‘There’s a poor divil upstairs with a wife and a couple of children. He could do with a night’s work.’
‘Is it Mr. Hennessy?’ his wife asked. Again Fitz noted that she was a quiet-spoken woman.
‘The Toucher Hennessy,’ Mulhall confirmed.
‘Then they’ve four children,’ his wife corrected.
‘Holy God,’ Mulhall said, ‘that woman is like a rabbit.’
‘I’ll go up and get him,’ Fitz agreed.
They left down their cups and while Mulhall set off to alert the carters Fitz climbed the remaining stairs. He was now in the attic, on a narrow landing where the ceiling was so low that he stooped. The baby was crying again when he knocked. A woman’s voice responded.
‘Who is it?’
‘We have a night’s work in the foundry, if Mr. Hennessy will take it,’ Fitz shouted.
There was a long interval. He heard whispering inside. Then the woman shouted: ‘He wants to know what kind of work it is.’
Fitz explained and there was another interlude. Then the door opened and a small skinny man looked up into his face.
‘I hope you’ll pardon the preliminary enquiry,’ he said with great politeness, ‘but what class of work is involved?’
‘Digging coal,’ Fitz said.
‘Aw God, wouldn’t that vex you now. I’ve no shovel.’ Fitz thought there was a note of relief in the voice.
‘They’ll give you a shovel,’ the woman shouted, ‘won’t youse, mister?’
‘That’s right,’ Fitz said, ‘we can supply a shovel.’
The man considered this. Then he asked cautiously:
‘Is there any climbing?’
‘What has that to do with it?’ Fitz asked.
‘I’ve no head for heights,’ Hennessy said.
‘Don’t listen to a bloody word he says, mister,’ the woman screamed, ‘he’s only acting the old soldier.’
‘There’s no climbing,’ Fitz said.
With obvious lack of enthusiasm for the prospect of facing the raw and laborious night, Hennessy turned up the collar of his coat and cast a despairing glance back at the room.
‘All right—I’ll go,’ he said.
He followed Fitz on to the street and set off in the direction of the foundry. His figure was huddled against the cold, his pace reluctant. Fitz went to his own place to rouse Pat Bannister and then to Farrell’s. He waited in the kitchen while Farrell dressed, all the time conscious that behind the door to the left of the fireplace Mary lay sleeping. He was torn between his desire to speak to her and his reluctance to disturb her. Before he could make up his mind Farrell had joined him and they went down to the foundry together.
As they walked Farrell said: ‘I won’t forget it to you for coming down for me.’
‘Who else would I call on?’ Fitz said, easily.
But he was shocked at the change in Farrell. He had not seen much of him since moving out to make room for Mary. Most of the time Farrell had been out searching for work. Or, if he was in, he had remained in his own room. He was not simply out of work. He was a marked man, barred by one stevedore after another, a man who had tried on his own to break a highly organised system of petty extortion.
‘You haven’t had any luck?’ Fitz asked.
‘Nor won’t,’ Farrell said.
‘What about Larkin?’
‘There’s been no word.’
‘Maybe there will be, soon.’
‘What can Larkin do, when the rest didn’t stand by me?’
Very little, Fitz thought. The shipowners gave each unloading job to the stevedore on contract. Who the stevedores employed after that, or how they paid them, was not the shipowners’ concern. The custom of paying the dockers in public houses had been accepted for years. It seemed impossible to Fitz that the lonely, elderly man walking beside him could alter it. There were too many who were jobless and willing to take his place. Farrell was beginning to look at it that way too. It had been painful to see his eyes light up at the prospect of a casual night’s work.
Farrell walked in silence for a while. Then he said, more hopefully:
‘What’s the foreman at the foundry like?’
‘Carrington is his name. He’s as hard as nails, but he has no favourites. All he cares for is a good worker.’
‘Does he job casuals often?’
‘Two or three times a week, usually for a day at a stretch.’
‘I’ll go out of my way to bring myself to his notice tonight,’ Farrell said. ‘I’m finished as a docker, anyway.’
They worked without rest through a night of continuing sleet and wind; the labourers digging and hauling, the carters loading, dumping, re-loading. Steam rose in dense clouds beneath the water from the hoses and fanned about the yard so that the sleet itself tasted of cinder and ash and the clothes of the labouring men smelled strongly and sourly. At last it became so dense that the men digging on the leeward side could work no longer. It had become impossible to breathe as the wind bent it downwards in an impenetrable fog.
Carrington, who was directing the carters, left off and came over to Fitz. It was a habit of his. Fitz was his unofficial deputy.
‘What now?’ he asked.
Fitz had been thinking about it. They had tried taking the hoses off for intervals and digging when the steam cleared. But when the hoses stopped the strong wind fanned the fire into life again.
‘We could try screening the fire and see if we can dig it out.’
There were large screens in No. 2 house, which were used in summer to cut off the heavy draught when both ends of the house had to be left open because of the heat.
Carrington felt it was worth trying.
Fitz gathered some labourers and half a dozen carters, one of whom was Mulhall. He set the furnace hands disassembling the screens so that the carts could carry them to the yard. While they were working Mulhall said to him:
‘Are you deputy gaffer here?’
‘No. Just senior hand.’
‘Union man?’
‘National Union of Dockers,’ Fitz said.
‘Same as us. Is the whole job union?’
‘Half and half.’
‘Ever met Larkin?’
‘No,’ Fitz said.
‘He fixed an overtime rate some time ago—ninepence an hour. It’s in the carters’ agreement.’
‘I wouldn’t know about that,’ Fitz said. He was a furnace hand. The carters had their own set conditions. Lately, one section or another of the carters was always in trouble.
‘Maybe you’d ask the head bottle-washer,’ Mulhall said, then backed up and drove off. They got the screens into position and after a while they shut off the hoses. The wind no longer had direct access to the fire, but it bundled over the top and caught the coal at its higher level. The steam too, was clear of the ground and the men could work in the lee of the stack. They loaded the carts without respite. Meanwhile other workmen had begun to dig towards the ignited coal. Fitz saw Farrell among them, working steadily and easily, the relaxed technique of the docker showing in every movement of his body. He was one of the small number selected by Carrington for a special and difficult operation. Fitz was glad. It would give Farrell hope—and for the moment hope had become his desperate need. Pat Bannister was among them too, working steadily, absorbed as he always was, in the job that confronted him. Further away, in among the general collection, Hennessy stood idle, with a long-handled trimmer’s shovel which was almost as tall as himself.
‘Don’t kill yourself,’ Fitz said as he passed him.
‘I’m a delicate framed man,’ Hennessy said, ‘and I’m crucified with rheumatism of the back.’
‘You’d better look as though you were working,’ Fitz advised him. ‘If Carrington puts his eye on you he’ll give you your papers.’
Hennessy sighed and dug his shovel into the coal.