“He wouldn’t know anything, Ivan.”
“He’s a paid-up Party member. He showed me his card.”
“Then he’s a fool. I’ll talk to him.” He looked at Chantal. “You got any of the good coffee, honey?”
She laughed. “You’re a real American calling me honey. I like that. Yes. I’ll get us all some coffee.”
CHAPTER 5
Bill Malloy took one last look at St. John’s Law School and then turned back to look at the traffic on Clinton Avenue. He half raised his hand to flag down a cab and then changed his mind. Walking would help him sort out in his mind what he was going to say to his father. The man whose sole ambition since the death of his wife was for his son to be a lawyer. To Patrick Malloy, being a lawyer meant that you were secure for the rest of your life. Not dependent on the whims of a ruthless employer. It had been a shrewd union lawyer who had got Patrick Malloy the insurance money when he had lost his arm when the brakes on the train he was driving had failed. They had tried to avoid paying any compensation and had then offered a sum that Malloy would have gladly accepted, but the smart young lawyer had advised him not to settle, and he’d finally been paid enough to buy a house on the outskirts of Jackson Heights. A three-storey house where they lived on the top floor and rented out the other two for enough to keep them all in what seemed to Patrick Malloy to be luxury after the three rooms in Astoria. Overnight they had gone from working-class to lower middle-class but Patrick Malloy never abandoned his Irish working-class standards. You didn’t owe anyone a cent, you stuck by your fellow-workers and you went to Mass on Sunday without fail.
As Malloy walked back towards his house he knew that his father would be pressing him to take the job at his union—the Brotherhood of Railway Clerks—the union who had given his father a job after he lost his arm. Two grim years of unemployment while the compensation was being fought for and then the stability of the union job. The savings of a life-time had gone five years earlier in a vain attempt to find a cure for his mother’s terminal illness. Since her death his father had concentrated all his hopes and affection on him. He had done his best to respond. His own ambition to be a professional ball-player had been put aside. He had gone along willingly enough with his father’s wish for him to become a lawyer but he didn’t share his father’s devotion to unions. He understood all too well the problems of working people and their exploitation. But he found the union organisers in his father’s union to be too rigid in their attitudes, still fighting long-lost old battles, with long debates on whether Stalin was their man or Roosevelt. Instead of which they should have been making up their minds about what their members really wanted from employers instead of going into meetings with a two-page shopping list of grievances. Lists that made it easy for employers to pick out a couple of worthless concessions that the union men could call a victory. And all the abuses and insecurities left unchanged.
Then there would be the sincere but annoying warnings about marriage to a non-Catholic. His father could point to three or four mixed marriages that hadn’t worked out although he was well aware that none of them had failed because of religion. Maybe the theory applied in Ireland or Italy, Catholic dominated countries, but it didn’t apply in the United States. His father had challenged him to give just two mixed marriages that had been successful and all he could say was that he never asked people what religion they had. He didn’t have friends or acquaintances because of their religion.
But there was a debt to be paid to that humble, good-natured man who had struggled all his life to provide a home for his wife and son. No hobbies because they could tempt you to spend money. No trips to the ball-game, no booze, no luxuries, just books from the local free library and a bicycle to get to work until he had lost his arm. And then you walked. It had only been since he was at law school that he realised that all the homilies were because a disabled man was trying to be a mother as well as a father. And that his father’s caution came from insecurity. A fear of not surviving in a tough, hostile world. But now there was the piece of paper in the envelope, confirming that he was entitled to practise law in the State of New York.
The old man was waiting for him, the tea already made and the cups and saucers prepared with milk and sugar. He still wore woollen shirts with separate collars attached with studs front and back. And that day he wore a tie. There was a white cloth on the table and a brown paper bag alongside the teapot.
He could see his father’s eyes on the cardboard tube that held his certificate and he smiled as he handed it over. The old man pulled out the certificate and flattened it with his hand. And Bill Malloy thought for a moment that it was symbolic in a way. That big, gnarled hand gently stroking the piece of paper that represented so many sacrifices and so much effort.
Then his father tore open the paper bag and pulled out a picture frame, taking off the cardboard back and sliding the certificate into place before pressing the clips that held the glass.
“How did you know what size it would be, dad?”
The old man grinned. “I phoned ’em. The office—Miss Levinski. She measured one up for me.”
“Did
