‘How did you hear this?’
‘I can’t tell you now, but it’s reliable.’
‘How reliable?’
‘It’s from my own sister—she’s in service.’
‘Good man,’ Mulhall said, and turned to go.
The man, pleased with his approval, grinned and stepped back towards the wheel. It was a careless movement that brought him too close to it. He stumbled against it, threw out his arms to find balance and shouted. Mulhall ran back and found him groaning with pain. His right arm was pinned firmly between the steel rope and the winch, which, despite the obstruction, continued very slowly to rotate, gripping the arm more and more tightly as it did so. Mulhall threw all his weight against it and shouted for help. No one seemed to hear. The buckets continued to rattle as they descended and the slack rope, no longer being drawn in by the winch, began to pay out about the platform. Mulhall, exerting all his strength, kept the winch from moving and shouted again. No one responded. The dusk had grown deeper, the rain heavier, the jingling of buckets seemed to increase every moment.
‘Jesus,’ the man beside him said. Mulhall’s strength was failing and the winch had moved a fraction more.
‘Switch off,’ he shouted, ‘switch her off.’
Fitz, arriving a moment later, found Mulhall agonised with effort.
‘Tell them to switch her off,’ Mulhall said to him. Fitz went to the middle of the platform and shouted up to the control cabin. At first they failed to understand. Then the message reached them. The buckets ceased to move. The wheels stopped. There was silence. The men gathered about the winch and forced it backwards until the rope slackened and the man’s arm was free. They took him down from the platform.
‘Are you all right, Bernie?’ Fitz asked Mulhall.
‘Gameball,’ Mulhall said. He leaned against the winch. Every muscle in his back ached; his lungs laboured for air.
‘Rest a bit,’ Fitz advised. He went down to examine O’Mahony. The arm was badly bruised but otherwise it was sound. Somebody shouted down from the cabin above and a voice shouted back.
‘All clear now. Start away.’
The sound of the buckets beginning to move again drew Fitz’s attention. He looked back at the platform. What he saw horrified him. Mulhall had moved away from the winch and was swaying with exhaustion. The winch, with no weight dragging against it, was hauling in the slack rope that lay in coils about the platform at a pace that increased each second. Fitz saw the danger and shouted out: ‘Bernie—watch the ropes. Jump.’
Mulhall straightened and looked out at him. Fitz shouted again. It was too late. The loop of steel rope that Mulhall was standing in rode up about his legs at a terrifying speed, tightened, and pulled through. When Fitz reached Mulhall he was lying in blood.
‘What happened, Fitz?’
‘Lie still,’ Fitz said. But Mulhall raised himself with a great effort and saw lying beside him his own dismembered feet. They had been amputated from just below the knees.
‘Lie back,’ Fitz said gently. He took off his coat and began to tear his shirt. With another man he made a tourniquet for each leg. They wound them as tight as their strength allowed. They knelt there in the rain, under arc lamps that the men had rigged up, holding on doggedly until the ambulance arrived, and Mulhall, now unconscious, was carried away. Fitz picked up the two feet, grotesque and horrible, and wrapped them in a sack. An ambulance man took them from him. When they had gone Fitz leaned against the side of the platform, shivering.
‘Are you all right?’ a strange voice asked him, very gently.
‘In a moment,’ Fitz said. Suddenly his stomach turned over and he was violently and repeatedly sick. A hand gripped him by the shoulder and when the bout of sickness had exhausted itself the same strange voice said:
‘Where do you live?’
Fitz automatically gave his address.
‘I have a motor car at the gate. I’ll take you home.’
Fitz looked round and found his companion was Yearling.
‘I’ve to finish my shift.’
‘Nonsense,’ Yearling said, ‘you will come with me.’
He led Fitz down the yard. In the car he found that Fitz was trembling and produced a silver hip flask.
‘Take some of this,’ he said, ‘good stuff for shock.’ Then he gave the address to the driver, who said he would need directions.
‘Yearling is the name—I’m a director.’
‘You’re very kind,’ Fitz said.
‘It was a dreadful accident. How did it happen?’
Fitz described it as they drove. As he talked he realised it would never have happened only for the fool who had signalled the cabin men to restart the machine. But he said nothing of this to Yearling, in case it might implicate one of the men. The damage was done. Mulhall, whether he died or lived, was finished. At Chandlers Court he got out, and thanked Yearling again.
‘Never mind that,’ Yearling said. ‘Have a rest when you go in. And don’t come to work tomorrow. I’ll see you don’t lose anything on that account.’
When he got in Mary knew already. Word had been brought and the house from top to bottom was astir with the news.
‘I was just going over to Mrs. Mulhall,’ Mary said, ‘she’ll need somebody with her.’
‘I’ll go with you for a moment,’ he said.
They knocked on the door and a quiet voice said, ‘Come in.’ She was sitting at the table, dry-eyed and shocked. On the bed in the corner lay the clothes Mary had lent her earlier in the day. At the fire, spread out to air on two kitchen chairs, were Mulhall’s good suit and a clean shirt, awaiting his return. She rose as Mary came across to her and the two women embraced.
‘My poor Bernie,’ Mrs. Mulhall said in a whisper, ‘my poor, darling Bernie.’
She began to cry. Mary held her tightly. There was no other comfort she could offer.
Over a fortnight later, on New Year’s Eve, while Mulhall in hospital still hovered between life and death, Fitz came home with news that he had been made a foreman. Mary knew it was Mr. Yearling who had done it and that it was Mrs. Bradshaw’s influence. She spent a long night writing a letter of thanks. Fitz went up to the hospital to see Mulhall. Carrington, who had been promoted to superintendent and whose place Fitz was filling, had said to him:
‘You’d be well advised to leave the union. It’s no longer in your own interest to meddle about with Larkinism.’
‘Thanks for the tip,’ Fitz said, ‘but I’m not opting out now.’
‘Well, keep quiet about it anyway,’ Carrington said. ‘I’m not trying to get at you. This is just a friend’s advice.’
‘I know that,’ Fitz said, ‘there’s no misunderstanding between us.’
He was allowed in briefly to see Mulhall, who was asleep. He peeped behind the screen at the great body that would march in no more processions and battle no more through cordons of police. He would never let down the trust of that ageing and wounded man.
BOOK THREE
1913–1914
CHAPTER ONE
Christmas brought Hennessy a little work, a job as porter to a butcher. Rashers saw him pushing a delivery bicycle through the streets. It had ‘A. Rattigan—Choice Meats’ written on the enormous basket in front. He was not very expert at bicycle-riding and the basket in front made him wobble a lot, but Rashers waved encouragingly. The children in the poorer areas were less sympathetic.
‘Ay—mister . . .’ they yelled after him, and then, when at the risk of wobbling over altogether he looked around to find out what was wrong, they pointed and said:
‘Your back wheel is going around, mister.’
When he cursed at them they had an answer too.
‘Get down and milk it’ they yelled.