Yearling had read of these things and found them rich in human absurdity. Now he looked at the reality. It was shoddy. It was worse. It was unbelievably ugly. He took Mathews by the arm and both turned away.
‘Let us get on to Liberty Hall,’ he suggested. Humour had deserted him.
Father O’Connor climbed the stairs and knocked on the door Hennessy pointed out to him. He waited. At first Hennessy’s footsteps, sounding on the stairs, filled the house with noise. When they had receded Father O’Connor became conscious of great stillness. There were children’s voices somewhere above him, but at a great distance it seemed, so faint and intermittent that they made the stillness about him hard to endure. He knocked a second time and knew from the sound that the room was empty. Was he too late? The thought that the Fitzpatrick children might be on their way to the boat already, alarmed him. He began knocking again, his time with his umbrella, with such force that the handle broke off. It rebounded off the door and made a clattering noise on the wooden floor. The sound brought him to his senses. He must control himself and think. As he searched in the half-light to recover the handle of his umbrella a door on the other side of the landing opened and an elderly woman came out. She was frightened until she recognised him.
‘It’s yourself, Father,’ she said, reassured. He searched for the handle and found it before answering her.
‘Who have I here?’ he asked.
‘I’m Mrs. Mulhall, Father,’ she said. He peered at her.
‘Ah yes—of course.’ He remembered her now as the woman whose husband had recently died. She might be able to give him the information he was looking for. He stuffed the umbrella handle into his pocket and said: ‘I’d like to have a word with you, if I may—immediately.’
‘Certainly, Father.’
She led him into a room in which upturned boxes were serving as table and chairs. The linoleum showed unworn and unfaded patches here and there in places once occupied by furniture. An easy chair at the fireside stood out in incongruous luxury. She dusted this and offered it to him. He sat down. She was, he remembered, a good and devout woman. Father O’Sullivan had spoken most highly of her. The death of her husband must have been a cruel blow. He would have to refer to it. Presently.
She sat on one of the boxes opposite him and he found an opening.
‘You are going through hard times,’ he said, looking about at the evidence of the room.
‘We’re all having the bad times, Father,’ she answered. Although he was agitated he found time to have pity for her, an ageing woman sitting on a box in a home without a fire. Whoever might be responsible for the evils of the times, it was not she. Exercising patience, he said:
‘Your husband’s death was a sad blow, I’m sure.’
‘It was at first, Father, but now I’m happy God took him when He did. He was lying there all those months breaking his heart because he couldn’t be out and about with the rest of the men.’
‘You are very brave.’
‘If nothing could ever give him his two legs back to him, why should I wish God to keep him lying there fretting and suffering.’
Father O’Connor nodded. He remembered more precisely now. They were speaking of the man who had assaulted Timothy Keever and whose conduct he had deplored from the pulpit. The woman was not embarrassed. Father O’Sullivan, no doubt, had made it his business to reassure her in her time of trouble. It was a gift which most puzzled him in that humble and otherwise very ordinary priest. ‘Your resignation is a great credit to you,’ he said. ‘It is indeed.’
‘God was good to me,’ she answered, ‘and I had the kindest of neighbours.’
He could now move nearer to the enquiry he wished to make.
‘One of your neighbours is Mrs. Fitzpatrick—isn’t she?’
‘The kindest and best of them.’
This made it more difficult. He deliberated.
‘You have a very high regard for her—I can see.’
‘With good reason, Father.’
‘Then if I tell you I’m here to help her and to persuade her against making a very grave mistake, you’ll assist me?’ The woman hesitated. He sensed her uneasiness. Conscious suddenly of his own isolation in this poverty-haunted parish, he set his will to the duty before him.
‘You must trust me,’ he urged.
‘I was never much hand at meddling in another’s affairs.’
‘Sometimes it becomes our duty,’ he told her, ‘I’m sure you’ll understand when I explain to you.’
She nodded. He took up the umbrella to lean forward on it and rediscovered its lack of a handle. That upset him. He pushed it aside.
‘You know that there is an attempt at the moment to send children to England. And you know, I am sure, that the Archbishop himself has written to deplore it. God knows what sort of homes these children will end up in; Protestant homes, for all we know—or homes of no religion at all. I am told that Mrs. Fitzpatrick intends to let her children go. And I want to persuade her to remember her Catholic duty.’
‘Who told you that, Father?’
‘I am not at liberty to say. But it is a person I place trust in. Have you any knowledge of it?’
‘I know it couldn’t be true, Father. I’m the closest to her in things of that kind, and I’ve watched the children for her many a time. If the thought had ever entered her head, I’d know it.’
‘Where is she now?’
‘She’s out walking with her children, a thing she always does when the afternoon is fine.’
‘Did she ever speak to you of sending her children away?’
‘She did, several weeks ago. But it was to her father in the country she was thinking of sending them.’
‘I see,’ Father O’Connor said. The woman was very sure of herself. He knew she was telling what she believed was the truth.
‘Did she say this to anyone else?’
‘She may have, Father, but not to my knowledge.’ A thought occurred to him which he knew he must express delicately. He found it hard to spare the time to do so. The children might at that moment be on their way.
‘Times have been so very hard with all of you,’ he suggested. ‘Could it be that she intended to send them to her parents if the necessity arose, but found when the time came that she could no longer afford to do so?’
The woman hesitated again. It took her some time to answer.
‘It could have happened that way,’ she said at last. She appeared upset. He felt he was near the truth.
‘In that case, she might well have been tempted to take part in this Larkinite scheme instead.’
The woman began to cry.
‘Please don’t be upset,’ he said. ‘I have to say such things because of what is at stake. Do you know if she had money to send them to her parents?’
‘She had indeed, Father . . . but she gave it to me.’
The woman was weeping bitterly now. Suspicion of the cause made him rise and go to her. She was not telling him all she knew.
‘Are you holding something back?’ he asked. ‘If so, I command you as your priest to let me know the truth. Is she taking part in the scheme?’
‘No, Father, I’m certain of it.’
‘We cannot be certain.’
‘She’d have told me.’
‘She might not. Why did she give you the money?’
He was now standing over Mrs. Mulhall. Suspicion and anxiety had swamped his pity. She turned her head away from him.
‘When my husband died I had no money in the world. She gave me hers.’
‘Why?’
The woman struggled to answer. He repeated himself.