Strumpet City Read Free Page A

rotten teeth seemed very long because the gums had shrunk back almost to the roots. He took his overcoat from among the rags on the bed, tied it about his middle with a piece of cord and took his board with the coloured favours. He put a bottle and the bread into a short sack which he secured so that it hung from his waist. He shut the door on the dog, which whined, went up the decaying stairs, past the pram in the hallway and down the steps into the street.
    The children in Chandlers Court jeered after him, but Rashers was used to that and scarcely heard them. He had already mapped out his journey in his mind. He would go over the iron bridge, through Ringsend and out the Strand Road to Merrion Gates. There would be a crowd there and on the way he could root in the ashbins of the big houses facing the strand. There were always scraps to be found that way. He could use the side streets to contact the crowds at various points along the route. It would be a long walk. By the time he got back from the procession to the Viceregal Lodge he would have covered ten to fourteen miles. But if he sold all his favours he would earn ten shillings. Rashers kept his mind on that. He deviated only once from his planned route and that was to look for some minutes into the window of McNeill’s music shop. It was still closed, a dingy little shop, with one dusty window and a small entrance door which needed painting. In the window, among instruments of a more aristocratic kind, there was a board displaying tin whistles. It said:
    ‘Superior toned Italian Flageolets.
Price: One Shilling’
    They were masterly looking instruments, and ought to be, Rashers decided, at such an outrageous price. He stared at them for some time. Then he caught sight of his own face and the reflection of his favours in the glass window. He turned away.
    The morning air had a sulphur smell about it, a compound of mist from the river, smoke from the ships, slow-drifting yellow fumes from the gas works. It was like the look on Rashers’ face. Hungry, dirty and, because so many things conspired to kill him, tenacious. His beard straggled. His gait was uncertain. He dragged his fifty years in each step forward through the streets of his city. She had not denied him her unique weapons. Almost from birth she had shaped his mind to regard life as a trivial moment which had slipped by mistake through the sieve of eternity, a scrap of absurdity which would glow for a little while before it was snatched back into eternity again. From her air, in common with numberless others about him, he had drawn the deep and unshakeable belief that the Son of God loved him and had suffered on earth for him and the hope that he would dwell with Jesus Christ and His Blessed Mother in Heaven. His city had never offered him anything else. Except her ashbins.
    At the sweetshop Mary found her note had been collected and that one from Fitz had been left in its place.
    ‘He called last night,’ Mrs. Burns said, handing it to her.
    ‘At what time?’
    ‘It must have been about nine.’
    Mary tried to remember what she had been doing at nine o’clock the previous evening. She remembered that she had been talking to Miss Gilchrist over a cup of cocoa. She remembered the scrubbed surface of the table, the sad, evening light outside, Miss Gilchrist’s talk of Fenians.
    ‘He was on his bicycle,’ Mrs. Burns volunteered.
    ‘Had he been swimming?’
    ‘He must have been. He had his togs wrapped about the handlebars.’
    ‘He was probably at Seapoint. Thank you, Mrs. Burns,’ she said, and went out into the street. She was suddenly shy of Mrs. Burns. The note read:
    Dear Mary
    I’m going on at twelve tonight, finishing at twelve tomorrow. I’m hoping you will be free. You remember you said you might. I’ll be at the usual place from two o’clock. Even if it is much longer than that before you are free don’t feel it would be too late. I’ll wait.
    What do you think of the