‘It’s true enough,’ she said, ‘the mothers were told that homes could be found in Liverpool for hundreds of the children.’
‘Do you know of anyone who agreed to take part?’
‘A few weeks ago Mrs. Fitzpatrick told me she was thinking of sending her children away.’
‘To Liverpool?’
‘She didn’t say where. She said she’d have to ask her husband about it.’
‘I see,’ Keever said. It was his duty to keep Father O’Connor informed. The woman would be useful in the future.
‘I can’t assist you now,’ he told her, ‘because I’ve to wait here for Father O’Connor myself. But if you call to my house later—about nine o’clock—I’ll see you get a share of whatever help we can afford.’
‘The blessings of God and His Holy Mother on you for that.’
‘Say nothing to others about it,’ he warned her, ‘in case there’d be more blackguardism.’
‘I’ll say nothing at all,’ she assured him.
He saw her to the door. He felt sympathy and pity for her. She closed her shawl against the rain and walked the streets aimlessly, wearing the time away until it was nine o’clock. She refused to think about what she had done. The hours stretched endlessly. She bore them rather than face her children empty-handed.
Father O’Connor found Keever’s news confirmed in his newspaper. A Mrs. Rand and a Mrs. Montefiore had been organising accommodation for the children of the strikers in the homes of workers in England. The report said they had three hundred and forty offers already. The headlines and editorials reflected his own horror. Little Catholic children were to be sent to Protestant or even socialistic homes, regardless of the risk to their faith and their immortal souls. The scheme would be used as a trap by the proselytisers. Larkin had finally shown his hand.
Father O’Sullivan admitted the danger. The Catholic press seemed certain of it. There was little to be hoped for from Father Giffley. All he could expect from that quarter would be a snub. The notice hanging on the wall to the right of the picture of the Crucifixion still commanded him to be silent. He put the matter to Father O’Sullivan.
‘I think perhaps if you were to approach him.’
‘I wonder if I should?’
‘We have a duty. Surely you agree?’
‘Yes,’ Father O’Sullivan said, ‘I think we must at least ask for a direction.’
But he returned to report failure.
‘There is to be no preaching. We are still forbidden to take sides.’
‘Did you stress the danger of apostacy—that souls may be lost to us for ever?’
‘I told him I believed that possibility certainly existed.’
‘And what was his answer?’
Father O’Sullivan hesitated.
‘He is a hard person to understand. He said it would be a poor religion that couldn’t stand up to a few weeks’ holiday.’
‘If that is the view he takes,’ Father O’Connor said, ‘we will be forced to act in spite of him.’
Press reaction justified him. The editorials worked up a public outcry. A priest from Donnybrook led a picket of Catholic militants to patrol the quays and the railway stations, determined, he declared, to prevent the move by force if necessary. Other clergy joined with him. The archbishop addressed a letter to the mothers of the children. He asked them if they had abandoned their faith and put it to them that they could not be held worthy of the name of Catholic mothers if they co-operated. The headlines made a display.
‘Workers’ Children
to go to England
Catholic Mothers
Archbishop’s Warning’
Father O’Connor now knew where his duty lay. If he was forbidden the use of the pulpit, he could still make a physical protest. The souls of little children were at stake. His way was clear.
The controversy took a dramatic turn which caused Yearling to consult Mathews. He wrote:
My dear Mathews,
I have just read that Mrs. Rand and Mrs. Montefiore have been arrested (!) and are to answer a charge of KIDNAPPING!!
Can you throw any light on this? It seems quite preposterous. Is there anything I can do?
This public pandemonium about Proselytising is beginning to irk me, pallid Protestant though I am. There was a verse in the Leader the other day
‘Where naked children run and play
Oh, there we find the wily
The slum soul-snatching bird of prey
At work for Mrs. Smyley’
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
CHAPTER NINE
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.