A Place Called Freedom - Ken Follett [84]
It would be no use to show anger, so he spoke mildly to Tallow. “I’m sorry you’ve made that decision. It’s bad for the men and bad for the owners. I hope you’ll reconsider, and I bid you good day.”
Tallow made no reply, and Mack had himself rowed ashore. He felt dashed. He held his head in his hands and looked at the filthy brown water of the Thames. What had made him think he could defeat a group of men as wealthy and ruthless as the undertakers? They had connections and support. Who was he? Mack McAsh from Heugh.
He should have foreseen this.
He jumped ashore and made his way to St. Luke’s Coffee House, which had become his unofficial head quarters. There were now at least five gangs working the new system. Next Saturday night, when the remaining old-style gangs received their decimated wages from the rapacious tavern keepers, most of them would change over. But the shippers’ boycott would ruin that prospect.
The coffeehouse was next to St. Luke’s Church. It served beer and spirits as well as coffee, and food too, but everyone sat down to eat and drink, whereas most stood up in a tavern.
Cora was there, eating bread and butter. Although it was midafternoon, this was her breakfast: she was often up half the night. Mack asked for a plate of hashed mutton and a tankard of beer and sat down with her. Straightaway she said: “What’s the matter?”
He told her. As he talked he watched her innocent face. She was ready for work, dressed in the orange gown she had worn the first time he had met her and scented with her spicy perfume. She looked like a picture of the Virgin Mary, but she smelled like a sultan’s harem. It was no wonder that drunks with gold in their purses were willing to follow her down dark alleys, he thought.
He had spent three of the last six nights with her. She wanted to buy him a new coat. He wanted her to give up the life she led. She was his first real lover.
As he was finishing his story, Dermot and Charlie came in. He had been cherishing a faint hope that they might have had better luck than he, but their expressions told him they had not. Charlie’s black face was a picture of despondency, and Dermot said in his Irish brogue: “The owners have conspired against us. There’s not a captain on the river that will give us work.”
“Damn their eyes,” Mack said. The boycott was working and he was in trouble.
He suffered a moment of righteous indignation. All he wanted was to work hard and earn enough money to buy his sister’s freedom, but he was constantly thwarted by people who had money in bagftils.
Dermot said: “We’re finished, Mack.”
His readiness to give up angered Mack more than the boycott itself. “Finished?” he said scornfully. “Are you a man or what?”
“But what can we do?” said Dermot. “If the owners won’t hire our gangs, the men will go back to the old system. They’ve got to live.”
Without thinking, Mack said: “We could organize a strike.”
The other men were silent.
Cora said: “Strike?”
Mack had blurted out his suggestion as soon as it came into his mind but, as he thought more, it seemed the only thing to do. “All the coal heavers want to change to our system,” he said. “We could persuade them to stop working for the old undertakers. Then the shippers would have to hire the new gangs.”
Dermot was skeptical. “Suppose they still refuse to hire us?”
This pessimism angered Mack. Why did men always expect the worst? “If they do that, no coal will corrie ashore.”
“What will the men live on?”
“They can afford to take a few days off. It happens all the time—when there are no coal ships in port none of us work.”
“That’s true. But we couldn’t hold out forever.”
Mack wanted to scream with frustration. “Nor can the shippers—London must have coal!”
Dermot still looked dubious. Cora said: “But what else can you do, Dermot?”
Dermot frowned, and he thought for a moment, then his face cleared. “I’d