Skeffington smiled.
‘Perhaps your friend . . . ?’ the man suggested.
‘Strictly a non-combatant,’ Mathews said.
They all looked at Yearling.
‘Not now,’ Yearling said. ‘I’ll go with you, Mathews.’
‘Good for you,’ Mathews said.
The children who were to act as a decoy were got ready. Yearling recognised one of them, a little girl. He went over and crouched to talk to her.
‘And how is Mary Murphy?’ he asked. ‘And is she still washing her clothes? And did she marry her sweetheart after all?’
The child became shy.
‘I don’t know, sir.’
‘Tell me another of your songs,’ he said.
‘What one?’
‘Any one,’ he invited. The child considered. Then she said:
‘“Applejelly lemon a pear”?’
‘That’ll be very nice.’
She drew a deep breath.
‘Applejelly lemon a pear
Gold and silver she shall wear
Gold and silver by her side
Take Mary Kelly for their bride
Take her across the lilywhite sea
Then over the water
Give her a kiss and a one, two or three
Then she’s the lady’s daughter.’
‘That’s nice,’ Yearling said when she had finished. ‘I like the lilywhite sea bit, don’t you?’
The child smiled at him. He went across to Mathews.
‘I know that little girl there. Could she come with our party?’
‘She is coming with our party.’
‘Good.’
He returned to the child.
‘Applejelly lemon a pear,’ he repeated. ‘I must learn that one. Tell it to me again.’
He went over and over it with the child, until the decoy contingent set off and they moved over to the windows to watch. The group of men about the doorway parted. The contingent passed through. From the height of the third floor they looked very small and vulnerable. The people who passed by were indifferent. Soon they were lost to his view. Some twenty minutes later the jeering of the men at the door brought him to the window again. Several cabs were passing in procession. The familiar banners were being held through their windows and the horses were moving at a smart pace. Their route was towards Kingsbridge Station. The plan was working.
‘We’ll move off in fifteen minutes,’ Mathews decided, ‘get everything ready.’
They began their final preparations.
When Hennessy caught up with Rashers the incident with Father O’Connor was still weighing on his mind.
‘What did you want to speak to him like that for?’
‘Why shouldn’t I?’ Rashers answered.
‘Because there’s no luck will come of it—that’s why.’
‘I haven’t noticed much of that commodity lately anyway,’ Rasher said.
‘Things is deplorable,’ Hennessy agreed, ‘but why make them worse by insulting the clergy?’
‘To hell with the clergy.’
‘Are you not afraid he might turn you into a goat?’
‘I wish to God he would,’ Rashers said.
‘You have the beard for it anyway,’ Hennessy decided, after scrutinising him sideways.
‘I have. And what’s more, enough spirit to puck Father O’Connor in the arse,’ Rashers answered. His good humour returned. But only for a while. He was not a goat. It was highly unlikely he ever would be. He was simply a man without employment, without health, without a friend of substance to turn to in his native city. That was the sum total of the matter.
‘What the hell are we to do?’ he asked.
Hennessy had no ideas. Except to walk about and keep their eyes and ears open, to let the mind imagine possibilities, to fasten the attention on the moment and not to try to look too far ahead. His eyes, searching along the footpath, fixed on something.
‘Here’s a sizeable butt we can share,’ he said, stooping to pick it up. They examined it together. It was a long one.
‘God bless your eyesight,’ Rashers said. ‘I’d have missed that.’
They had no matches. Hennessy, storing it away for later, suggested doing the round of the public houses to see if a porter’s job might be going, or some work washing bottles. They passed the queue of children waiting outside Tara Street Baths to be scrubbed and fitted out with clean clothes. It engaged them for twenty minutes or so. Half-heartedly they went on with their search. They had no luck, but they continued to wander the streets.
‘Did you hear Mrs. Bartley and the family is going to America?’ Hennessy asked.
‘I did,’ Rashers said.
‘A brother of hers did well out there and sent her over the fare.’
‘She’s a woman was always good to me,’ Rashers said, ‘and I wish her the height of luck. I’m going to miss her.’
They begged a match from a passer-by and stopped to light the butt Hennessy had found. They leaned on the wall of the river, sharing it puff for puff. Hennessy remarked the procession of cabs on the opposite bank. Rashers was unable to see that far.
‘It’s the demonstrators,’ Hennessy told him, ‘the crowd that want the children kept in Ireland.’ He became conversational.
‘Supposing we were chislers again,’ he said, ‘being cleaned up and dressed in decent clothes and sent off to England to be looked after. We’d have no troubles then.’
Regretfully Rashers passed back the butt. There was about as much chance of becoming chislers again as there was of being turned into a goat. Hennessy’s vein of fantasy was beginning to irritate him.
‘We’d make a hairy pair of chislers,’ he told him.
The children walked in pairs with Mathews leading. He held his stick under his arm and strode purposefully. Yearling kept to the side. His job was simply to see they did not step out under the traffic. Three other men followed behind him and two more took up the rear. Yearling had counted thirty children at the beginning of their journey and threw his eyes over them at intervals during their march to count them all over again. Although nothing much was expected of him, he felt anxious and responsible. The little girl who had recited the street rhyme was talking to the child beside her, unconscious of any tension. If they attempted to use her roughly, Yearling decided, he would take a chance on violence himself.
At the Embarkation sheds they found a cordon of police waiting for them. Behind the police the demonstrators had spread out in a line across the road. Traffic was being held up and searched. There were hundreds of them. The contingent that followed the decoy had been easily spared.
Warning the children to behave, he went up front to Mathews.
‘It looks rather bad,’ he suggested, ‘do you think we should proceed?’
‘Personally, I intend to.’
‘Oh. Very well.’
‘But there’s no obligation of any kind on you.’
‘My dear Mathews,’ Yearling said, ‘please lead on.’
‘You’re quite sure?’
‘Glory or the grave.’
They moved again. Yearling kept to the steady pace set by Mathews. The police parted to allow them through. Then they came up against the front ranks of their opponents, were forced to a stop and quickly surrounded. Yearling, doing his best to shield the children, was aware not of individuals but of bowler hats and moustaches in unidentifiable multitudes. Bodies pressed about him and exhaled their animal heat. The priest in charge made his slow passage towards them. He was red-faced and trembling with excitement.
‘Who is in charge of these children?’ he demanded. Mathews stepped forward.
‘I am,’ he said.
‘And where are you taking them?’