‘All present and correct,’ he said.
As he went into the house Rashers stared after him. So did the dog.
‘I might do worse than go to gaol myself,’ Rashers said to the dog, ‘but if I did what the hell would happen to you?’
The dog flexed his ears and sat down again. Neither of them had very much to do.
Mulhall found his wife making their son’s bed. She turned round slowly when the door opened. He stood for a moment, waiting for her to overcome her surprise. The room was familiar and yet new. The chairs and the table, the statue and its lamp, the pictures on the wall, seemed to turn with her to regard him.
‘You’re back,’ she said.
‘Like a bad ha’penny.’
She let the blanket fall from her hands and came to him. He embraced her.
‘We missed you, Bernie.’
He knew they had—his wife, his son, the statue and the lamp, the pictures and the furniture. He was a leader in a great army, but he was king also here, in a little world where everything was moulded to serve him.
‘I know,’ he said. While he had been dreaming of conquering a city, they had been lonely for him and wishing him home. He released her and found tears covering her face. It was her way. She cried for sorrow and for joy, a tender, ageing woman easily moved. She wiped her face with her apron as she went over to the stove.
‘I’ll make you a cup of tea.’
That was her answer to every visitation of woe and joy, her response to an unexpected call, the preliminary to all departures.
‘No hurry,’ he said. He was over at the window and looking down at the street. The sight gave him pleasure. It was sunny and quiet. He saw Rashers and the dog turning the corner, two inseparable questors. Then he looked at his pipe-rack. There were four pipes stuck in it, all old, acquired over a lifetime. He kept them clean with methylated spirit which the watchmen in Doggett & Co. saved for him from time to time. He went over and took one down. He was examining it when she came over to give him the plug of tobacco.
‘I’ve a head like a sieve,’ she complained.
‘Where did this come from?’
‘I bought it to keep for when you came out. I knew it’d be the first thing you’d want.’
‘God bless the thought,’ he said. He sat down and began to cut it. As he filled his pipe he asked:
‘And how’s Willie?’
‘He missed you.’
‘Damn the miss,’ he said gruffly, to hide his pleasure. The smell of his tobacco drifted about the room.
‘I’ve a job for Willie,’ he said presently, when they were sitting at table, ‘and that’s to get them messengers and parcel boys organised in the union.’
‘You’ve got thin in the face,’ she said, when she had scrutinised him closely. ‘Did they treat you bad?’
‘I didn’t mind it.’
‘It used to worry me all the time, thinking of you locked in there with rogues and robbers.’
He had known that would worry her. She could not be expected to understand what it had taken himself a long time to find out. There were worse rogues.
‘Gaol isn’t so bad,’ he said, ‘the real criminals are outside.’
After a while he went out again, roaming for an hour or so at will. He walked the docks and saw, piled along the quayside and outside the sheds, the accumulation of goods that the rail workers and the dockers had refused to handle. At the gates of Doggett & Co. some of the carters reined in and greeted him.
‘When are you starting back, Barney?’ they asked him.
‘That’s what I’m here to see about.’
‘If there’s any mullarkey, let’s know.’
They took pains to show him they would stand by him if Doggett made any difficulties. He waved them on and went through the gate, pausing for a moment in the yard as affection stirred in him for the familiar coal-heaps and the black dust which formed odd patterns on the ground. He had worked here a long time and knew every corner of it. He could recognise every horse in an instant and recall its name. Horses, when you worked with them for a long time, he thought, were like any other working mate. Some were lazy and forgetful, some had good humours and bad, some were inexhaustible and patient and long suffering, pulling loads without flinching until the great heart inside them burst.
The timekeeper said Mr. Doggett would see him. He was to wait. They talked about gaol and what it was like. The timekeeper told him of small changes.
‘Who took over my horse?’ Mulhall asked.
‘Gibney,’ the timekeeper said.
‘Gibney is a butcher, not a carter,’ Mulhall said, ‘he’ll pull the mouth off her.’ The timekeeper took a delivery docket off the table and stuck it on a hook behind him, over a key that was numbered fourteen.
‘Who the hell gave her to him?’ Mulhall demanded.
‘You seem to forget,’ the timekeeper said, when he had completed his business, ‘that his nibs Gibney is related to the foreman.’
‘Since when?’
‘Married to the daughter, less than six weeks ago.’ Then, as though Mulhall ought to have known, he added: ‘That’s been going on a long time.’
A clerk came in and said Mr. Doggett would see Mulhall. They went together through the door at the back of the office and up a carpeted staircase. Doggett was standing at the window overlooking the yard. He turned and said to the clerk: ‘You may go.’ Then he sat at his desk.
‘I expect you’ve come for your job back.’
‘I’ve come to find out when do I start,’ Mulhall corrected. There was a difference.
‘And if I say you can’t start?’
‘Why should you say that?’
Doggett paused before answering. He was alert and cool. If what stood before him was simply a man, he could smash him by merely deciding to do so. But he was not confronted by a man. He was face to face with a movement. He did not want Mulhall back. On the other hand, it would not be worth facing a strike to get rid of him. The thought ran through Doggett’s mind that things had changed. Three years ago it would have been a simple matter.
‘I don’t know if you’re aware of it,’ he said, ‘but there is a railway strike and several smaller strikes too. We haven’t the work for a full staff.’
‘No one’s been laid off.’
‘Not yet—but the situation changes day by day.’
‘And what about Gibney?’
‘Gibney?’
‘He’s got my horse and he isn’t a carter at all. He hasn’t twelve months’ service.’
‘And what service had you?’
‘I was jobbed in Mr. Waterville’s time,’ Mulhall said, ‘and that was neither today nor yesterday.’
‘In the meanwhile,’ Doggett suggested quietly, ‘you’ve been in gaol—on a criminal charge.’
Mulhall smiled. They were getting down to brass tacks. He went over to the window and looked down. Three carts had pulled up in a line and were waiting their turn to ride on to the tare scales.
‘Those men below wouldn’t consider it criminal,’ he answered.
Behind his back irritation had brought Doggett to his feet. His workmen did not usually behave so casually in his presence. He mastered his ill humour. There would be a time to put this man back in his place. To do so too obviously now would be a mistake. He went over quietly and they both stood shoulder to shoulder. Below them lay the yard, peaceful in the sunlight. To Doggett it was not unlovely. Anything he had he owed to it. For Mulhall it meant bread and butter and, now that he had been away from it for half a year, something more. It was a familiar plot, as much a part of him as the street he had played in when he was a child, or the school he had gone to for so short a while, or the walks he had walked with his father when he was still small enough to be led by the hand.