He was looking into a shop window in which he saw nothing but his own reflection, his long, ragged coat, the grey beard, the hat that had lost all semblance of shape and fitted over head and ears like a bowl. He was thinking of food. He had thought of little else for days. A hand tapped him on the shoulder.
‘Using the head?’ said the voice.
When he turned around it was Pat Bannister. A generous skin, Rashers knew, but unlikely to have anything to give away.
‘I’m thinking about hard times,’ he said.
‘It’s a general complaint,’ Pat said.
‘I don’t suppose you have anything you could spare?’
Pat shook his head.
‘Why aren’t you playing the whistle?’ he asked.
‘Because no one has the inclination to listen,’ Rashers said.
‘Some is too stingy and the rest is just too bloody hungry. Music is out of fashion.’
‘Did you ever try advertising?’
‘It isn’t one of my accomplishments,’ Rashers confessed.
‘There’s nothing to it,’ Pat said. ‘Come on for a walk with me and I’ll show you.’
They went through back streets that both of them had known since childhood. They now looked different. There were too many men moving about and there was too little traffic. Nothing was happening. Rashers thought it was like Sunday without the bells. As they walked Pat said there was little hope of the strike finishing soon. It would go on through the winter. They were setting up food kitchens for the women and children in Liberty Hall. The Countess Markiewicz was going to serve the meals with her own hands. He asked Rashers if he had ever heard of her. Rashers grunted. She was one of them high class oul wans that were sticking their noses into a hundred and one things nowadays. Trouble-makers. Like Madame Despard and Maud Gonne. Acting the hooligan about votes for women when they should be at home looking after their husbands and their unfortunate children. Mad Gonne and Mrs. Desperate, the people were calling them. No wonder the city was starving.
The distant ringing of a handbell interrupted his thoughts and Pat said: ‘Now you’ll see what I mean.’
They turned the corner. The gleam on the three brass balls outside Mr. Donegan’s shop caught his eyes first, then the long queue of women, each laden with ornaments or bundles of clothes, then the figure of the bellringer. He was a man of Rashers’ age, but more hale. His body was hidden beneath two sandwich boards which were suspended by straps from his shoulders. The boards announced:
‘Donegan’s for Value
Best Prices
All Welcome’
‘There you are now,’ Pat said. Rashers stared, puzzled.
‘What about it?’
‘The advertising business. A job like that would suit you down to the ground.’
‘What the hell use is that when this fella here has nabbed it already.’
‘If Donegan finds it worth while to take on a man, so will somebody else,’ Pat explained. ‘The thing for you to do is to persuade one of the other pawnbrokers. What about Silverwater in Macken Street?’
‘The Erin’s Isle?’ Rashers said. ‘I’d have a hope.’
‘Give me a minute,’ Pat said.
He went across to the man with the bell. They talked for a while. Then he rejoined Rashers.
‘Now we’ll make our way to The Erin’s Isle,’ Pat announced.
It took them about ten minutes to reach Mr. Silverwater’s establishment. It was an unusual building. Beneath the three brass balls the figure of Ireland, with golden tresses reaching down the green mantle about her shoulders, wept over her stringless harp. The scroll at her feet spelled out in white letters: ‘The Erin’s Isle’. A queue of patient women had formed outside.
‘Now what do we do?’ Rashers asked.
‘We wait,’ Pat said firmly.
Rashers wondered why. But it did not matter. There was nothing else to do.
‘That’s an occupation you get used to,’ he said.
The pawnshop had once been a public house. Rashers remembered having a drink in it as a young man. About forty years ago, he thought. In those days it had not been so hard to find a crust to eat. Or so it seemed now.
‘Do you remember Jeremiah Brady?’ he asked Pat.
‘Who was he?’
‘He owned The Erin’s Isle when it was a public house.’
‘I don’t remember it as a public house,’ Pat confessed.
‘Jeremiah had three faults that make a bad publican,’ Rashers said. ‘He stocked only the best, he kept too easy a slate and his best customer was himself.’
‘A good man’s failing,’ Pat said.
‘It put Jeremiah in Stubbs,’ Rashers finished, ‘and in the heel of the hunt it put him in Glasnevin.’
The sound of a handbell attracted the attention of the waiting women as the man from Donegan’s turned the corner into the street. He nodded over at Pat. Then he began to parade up and down. The noise brought one of The Erin’s Isle clerks to the door. Eventually Mr. Silverwater himself appeared. He found the bellringer parading up and down, bawling out the claims of Mr. Donegan to the patronage of his own customers. Mr. Silverwater was astounded.
‘Hey, you,’ he shouted, ‘get to hell out of my street.’
The bellringer ignored him. Mr. Silverwater read the board in front and when the bellringer turned he suffered the shock of reading the same message on the back.
‘Donegan’s for Value
Best Prices
All Welcome’
‘My customers,’ Mr. Silverwater yelled at Pat, who had crossed over to sympathise with him. ‘He wants my customers.’
‘That’s shocking,’ Pat said.
‘What’s the matter with Donegan?’ Mr. Silverwater asked. ‘We’re good friends. We often play poker together.’
‘Maybe you beat him too often,’ Pat suggested.
‘We’ve been playing for maybe fifteen years,’ Silverwater said, ‘it couldn’t be that.’
‘He’s taking advantage of the times to extend his trade,’ Pat suggested. ‘Business is business.’
‘Business be damned,’ Mr. Silverwater said.
Then he yelled again.
‘Hey, get back to your own streets.’
‘You won’t shift him that way,’ Pat said, ‘let me talk to him.’
He went over to the bellringer. They held an animated discussion out of earshot of Mr. Silverwater. Pat returned. The bellringer went off.
‘How did you do it?’ Mr. Silverwater asked.
‘I told him you’re a friend of Mr. Donegan, and it wasn’t very nice to cause trouble between you. I said you played poker together.’
‘That was it. That was exactly my very strong emotions,’ Mr. Silverwater approved. ‘We are poker friends for years.’
‘The trouble is,’ Pat continued, ‘he’ll keep away from your shop all right—but will that stop him from parading the streets your customers live in?’
The villainy of it made Mr. Silverwater speechless. He nodded his head several times, unable to find words.
‘I could tell you what to do,’ Pat added. Mr. Silverwater clutched his arm.