‘He’d draw tears from a glass eye,’ Joe said.
‘A few bars from yourself, ma’am,’ Pat invited. But Mrs. Mulhall said she had no voice.
‘You’ve voice enough when it comes to giving out the pay to me,’ Mulhall assured her.
Everybody took a hand in encouraging her and at last she gave in and began to sing ‘If I were a Blackbird’. Her voice was thin and had a quiver in it, but Mulhall regarded her with a proud look. They were a kindly couple, Fitz thought, unbroken by hardship. He hoped he would reach Mulhall’s age with as much of his courage and his world intact.
When the song finished Fitz raised his glass and said: ‘Here’s to ninepence an hour.’
Mulhall, delighted, repeated ‘Ninepence an hour’ and drank.
‘How is it going?’ Farrell asked.
‘They’re marking time,’ Pat said. He was elaborately complacent.
‘Larkin wrote and said we won’t deliver to the foundry,’ Mulhall explained. ‘We’ve heard nothing more since.’
‘They haven’t paid,’ Joe put in.
‘Any day now they’ll load us and tell us to deliver to the foundry. We’ll all refuse.’
‘Amen,’ Pat said.
‘If they lock you out we’ll stand by you on the quays,’ Farrell said.
‘I wonder,’ Mulhall said, challenging him.
‘It’s a certainty,’ Farrell assured him.
‘That’s worth drinking to,’ Pat declared.
‘I’m sure Mrs. Fitzpatrick doesn’t want to begin married life with a session about strikes,’ Mrs. Farrell protested.
‘I’m not listening,’ Mary said lightly.
She was making tea. There was something about her which set her apart from the others, a way of moving, of lifting things, of using her features and varying her intonation when she spoke.
‘That’s the proper way to treat them,’ Mrs. Farrell agreed, ‘don’t listen.’
The women were having tea and cake when Hennessy tapped at the door. Fitz invited him in. He stood uncertainly and said to Mrs. Mulhalclass="underline"
‘I was knocking at your room, ma’am, this while back. Then I chanced to hear the voices and guessed you might be here.’
Is there something I can get you?’
‘Herself was wondering if you’d oblige her with the loan of a cup of sugar.’
Mrs. Mulhall rose, but Fitz looked at Mary and she went to the cupboard.
‘I hesitate to trouble you . . .’ Hennessy protested.
‘We have it to spare,’ Mary assured him.
Fitz invited Hennessy to drink and he sat down.
‘My respects and wishes for a long and happy life,’ he toasted.
‘How is the work with you?’ Mulhall asked.
‘Not too bad,’ Hennessy said. ‘I’ve landed a bit of a watching job. Three nights a week.’
‘You’re a great man at the watching.’
‘I’ve a natural gift for it,’ Hennessy said. Then he added: ‘I suppose you all heard about Rashers and his stroke of fortune?’
‘What was that?’
‘He swears he owes it all to yourself, ma’am.’
Mary, finding the voice directed at her, put down the cup of sugar.
‘The night of poor Hanlon’s funeral he showed the two of you the way to the presbytery and on the road out he dropped in to say a few prayers. He met the curate and landed the boilerman’s job. Ten bob a week. Wasn’t that a stroke of good fortune?’
‘It’s only seasonal,’ Joe said.
‘It’ll keep him going through the winter.’
‘Ten bob is a scab rate,’ Pat said, with disgust.
Mary said: ‘The curate is Father O’Connor. I knew him in Kingstown.’
‘Is that a fact?’ Hennessy said, happy to gather a further piece of information.
Pat, with obvious satisfaction, remarked: ‘St. Brigid’s must be a bit of a change for him.’
‘It was his own wish to work here,’ Mary said.
‘Imagine that now.’ Hennessy was greatly impressed.
‘Only a saintly soul would make such a change,’ Mrs. Mulhall said.
‘Every man to his taste,’ Pat said.
Hennessy noted there was full and plenty and lingered. He accepted a second drink and agreed to sing a song. Later he recited a ballad about a young man who gambled away his inheritance and died all alone in the Australian bush, where he was found with a locket in his hand containing a lock of golden hair. Was it his own, a relic of the lost innocence of his childhood or had it been cut from a sweetheart’s golden hair before sin sullied the hopes of youth? Or was it, perhaps, a sweet mother’s tresses, carried to the ends of the earth by an erring son and fondled with remorse when Death laid its chill hand on his brow? The poet was unable to say and Hennessy, having posed the question and moved everybody by the light, nasal style of his recital, let his eye rest on the cup of sugar and suddenly remembered his wife.
‘She’ll think I’m lost,’ he said, springing to his feet.
‘That’s the greatest oddity in Dublin,’ Mulhall remarked.
‘He has the gift, mind you,’ Joe said. The rest had been equally impressed and agreed with him.
Mrs. Mulhall, thinking of the peaky face with its short moustache and small chin, and the far-away look in the eyes during the recital, sighed and said: ‘The poor soul.’
‘I think it’s time we all went,’ Farrell suggested. He had a long walk home before him and a six o’clock start the next morning.
‘That’s a thought,’ Joe said.
They gathered their belongings and began to renew their wishes for happiness and good fortune. They were halfway down the stairs when Mary, who had gone back into the room to tidy up, noticed the parcel in the corner and called to Fitz.
Fitz shouted down the stairs: ‘Pat—your parcel.’
‘Never mind it.’
‘You’ve left it behind you.’
Pat returned a little from the rest and said: It’s for herself—a bit of a wedding present. There’s no need to waken the house over it.’ He was gruff and embarrassed.
‘Did you rob a bank or something?’ Fitz said, smiling.
‘Never mind what I robbed,’ Pat said. He turned and went down to join the rest.
‘Thanks,’ Fitz shouted after him, but he got no reply and went in and closed the door.
Mary was still tidying. Already, he noticed, she had given the room a touch of home.
‘What was ninepence an hour?’ she asked, working busily.
‘I told you about it. The job I called Farrell for.’
‘The night I was asleep and you didn’t waken me?’
Something had happened to him that night that had nothing to do with their love. He remembered the sharp morning wind and, far off, the shouts of the men. Isolated in the top gallery of the house, just before the water pipes rattled into life, he had felt the inward drag of compassion and responsibility, linking him with the others below. Some part of him had become theirs. It was a moment he had no way of explaining to anybody, not even to Mary. He said, ‘It may mean trouble for us.’
‘But it’s so long ago.’
‘So far we’ve been able to keep going at the foundry by drawing from stock. But if the carters don’t deliver to us soon we’ll have to close down. And if non-union men deliver to us we’ll have to refuse to handle the coal.’
‘Maybe they’ll give in and pay them.’
‘That’s what we’re hoping for.’
She had finished her work and was removing her apron. He remembered.
‘The parcel Pat left is a wedding present.’ He took it from the corner and put it on the table. It was heavy. He unwrapped it. It was a marble clock, with the figure of a wolfhound on either side. The gilt on the hands had worn thin in places, but when they wound it and moved the hands it had a low, musical chime.
‘It’s lovely,’ Mary said. They set it on the mantelpiece and stood back to admire it.