Roger hacked as smoke reached his nostrils. He shouted into the phone to no avail. Now the heat could be felt creeping in. He fought his way out of his jacket and loosened his collar. For an agonized instant he hovered on the notion of abandoning the call but realized it could mean the end of them all.
"Hello! Hello!" a dim but blessed voice bellowed as though it were trying to shout over the breadth of Ulster.
"Freddie, thank God. Who's on the switchboard?"
"Me, sir, Devine."
"Good of you to call back, Roger . . ."
"This is a grave emergency. Listen with extreme care."
"Go on."
"The shirt factory is afire. Did you hear that?"
“Yes . . . go on."
"We are going to have a number of deaths. You know what kind of reaction there's going to be."
"See here, Roger! I want you to get Caroline and the boys out of there at once."
"No, no, no, no. We are in no personal danger. A military unit will be on hand at the Manor within the hour. What concerns me is Kevin O'Garvey. Do you fully understand me, Freddie?"
"My God . . . that's right . . ."
"Exactly. He almost broke silence on us once. He's bound to put us under with this. Hello, Freddie . . . hello . . . hello. Freddie, he's in London now."
"I understand you completely, Roger. We're in luck. The Brigadier is there also. But, Roger, even if it all goes well at this end, it will take a few hours to get ahold of Swan. News of the fire will be all over by then."
The line faded as a blast of thermal air shattered the windows and, behind it, a rush of smoke. Roger was half blinded and he was drenched in sweat and broke into a fit of coughing.
"Hello, Roger, hello, hello."
"Yes, you're back on, Freddie. All telegraph and telephone lines and trains from Londonderry are out of order. We'll probably have until morning to play with in the confusion."
"I'm already cracking on it. I suggest you get Caroline and the boys to the hunting . . ."
As the line went dead, Roger held the phone, wavering in stupor. Hastings returned. "My lord, you must get out!" He grabbed Roger and led him from the office.
As they reached the landing Roger screamed for Devine to abandon the switchboard and cut the lines and the three of them reeled into the street.
Witherspoon & McNab was entirely out of control, a mad holocaust, an all-consuming pyre!
Conor Larkin and Myles McCracken reached the police line as a rain of bodies hurled from the roof.
At that instant the water from fire hoses which had reached the third floor powered into the cast iron pillars. One after the other they shattered. Rumbling slowly at first in a death rattle, the building twisted and trembled, then the floors cracked open, splitting like an earthquake, and one story emptied down on the other in an avalanche.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Brigadier Maxwell Swan kept active files on enemies, potential enemies, anarchists and competitors as a workaday way of life. It was his past years in counterinsurgency that had made him so totally valuable to Sir Frederick. Daily movements, habits and peculiarities of someone as important as Kevin O'Garvey were catalogued in Swan's head.
When Sir Frederick first reached him it looked good, a stroke of luck that both he and O'Garvey were in London and that Lord Roger had shown the presence of mind to block the news out of Londonderry.
Swan had a number of people in London he could call upon for ready assistance. Some of them were former officers and informers. Others were Irish Catholics who had worked for him in covert operations in Dublin Castle, made their passage, and situated well in England. These men were in his debt. He went to work instantly to find suitable henchmen.
Six hours to the minute after Sir Frederick relayed the information, Swan arrived at his London address, the Colonial Club, where Chief Steward Tompkins greeted him in the foyer.
"Evening, Brigadier," Tompkins said in the prevailing whisper that ruled the club as he relieved Swan of his cape, cane and top hat. "Heard the news, sir?"
"No, I've been tied up."
"Terrible fire in Londonderry. Many deaths feared. If I'm not mistaken, one of Lord Hubble's factories."
"That's ghastly," Swan said.
"Sir Frederick tried to reach you by long-distance cable phone forty minutes ago. I took the liberty of checking the time of your dinner reservation and booked a call for about that time."
"Ah, good man, Tompkins. I'll take my sherry in the Command Officers' Lounge and wait for the call there."
"Very good, sir."
A loner in his own circle of officers, Swan scootched off to his usual lounge chair tucked away behind a pillar and buried his face in the day's papers until the call came through.
"Hello, Freddie, Max here."
"Anything new in London?" Weed asked.
"Some news of a fire in Londonderry. First reports came in about a half hour ago. Was it serious?" Swan asked.
"Very. Several dozen dead, I fear. They won't know the full extent for a day or two."
"Ghastly."
"Were you able to keep your appointment, Max?"
"Yes, it all went extremely well. Negotiations came through without a hitch. The deal is closed and sealed. I attended to the final signing personally."
"Splendid. How's the theater this season?"
*
NOTED IRISH PARTY MP DISAPPEARS
London, December 5, 1899 (Reuters)
Scotland Yard reports that Mr. Kevin O'Garvey, M.P. (Irish Party-East Donegal), has been missing for four days from his London address on Jamaica Road, Southwark. Answering a call for assistance from Mrs. Midge Murphy, owner of his rooming house, a routine investigation of known relatives, usual haunts and his residence in Londonderry, failed to turn up either clues or motivation for the disappearance.
O'Garvey was last seen Friday evening at Dancy's Public House, Neptune Road, South-work, where the patrons consist largely of Irish dockers, seasonal workers and immigrants. Mr. O'Garvey was well known in the establishment, visiting it several times weekly to assist Irish constituents Mr. Enda Dancy, proprietor of the establishment, saw O'Garvey leave the premises at approximately 6:00 P.M. in the presence of a young man who had sought him out there. This person was unknown at the establishment but, from speech and manner, Mr. Dancy and others concluded he was of Irish origin. However, he was in and out of the place so quickly, an accurate description was not possible.
In answering questions by Inspector Arnold Sheperd of Scotland Yard, Dancy saw nothing unusual about the situation. "Kevin O'Garvey was almost like a priest or doctor," he said. "He was always answering emergency calls." This was confirmed by Mrs. Murphy, who testified to O'Garvey’s frequent comings and goings on behalf of petitioners.
When questioned about O'Garvey's recent health and behavior, "nothing out of the ordinary was noted," Inspector Sheperd said. O'Garvey was extremely methodical in his habits and movements, generally crossing Southwark Park to and from the public house and his lodgings. "A thorough inspection of the park turned up nothing," Sheperd reported.
O'Garvey was first elected to Commons a decade and a half ago in the Pamell landslide and has been known for Irish "republican" activities. "His long history of Fenian activities is public record," Sheperd added, "and he was bound to pick up innumerable enemies. He was easily accessible to his constituents so foul play cannot be ruled out."
*
Lord Roger and Sir Frederick put their forces into play massively. They wanted a quick conclusive investigation underplayed as much as possible, although the British press had swarmed into Londonderry. Rumors abounded that the fire was either the work of anarchists or Fenians, a thesis latched onto promptly by the journalists.
Opening smally but with proper pomp and solemnity, the commission of inquiry reviewed the fire, safety and work laws which were almost nil. It was immediately ascertained that no law had been broken. A window dressing parade of "experts" testified that the building could not have possibly bu
rned unless it was the work of arsonists, which heightened the anarchist Fenian theory for the eager press. Furthermore, most of the dead were on the roof, which was in violation of a company safety regulation. None of the experts were cross-examined to a meaningful degree and the people who worked there were not considered authorities or qualified on fire matters and were not permitted to testify to conditions which were ruled irrelevant. No one said why women were driven to the roof if indeed anyone ever knew there was a rule against it. The conclusion on the end of the first day was that the building was absolutely safe and fireproof and under normal conditions on the day of the holocaust.
At the beginning of the second day of inquiry, the commission was stunned by the chief of Constabulary, who asked permission to interrupt the proceedings and "Commenced to read a signed confession of arson.
One Martin Mulligan, "a known Fenian and republican," had signed an admission to setting the building afire before three witnesses in his cell in the Londonderry bridewell. Unfortunately, the chief concluded, Mulligan's body had just been found. He had apparently committed suicide by hanging himself by his belt in his cell immediately after the confession.
Displaying stunning efficiency, the confession was followed in minutes by a battery of witnesses who established that Mulligan had once worked at Witherspoon & McNab as a stable hand for a short period but had been fired for drunkenness on the job. Thereafter, he had been overheard at numerous public houses repeating a threat that he was going to burn the building down. He had likewise boasted publicly of innumerable Fenian and republican exploits of an illegal nature.
What went untold was that Martin Mulligan was known as a harmless old sot who hadn't drawn a sober breath for years and who often as not turned himself in to the Constabulary for a night or two's free lodging in jail before returning to his true occupation of vagrancy. No one on the panel of witnesses was there to testify that Marty boasted of countless other fantasies, all the babblings of a mindless alcoholic. No one said they saw him in the vicinity on the day of the fire or tried to explain why the arson wasn't accomplished during the night hours. No one testified to the fact that he didn't even own a belt but wore braces and that the suicide itself was highly questionable.
Yet with all this flimsiness there was no one around to set matters straight. Kevin O'Garvey, the Bogside's champion, was missing. Had he been there, the farce would have been halted, for he had too much evidence against the building and too much mileage in proceedings of this kind to permit such a travesty. But Kevin O'Garvey was gone.
The coup was delivered in the form of three men who witnessed and swore to Martin Mulligan's confession. Two who heard it were the Constabulary chief and a Hubble solicitor who was also a Londonderry Corporation Councilman. Although those two gentlemen and their motives might be suspect, it was the third who closed the book on the matter, for he was among the most respected Catholics in Londonderry.
Frank Carney swore he had heard Martin Mulligan's words.
The confession was accepted and the investigation officially closed before Christmas.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
A macabre reign of horror followed. When the fire was finally cooled down they dug through the rubble, then sifted through the ashes and as the toll mounted it hammered numbness on numbness. Those with missing loved ones hung onto foolish hope that a saint had interceded with a miracle in their case but none did. The missing were dead and that was that.
Most of the forty who leaped from the roof were bashed beyond recognition and lay in a ghoulish line, twisted and mangled, in the morgue where screams pierced that awful place as the parade of terrified family recognized a piece of clothing or a ring or shoes. The corpses dug out of the collapsed rubble were in worse condition. The charred bodies of most of those who had burned were beyond recognition. The death count topped a hundred, and another hundred lay badly burned in the hospital.
The bulk of the dead were seventy-two women who broke a company rule by seeking seventeen minutes of sunlight on the roof. Two dozen of this number carried unborn babies.
Ten cutters, most of whom had stayed to help evacuate the women, were crushed or suffocated when the building collapsed, as were five firemen when the pillars split.
The rest were children, eighteen in all, from nine to fifteen years.
The Tully family lost three women. Others lost as many or more. There was no compensation or medical money for those who had been burned and a single mass grave took the unidentified blackened waste.
During this time an investigation had been conducted and closed and Christmas made a sordid appearance. The twentieth century came into being, a symbol of hope celebrated elsewhere in the world.
For weeks the Bogside was incoherent in its grief. The already weakened muscles and sinews were further ripped and shattered. Whitewash of the fire investigation came as no surprise, for no one's memory went back so far as to remember justice. Commissions of the Crown had done this before in Derry, they would do it again. Passion to lash back at their oppressors and tormentors was sapped. Bursts of pain and rage at the time of the funerals were wept out at graveside and prayed out by half-maddened survivors. When this blood was spent, the old lethargy, the old acceptance of tragedy drove them deeper, deeper, deeper into the mumbo-jumbo of Jesus and Mary and escape in drink and drug. Bogside was Bogside was Bogside.
Four months passed before anything resembling normalcy returned to Bogside's speech and movement when a touch of the pain began to subside. During that time people were too dazed to comprehend that Kevin O'Garvey was no longer with them. No trace was found. When the agony of Black Friday tempered, a new agony, realization of their champion's demise, crashed down with delayed impact.
In those months the night of Conor Larkin was without end. He was strong and they were weak, yet he was wan and dull of mind and red of eye. The might ebbed from his powerful body and the poem from his heart and the song from his lips. He backslid into becoming all of his drunken Bogside brothers, falling into a few moments of tormented rest when the brain was soaked full with deadening gin. He dragged about the Bogside grungier each day, barely nodding to those who worshiped him, despising them for that worship. I have no magic answers, he pleaded silently to their hungry stares, I have no answers.
The only thing that seemed to keep him from crossing the line was a desperation to keep Myles McCracken from going under. He took him in, listened to the endless wail of despair, choked on Myles's tears, dressed him, fed him, talked him through night after night. Deeply as the wound was driven, somehow the answer seemed simpler for Myles. It was clear that he was finding it in the endless bottle. He drank from morbidity to silliness to stupor in a cycle that never started or ended. Conor thought it was no time to take the man off his drug, for without it Myles slid immediately into breast-beating tantrums of agony. For the moment he needed drink as he needed air. Perhaps, Conor prayed, when the shock had lessened it would be time enough to grab Myles by the shoulders and shake him and slap him back into manhood. Not now. No lectures, only to watch and wait for the healing process to start, to be there, to help. Conor prayed there might be a coming back for Myles, but for now he was dust.
Away from Myles McCracken, Conor's own depression was a miracle of all Bogside. Confusion raided the brain until thoughts lost value and one had no desire to wake up after a sleep but only to sleep again. But even sleep brought no rest, for sleep meant that bedlam of pus-filled sores and human fire bombs hurling into Berry's walls and at the top of those walls great cauldrons of boiling oil pouring down, drowning old beggars, and bony cats scratching out children's eyes and thumping drums leading endless lines of black suited men marching at funeral cadence with orange crosses in their hands and fields run white with the mush of rotted potatoes and hundreds of women trapped as a fire raged, unable to break past the wrought-iron screen.
Bogside was devouring the will from him. Bogside was gutting him alive. Bogside was winning.
*
B
ishop Nugent passed on in his eightieth year, an uninspired prince of the Church whose three-decade reign over the diocese was marked by mediocrity. An ordinary Derry priest with a good line of gab and a grasp of church politics, he ran a pragmatic office keynoted by vacillation until he was certain to be on the safe side of every issue. Bogside's rot and ruin stirred nothing more in the man than platitudinous prayer.
In his final decade, his old fence sitting degenerated further into an inability to make any clear-cut judgment and the diocese hung in a kind of theological limbo. Stern church disciplinarians surrounded the Bishop, sealed him off and set plans for an era of heavy-handed ecclesiastical power.
Bogside had always been a bone of contention. Ignoble circumstances there gave rise to liberal priests who took a free hand and even freer view of church law. As Bishop Nugent's mind began to stray, a small band of young turks led by Father Patrick McShane pressed their ideas and stretched rules to suit their needs and the needs of their beleaguered flocks. These priests plunged into the Gaelic League to revive the Irish language and culture, a position contrary to both the Church and the British overlords.
While Nugent gasped out death rattles, his palace guard closed ranks, formed a unified front, and placed in nomination Charles Donoghue to the Cardinal in Armagh as Nugent's successor. Donoghue was chosen.
Hardly any power in Ireland was more total than that of an autocratic Bishop in the good graces of the British. The new Bishop Donoghue asserted immediate authority with a series of swift dicta aimed at reduction of the young turks in Bogside. Doctrine was an unbending adherence to the harshest interpretation of Catholicism. Humility by priest and laymen became the new order. Bogside liberalism was done.
In the weeks after Black Friday a rash of labor organizers, reformers and republicans descended on Derry and the young turks identified with them. This was intolerable to the full skein of the establishment, be it Orange, Protestant, British, the Earl or the new Bishop Donoghue. He used the moment to rearrange things, thumpingly.