Strumpet City Read Free

for,’ Rashers explained, showing her a sample, ‘the green ribbon is for Ireland.’
    ‘It doesn’t match up, somehow.’
    ‘It never did, ma’am,’ Rashers said. ‘Isn’t that what all the bloody commotion is about for the last seven hundred years?’
    ‘Wet your tea before the water’s gone cold for you.’ Rashers reached behind his pillow and brought out a tin from which he took part of a loaf, a tin of condensed milk and a jampot. He took out a cold potato too, but put it back. The rest he left on the straw beside him.
    ‘I brought you some bread.’
    ‘I have some,’ Rashers said.
    ‘It’s as hard as the rock of Cashel,’ Mrs. Bartley pronounced, having felt it.
    ‘It’ll soften up when I dip it in the tea,’ Rashers explained. ‘I’ll keep yours for afterwards.’
    Mrs. Bartley sighed and handed him the spoon. He put in the tea.
    ‘What’s it doing out or what?’ he asked conversationally as he drank. He meant the weather.
    ‘It’s dull. I wouldn’t say it was a bit promising.’
    ‘Let’s hope to God the rain keeps off,’ Rashers said. ‘They’re more given to buying favours and things when it isn’t raining.’
    ‘Are you taking the dog?’
    ‘And have him walked on?’ Rashers asked.
    ‘If you’re not I’ll give him a little something later on.’
    ‘You’re a jewel.’
    ‘So long as he doesn’t take the hand off me in the process.’
    ‘Is it Rusty?’ He called the dog to his side.
    ‘That’s Mrs. Bartley,’ he explained to the dog, ‘and if you don’t know her by now you bloody well ought to. She’s to come and go as she pleases.’ He patted the dog and looked around at the empty floor.
    ‘He thinks you have your eye on the furniture,’ Rashers added. Mrs. Bartley laughed aloud.
    ‘Is the husband working again?’ Rashers asked.
    ‘All last week, four days this week and a bit promised for next.’
    ‘Look at that now,’ Rashers approved, ‘isn’t he having the life of Reilly.’
    Mrs. Bartley said the children might be calling for her so she would leave the spoon and the can and get them when she was bringing down the scraps for Rusty. She hoped God would give him good luck with his selling.
    ‘I’ll be rattling shilling against shilling when I get home,’ Rashers said, ‘and the first thing I’ll buy is a tin whistle.’
    ‘You never found the one you lost?’
    ‘Never,’ Rashers said, ‘neither sign nor light of it from that day to this.’
    ‘Bad luck to the hand that took it.’
    ‘May God wither it,’ Rashers said. He had lost his tin whistle after a race meeting nearly a year before.
    ‘It was the drink, God forgive me,’ Rashers confessed.
    ‘It’s a very occasional failing with you,’ Mrs. Bartley said indulgently.
    ‘Drink and the sun. After the few drinks I lay down in the sun and it overpowered me. When I woke up the whistle was gone.’
    ‘The children miss it most of all,’ Mrs. Bartley said, ‘they loved you to play for them.’
    ‘Rusty too. I used to play to the two of us and we were never lonely.’
    ‘The best music you ever had is the bit you make yourself. It’s a great consolation.’
    ‘For man and beast alike, ma’am,’ Rashers assented. Mrs. Bartley had a very proper understanding of the whole thing.
    When Mrs. Bartley had gone he got up and began to pull on socks, thinking of the whistle he had lost. It had been given to him by Mrs. Molloy, the woman who had reared him. It had earned him coppers at football matches and race meetings. His ambition was to replace it when he had the money to spare. He looked down at his socks and for the moment he forgot about the tin whistle. Both socks had holes in the toes and heels. He thought about that and took them off again. Then he put on his boots. They felt hard and uncomfortable for the amount of walking he would have to do. He took off his boots again, put on the socks and then put on his boots once more. He stood up and stretched. When he yawned, the few