‘Oh no,’ Father O’Connor said, rising in his turn, ‘it is my responsibility.’
‘I know the poor fellow very well,’ Father O’Sullivan explained. ‘I’d like to attend him—if you will allow it?’
He said it anxiously, as though afraid of giving offence.
Father O’Connor said: ‘But of course—if you wish to.’
‘Thank you,’ Father O’Sullivan said. He threw his napkin on the table and indicated to the clerk that he would go immediately. Father O’Connor felt he should at least have finished up what remained on his plate. The clerk went out to tell Mary the priest would come at once. She hurried back to help Mrs. Mulhall to prepare.
So it was that Father O’Sullivan made his way once again to Mulhall’s room, this time to administer the final sacrament, to forgive him his sins, to anoint his five senses with holy oils. He found the room prepared as before, though this time with signs of haste and this time without the fine glass bowl and without the white linen cloth, which had been sold. A cup held the holy water, a sheet of clean paper covered the table. Mulhall’s breathing made the room shudder. His mouth gaped open, his cheekbones looked as though they would burst through the taut skin. His Spirit had already surrendered to death. Only the body continued the struggle, going through the repetitious motions, mechanical, instinctive, unaware. Father O’Sullivan signalled and Mary led Mrs. Mulhall from the room. The sound in it terrified her. She was glad to be able to leave.
Father O’Sullivan bent over the labouring body. He spoke to it, but knew there would be no response. He then began to administer Extreme Unction, blessing with holy oils each eye, each ear, the lips, the palms of the hands. From long habit he loosened the bedclothes at the foot of the bed, then as he did so remembered that there were no feet to anoint. He tucked the clothes back under the mattress again. The breathing suddenly became quieter, although when he looked the mouth still gaped open. He took the lower jaw in his hand and closed it firmly. For a while the face remained in repose, the cheekbones no longer threatened to burst it asunder. He watched, thinking for a moment that Mulhall had come through his crisis of unconsciousness into natural sleep. He may have done so. But as Father O’Sullivan was about to call to him again Mulhall sighed, stirred a little, and died. Father O’Sullivan knew immediately. For a moment Death was a presence. He felt it enter the room. He prayed. In a brief while Death ceased to be a presence and became merely a state.
He went to the door and summoned Mrs. Mulhall. Mary was still with her and her son Willie, who had just come in. He avoided saying her husband was dead. Instead he said: ‘I was just in time.’ His face and the gentleness of his tone told her the rest. She went past him into the room.
‘Everything has been done that should be done,’ he told Willie. To Mary, as he was leaving, he whispered: ‘Stay a little while with her and comfort her.’ Mary nodded.
Mrs. Mulhall was standing at the bedside. Her world of girlhood and womanhood lay there. She would listen no longer in the nights for the furtive signals of distress. She would rise no more in the hours of darkness to calm a man suffocating in nightmares. It was at an end now. She said to Willie:
‘You’ll have to go down to Mrs. Henderson in Townsend Street and tell her. Tell her to come and attend to him and lay him out. We must have everything arranged and decent before the neighbours begin to call.’
I’ll do that,’ he said, I’ll do it now.’
His voice was very like his father’s and as he went Mary noted the same deliberate movements, the confident set of his shoulders. He was almost twenty now, she reckoned. She went to the older woman and put her hand about her shoulders.
‘We reared a good child,’ Mrs. Mulhall said. She was speaking not to Mary but to her dead husband. She sat on the bedside chair and reached out her hand to touch his forehead. ‘Bernie,’ she said to him. ‘My poor Bernie. This is what their machines have done to you.’ She turned to Mary a face that became contorted as she struggled to speak. At last she said: ‘What am I to bury him with?’
Her grief mastered her. She stretched her body across that of her husband and sobbed.
The meaning of the question at first evaded Mary, then shocked her. Mrs. Mulhall had no money. There was nothing to pay for the decencies of death and burial, for the shroud and the coffin, the carriages and the undertaker. Mrs. Mulhall, looking at her husband’s body, had seen a pauper’s end for him. It was a shame too terrible to bear thinking about.
Mary waited for Mrs. Mulhall’s grief to exhaust itself. Then she said: ‘Whatever happens—that won’t happen.’
‘Where can I turn?’
‘The neighbours will see to it.’
‘How can they,’ Mrs. Mulhall said, ‘when they’ve nothing themselves?’
‘Have you no insurance?’
‘I had to stop paying it. There were things over and above that had to be got for Bernie. Every week I did my best to pay it up but always there was something. Then it lapsed altogether.’
‘You’re not to fret yourself about it,’ Mary said, ‘we’ll think of something.’
Already she had thought of something, a thought which frightened her and which she tried to push away. She struggled with it as she kept vigil beside Mrs. Mulhall, until at last Willie and the woman whose customary work it was to wash and prepare the dead of the parish arrived.
Mary went across to her own rooms and found Fitz with the children. He had heard the news.
‘How is she?’ he asked.
‘She’ll be all right for a while,’ Mary said. ‘Willie is with her. I want to give her some candles.’
‘Can I do anything?’
‘Not at the moment,’ Mary said. She found the candles. There were six of them, her own reserve supply. They would help to furnish the wake. She was about to bring them across when she changed her mind. She put them on the table and sat down.
‘Fitz,’ she said, ‘I want to talk to you.’
‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘The Mulhalls have no money and no insurance. Unless they get help the poor man will have to be buried on the parish.’
‘We could try to organise something among the neighbours,’ he said, but not very hopefully.
‘The neighbours haven’t enough for themselves.’
‘I don’t know of any other way,’ he said.
She made up her mind as he was hesitating and said quickly, ‘I do.’
He stared at her.
‘There’s the money we laid by for the children’s train fares,’ she reminded him.
The suggestion took him by surprise.
‘And you’d lend them that?’ he asked.
‘If you think it would be the right thing to do,’ she answered.
He thought of Mulhall, his independence, his pride.
‘Yes,’ he decided. ‘I think that would be the right thing to do.’
His tone reassured her. She went to the hiding place where the few pound notes had been lying since the lock-out began. She counted them. Then, as though she must get it done before prudence tempted her to change her mind, she said: ‘I’ll give these to her straight away, before the neighbours begin to call on her. It’ll relieve her mind of that much at least.’
He nodded in agreement. It was a hard decision. But it was right. There was no option.
Mulhall had his wake. There was no tea to pass around and no drink for those who called. They did not expect it. No one nowadays had anything for hospitality. But he had candles and a habit and, when the customary two days had passed, a coffin and a hearse. The grave belonged to Mrs. Mulhall’s mother and father, whose bones already occupied it. The neighbours and his trade union colleagues walked behind him and men with hurling sticks on their shoulders escorted the procession, forming a guard of honour. The sticks were an innovation, defensive weapons against police interference, now carried at all trade union processions by men who called themselves soldiers of the Irish Citizen Army. It was a new body and its members drilled and studied military tactics. They knew they were an army of scarecrows but they did their best to keep their backs straight and to walk in step. They had been formed to protect trade union meetings against police interference. If the police charged it was their job to strike back.