‘You took that step without consulting me,’ Father Giffley said. ‘And now you ask me did you do wrong. Am I to take responsibility for your decisions? This time I leave the matter in your own hands. You feel you have been insulted. If you wish to punish, it is your sole responsibility.’
‘It was not a question of punishment.’
‘No?’
‘One has a right to expect decency and good behaviour.’
‘Quite so,’ Father Giffley agreed.
The words should have reassured, but instead they disturbed. What was the use of discussing decency and good behaviour with a man who was himself about to offend against both. Irritated by the whiskey, the swollen face, Father O’Connor snapped:
‘I never know what you mean.’
He stopped short, alarmed at the sound of his own voice. It was loud, it was almost contemptuous. Father Giffley turned fully about, fixing his eyes squarely on Father O’Connor.
‘You have that look again now,’ he said.
‘I spoke loudly. I am sorry.’
‘That look on your face. It comes quite often. I saw it earlier today. Shall I tell you when?’
Goaded beyond endurance by the tone, Father O’Connor said: ‘I am not here to be insulted.’
Father Giffley rose from his chair and left down his glass with a bang.
‘This morning,’ he continued, his hands clasped behind him, his head inclined pugnaciously towards Father O’Connor, ‘I watched you distributing holy communion. The old men, and the young men too, thronged to the altar rails—in this parish they always have on sodality Sunday. You were distributing holy communion. It had been raining. Nothing unusual in that, of course. It is never done raining in the parish of St. Brigid. You have probably had time to notice that—in between your visits to Kingstown. The rain makes them smell quite badly. And when they are packed together, row on row, that smell can be more than a little distressing.’
Father Giffley took his hands from behind his back and leaned his weight on the table.
‘You were faced with a line of assorted tongues, all thrust forward to receive the Body of our Lord from your hands. You kept as far off as possible from the assorted breaths they were exhaling at you. And in all my days I have never seen a priest’s face that wore such a look of loathing and disgust.’
‘It’s a lie,’ Father O’Connor shouted. The denial broke from him before he could attempt to control it. The sound of his voice reverberating through the room shocked him. He trembled as Father Giffley resumed his seat by the fire. Then, with a feeling of loneliness and despair which reduced him almost to tears, he added:
‘I can only assume that you have already had too much whiskey to drink. It will ruin you. If you do not respect yourself I cannot expect you to respect me.’
Father Giffley was unmoved. He folded his arms and gave his attention entirely to the fire. It burned clearly and brightly. In it were coloured scenes of ethereal beauty. In it were no dead born babies, no lice-infested heads, no worn-out creatures, no malformed bodies. Soul and imagination could wander down its galleries for ever, in peace, in contemplation without end.
He heard the door close. He did not associate it with Father O’Connor leaving. Already, it seemed to him, Father O’Connor had left a long time ago.
Rashers went back once more among the old women and the children who searched the dustbins. There was nothing much to be got elsewhere. A dock strike spread and involved the railway workers; there was a partial stoppage in the timber trade. Throughout the city, jobs closed, men picketed, homes went short of food and firing. Among themselves the poor had nothing to spare. At night Rashers played his tin whistle for the theatre queues. Everywhere the competition proved formidable. A man with a barrel-organ and a monkey was a frequent rival. Another pair, with fiddle and full-size harp, outdid him in both sound and spectacle. There was an unusual number of casuals, from broken-voiced ballad-singers to outright beggars wheedling for the price of a cup of tea and a night’s lodging.
Often enough he lost heart. His limp had grown worse, his chest constantly gave him trouble.
‘Why don’t you go round and apologise to Father O’Connor?’ Hennessy urged him more than once throughout the long winter.
‘Because Rashers Tierney isn’t that class of a man,’ he always answered.
‘After all—he’s a priest.’
‘If he is he shouldn’t want an apology.’
‘And what should he do?’
‘He should turn the other cheek.’
Hennessy, with a grunt of impatience, sat down beside him.
‘Ah—talk sense.’
‘Sense be damned.’
Finding him immovable, Hennessy offered a cigarette. They smoked and watched the children swinging about a lamp-post on the opposite pavement.
‘You’re a stubborn and cantankerous bloody oul oddity,’ Hennessy decided.
Rashers shrugged the rebuke away. His job was filled. Apologising would get him nowhere. Never again would he go next or near St. Brigid’s. Mass was available elsewhere; God and His Blessed Mother and St. Joseph and St. Anthony and anyone else he cared to address a prayer to would listen to him without asking Father O’Connor’s permission. That was one good thing about religion. No one owned it. No one could put a wall around it and lock the gate on you. If he was sorry for his sins God would smile and say, ‘Come on in, Rashers—I knew your knock.’ If he was not, all the Father O’Connors in the world could do nothing to put him back into favour.
‘I’ll creep in through a little hole or behind the little children,’ Rashers said aloud.
He screwed up his face defiantly.
Hennessy, wondering what he was wandering in his mind about, looked at him but said nothing. For once he was incurious, his thoughts returning to his own plight. Another of his temporary jobs had come to an end. There were too many idle men now to compete for what might be left. Like Rashers, he stood little chance in open competition. Unlike Rashers, his accomplishments did not include a command of the tin whistle. He sighed and said:
‘One of the chisellers is sick.’
‘Which of them?’
‘The second youngest. It’s some class of a bowel complaint. I’d like to get a bit of decent nourishment for her.’
‘The poor little morsel,’ Rashers said.
‘But with all the strikes, it’s hard to know where to turn to earn a crust.’
‘It always was,’ Rashers agreed, ‘in this glorified kip of a city.’
They both fell silent again.
CHAPTER FIVE
It was summer when Mulhall left prison. He had to stand for some moments to adjust himself to the space and noise of the early-morning streets. Even the sunlight seemed loud. Then he began to head towards the centre of the city, where the crowded pavements bewildered him, until he remembered again that he was a leader among all the people. He had been in gaol for them. He would be in gaol again. He squared his shoulders when the floats and carts rattled past him. While he had been in gaol for them they had not let him down. The dockers had tied up the port rather than work with non-union labour. The Viceroy had invited Larkin to Dublin Castle to discuss ways and means of settling with the men. That was a new measure of recognition. Now the railway men were on strike in sympathy with their comrades in England.
Mulhall saluted the pickets as he passed and was saluted in turn. They knew him as a leader too. These were part of his great army, an army that would grow and grow until wealth and eminence would bow to its banners. There would be no more slums, no more rickety children, no more hunger and cold. Because he, and others like him, would refuse to be defeated.
‘I declare to God,’ Rashers said, ‘will you look who’s here?’ Mulhall paused to greet Rashers on the steps. Rusty the dog sniffed at his trouser legs. That, more than anything so far, assured him that he was back in the world again. Mulhall patted the dog.