When the dust had cleared and the workmen had begun to rebuild the sacks Rashers turned for home. It was one of those never-ending June evenings, with long reaches of sky from which the light seemed unable to ebb. Rashers moved slowly. The rumble of the collapsing sacks and the great cloud of dust had set his heart beating in a way that now made him breathless. His bad leg made movement very difficult, his chest pained him. He began to curse the pigeon, for its thievery, its unnecessary death, the shock that was making the road home interminable, the delay that would send him hungry to bed. It was too late now to ask Mrs. Bartley for bread. Rusty would go hungry too. At Chandlers Court he stopped to get his breath and to look up at the sky. It was never ending, with never fading light. He thought of Death and felt it was waiting for him somewhere in the sky’s deeps, cold Sergeant Death, as the song said, Death the sad smiling tyrant, the cruel and remorseless old foe. He listened to his heart and heard it speaking to him of Death, not in words, but with a sound like sad music. He listened for some time. Then he stepped into the hallway, where his feet echoed on the wooden floor. At the third footstep the dog below in the basement began to bark.
At about eleven-thirty Father O’Sullivan, having waited all evening to be summoned by Father Giffley, decided to go to his parish priest’s room and knock. At first he had been anxious because of the promised discussion on his pamphlet, but now he was uneasy only because something might have happened. ‘I want to tell you that I am going mad, John,’ Father Giffley had said. The words had upset him, because he regarded his parish priest with compassion and because he feared in his heart that they were true.
He remembered them again as he waited for a reply to his knock. There was none. When he had tried several times without success he opened the door gently and went in. Father Giffley was snoring in his chair. The manuscript lay on the table beside him. It had not been opened. A water jug rested beside it and a drinking glass had left circular stains on it. The whiskey bottle beside it was almost empty.
He hesitated, wondering what to do.
‘Father,’ he whispered, ‘Father Giffley.’ When he had repeated the name several times his superior opened his eyes.
‘Go away,’ he said.
‘But, Father . . .’
Father Giffley turned away and closed his eyes once more. After a moment, while Father O’Sullivan waited, he said:
‘Heart of Jesus patient and full of mercy, Heart of Jesus, desire of the everlasting hills.’
Father O’Sullivan remained very quiet. In the twilight of the room the words seemed for a little while to have physical presence, to repeat of themselves, clearly at first, then fading gradually into silence. Father Giffley’s breathing became heavy. After a while he began to snore.
Father O’Sullivan, knowing there was nothing he could do, withdrew, closing the door very gently.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Yearling, back in the city for the first time in six weeks, remarked anew its characteristic odours; the smell of soot and hot metal in Westland Row station, the dust-laden air in streets, the strong tang of horse urine where the cabbies had their stand, the waft of beer and stale sawdust when a public house door swung open. If the fishing in Connemara had been poor this season, at least the open spaces had given him back his nose.
He stood at the corner, a jaunty figure in Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers, with a walking-stick which he wagged contentedly to and fro as he considered his surroundings. He liked to smell things. Smell was part of place. It was more. It seeped into forgotten storerooms of the mind and unlocked hidden memories. Smell, like music, could produce the latchkey to pain and pleasure.
He looked down Brunswick Street to read the clock above the fire brigade station. Twenty-five minutes to three. That gave him an hour before his appointment with the chairman of Morgan & Co. He was glad. The October afternoon was fine. There were plenty of pleasant, inconsequential things to do.
Wondering if there was anything of interest going on at the Antient Concert Rooms, he crossed the road and turned left down Brunswick Street. He found the place was locked and the notice board outside blank. Too early yet, he remembered, for any of the concerts of the Dublin Orchestral Society. He had played with the orchestra some years before, when they presented all the Beethoven symphonies. They had to leave out the last movement of the Ninth, though, because there was no choir. Michele Esposito had conducted, an accomplished musician, Yearling considered, unanimously respected by musical citizens. Pity they were also unanimous in mispronouncing his name.
In the graveyard of St. Mark’s Church an old man was sweeping up the leaves. The trees that had shed them were covered with grime from the nearby railway bridge, as black as the coal carters who lived in the surrounding tenements. Yet they budded in spring and decked themselves in summer, with a gnarled and grimy courage which moved Yearling to admiration. The old man swept the leaves into little heaps along the paths. From time to time he exchanged his sweeping brush for a barrow and brought them to the fire that smouldered by a stone wall. There was no flame visible, only a plume of blue smoke rising steadily towards the sky. On all sides were tombstones, upright, angled, grimy as the trees. The iron railings of the graveyard ran parallel with the street, a barrier to divide the kingdoms of the living and the dead.
The metal-shod wheels of a dray ground on the cobbles behind Yearling’s back. The noise was deafening. He turned impatiently to shake his stick at the driver and put his fingers in his ears. The driver, unabashed, winked to convey his good humour. As the dray passed Yearling saw the board on the back. It read: ‘Morgan & Co.’
The reminder of his appointment was unwelcome. His mother had been Cecilia Morgan and from his grandfather, George Morgan, he had inherited an aptitude for music and his influential place on the Board. His brother-in-law, John Bullman, was now chairman. Neither approved of the other.
As Yearling turned to resume his walk, a man passed him with a barrel-organ and a monkey on a chain. One of Signor Esposito’s fellow-countrymen, a twin soul, a musician. The man was thin and famished looking and the monkey, in its red flannel jacket, clung to the organ and scrutinised the passers-by with quick, continuous movements of its head. When a group of children waved and shouted to it, the monkey responded by leaping up and down several times. Showing-off, Yearling thought.
He crossed the road. The children had now gathered about a shop window. They were ragged and poor. The boys wore trousers that had been cut down to fit, the girls’ dresses were made of oddments run clumsily together by their mothers. All of them were barefooted. For the moment the window held their unanimous interest. It displayed drumsticks and liquorice pipes, toffee apples, jelly babies, cough-no-mores, aniseed balls, conversation lozenges.
Yearling, aware suddenly of a conglomeration of appetites, tapped the nearest shoulder and asked: ‘Who’d like sweets?’