‘Am I the only one?’
‘There are two others.’
‘Shop stewards?’
‘One is a shop steward. The other is just an incurable troublemaker.’
The boy came in with the sandwiches and the tea. Fitz rose to go but Carrington gripped his arm.
‘We’re not enemies, Fitz.’
‘No.’
‘Then stay where you are. I want to talk to you.’
‘Is there any sense in talking?’
‘Sit down.’
Fitz hesitated. But he took the mug of tea which Carrington pressed on him and accepted a sandwich. The feel of the sandwich in his hand roused reserves of hunger that had been building up for weeks. It had meat in it. He forced himself to delay before eating it. It took an enormous amount of will. After a decent interval he began to eat it. Once he began it was impossible to stop. He worked away steadily at it until it had gone. Carrington immediately offered him another, but Fitz waved it aside.
‘No shame in being hungry,’ Carrington said, ‘take it.’ He was smiling. Fitz gave in and took it.
‘Thanks,’ he said.
‘There’s one way you might get back,’ Carrington said, ‘but you’re probably going to be stubborn about it.’
‘Tell me what it is.’
‘If I could tell them you’d leave the union and give an undertaking never to join it again, it might make them change their minds.’
‘Is this your idea or theirs?’
‘Mine. I don’t even know if it would work. But I’m willing to put it to them.’
‘I’ll do anything within reason,’ Fitz said, ‘but not that.’
‘Fitz,’ Carrington said earnestly, ‘I have respect for you as a person and as one of my best foremen. If you do what I ask it’ll all be forgotten about in a few months anyway. What’s the sense in being stubborn?’
‘No,’ Fitz said.
‘Do you realise the position you’re in?’
‘I’ve a shrewd notion.’
‘I don’t think you have,’ Carrington said. ‘You’re the only foreman I know of who walked out with the men. It’s not just a matter of the foundry refusing to employ you. You’ll be blacklisted in every job in the city.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because I’ve been given the general list drawn up by the Federation with instructions to follow it, when I’m taking men on. Your name is on it. You don’t believe me?’
The information was hard to accept. As he reflected on it he felt panic beginning to stir in the back of his mind.
‘I believe you,’ Fitz said.
‘Then let me try what I suggested.’
Fitz hesitated. He shut his mind to speculation about the future.
‘No,’ he said.
‘You’re a stubborn bloody man,’ Carrington said. He offered another cigarette and they smoked in silence. Then Carrington said:
‘There’s something else I wanted to speak to you about. I’m thinking of that friend of yours who lost his legs here a couple of years ago. Mulhall—wasn’t it?’
‘Bernard Mulhall,’ Fitz said. ‘He died.’
‘I know that. Had he a family?’
‘A wife and an only son.’
‘That’s what I was told. How old is the son?’
‘About eighteen. He might be more.’
‘I think I can help him.’
‘I seem to remember Bernie Mulhall being on your blacklist too.’
‘I know. But there was a lot of admiration and sympathy for him higher up. I can offer him a job.’
‘Have you been told to?’
‘Not in so many words. But one of the Directors expressed interest in the case and sent word down the line. A bit mad in his way—Yearling.’
Fitz made no comment.
‘He’s the man that left you home on the evening of the accident,’ Carrington supplied.
‘I remember him,’ Fitz said.
‘Will you send young Mulhall down to me?’
‘I will,’ Fitz said.
‘And keep in touch with me. There’s nothing I can do here, but I get to know of odd jobs here and there. They might help to keep things going for you while you look around.’
‘Do you think there’s any point in looking around?’
‘If you can stand up to being sent from pillar to post. Don’t let them beat you.’
Fitz smiled at him.
‘I’m wondering whose side you’re on.’
‘Not on Larkin’s anyway,’ Carrington said. ‘Yours—I suppose.’
‘That’s something,’ Fitz said.
Willie Mulhall started in the foundry a week later. It was his first adult job. His mother came over to thank Mary the moment she got the news.
‘Now I’ll be able to pay back what I owe you,’ she said. She embraced Mary and began to cry.
There was nothing for Fitz. He went from job to job but was turned away time after time. In February the Strike Fund closed down altogether. When that happened Mary put the clock on the pram and wheeled it down to The Erin’s Isle Pawnshop. Mr. Silverwater refused to look at it. He was open for people who wanted to redeem the articles they had pledged, not to take in more. She returned home and Fitz put it back on its place on the mantelpiece.
‘What are we to do?’ she asked him. He had no answer for her. Except to offer to try what Carrington had suggested. That, too, was impossible.
‘We’ll keep trying. Things will be better as the rest begin working again. Something is bound to turn up.’
That evening he borrowed from Joe, who was back at work in Nolan & Keyes.
‘It’ll be a while before I can pay you back,’ he said.
‘Don’t be worrying,’ Joe told him. But he worried just the same. He had never before borrowed money without knowing how he was going to return it. He was starting at the bottom again—a scavenger for odd jobs.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Pat was passing the shop with its display of religious goods when the little foreman stopped him on the pavement and said:
‘I don’t seem to have seen you around lately?’
‘I’ve been in gaol,’ Pat said.
‘When did you get out?’
‘This morning, about two hours ago.’
‘And what was it like?’
Pat considered.
‘A bit confined,’ he decided.
‘Come over here with me, for the love of God.’
‘What is it?’ Pat asked.
The little foreman insisted on dragging him over to the window.
‘Have a look at that,’ he invited, pointing at it. Pat looked in.
‘Well—I’ll be damned,’ he said.
Inside the window, with a pencil behind his ear and a roll of dockets peeping from the breast pocket of his shop coat, Timothy Keever was struggling to put a statue of St. Patrick on display. The statue was heavy and the window space already crowded.
‘Watch this,’ said the little foreman. Pat had met him from time to time in various bookmakers’ shops, where his fellow-punters knew him as Ballcock Brannigan. He now banged with his fist on the glass to attract Keever’s attention. Neither could hear the other because of the thickness of the glass, so Ballcock began to convey his instructions in dumbshow. Keever, indicating that he understood, moved first a statue of St. Christopher and another of the Little Flower. But the rearrangement was unsuccessful. He looked out for further instructions.
‘Move the other stuff first.’ Ballcock shouted in at him. Keever shook his head.
‘Did you ever see such a thick?’ Ballcock asked Pat. He gave the instruction again, this time in dumbshow. Keever acknowledged and set to work again. He shifted a heavily mounted candle, Paschal in design; then a set of purple vestments, appropriate liturgically to the seasons of Advent and Lent; then a shroud which would provide for the last sartorial decencies of some deceased Brother of the Third Order of St. Francis. In his struggle with these complexities he banged his head severely against a sanctuary lamp, a pendulous one with a red bowl and a brass container.