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.’