‘They called me a scab,’ Keever said.
‘And they didn’t leave your name altogether out of it either, Father,’ Hegarty added.
Father O’Connor flushed deeply. ‘All of them refused?’
‘Every one of them.’
‘In one of the houses they tried to empty water over us from the windows.’
‘Blackguardism,’ Father O’Connor said.
‘It’s Larkin and the union, Father. They’re boycotting Keever and myself.’
‘I see,’ Father O’Connor said. He had betrayed anger. That was a mistake. He should be calm. He should receive the information as though it was of no importance.
‘Well—leave the parcels back in the press. Tomorrow evening we’ll have a committee meeting.’
But the next evening only Keever and Hegarty and one very old man turned up.
‘If you’d send someone else with the parcels they’d take them,’ Keever suggested. He was humble. It would not matter to him.
‘Certainly not,’ Father O’Connor decided. ‘We are not going to be dictated to.’
The parcels remained in the press. He owed a duty to Keever. More important still, he owed a duty to himself. Or, rather, to his cloth and the Church which had been offered a blackguardly insult. It was an indication of the evil disposition which was gaining ground, even among the lowly and illiterate.
Rashers had his own campaign to fight in the daily battle to survive and he fought it with his own weapons. Circumstances were making it more than usually difficult. The city was either curtailing its charity in the belief that that would kill the new tendency among its lower orders to strike and perhaps do worse, or reserving its coppers for the collecting boxes of the locked-out men. It was a new partisanship which left no place for Rashers. The idea of cashing in on this sympathy occurred to him, and he got as far as painting the words ‘Help the Lock-Out’ on the side of a home-made box. But while he waited for the lettering to dry he changed his mind. It would be wrong, his conscience suggested, and he gave in to its reproaches. The idea of writing a ballad about the strikes seemed better and more honest. Hennessy found him sitting on the steps one afternoon, already at work on it. He had the first two lines on the back of a cigarette packet, but its composition was a laborious process. He welcomed the interruption.
‘Is Fitzpatrick above?’ Hennessy asked.
‘He went out about twenty minutes ago,’ Rashers said.
‘That’s most unfortunate,’ Hennessy remarked. The cigarette packet intrigued him.
‘What’s the writing about?’
‘It’s a ballad about the strike.’
Rashers handed him the packet. Hennessy, screwing up his eyes, read:
‘Come all ye gallant Dublin crew and listen to my song
Of working men and women too who fight the cruel wrong.’
‘What comes after that?’
‘Damn the bit of me knows,’ Rashers confessed, ‘it has me puckered.’
‘What are you going to do with it?’
‘Sing it at meetings and outside public houses.’
‘In the hope of making a few coppers?’
‘What else?’
‘Not a chance now,’ Hennessy said.
‘Why not?’
‘The tide has gone out, oul skin. That’s why Mulhall sent me looking for Fitzpatrick.’ Hennessy handed back the cigarette packet.
‘The Liverpool Executive stopped the strike pay this morning.’
Fitz was already down at the committee rooms, where Mulhall had been waiting in the hope of seeing him. The doors were still closed and the crowd grew as they talked. Men who would not normally have come until later in the evening arrived early because the story of the stoppage of the relief money had spread from street to street. There were carters, shipping workers, a number of hands from factories that had become involved in the spread of the stoppages. The rumour went that there would be no money at all. Mulhall was more optimistic.
‘Larkin collected in Cork,’ he said, ‘and as well as that the committee built up a relief fund through the collection boxes. There’s bound to be something.’
‘It’ll want to be a lot,’ Fitz said, looking at the crowd, ‘to go anywhere among this mob.’
Joe joined them and after an hour Pat came along.
‘Trouble in our native land,’ he said.
‘The strike pay has been stopped,’ Fitz confirmed. There was still no sign of the doors being opened, so they moved over to the river wall. Down towards the sea, on the South Wall, cranes swivelled above ships.
‘It’s at times like this I wish I was a docker,’ Fitz said.
‘Or a sailor,’ Pat said. ‘Plenty of money and a wife in every port.’
Joe, who had been brooding about the matter on and off, saw his opportunity and said:
‘What about the four pounds you left with Lily Maxwell?’
Mulhall looked mildly curious. Fitz, glancing quickly at Pat’s face, knew that Joe had gone too far. It was one of those things which should never have been said.
‘I haven’t been able to see her,’ Pat said. Joe began to explain to Mulhall.
‘Imagine giving four pounds to mind to a . . .’
But Fitz, his tone sharp and violently angry, cut him short.
‘Give it a rest.’
Pat, who had been leaning on the wall, straightened and faced the three of them.
‘I promised Fitz two pounds of it and he’ll have it. I’ll pick her up.’
‘The girl might need it,’ Fitz said, ‘don’t go trailing her.’
He was sorry for Pat, whose face showed pain and humiliation.
‘There’s no question of trailing her,’ Pat said, ‘the girl never wronged me of a penny piece. You’ll have two pounds tonight.’
He left them abruptly. Mulhall looked after him and then asked: ‘What’s the matter with him?’
‘His sweetheart let him down,’ Joe said, beginning to laugh.
‘Give it over, I told you,’ Fitz said, rounding on him.
They went back to the hall and found it open, but the crowd outside seemed as dense as before. Someone Mulhall knew said: ‘They’re paying out inside.’
‘What’s the damage?’
‘It’s reduced to five bob.’
‘Better than nothing.’ Mulhall remarked. He began to elbow his way in. Fitz and Joe followed. Inside they produced their cards to the first man of three sitting at a table. With a shock Fitz realised that he was looking at Jim Larkin.
He was bigger than Fitz had imagined him and was smoking a black cheroot. The thumb of his left hand was stuck into the docker’s belt which he wore loosely about his waist. The man next to him made a quick entry in a book, the third man counted out five single shillings and handed them to Fitz, together with a printed notice which said:
‘Meeting This Evening At Parnell Square 5 p.m. sharp.
Jim Larkin Will Speak
Scabs Arriving
Muster For Action
Unity Is Strength’
They reached the sunlight again.
‘It was Jim Larkin,’ Fitz said. The encounter had excited him. It was as though he had just seen personalised all the slogans and half-conceived ideas that had been the common currency of the past two months. Mulhall, more experienced in such matters, found it less remarkable.
‘How’s the time?’
‘I’ve no notion.’
They walked together towards the city centre to consult the public clocks. It was half past four. All three were more or less hungry, yet they passed the bread shops and walked across restaurant gratings and were unaware for the moment of their drifting odours.
‘What’s that about scabs arriving?’ Joe asked, looking again at the badly printed notice.
‘That’s more of their dirty play.’
‘They did it in Belfast, didn’t they?’ Mulhall reminded them.