A little later Father O’Connor said: ‘When I spoke of drink as being unseemly I didn’t mean that it could not be sinful. It can. I’ve seen it become sinful and I’ve seen it lead to much human tragedy.’ He spoke generally. But he was thinking of Father Giffley.
October brought work for Rashers once again. He piled paper on the cold bars of the furnace, spread sticks and a dressing of coke. Then he lit the first fire of another season, building it to give a slow heat which he could control. For the first week it required attention at night-time, so he decided to sleep in the boiler house. On the Saturday night, when there was a corpse in the mortuary chapel above, he brought the dog and played music on the flageolet to keep himself company. The dog was a mistake. In the morning, when Father Giffley passed near the entrance, it gave a warning bark.
‘In the first week of the season I have to sleep here at night, Father,’ he said. ‘I keep a slow fire so as not to do damage to the pipes.’
‘And is the . . . dog . . . very useful?’
‘In the matter of company, Father.’
‘St. Francis and yourself would get on well together, I can see that.’
Father Giffley peered into the corners beyond the ring of candlelight. They were grimed with dust. The cobwebs looked solid.
‘Do you sleep on the coke?’
‘With a sack underneath.’
‘And it is comfortable?’
‘It could be worse.’
Father Giffley noted the familiar phrase. Everything could be worse.
‘It could, indeed.’
‘Only I noticed it’s inclined to bring on the bronchitis.’
‘That would be the dust,’ Father Giffley said.
‘I hope you don’t think bad of me bringing the dog, Father.’
‘We could deduct something for its board and lodging,’ Father Giffley suggested, smiling to himself. ‘What’s his name?’
‘Rusty, Father.’
Father Giffley bent down to the dog and said: ‘Here, Rusty, that’s the fellow, that’s the good doggie.’
The dog wagged its tail. It was a mangy-looking specimen, he thought, like its lord and master. Father Giffley wrinkled his forehead. He thought of a religious picture which had hung somewhere, of a saint who wept for his ox. The picture he remembered clearly—a great, bearded human face pressed in fellowship against the hairy face of the beast—but the saint’s name evaded him. Or—after all, was it called ‘The Peasant Weeps Over His Ox’? Father Giffley was unsure. He patted the dog’s head. Then he straightened and said:
‘You shouldn’t spend too much time in this place. The air is foul. Call into the housekeeper later—I’ll tell her to give you some breakfast, and some scraps for Rusty. Do you drink?’
‘Whenever good luck pushes a drop under my nose.’
‘I’ll tell her to give you a little something to take home.’
‘God bless you, Father.’
‘For your bronchitis, you understand,’ Father Giffley added.
He climbed the steps and went out into the air, which was mild. When he had seen the housekeeper he came back again, circled the courtyard a couple of times and then went out into the street. With his hands behind his back and his head bowed forward he pushed through the people who were on their way to mass. They parted for him. Some of them who greeted him were acknowledged with an inclination of the head, others he did not see. He passed under the railway bridge, through side streets which were so far from the church that people wondered to see a priest dressed only in his soutane. Here and there he stopped to talk to children who were playing hopscotch and skipping outside the tenements which occupied so large a part of his parish. He came to the riverside at last and remained leaning against a capstan for some time. To the right and left of him ships lay to. Sunday ships, deserted, he would believe, were it not for the smoke streaming up from the galleys. The cranes were still and the buckets empty. Behind him the bells of Sunday were clamouring throughout the city, marking the arrival of each half-hour. Men passed him and saluted. One of them, a young man of average height, well built, had a grimy and unsabbath like face.
‘Good morning,’ Father Giffley said.
‘Good morning, Father.’
‘Have you been working?’
‘At it all night, Father,’ Fitz said. He pushed his cap on to the back of his head and now that he had stopped, let his eyes travel with the river to the point where the north and south walls widened, disappeared and left it to the sea. It was sluggish and grey, but with a sheen here and there that acknowledged the sunshine.
‘Shift work, I suppose?’ Father Giffley questioned.
‘At the foundry, Father.’
‘How do you get to mass?’
‘Our mates come in an hour earlier on Sundays—we do the same for them in our turn.’
‘You’re a good bunch of men,’ Father Giffley said. ‘You’ll be off to a football match after the dinner, I suppose?’
Fitz smiled and said: ‘No such luck today—I’m minding the kids.’
‘Letting herself out?’
‘For a change,’ Fitz said easily. Father Giffley, he realised, did not remember him.
‘You’ve a button in your coat,’ Father Giffley remarked, ‘and I haven’t seen one like it before.’
Fitz said it was a trade union button.
‘Will they release Larkin, do you think?’
‘There’s great talk of it, Father.’
‘So they should,’ Father Giffley said. ‘Have you ever been on strike?’
‘Which of us hasn’t?’
‘Of course,’ Father Giffley said, ‘everybody in my parish has been, I suppose. They don’t treat you very fairly, do they?’
It was not a question that needed answering. Father Giffley rose and put his hands behind his back once more.
‘No, indeed,’ he said as he went off, ‘they do not.’
He went back again through the side streets. People who knew him thought it strange, not because he was walking in his soutane—he was odd and had peculiar ways—but because he was seldom known to stroll through his parish.
The high windows let in the afternoon sun behind the girl at the bedside, giving lights to her smooth, black hair, leaving her pale face in shadow. She was the girl with the two children who so often brought her snuff, who in fact had just given her a small packet of snuff, which was now under the pillow somewhere, if she could find it. She quested with the fingers of one hand.
‘I’ll get it for you.’
The lights in the hair went out as the girl who had left a good place to marry some poor chap or other leaned nearer the bed. Mary . . . that was the name she was searching for.
‘What were you saying, love?’ Miss Gilchrist asked.
‘I said I’ll get it for you.’
The young face smiled. A pleasant girl, she now remembered, who always brought her snuff. Mary.
‘I mean before that.’
‘I was saying the days are growing short already.’
‘What day is it?’
‘Sunday.’
Of course it was Sunday. It was on Sundays she got the snuff. If she used it carefully and watched that it wasn’t stolen it would last a week. Almost.
‘When I was a young bit of a thing in Dublin at first I never liked Sundays.’
‘Why was that?’
‘The bells. I never liked the sound of them.’
‘Yes. They make you lonely when there’s only yourself.’
‘Our own bells making a din the whole of the morning. And then the Protestant bells going in the afternoon. And the bells for devotion at seven or eight o’clock. They made such a commotion from morning till night I used to be glad when it was Monday.’
‘I was like that myself too, at first.’
‘When you looked out the window and saw everyone else parading it in their finery?’
‘Meeting each other and going to each other’s houses.’