Sometimes when Father O’Connor came in on business he was called into the shop to speak with him. These were proud moments. The lady assistants looked on with respect and even the floorwalker smiled and said: ‘Here is Mr. Keever for you now, Father.’ So among the statues and the priedieus, the ciboria and chalices, the lamps of brass and the vestments hued according to liturgical ordinance, Keever enjoyed for brief moments a world that could have been a cluttered anteroom to the real heaven into which, his duty earnestly done and his earthly life over, he hoped by the Mercy of God and the intercession of the Saints to be eternally translated.
Mostly they spoke of the affairs of the parish, who was on strike, who had given in, what was the prevailing temper of the people. With Mr. Hegarty he still visited certain of the aged and the poor, dispensing on Father O’Connor’s behalf what relief could be afforded out of the remnants of the fund. Father O’Connor had given up the hope of a regularly operating charitable society. The issues had become too complicated. It was impossible to distinguish between those who were suffering because of circumstances beyond their control and those who were hungry because they were in revolt against lawful authority.
But Keever could report that the suffering was spreading and growing more intense with each week that passed and that neither the strike fund nor the food kitchens could keep the condition of the mass of the people from deteriorating. One afternoon he told Father O’Connor that there were rumours of a new move, a plan to send the children of the strikers to working-class homes in England. The effect on Father O’Connor was quite astonishing. He began to tremble and had difficulty in speaking.
‘Are they out of their minds?’ he asked.
Keever was appalled at the effect of what he had reported.
‘Maybe it’s only talk, Father,’ he said contritely. ‘I shouldn’t have repeated it to you.’
‘No, no,’ Father O’Connor assured him, ‘this is an extremely grave matter. You did right to tell me.’
‘I hope so, Father.’
Father O’Connor became very serious.
‘Mr. Larkin may see nothing wrong in sending Catholic children to homes which are almost certain to be of the Protestant faith. But I’d expect Catholic parents to understand the grave danger. If you hear any further talk of this—even a whisper, make it your business to let me know immediately.’
‘I will indeed, Father,’ Keever said.
He returned to the stores, where, among the smells of colza oil and benzine, paraffin and brasso and beeswax, he made up parcels and filled cans and pondered on Father O’Connor’s reaction to what he had reported, until the overseer interrupted him to draw his attention to a new consignment of statues and gave him a price list.
‘I want you to mark these up’ he said. ‘Put a price code on one of each kind and bring it up to the shop for display.’
Keever took the list and unpacked the first of the statues. It was St. Michael the Archangel. He looked at it in some doubt and said: ‘Where will I mark it?’
The little overseer screwed up his face.
‘On the right cheek of his arse,’ he said.
Shock paralysed the hand in which Keever held the marking pencil. It refused to move.
‘Go on,’ the overseer said after a while. ‘Do what you’re told. There’s no fear he’ll sit down on it.’
Muhall’s face, once powerful and ruddy from the open air, grew smaller and became silver coloured. The bulk of his body under the bedclothes grew smaller too. More frequently now, as he lay between sleep and wakefulness the patterns on the walls cast by sunlight or lamplight drew him into the half-world of imagination, where he drove unearthly horses and humped weightless sacks in streets that were shadowed and soundless. He squared his great shoulders and led the processions and listened at vast meetings to voiceless speeches. The bands played in dumb show, the torches waved wildly to noiseless cheering, faces mouthed words at him that he could not hear. But the exultation ended always, whether he was carrying sacks up a stairs or marching with his comrades, when he looked down in sudden agony to discover that he was walking on stumps. Sometimes he wept, but only if he was sure he was alone. At times it was for pity of self. At times it was because of the things he could no longer do for Larkin and the union.
Whenever they visited him he was still militant. Pat he liked best to talk to, because Pat was one of the strong-arm element engaged in ambushes on the police and in teaching scabs that strike breaking would not pay.
‘That’s my man,’ he would say approvingly at the end of each account of a victorious clash, ‘into the river with them.’
‘That’s the motto, Barney,’ Pat would say. ‘The prospect of a watery end is a great deterrent.’
Once, when Fitz said: ‘One of these days you’ll find yourselves had up for murder’, Mulhall grew angry.
‘There’s a lot of ways of murdering people,’ he said, ‘and one is to starve them.’
‘That’s not the law,’ Fitz pointed out. Mulhall tried to pull himself up in the bed and roared at him:
‘Whose side are you bloodywell on?’
But Fitz took the outburst quietly. Mulhall’s anger with him was always brief.
When they got outside it was Pat who said: ‘He won’t last.’
‘No,’ Fitz said.
‘How are they managing?’
‘On Willie’s strike pay. That’s all they have.’
‘Christ help them,’ Pat said.
They went down the stairs together.
‘What do you know about Hennessy, the fella with the bowler hat?’ asked Pat.
Fitz became cautious.
‘What should I know about him?’
‘That he’s got a job somewhere.’
‘I didn’t hear that.’
‘To be precise,’ Pat said, ‘that he’s watching at night for Crampton’s.’
‘He could be,’ Fitz said.
‘A few of us intend to find out. We’ll lie in wait for him. If he turns up we’ll let him have it.’
They were walking down the street now. Fitz stopped.
‘I don’t think you should do that,’ he said.
‘Crampton’s men are locked out. It’s a scab job.’
‘He’s an inoffensive poor devil with a crowd of young children,’ Fitz said. ‘I’m sure he doesn’t see any harm in it.’