At fifteen minutes to one, Bartly Mulholland entered Biddy Burke’s
kitchen and sat by the fire. Nobody addressed him. He saluted nobody.
Biddy Burke was sitting on the other side of the fire, on a stool,
smoking a cigarette.
Biddy Burke was a middle-aged woman with a lowering expression in her
black eyes, with puffed-out, sallow cheeks and a swollen throat. She
was of the type of Irishwoman that is prone to sudden passions, due to
the habit of eating enormous meals and then suffering from digestive
disorders. They are tender-hearted people, utterly lacking in an
æsthetic sense, violent, quarrelsome, savage, generous, inconsistent.
Biddy was dressed in a white blouse and a blue skirt. She wore her
greyish hair drawn back to her poll tightly and parted in the middle
according to the peasant fashion.
There were other people in the room, two young women who sat on chairs
and Jimmy “the fancy man,” who lay on his right side, on the settle
opposite the fire.
Mulholland looked around the room slowly. Then he spoke.
“Was Gypo Nolan here this evenin’, Mrs. Burke?” he said.
Biddy Burke slowly shook her head, carefully examining Mulholland’s
face as she did so. Then, as if she suddenly remembered something
important, she leaned forward and bunched her lips together.
“There hasn’t a man stood within me door this blessed night,” she said
in her rough, croaky voice. “No, nor damn the bottle o’ stout did I
sell. That’s the God’s truth. Some people find Biddy Burke all right
when they’re in trouble an’ they got nothin’, but when their tune
changes they give her a wide berth. I’ll soon be in the workhouse at
the rate things are goin’. I never saw anythin’ like it. The country
is goin’ to the wall. That’s all there’s to it. I knew they’d make a
mess of it with their revolutions an’ their shootin’ the peelers. Not
that I didn’t do me bit to help the boys, God bless ’em, but ’tisn’t
the boys that done the fightin’ that get the jobs. So it isn’t. It
never is, if ye ask Biddy Burke. It’s them publicans an’ bishops that
were always top dog in this country. ’Twas that way before an’ ’tis
that way now an’ ’twill be that way when Biddy Burke is goin’ to meet
her God on the day of judgment. They were talkin’ about English
tyrants, but sure nobody ever saw the likes o’ these tyrants with
their searches an’ their raids, an’ every divil’s wart of a farmer’s
son that can pull on his breeches without his mother’s help, runnin’
around an’ callin’ himself a gineral. Aw! Gypo Nolan! He’s like the
rest o’ them, Bartly Mulholland. You take it from Biddy. Indeed then,
he hasn’t set a foot within me door. It’s not that I haven’t heard of
his goin’s on though. Huh!”
“What did ye hear about him?” asked Mulholland, peering at her.
“What did I hear about him?” cried Biddy Burke. “What d’ye take me
for, Bartly Mulholland? An information bureau or what? Don’t be
botherin’ me.”
Mulholland sighed. Then he took out his pipe and lit it. He put his
back against the wall and began to smoke in apparent comfort. There
was silence. Through the open street door sounds of footsteps and of
voices came in through the rain now and again. They were subdued
sounds. It seemed that everything was waiting for something monstrous
to happen.
The two young women began in their gruff, cracked voices to discuss
the death of Francis Joseph McPhillip. They talked casually, in
whispers, indifferently.
Mulholland peered at them for a moment. Then he sank back into his
thoughts. His thoughts just then were not at all comfortable. He had
lost track of Gypo. He had been wandering about trying to find his
quarry again, absolutely without success. Gypo had been swallowed up.
A more nervous man than Mulholland would have not taken the matter so
philosophically, so coolly. Because if Gypo could not be found again,
Mulholland’s own life would be in serious danger. But Mulholland was
not considering that aspect of the affair. Mulholland was a sincere
revolutionist. It was the danger to the “cause” that worried him. The
“cause” was his whole existence. He did not understand any other
purpose in life except the achievement of an Irish Workers’ Republic.
Still . . . as he sat on the stool, stoically smoking his pipe, other
worries came into his mind. If he could not find Gypo and anything
serious happened to himself as a result, what would become of his wife
and his six young children? He hardly ever thought of them seriously,
in this way, with a view to the future. The future held a workers’
republic, somewhere in the distance, when there would be no slums, no
hunger, no sick wives, no children that got the mumps and the rickets
and the German measles and the whooping-cough with devilish
regularity. It never worried him to think that his wife and his six
children were for the moment living in a miserable slum shanty, with
his wife going rapidly into a decline through hard work. That had to
be. The “cause” was above all these things. Why! It was his wife who
often urged him on to give all his time to the “cause” whenever he
became slightly despondent or disheartened, timorous or apathetic.
Ever struggling without reward!
So he thought suddenly. But almost as soon as the thought entered his
brain another thought came in mad, bloodshot pursuit. He pulled
savagely at his pipe and ejected the first thought in terror.
Even “mentally” it was dangerous to think of leaving the Organization
without being expelled. After all . . . terror was the foundation of
his zeal.
He forced himself into his habitual calm. His face assumed the
impenetrable aspect which he had developed during five years of
constant practice. He turned to Biddy Burke again.
“Where did ye say ye saw Gypo carrying on?” he said casually.
Biddy Burke looked at him ferociously, emitting two columns of
cigarette smoke through her fat nostrils.
“I didn’t say I saw him carryin’ on anywhere, Bartly Mulholland,” she
said angrily. “Be the holy! These late years every one o’ ye is as
smart as a corporation lawyer. Now look here, Bartly. I don’t want to
have any truck atall with ye or yer crowd. Ye know that too. I know
ye, me fine bucko, an’ I don’t think . . . eh . . . well o’ course,
Bartly . . . ye know what I mane. . . . It’s not . . . uh . . . that I
mane any harm . . . but a poor woman like mesel’ . . . o’ course I’m
ready as I said before to do me duty for me fellow-men . . . but it’s
like this . . . what does a woman like me gain be gettin’ mixed up in
politics . . . that is o’ course . . . look here,” she continued in a
lower voice, “I heard he was up in Aunt Betty’s, raisin’ hell up
there. He was one o’ your crowd, wasn’t he?”
Mulholland looked at her sombrely. She drew back immediately.
“Well, ye know me well, Bartly,” she muttered apologetically and
nervously. “I’m not sayin’ anythin’ out o’ place. Am I, girls? Sure——”
Just then an interruption came from outside. Footsteps came rushing to
the door. Then gasps were heard. Then a panting sound became audible.
Then Katie Fox burst into the room, with her right hand on her hip,
her eyes glittering, looking about her wildly. She rushed up to Biddy
Burke. She bent down from the hips towards her and began to speak
immediately, gasping after each word.
“What d’ye think of it, Biddy?” she cried. “D’ye know where I found
him? D’ye know where I found him? The big hulkin’ waster! An’ she
that’s not fit to walk the same street as me with her big, ugly arms
around his neck! She laughed in me face. She laughed”—screaming—“in me
face! I wish to God I had hit her with the bottle I threw. That ud
spoil her mug. Though it was spoiled enough the day she was born. Who
was she, may I ask? Who was she, Biddy Burke? I’m askin’ ye. Ye don’t
know an’ ye’d never guess in a thousand years. Who would she be but me
bould Connemara Maggie! That imperent trapster that came up here last
year as a skivvy in a Gaelic Leaguer’s house, one o’ them crazy
fellahs that goes around in kilts. She came up here an’ before she was
three months in town she was put in the family way be a soldier. Then
she comes down here, with her curly locks an’ her big face like a
heifer, savin’ the comparison. I pushed up past Aunt Betty in the hall
an’ she shoutin’ after me. I bust into the room an’ there he was,
sittin’ on the floor, with his legs spread out, drinkin’ outa the neck
of a bottle, laughin’ like a fool, with her sittin’ beside him.
‘Hello, Katie,’ says he, ‘d’ye want a drink?’ ‘’Twill do ye good,’
says she with a giggle. Me curse on her! I gave him a bit o’ me mind
an’ . . . Biddy, for God’s sake, gimme a drink o’ water. Biddy,
listen.”
She threw herself suddenly at Biddy’s feet and began to moan. But
almost immediately she jumped to her feet again and cried out:
“An’ what’s more he gave three quid to that swank of an Englishwoman.
He gave her three quid and he paid two quid more to Aunt Betty, money
that was owin’ to her for board, an’ he never gave me a penny. Me that
kept him for the last six months when I hadn’t a bite mesel’. But I’ll
tell everybody. I’ll tell.”
She looked around her wildly. She saw Mulholland. She came up to him
and bent down close to his face. Her hat trailed off. Her hair fell
down over her eyes. She swayed. She pointed her right forefinger
menacingly at Mulholland’s forehead.
“Listen to me, Bartly,” she said. “You remember me when I was a good
girl an’ when I was a member o’ . . . ye know yersel’ . . . Well, so
was he, wasn’t he? Well, can ye tell me how did Frankie McPhillip get
plugged? Who got the twenty quid that the Farmers’ Union gave out?
Where did he get the money? I’m not shoutin’ any names. No names, no
pack drills. But ye can guess for yersel’. Where did he get his money
from? Was it be robbin’ a sailor at the back o’ Cassidy’s same as he
told me in the pub? Was it?” She suddenly threw her hands over her
head and clawed the air, shrieking. They jumped up and caught her.
Mulholland got to his feet quietly. He stole out into the street,
avoiding the people who came rushing up to Biddy Burke’s door,
attracted by the screaming.
Mulholland chuckled as he crossed the street. He would have plenty of
news for Gallagher. After this there would be little difficulty in his
getting McPhillip’s job on the Head-quarters Staff. He stole quietly
into the hallway of Aunt Betty’s house. He went noiselessly up the
stairs without attracting the attention of the revellers who were
still “on the tear.” He reached the landing. There were three doors,
with light streaming through each of them. He listened at each door.
The third was the right one. He stood straight. He lifted the latch
suddenly and strode into the room. He called out as he did so
dramatically:
“Come on, Gypo, it’s time for ye to be comin’ with me.”
For a moment he could see nobody, owing to his excitement and the
thick mist of smoke and unescaped vapours which filled the room. He
stood within the door with his feet spread out wide on the bare
moth-eaten boards of the floor, with his right hand in his pocket
fingering his revolver. His heart was beating wildly. Then he became
aware of Gypo’s presence. He felt that peculiar movement in his head
that the realization of Gypo’s presence always caused, a little
snapping movement of unreasoning terror. Then he heard Gypo’s voice,
heavy and hoarse with drunkenness, but cordial and friendly and
distinctly patronizing.
“Hello, Bartly. Sit down an’ have a drink. Plenty time yet.”
Then he turned his head towards the fireplace and saw Gypo.
Gypo was sitting on the floor to the right of the fire, in a corner,
in half-darkness, bare to the waist, with his trousered legs stretched
out at a wide angle, sitting bolt upright, a bottle gripped in his
right hand between his knees, his feet bare.
Connemara Maggie was standing by the fire drying Gypo’s shirt, his
jacket and his socks. The big boots were resting on a fender before
the fire, steaming. She took no notice of Mulholland’s entrance. With
her golden hair hanging in disorder over her face, with her blouse
undone, with her strong, heavy-boned face covered with perspiration,
with her great, soft eyes swollen and gentle like the eyes of a
heifer, she busied herself tending her man, just as if she had never
left the purity of her Connemara hills and she were tending her
peasant spouse after a hard day’s work in the fields; instead of
tending a casual lover in the sordid environment of a brothel. There
was no hint of vice or of libidinous pleasure in her face or in her
movements. She seemed to be, like Gypo himself, a child of the earth,
unconscious of the artificial sins that are the handiwork of the city.
In her two brawny arms she held the steaming shirt to the blaze. She
stood silent and immovable.
There was little else in the small, whitewashed, low-ceilinged room. A
bed with the clothes tousled on it, a quilt that lay on the floor by
the bed, a chair on three legs and a weatherbeaten washstand,
containing a basin and a broken jug, comprised the furniture.
Mulholland looked around at all this before he spoke. It was as well
to get the correct details in case identification were necessary. Gypo
might deny it. Then he spoke. He had recovered his nerve.
“No,” he said. “I don’t want a drink. It’s time for ye to be comin’.”
“Be off with ye, ye little divil,” yelled Gypo, suddenly jumping to
his feet, with a great scraping and slapping noise. “Who are ye givin’
orders to?”
He took a pace forward and reached out his right hand, but Mulholland
had drawn his revolver and taken a pace to his rear. At the same time
he called out in a hissing whisper:
“It’s not me orders. It’s the Commandant’s orders, an’ ye better be
careful about disobeyin’ them.”
Immediately Gypo drew himself up and let his hands drop to his sides.
His face, which had lit up with anger, dropped into that peculiar
wondering expression, which he wore when he was musing on the river
bank before he went into the police-station. He looked at Mulholland
in amazement. His forehead wrinkled. His nostrils expanded and
contracted. His thick lips moved backwards and forwards, up and down.
His face and his cropped skull shone in the light of the paraffin lamp
that rested on the mantelpiece over the fire. The light also shone
across his body, over a bulging bare shoulder that stood out white and
massive and round below his brown neck. The shoulder muscles were
immense. His body was white and hairless. His skin was perfectly
smooth. But everywhere the muscles strained against the skin, in
irregular, moving mounds. They swelled out on his breasts, at his
biceps, above his hips, on his shoulders, just as if his head and neck
were a massive tree growth and the body muscles were its roots, sunk
into the body promiscuously and afar, during centuries of life.
He looked at Mulholland for some seconds. Then he turned to Maggie.
“Gimme me clothes, Maggie,” he said quietly.
She handed them to him in silence. He dressed. He put on his little
tattered round hat. Then he put his hand in his trousers pocket. He
took out all the money he had left. Two pounds four and sixpence. He
put the four and sixpence back into his pocket. He handed the two
pound notes to Maggie.
“Keep one an’ give the other to Katie Fox,” he said. “Ye’ll find her
down at Biddy Burke’s.”
She nodded and put the notes within her blouse.
“So long, Maggie. See you again,” he said, going to the door.
“So long,” she called after him quietly.
Gypo stalked out unsteadily, followed by Mulholland.
After a little while Connemara Maggie also left the room. She went
down to Biddy Burke’s.
Biddy Burke’s was now thronged with people. They were mostly women of
the district and their men. They had been talking at a terrific rate
when Maggie came in, but a strange silence fell upon them when she
appeared. She did not take any notice of them. Going up to Katie Fox,
who sat by the hearth, on the seat occupied recently by Mulholland,
she took out the pound note and offered it to her.
“Gypo Nolan gave me this for ye,” she said quietly.
Katie Fox looked at the note. Then she looked at Maggie. Her under lip
was quivering. Her eyes opened and narrowed spasmodically. She was
moved by some complex emotion that she could not master for the
moment. She did not speak. Others began to whisper. Some spoke out
loud and sharply:
“Don’t take it, Katie. It’s blood money,” said one.
“Take it,” said Biddy Burke indignantly. “A pound note doesn’t smell
when it’s changed.”
“Money is the common whore of all humanity,” stuttered a tall, lean,
drunken gentleman, who dozed by the window with his head dangling.
“I bet she got more than that to give ye,” said another woman.
“Yes, I bet she has,” cried Katie Fox, suddenly settling the matter
that was agitating her mind, whatever it was. “I know her. Out with
it, Connemara Maggie,” she screamed, jumping to her feet and squaring
herself. “Out with it an’ don’t stand there tryin’ to melt butter in
me mouth with yer soft looks. How much did he give ye for me? Don’t
tell me he only gave me one quid. Yer a liar before ye open yer mouth
to say so. Ye——”
“Well of all the stories—” cried Connemara Maggie in amazement.
“Don’t put on airs, Maggie,” said a woman beside her. “Don’t put on
airs.”
“Out with the rest o’ the money,” cried Katie Fox.
“Yer a pack o’ dogs,” cried Connemara Maggie furiously. “Yer a pack
o’——”
She gasped and could say no more, astounded and hurt bitterly by the
slanderous attack from Katie Fox, to whom she had never spoken in her
life before, except to say good morning. She fumbled at her blouse and
took out the other pound note that Gypo had given her for herself.
Then she took a purse from a hiding-place on her left thigh. She
abstracted another note from that. She put back the purse again. She
threw the three notes at Katie Fox.
“There ye . . .” she hissed. “That’s all his money. Take it. Maybe
it’s dirty like yersel’. I am well rid of ye. If he’s yer man, keep
him.”
She spat and strode out of the room, swinging her arms and knocking
out of her way all who came in front of her.
Some stared after her and swore. Others looked at Katie Fox. Katie had
the three pound notes in her hands and her lips were moving. Then
Biddy Burke whispered something to her. Immediately Katie sighed and
clutched the three notes in her hand, desperately, staring at the
floor. Then she held them out to Biddy Burke rapidly, without looking
in their direction. They lay crumpled in a ball on her quivering thin
palm.
“Take them, Biddy,” she whispered. Then she suddenly raised her voice
to an hysterical shriek. “Take them, but for God’s sake hurry and give
me something at once. Quick, quick. Give it to me, Biddy. Give it to
me.”