He closed the door.
CHAPTER EIGHT
It was raining. Mulhall, taking his breakfast by candlelight, heard the sprinkling of drops against the window as he ate.
‘Is it bad?’ he asked.
His wife went over to peer out. In windows down the length of Chandlers Court the light of candles wavered above a pitch black street. A squall rattled the window pane as she looked, taking her by surprise.
‘It’ll be bad enough,’ she said.
He filled his pipe, feeling the cold of the morning in his fingers. It would be two hours to the first of the light and by that time he would have the horse yoked and the cart loaded for the first delivery of the day.
‘Wear the sack about your shoulders,’ she advised him.
She was now on her knees in front of the fire, preparing to light it.
He puffed at his pipe.
‘Call Willie,’ she said, busy.
‘In a minute.’
He was thinking of the day ahead; yoking up, driving through wintry streets, hoisting wet sacks and labouring up and down stairs with them. He was in no humour.
‘There are times,’ he said, ‘when I think Hennessy above has more sense than any of us. He only works when the weather is fine.’
‘Call Willie for me, like a good man,’ she urged.
‘It’s too early to call him.’
‘No it isn’t,’ she said. ‘He wants to practise for half an hour before he goes out.’
‘Wouldn’t you think he had enough of it last night?’ he grumbled.
He took the candle and went into the small room at the back. His son was deeply asleep. On a chair beside the bed was the music he had been practising the night before. On top of the music lay his fife.
‘Willie,’ he called.
There was no stir. He leaned down until the candle lit up the sleeping form. The boy was nineteen now, tall. If all went well he would be as big in the body as well. He shook him by the shoulder.
‘Get up. The fire is lit and your breakfast is ready.’
The boy sat up, shaking his head to get rid of the sleep.
‘Playing that damn thing all night—and then not able to stir in the morning,’ Mulhall grumbled to his wife when he came back to the main room.
‘He’s anxious about the competition,’ she said.
It was to be held in the Queen’s Theatre that night—a Grand Fife and Drum Band Competition. They were going together to it. She would have her husband’s navy serge suit laid out airing for him when he came home, so that he could change quickly. She herself would wear her best dress, and in addition Mrs. Fitzpatrick might have something nice to lend her. They were friendly and she would call over during the course of the morning to enquire. The thought made her happy.
‘Be home early,’ she told him, ‘it’s not often we get out together.’
He pinned the sack about his shoulders and took his lunch parcel from the table.
‘Have you everything?’
She had asked the same question every morning of their lives—on weekdays as he went out to work, on Sundays when he made ready for mass. As he settled his cap on his head he smiled at her and said: ‘When me hat is on, me house is thatched.’
But as he went down the steps his moment of good humour left him. He was dispirited and reluctant to face the day, and wondered if he was starting a cold. The hall smelled dankly; on the steps the wind lifted up the sack so that he had to take his hands from his pockets to hold the ends in position. He bent his head against the rain and went down into the street. There were footsteps in the darkness ahead of him and behind him, echoing with the lonely sound of early morning. They were his mates and fellow-workers, a multitude moving through a dark dawn to earn their bread. In all the meaner streets of the city they were turning out to face the winter day.
In Brunswick Street, where the lighting was better, and he could see as well as hear the hurrying figures, a placard outside the Queen’s Theatre announced the evening’s attraction:
‘Tonight
Grand Fife & Drum
Band Con . . .’
That was as much as he could read. Rain had loosened the lower portion, which made a flapping noise in the wind. Was it ‘concert’ or ‘contest’? Not that it mattered. The tickets were at home and he knew all about it. No wonder, with Willie practising night after night for a full week.
Further down the street the Antient Concert Rooms promised music of a different kind. Holding the sack ends across his chest like a cloak he stopped to read:
‘Tonight (Friday) 13th December 1912
Dublin Philharmonic Society
Hymn of Praise
Athalie
(Mendelssohn)
Conductor Charles G. Marchant Mus.D.
Madame Nora Bonel
Miss Edith Mortier (Feis Gold Medallist)
J. J. Maltby (Principal Tenor, Chester Cathedral)
Full Band and Chorus
Prices: Reserved & Numbered seats 4s.
Balcony 2s.
Area 1s.
Booking at Cramer’s, Westmoreland Street’
Swanky stuff. Women in white and men in evening dress, reading the words out of books. He had seen them once, though not in full regalia, when he went in during a rehearsal to ask about delivering a load of coal. He had stood at the back, wondering whom to approach, while the voices of the chorus and the orchestra filled the hall with music. That was not in the Antient Concert Rooms, but in a hall attached to a convent school. A nun told him to sit and wait until the interval, but he felt self-conscious and slipped out again when she left him. Despite the convent, he felt they were a very Protestant-looking crowd.
A cold wind raked the quayside, driving the rain in squalls. Above the loading yard the windows of Mr. Doggett’s office and those flanking it were blank. It was too raw and early as yet for the owner and his henchmen. The air in the stables, comfortingly warm, smelled strongly of horse urine. The stableman greeted him. He was tossing hay by the light of a paraffin lamp, a shadowy presence in its inadequate glow.
‘Seasonable weather.’
It was seasonable, all right, and set now to go on being seasonable through January and February and early March, the most godforsaken months of the year.
‘I thought she was going lame on me yesterday,’ Mulhall said, stroking the mare.
‘A little stiffness,’ the stableman said, ‘nothing much. I gave her a rub.’
‘Rheumatism, maybe,’ Mulhall suggested.
‘A twinge,’ the stableman said, ‘she’s only flesh and blood—like the rest of us.’
Sure of a bed and a bit to eat while she could work, Mulhall thought, and a bullet to end it all when she was past labour. If she didn’t die in harness, like many another. The stableman started to cough, checked it, then began more violently. He had to lean on the rake until the fit passed. He was a long, thin man with a haggard face and consumptive frame, who lived on the premises. In the daytime he cleaned out the stables and in the evenings he examined the horses for any signs of injury or ill-health. If an animal was sick he stayed up at night to tend it. His father and his grandfather before him had done the same thing in their time.
Mulhall continued to stroke the horse.
‘Less than a fortnight now to Christmas,’ the stableman said, when he had got his breath back.
‘You’ll be going abroad for it, no doubt,’ Mulhall joked. The neck muscles of the horse were quivering delicately under his hand.
‘I was talking to the missus about that,’ the stableman said, ‘she has a fancy for the Rivieria.’
‘My own was thinking of one of them spas,’ Mulhall said.
‘Right enough,’ the stableman said, after a moment of consideration, ‘you meet a nicer class of people altogether at a spa.’
‘That’s my own experience too,’ Mulhall agreed.