‘I thought you didn’t look well when you called. Gaol was no cakewalk, was it?’

‘It’s nicer to be out,’ Pat admitted.

‘It’s nicer for me too,’ she said softly. The tenderness that had been denied for so long overwhelmed him. He took her in his arms and she yielded warmly to him. His heart quickened with happiness.

After some minutes she moved a little away from him and said:

‘You didn’t ask me about my good news.’

‘I thought I’d let you come to that in your own good time,’ he said. He was a little bit apprehensive, wondering if she had got a job which would take her away, or if she had met somebody who meant more to her. He was not certain that he wanted to hear.

‘It’s about that thing which used to worry me.’

‘What thing?’

‘Oh, God!’ she exclaimed. ‘Do I have to use the deaf-and-dumb alphabet?’

He knew then what she meant. It had become so much a part of their knowledge of each other that he had not considered it.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘When I was in hospital there was this nun. She was very kind and I think she took a fancy to me. Anyway I screwed up the nerve to mention it to her and she insisted on me having all sorts of examinations.’

He waited. It was a subject he had learned not to discuss.

‘Pat,’ she said, ‘there’s nothing at all wrong with me. I’ve got a clean bill.’

He reached out and took her hand. But he knew it was better not to say anything. He was never sure on this score.

She said: ‘So—if you still want to marry me—everything seems to be all right.’