‘He is right,’ Father O’Connor said.
‘And Miss Gilchrist. I’d like to speak to her even for half an hour.’
Father O’Connor insisted that it was out of the question. He told her again about the kind of place it was, about the inmates, their coarseness, the overpowering combination of age and ignorance and illness. Mrs. Bradshaw would find it too distressing.
‘Is she very ill?’ Mrs. Bradshaw asked.
‘Last week there seemed little hope for her. But on Sunday she seemed as well as ever.’
‘She was always very strong,’ Mrs. Bradshaw said. She seemed to be considering something. In order not to intrude, he took his time putting milk and sugar in his tea, stirring it, tasting it. He was glad he did so. Her next question led without embarrassment towards the topic he had come to discuss.
‘When they die,’ Mrs. Bradshaw asked, ‘what are the arrangements?’
He chose his sentences carefully.
‘The relatives are notified—if there are any. If there are and they claim the body they have the option of making the customary funeral arrangements—at their own personal expense, of course.’
‘And if there are no relatives?’
‘In that case, I’m afraid, it’s an institutional burial in a pauper’s grave.’
‘I shouldn’t like that to happen to Miss Gilchrist,’ Mrs. Bradshaw said.
Father O’Connor saw that the moment had come when he should be frank.
‘She spoke to me about it last Sunday. The thought seems to be constantly at the back of her mind. It has made her very unhappy—so unhappy that she asked me, as a great favour, to mention it to you.’
His words so affected Mrs. Bradshaw that he wondered for a moment if he had been too brutal and direct, if he had assaulted her feelings instead of appealing to her charity. She set his mind at rest almost at once.
‘I’m very glad you told me this. Please let Miss Gilchrist know that if I’ve failed the living I’ll at least do my duty by the dead.’
She began to weep. They were the tears of a kind-hearted woman and they distressed him greatly. It was not her fault that Miss Gilchrist had been cast off.
‘You are very generous,’ he offered. It was the best he could think of.
‘We should have looked after her ourselves. She was such a loyal poor soul—and she was with us so long.’
‘Your husband had to be practical.’
‘Do we fulfil our obligations by being practical all the time?’ she asked.
Her bitter tone caught him on the wrong foot. He had only meant to console, not to begin a discussion on the morality of a dismal affair. The main thing was she was prepared to meet Miss Gilchrist’s wishes.
‘I’ll tell Miss Gilchrist. It will make her very happy. And grateful.’
‘For so little?’
‘It is not by any means little,’ he said, earnestly.
‘It seems so to me.’
‘I assure you it isn’t. You are a generous woman. You must stop reproaching yourself. And you must not blame your husband.’
‘He is not to know,’ she interrupted quickly. ‘Please don’t mention anything to him.’
This mild woman surprised him. He had thought her incapable of bitterness, an imperturbable woman at the centre of a small, smoothly enamelled world. Yet she criticised her husband and was prepared to disobey him because in her heart she felt a greater power at work. He knew how hard that must be for her, a woman shaped—to the raising of a teacup—by the conventions of her class.
‘You need have no fear,’ he told her, in his quietest and most reassuring tone.
Then, to ease her mind further, he told of his call on Mary. She questioned him about Mary’s circumstances, her husband, her children. He began to understand how lonely and unhappy she was, this woman without children of her own who brooded too much over the misfortunes of those for whom she felt the tug of responsibility. She did not brush shoulders often enough with reality to know that these were commonplace hardships. There was nothing to be done about them that Father O’Connor could see, except to suffer them with patience and to offer, where possible, some negligible but well-intentioned relief. Her kindness impressed him, but he was glad, nevertheless, when he could look at the clock and say, without lying, that it was really time to go if he was to spare a little while for Mr. Yearling before getting back to the duties of his parish.
Hennessy, about to climb the steps to 3 Chandlers Court, heard the tin whistle and cocked his head to listen. The notes, creeping from behind the basement window, shaped a slow air that was barely audible, although the street was enjoying one of its rare interludes of quietness. Where were the men? Hennessy wondered. Where were the women, the children, the dogs that should have been searching the gutter with noses nursing the remote hope of something edible? Off to gape at some moment’s diversion, he decided; off to follow a German band, maybe, or a parade of military passing on its way to join a ship. It was disappointing. There was no one to pass on his news to, no one standing on any of the steps, no one leaning against a lamp-post; only a street in the evening sunlight and a melancholy air meandering down its emptiness. The basement window had no glass in it. Instead, pieces of cardboard filled in its frame, leaving a small panel at the top for light and air.
‘Rashers,’ he shouted.
The air continued. It was slow; it was a personal, unorganised kind of air that could meander on for ever. Hennessy saw a stone, stooped for it, then let it fly at the window. It made a sharp sound on the cardboard. For a moment the melody broke off, then started again. Irritated, Hennessy searched once more. He found a larger stone which hopped back off the cardboard and fell into the area space with a thud. The music stopped abruptly and a voice from inside yelled in anger.
‘Who flung that?’
‘Rashers,’ Hennessy shouted again.
‘Go home, you little bowsie. Flinging stones at a decent man’s window. I know you. I’ll tell your mother—honest to God I will.’
‘It’s me, Hennessy.’
‘Who?’
‘Hennessy.’
‘Wouldn’t you think you’d have more sense at your age,’ Rashers yelled.
‘I want to talk to you.’
‘You could knock at the bloody door.’
‘A bit of news.’
‘Like a bloody Christian. That cardboard cost money.’
‘Come on up,’ Hennessy invited, ‘I want a word with you.’
He sat on the steps. The stone under his skinny behind felt warm. The day had been good. He had spent it travelling between the office of Bates & Sons, Contractors, in Merchants Lane and a gang of men who were working in Phoenix Park. Twice he had pushed a handcart across the city to them with supplies. But he had taken his time, pausing when he wanted to watch anything of interest, enjoying the sunlight, happy to have a few weeks’ work as a runner. Two rosy spots on his normally sallow face showed the benefit of good weather and exercise. He took a cigarette from his waistcoat pocket, lit it with an air of luxury and waited. When Rashers joined him he had the tin whistle still in his hands.
‘What’s the commotion?’ Rashers asked, taking a seat beside him.
‘Where’s everybody gone?’
‘To hell, for all I know.’
‘Not even a stray cat . . .’
‘Or out of their minds for the want of sense.’
Rashers absentmindedly raised the tin whistle to his lips.
‘Don’t start on that again,’ Hennessy appealed.
‘You’re unmusical as well as being a bowsie,’ Rashers commented.
‘It was a sad sort of tune you were playing.’
‘I was thinking,’ Rashers said. He laid the whistle aside.
‘Have a cigarette,’ Hennessy invited. He drew one from a packet of Woodbines and passed it over to Rashers, who said:
‘Thanks be to God someone’s earning,’ and lit it.