Chapter Ten: Dublin September 1913
"...And the broken pool of sky reminds the colour of her eyes...."
-The Cavan Girl, Traditional Irish
So Mick had gone, walking up with Paddy from his office in Botany Bay at the end of day the next Wednesday; they had come upon each other in the stairwell. The light was already fading in the east as they crossed the Liffey at Eden Quay, and the evening foot-traffic was illuminated by the golden glow of the gaslights in the streets, and shrouded by the hastening shadows in the unlit lanes. Only in O’Connell Street were the lamps electrified yet. The winter evening was snug and close, with the damp gathering along the corridor of the river. There would be rain tonight. The sunset beyond sprawled beneath the clouds like the tumbling battle of a half-forgotten dream.
“Ah, she’s a fine sunset, so,” Paddy said easily, reverting to the country speech. His robe was thrown over his arm, as if the whole burden of his profession were thrown off with it, and he was, at last, only a young man. He walked with a loose, reaching, easy stride, a man used to covering great distances afoot. His colouring was ruddy, lit dramatically by the sky, so that he seemed at one with it, a god come down from the thundering heavens to bestride the narrow world of mortals.
“Aye,” Mick agreed soberly, much taken with the analogy. He was on fire with it, in an itchy, nervous, irritable way, almost swooningly. He wanted so much to capture it on canvas, the shocking vitality of this man. His desire and the admiration that sparked it ran ahead of him, and he could scarcely take note of ordinary things – the rubbish blowing about the pavement before St. Michael’s, swirling into little eddies, like dogs at heel, to trip them up. But he was tongue-tied at the asking. Every time he steeled himself to it, his heart gave a leap and he almost suffocated with dread. Yet he hardly knew what he was afraid of.
“I mind sunsets like that in Kerry in the winter when I was a lad,” Paddy said, pulling out his cigarette case. “It was always a storm coming on the heels of it.” He lit a cigarette.
“Aye. It was the same at home,” Mick agreed. He smiled a little. “Always of a Saturday night, and the devil to get home from the docks.”
Paddy squinted at him through the smoke. “What was it like, being a docker?”
Mickey glanced at him, startled, and laughed, holding out his right hand palm up. There were still calluses and old scars. “Bloody hard labour. Bloody mindless, numbing hard labour. Endless, aching days to wither the soul to the level of a beast. No soul about it. Not like farming. We’d have done well with more machines and less hard labour. It felt like a prison sentence sometimes, endless days with no reprieve in sight.” He looked up the length of Gardiner Street musingly.
“And so you sat the exams,” Paddy said softly, almost as if to himself. “To escape.”
Mick looked at him askance. “Yeah, I suppose I did. Never thought about it that way exactly, but I suppose it’s true.”
“Could you have stuck it?” Paddy asked him, softly, fiercely. “Could you have stuck it?”
“How do you mean?” He asked for the sake of argument.
Paddy smirked, tossing the fag end away. “Michael, for Jaysus sake, you’ve the soul of a bloody poet, you apprehend things, man! Not for you, not for neither of us the deadening round of bestial existence promulgated to the common man by every self-appointed guardian of civilisation.” He looked at him keenly, his dark eyes alight in the deepening twilight. “We’re a fine brace of rebels.”
It was true, so shockingly true that he had to deny it, make light of it. They were alike, were rebels, both of them, against fettered minds, fettered souls; their own, anybody’s.
“Oh yeah,” he laughed, disingenuously. “And what are we rebels against, is it?”
The look in Paddy’s eyes halted his forced gaiety; it was vibrant, earnest, sunderingly intense. Tyger, tyger, burning bright/In the forests of the night. The lines from Blake assailed him. Burnt in distant deeps or skies/The cruel fire of thine eyes/Could heart descend or wings aspire/ What the hand dare sieze the fire/When the stars threw down their spears/And watered heaven with their tears/Did he smile his work to see/did he who made the lamb make thee. The essence of the man was so clearly exposed, shockingly, heartbreakingly.
“Against mortality, Michael,” Paddy murmured slowly. “Against mortality.”
Mickey gulped, and could say nothing, engulfed in the fire of that man’s exposed soul. No one had ever dared speak the words aloud to him before, the words of his own inner being. The impact made him want to cry, with relief, with the gladness of recognition, with love. The queer nervy feeling washed over him again as they came to the juncture of Gloucester Street. He had never felt this way about his own brothers, and was not really close enough to other men as friends to have experienced it. It was exhilarating and frightening, like falling in love.
They went into Leary’s house in the Square, and he called out to his wife. It was one of the old Georgian townhouses of the 18th century, genteely seedy about the edges, but still elegant. The chandelier in the foyer was genuine, illuminating this dull day the spectacular stuccowork ceiling. They were passing into the house proper, when Paddy caught his arm.
“Go on in,” he said, with a jerk of his head. “It’s through the back. I won’t be a moment. I want to put these things away.” He meant his satchel and robe. He had already thrown his hat on the hall table when he halooed his wife.
“Aye, so.” The first room was a high ceilinged parlour, ornate and proper, but it was empty. He went down the long hall, painted a pale buttery shade of yellow, soft as candlelight.
It was hung with hunting prints, and small studies of thoroughbred horses. Odd. There was a carpet runner, a soft Wedgewood blue patterned in yellow and red flowers. Turkish. Real. It was hard to believe that they had just moved in. Already, everything was settled and comfortable in the way of minor gentry houses. He went through to the back. The door to the private back room was open and light poured through the window at the far end. The woman there, invisible at first in a white dress, turned.
“Hello darling,” she began brightly, and halted in mid-step at the sight of him. “Oh, I do beg your pardon, I thought you were my husband.” It was the dark girl of the Rotunda concert. So Paddy had married her. At close quarters now, he saw why: she was stunning. He coloured.
“No, um… I’m Michael Rafferty. And I’m here to see the professor, like.”
“Oh I say,” she said, as catching on belatedly to some joke. “How plumy. Well, of course you are.” She came forward now, holding out her hand. “How d’you do, I am Mrs. Leary. Won’t you come and make yourself at home… Michael. May I call you that?” She looked directly into his eyes. She was very tall, and her grip was sure and strong, her touch electric. He stepped back, numb and confused. She was his own age, or younger, with a languorous, dolorous beauty, enmeshing as opium.
“No, I--” He wanted to run. He knew by instinct that both the Learys were terribly dangerous to his peace of mind. Paddy came in behind him as he turned and he was trapped between them like some ancient sacrifice.
“I see you’ve met Molly,” Paddy said. “Hallo, darlin’,” he went and kissed her decorously. “Well, it’s begun.” His hazel eyes crinkled in a warm intimate smile. “We are now properly the ‘varsity set.” The self-mocking joke went over Mickey’s head, but not Molly’s.
“Yes, I was on the ‘phone twice to Frances Mahaffy today, and my mother.”
Paddy patted her shoulder. “We’ll do swimmingly, darling girl, not to worry.” He looked up, squinting at Mick. “Do you fancy a drink,” he asked, grinning, “or would you rather wait for the sherry?”
He needed a stiff drink. “Now, please,” he laughed ruefully, eyeing Molly.
Martin Cummings had popped round not long after, with Marjorie Reckle and the lads from the Mediaeval course, all together again for the Romantics. It was only a crowd of young people, Paddy and Molly Leary included, and between the drink and the terrible, obscure puns he recovered himself.
He was chatting with Margie about the upcoming scholarship exams for English in April, for which they were in something of a competition. Margie blew out smoke sharply from her cigarette and called to Paddy, who lounged in the overstuffed chair talking to Martin and Lennox Robinson,
“Paddy, which exams are you proctoring this term?”
“Yes,” Martin said, with a droll glance, “ she has two in English and needs to know if she should panic in advance of them.”
Paddy laughed and throwing back his head, quoted, “’Oh weary life! Why sit I here & give up all my powers to indolence, to the night of death, when indolence and mourning sit hovering over my dark threshold.’” He drank his seltzer. “Still your faint hearts, I am not proctoring any of your exams. I am given over to the entrances examinations for the autumn term.”
“Poor innocents!” Martin murmured in mock-pity. “All unawares! ‘Would that the little flowers were born to live, Conscious of half the pleasure which they give.’”
Paddy smiled, continuing, “’ So might he ken how by his sovereign aid, These delicate companionships are made; And how he rules the pomp of light and shade.’”
“’He replied at hazard,’” Martin countered, “’with a modest confidence and calm assurance, which lent his lucubrations pith.’” And laughed. The company did not miss the lurking comparison to Byron’s famed roué. Margie snorted, blushing scarlet up her neck, and several of the young men fell out of their chairs chortling. Robinson smiled primly, his ankle thrown across his knee, and smoked his cigarette intently. Paddy was not in the least outdone, and hardly embarrassed by the allusion; on the contrary, despite the fact that his wife sat above him on the back of the chair. Molly’s expression was innocent of grasping the double-entendre. She was, Mick saw, neither a mental not an emotional creature, but all sensation.
Paddy challenged the company by voicing the unspoken thought,
“’Juan knew several languages – as well he might – and brought them up with skill, in time to save his fame with each accomplish’d belle, who still regretted that he did not rhyme.’”
That produced a hoot from Martin and Stuart, who had been subjected to the professor’s free versifying on every conceivable occasion.
“Match point,” Martin admitted, shaking his head. “I could not do it one better.”
“You do well enough, my Idiot Boy,” Paddy drawled lazily, a smile glimmering round his eyes. Affection lay there. He glanced at Mick, who had watched all this banter with relish, and a secret, intimate expression flickered there almost imperceptible. “That’s why you have top marks.”
“Top marks,” Martin said, rolling his eyes. “95 and fourth in the running.”
Mickey flushed. He had ended the year at 99 and tied for firsts. Best not to mention it here! That was what the look was for, he realised, a private comment on his esteem in that man’s eyes.
Paddy shrugged. “The university know what it means from me, as opposed to, say, Oliver,” he murmured slyly. A low exclamation went round the room. Paddy flung his arm behind his head, leaning into his wife’s lap on the back of the chair. “I should tell you all, if it needs saying, that it is for such as yourselves I am a Demogorgon. You make the whole venture worth my while. The unworthies run and hide their faces at first sight, but I can count on the like of you to see through my seeming chaos…” he smiled a little, a self-deprecating smile. “Even if I remain the dreaded name.” He glanced round the room. “You make it worth it,” he repeated, softly, “every day.” There was a hush, and the words were felt by everyone there. Paddy’s mouth twitched then. “But that doesn’t mean I’ll let up on you, not one whit!”
By such means, he made himself beloved, for all his exactitude. And Mick did love him, wholly, as one loves the lightning storm and the thunder-cloud from the safe harbour of the hearth.
Now, three and a half years later, he was preparing for oral examinations, and working on the thesis for the Bachelor of Arts. An Exegesis of Occult Symbolism in Yeats. In the Square the leaves were just beginning to turn. There was the crisp scent of death in the air, the last pell-mell burst of life before dying, Mickey thought as he stood before the door of Number 60, like the rush that spurred a man coming. He smiled at the rude thought. He had been too long a sensualist, a symbolist, relating life to art in ways that the workaday world missed. But he wouldn't have it otherwise. He shifted the satchel to his left hand as the door opened to Rosie's round sweet face. She was the day-maid.
"Afternoon, Rose," he touched his hat. He grinned at her and resisted the impulse to pinch her cheek as he sauntered by. "Is the Professor in?" He asked, looking over his shoulder as he passed through the doorway of the entrance hall.
"No, Mick. Not yet," the girl said, blushing. "But herself is in the back parlour."
"Ah." Herself. Molly. "Thanks." He tossed his bag into the study on the right and went past the stairs, down the hall and into the sunny back parlour where he found her sitting at the desk before the window, her silk-stockinged legs crossed at the ankle and the sunlight gleaming on her hair that was glossy as a raven's wing. She did not look up, reckoning her accounts as she was. She had suffered a miscarriage recently and was still pale, but for all that she was lovely as porcelain. He recalled the first time he saw her, standing before that same window in a white linen dress looking down into the garden. He had never seen a woman so beautiful. He had pestered her to allow him to use her as a model over the years, but she had always refused with a quick blush, saying that Paddy would not allow it. Doubtless he would not, but Mickey suspected there were other reasons due to that blush. So he sketched her surreptitiously while she was doing something else. He had a hundred or so sketches of her, or parts of her - hands, feet, torsos, medallion portraits - one from a photograph on the mantel of her and her brother in hunt clothes.
"Hello," he said.
"Hello." She did not look up, her gaze turning from one column to another as she wrote. "Would you care for tea? It's time."
He squinted at her through the pouring sunlight. "Thank you."
"Good. I'll tell Mac." She did look up now, her clear grey eyes untroubled and rose to tug the bellpull on the wall. Then she went back to her accounts, all serene, completely unaware how the sound of her dress moving against her stockings quickened his blood. He flung himself into one of the overstuffed chairs in agitation. Mrs. MacElwee appeared at the door.
"Ma'am?' She inquired garrulously in her deep voice. She did not care to climb the stairs from the kitchen.
"Mr. Rafferty will be having tea, Mac, if you please." Molly said in drawling tones, looking up but shortly. "And Mr. Leary is expected, so please have the tongue sandwiches." She looked at him "Unless you prefer sherry?"
He shook his head. "No." Altar wine, far too sweet so early in the day.
"Very good. Just tea then, Mac. Thank you." She went back to her accounts. He picked up a magazine - The London Magazine, a society paper - and leafed through it distractedly. The other reading fare on the small table betrayed no further literary pretensions - the Tattler, the Spectator, Country Life - there was a book on Irish and English bloodstock of horses, but not a book of poetry or even a romance in sight. Molly didn't share Paddy's love of books. It was too evident what their bond was. In the three years they had been married, the girl had been pregnant as many times. He thought the upper classes took a dim view of such goings-on, but obviously that was not the case, at least with her. He sat looking at her while she wrote, under the pretext of staring vaguely out the window, until her children's nurse came in with wee Joe and the baby, Sally. Both were red-haired and volatile like their father.
Nancy had Joe by the hand. He was whining disorientedly, sleepy-eyed yet. Molly instantly put down her pen and went to him, kneeling on the floor before him and smoothing his wild, curling hair.
"What's wrong Joejoe? Ah, did Mummy's darling just have a nasty dream? Ah, come here darling," she picked him up, cradling him, rising to her full height. "Come sit with Mummy. You'll be better soon. Mac is bringing tea, would you like a biscuit? Yes, there's a good boy. Dada will be home too in a little." She looked over the child's head to Nancy. "Thanks for bringing him down Nancy. You can put Sally on the floor over here if you like." It was not a request, but a polite command, uttered in a smooth drawl. But whatever her defects with the servants, Molly plainly loved her children and she was very good with them.
"Yes, ma'am," Nancy said, and carried the girl over to the sunny patch on the floor and sat her down. She was not sitting for long. The child was everywhere, and for the rest of the time Mickey was in the room, either Nancy or Molly was running after her, endeavouring to distract her attention with some bauble or soothing her bumps when she fell. For the moment, though, Molly sat with Joe on her lap at the desk, letting him draw all over the blotter with a pencil. It was not quiet: Mrs Mac came in with the tea and the longed-for biscuits were produced, then Paddy came in and the children were all over him. But Mickey was used to such intimate scenes now, having been witness to them as long as there were children between these two.
Paddy threw his satchel on the floor and flung himself into the opposite overstuffed chair, wincing over the children's heads as they climbed up on his lap, the boy shouting "Dada! Dada!" He smiled with weary patience and kissed his child before looking pleadingly at his wife. She was beside him in an instant.
"Is it your headache?" She asked. He nodded, wincing, and she went to fetch him a dose of aspirin from the mantel.
"Mac will be in soon with some tea," she said. "Then you can have a lie down."
Paddy had been in O'Connell Street last month when the DMP, sensing trouble from an appearance of the labour agitator Jim Larkin, had been in the street in great numbers. Larkin appeared, the crowd cheered, the police panicked, and several hundred people, most of them innocently returning from Mass in the nearby Pro-Cathedral, were beaten into a state of insensibility or killed. Paddy was one of the former; he had been on his way to the university for a book from his office. He was away from Trinity since, only two days ago having resumed his tutorials. His arm was still in a sling, and his forehead still bore a plaster. He had complained privately in the tutor's lounge that his ribs were still taped, and professed a new sympathy with women wearing corsets.
He shook his head. "No, you mustn't cosset me, I have work to do," he looked at Mick. Despite he rebuke, his hand sought his wife's on his shoulder. She came round him and took up the boy, who was bouncing on his lap.
"Come along, darling. Here comes Mac with your tea. Wouldn't you like a biscuit? Come now," she took him over to her desk by the window, then retrieved her daughter in the same way.
She poured out tea for all, gave the boy his promised sweet, then retired to the corner with them to play with Joejoe's trains. She actually sat on the floor with them, an amazement to Mick. He didn't think women of her station sat on the floors. But there she was, clambering after the baby when she escaped, and crouching with her nose practically on the floor, listening very earnestly to the little boy's play. She'd have made a fine nanny herself, he thought, or a governess. Yes, she would be as one of those upper-class ladies in the last century, doling out soup and grammar and Protestant manners to starveling Catholics during the Famine with every good intent, never seeing why it was wrong. Such musings were short-lived. He hardly had time to bolt down a cup of very hot tea before Paddy was on his feet, saying,
"Well, let's to work," and was striding down the hall towards his study unceremoniously.
They were drilling on the major shifts in English Literature, from the romances of the early Middle Ages through the era of modern realism. Paddy would like to have included the current upsurge of interest in myth and legend, being one of the examiners, but he admitted sardonically that it would be stacking the deck, as he was known for his writings in symbolism throughout the academic community.
So that Mick should not be intimidated by facing the board of examiners, it was Paddy's custom to have him sit in a hard chair in the middle of the room and fire questions at him at random while he paced the floor; it was his goal that he should be able to answer anything immediately and in detail, no matter how unrelated the flow of topics. The point of university was, after all, to train one to think, no matter the subject studied, but even Paddy admitted that it was a stretch to his imagination to gather topics from different periods willy-nilly on the spot. At the moment they were focused on the Romantics.
"Mr. Rafferty," Paddy said in his slow Kerry drawl as he walked. "Please explain the commonly accepted beginning of the Romantic Movement and its actual roots. You have ten minutes. Please be succinct."
Mickey nodded. "Samuel Taylor Coleridge is acknowledged to be the first of the Romantic Poets in Britain, beginning with the publication of his first play, The Fall of Robespierre, written with Robert Southey in 1794, Southey being one of the co-founding members of the Pantisocracy. However, more properly, the Romantic Movement can be said to be popularised by William Blake in the decade and a half before. Already London literary society was infiltrated by men of the artisan and merchant classes, men such as MacPherson, Burns, and Blake himself whose poetry was self-taught and sprang from a reaction against the strict neo-classicism of the so-called Age of Reason. They were alarmed by the encroachment of mechanisation into the rural areas and its effects on the both the rural mind and rural society in general. They feared, as did Mary Wollestencraft Shelley, that the humanity would be pressed out of the working classes by the use of engines and machinery to accomplish what ever once the crafts of artisans, and sought to restore the importance of human feeling to social interaction, through literature; it was a social rebellion, which went to extremes in some cases - that of George Gordon most notably - but as with all such reactions endeavoured to strike a balance between cognition and empathy.” He paused, sighing, and rested his hands on his knees, hardly aware of what he had said; his head was spinning.
"Good. Very good," Paddy said thoughtfully. "But you must train yourself to have no physical reaction. Simply stop. Show no emotion or reaction whatever."
"Aye."
Paddy smiled at that country expression, rare in Mickey these days, looking over his shoulder. "The oral examination is the most difficult," he admitted. "The written will not have such constraints." He grinned. "Think of it as a stage role..." for Mick had painted not a few backdrops for the National Theatre since meeting Lennox Robinson four years ago, and had consequently seen the actors and actresses there in rehearsal. "Every move you make, every thing you say is imbued with meaning to those observing.... It's true in life as well, but we are unconscious of that for the most part."
Molly came into his mind, inexplicably, sitting at her desk in the sunshine, studiously ignoring him. He didn't think her half-clever enough for such artifice, but it was possible... possible that her manner had been a carefully constructed act to induce certain feelings in him.... She was a performer too, after all, or had been, with her piano concerts. The prospect filled him with a strange mixture of pleasure and annoyance. It roused his curiosity. He would have to test the idea next time he saw her....
"---contrast with the purport of Keats' Endymion...."
Mickey stirred out of his self-absorption. "I'm sorry," he shook his head. "I missed the first bit."
Paddy was scowling. "Micko, for Jaysus sake, the one thing you must not do is let your mind wander!" He exclaimed. "These old fellows will forgive a good deal, but never that!"
"I'm sorry....It won't happen again. You were saying?"
Paddy drew himself up, saying harshly, "No, Mr. Rafferty, that question is gone."
Mickey gave an inarticulate cry of protest.
"That is what will occur," Paddy said shortly. "You must be prepared." He began walking again.
Shite, Mickey thought. But this time he was listening for the question, and not letting his mind wander to Molly and the question of whether there was any hope with her.
The next Wednesday he came to Paddy's student afternoon, to be informed at the door by Rose that the professor was ill and not attending, but that Mrs. was keeping the house open nevertheless. Curious, he went down the hall to find Molly Leary standing in a dark-blue crepe dress with cerulean trim before the side table, arranging the flowers in a Chinese export vase. Her hair was a perfect fashionable mass of carefully casual curls. An hour with the curling tongs, that, for her hair was naturally straight as his own. Why? They were alone, as he was the first one to arrive. She turned and smiled at him as if there were twenty years between them, instead of three-months' age. He half expected her to say, as Paddy did, "Ah, there you are, my dear boy...." He had been to the Mahaffys' Thursday afternoons, so he knew where it came from. She did not however, but said instead,
"How nice to see you. You know I hope that Paddy is ill. One of his headaches, I'm afraid. But that shouldn't stop you enjoying yourselves." She shook her head. "There simply wasn't time to ring everyone, and some aren't on the 'phone, of course, so Rose is telling the arrivals." She turned back to her flowers, placid as always.
He came forward. "What's the matter?"
"With Paddy?" She asked without looking. "Oh, I expect he's had a difficult time. You'd be more qualified to say than I, seeing more of him as you do," she looked over her shoulder at him briefly. "He came home quite ill about half an hour ago, and is now abovestairs with a dose of morphia. I offered to ring the doctor, but he refused." She smiled a little, and said with affection, "he's stubborn that way."
No, he thought, I mean with you. Why do you treat me like you’re my old auntie?
"Is something the matter?" She asked in casual concern. He realised that he had been staring at her. Her clear grey eyes were innocently untroubled. Too innocently? A blush had crept up her cheeks.
"May I make a drink?" he asked abruptly.
"Certainly," she said in surprise, waving her hand toward a small cabinet on the opposite side of the room. "The glasses are just there. The key's under the bowl." --"The bowl" was Royal Doulton, filled with tiny violet pastilles - doubtless to cover the scent of drink after. She did everything just so, did she not? So coolly, so properly. He fought down a feeling of rage and shoved the key into the lock of the Sheraton cabinet. He poured out a neat whiskey and tossed it back at a gulp, poured another, and took it to stand before the windows, looking down on her burgeoning garden. The ormolu clock ticked, but otherwise there was silence. His hands were shaking. He put the drink on the desk.
"I still would like to paint you," he said suddenly. To his dismay, she laughed, coming away from the flowers.
"Is that's what troubling you? Oh Mick!"
He could not bear her closeness, the familiarity, and the light touch of her fingers on his arm, the scent of her hair. She was as tall as he, and he could look directly into her eyes.
"I have explained to you before that Paddy is against it," she said gently.
"Did you ask?" He barked, though he knew it was neither proper nor fair.
She hesitated. "I broached the topic in a general way," she hedged, shaking her head. "He is a proud man, as you know, and quite old fashioned in many ways for all his arty ideas." She took her hand from his arm, twisted the sapphire ring on her right hand. "He would prefer a photograph," she said. "A studio with people, rather than -" her breath caught " - my being alone with an artist for weeks on end." Her cheeks were scarlet, and she did not look at him, but out the window at the spire of the church beyond.
"You must understand." She did look at him now, and something in the depths of her eyes quelled the bitterness in him.
"You can hardly have given him reason to be so suspicious," he said, more gently than he would have a moment ago. The reference to her continual pregnancies did not escape her. It produced the hint of a crooked smile from her.
"Perhaps it is just for that reason that he is 'suspicious' as you say -" She turned her gaze on him fully. Her eyes were like the sky on a stormy day, full of depth and unleashed passion. "Because he knows what others do not." It was tit for tat, a sly-witted reprimand for his prying where he should not. She was far more subtle than he had supposed. It gave him something to think about as the doorbell rang and she went into the hall while Rose answered it. She could certainly be a bitch when she wanted to.
The bitch was all society smiles when she brought Marjorie Reckle into his company. He was genuinely glad to see Margie, and sank instantly into conversation with her, ignoring Molly altogether. That she didn't appear to notice or care irked him. But she was busy with guests for the next two hours, and he was caught up in conversations and the only time they spoke again was when he left.
"You will think about my request, I hope," he said in an undertone, standing under the muted sparkle of the unlit chandelier in the entrance hall. They were very close. She wore a flowery perfume, he noticed, heavy and languid. Jasmine or the like. Inciting and cloying at once at close quarters; as she was.
"I'm afraid that's not possible," she said coolly, not looking at him. “I have told you my husband's feeling on the matter." She looked up now, breathlessly. "Would you have me defy him?"
He took a step back, glaring at her, angry at the blatancy of such a coy tease. "Good evening, Mrs. Leary," he said shortly, and turned on his heel. He was out the door in an instant, pulling on his hat and stalking angrily towards Montgomery Street and the river. The bloody bitch. He shoved his hands in his pockets, his hat pulled low. She had tormented him these three years, and it was poisoning everything, especially his relationship with Paddy, which he could ill-afford at the moment; they were thrown together closely for the better part of every day now, working hard. Did she want to wreck it, wreck him? Maybe she did. It barely occurred to him that she might be jealous of his relationship with her husband; the notion only danced at the outer verge of his consciousness. Right now he hated her enough and wanted her enough to believe anything of her.
The evening was settling in, with the air cool and the just moon rising over the Customs House, the sky around it deepening to azure. He came to Montgomery Street, and stood at the corner while he waited for traffic to pass, looking up in the direction of the kips undecidedly. He had half a mind to find a whore. He had not been to "Monto" in better than a year - maybe closer to two now, his work keeping him from such entertainment. Peter Krisham had done him a better kindness than he knew in introducing him there, in his first days in Dublin. It was a touchstone to the college men - a focal point when nothing else could be agreed on and when all else was a balls-up. He considered. In his pocket was about a guinea in odd change. Well, it would be a mighty cheap whore or a mighty quick go, either or both. He had a painting to finish at home, and reading to do. But he knew that in his present mood it was no good; the options were to get drunk or get laid, and he had to get up early in the morning, so on to Monto it was.
Number 35 Montgomery Street was a decent house. The girls were youngish and clean, if not always pretty. The landlady, as she preferred to be called, was a woman from Mayo who used to be a schoolteacher - so she said - and fallen on hard times. It was as good a tale as any. He walked up the steps and let the knocker fall.
A young girl in a shiny brown cotton dress answered the door. The skivvy. She was pale with thin blonde hair and enormous eyes. Something wrong with that one.... what did Pete call it? Goiter.....
"Ya, mister?"
He nodded grimly at the greeting. "Is the landlady to be seen?"
The girl opened the door wider. "Ay. C'min...." He followed her into a long narrow hall that smelled of cabbage, down to a back parlour decorated in third-hand gentry cast-off furniture, heavy, dark Victorian pieces with fringe. The landlady was likewise dark and heavily upholstered, with black hair and an old-fashioned basque. The only clue as to her calling was a profusion of rings on her fingers - three or four on almost every finger - and two dark patches of rouge on her cheeks. She wore carpet slippers and smoked a cigarette. She squinted at him through the haze of smoke.
"Eh? Who's this, Nancy? One of the Trinity boys be the look of ya."
Again, he nodded, silently, feeling rather surly about the whole business now he was here. He wished he'd gone home, gone to dinner, stayed at Paddy's, forced Molly's hand.... Ah, he was working himself into a fine rage....
"Well, don't be so coy," the landlady said. "Come here where the light’s better and let's have a look at ya."
He took off his hat and walked forward three paces. The landlady squinted at him again, at closer quarters, and cackled. "Ha, a fine strappin' lad ya are!" If she touched him, he'd flee. But she did not. "What'd ya have in mind?"
Well, that was getting down to business. He spoke in his best Trinity accents, since she thought him the typical sort; he was glad he was not so regular a customer that she remembered him instantly. He challenged her,
"A pretty, slender, dark-haired girl," he ground out between his teeth, forcing the words out past the bitterness that welled up in him at the thought of Molly. "Tall preferably. No blowsy."
"Ooh, hoity-toity!" She mocked. "Aren't we the gent! This ain't the regatta, me laddie!"
He said nothing. All he wanted was half an hour of forgetting.
"As it happens, I do have such a gel. Mary'll do." She held out her hand. "A shillin'." He gave it to her. "Number ten," she nodded, with a jerk of her head. He nodded again, and went out, up the squeaking stairs to the third floor. Number ten was at the far end of the hall, on the river side. He rapped on the door twice shortly with his knuckles and went in.
The girl who sat on the rumpled bed in a threadbare chemise in the ochre room was indeed slender, with black hair hanging down her back to between her shoulder blades. She was brushing her hair and turned at the noise. Her eyes were pale blue. She had once been very pretty, but now looked tired. He nodded to her, scowling intently.
"Hullo!" she said in surprise. She put down the brush and leaned enticingly on the bed, her uncorsetted breasts spilling over the top of the chemise. "How long are you for?"
"Half an hour," he returned shortly, yanking off his necktie and throwing it on the floor. "So I don't want chat." The girl gave him a shrugging glance.
"Suit yourself." Her face lit then with a coaxing, professional smile. "Wha'd you want?"
He knew what he wanted. "Take that off," he told her shortly, gesturing at her underwear with his sock as he bent to unlaced his other shoe. He wanted no distractions of class to spoil the fantasy. "And no chat," he reminded her. He yanked off his remaining sock, rose to his full height, and grinned, tossing his head to move his hair out of his eyes. "Other noises are fine." He divested himself of the rest of his clothes unceremoniously. The girl was more deliberate, he noticed, watching her steadily as he threw his braces, shirt, and trousers on the floor piecemeal. She was good; she guessed his game: she waited with her eyes downcast, looking at him from under her lashes, until he stood naked before her - a fit and handsome young man in his prime. Then she looked, appraisingly, and smiled archly. He held out a hand.
"Come here," he said, more gently than he had before. She got off the bed and sauntered over with brilliant eyes, the slow sensuous walk reminding him of Molly. It was at variance with the wraith-like quality of her figure. The variance itself was thrilling. She came to him and pressed herself close of habit, raising her face with an expression that was triumphant.
"Let me lead," he murmured, cupping her face in his paint-stained hand. His gaze roved over her face and shoulders. She was not as tall, but tall enough. So close she was.... so close, close enough to make it work. A strange humming began in his ears. Her expression changed. Her eyes lost their hard-edged brilliance and with it her face became soft. It sent a jolt through him that reverberated, his cock leaping against the belly of the girl.
"Ah, yes," he breathed. His hand closed on her hair, and he kissed her. She was good to the bargain, and did only what she was told, venturing not at all into the usual whore's tricks to make him come off sooner than he wanted to. He'd have preferred, oh, a trip around the world, but there wasn't time.
"We have only this little while," he murmured against her neck. Eyes half-closed as if in a dream he touched her everywhere, letting the memory soak into his fingers, eking into the canvas of his mind - Galatea to his Pygmalion, he would remember this when he was alone, when he looked at Molly. He was not ashamed of having her this way; it's what whores were for. He played with the girl, teasing, and brought a muffled response from her. Smiling, he nudged her to the bed, cushioned the slow fall, and rolled her in his arms so that she was caught. He had learned from William Orpen how to still time when he was painting - to accomplish much in a little time - and he used that now, falling into every taste and texture of the girl, burning sensation into his brain as with an engraving stylus. The room was forgotten, his rage was forgotten. There was only the girl. He took her slowly, more slowly than he wanted to because he wanted it to last forever in his mind. He was shaking now strongly, holding back, wanting so much to use her well. She was so responsive to his brief commands, going with him everywhere, all with that melting expression. He raised himself on his hands and looked at her. Her face was flushed, a flush that spread down her neck and across her breasts; blissful face, she was with him, wanting but not asking, her mouth half-open in delight, her black hair tumbled over the tangled linens.
"All right, then," he smiled. Her answer was a low murmur, and she clasped him by arms and legs as he plunged in.
He let go. Mind gone, sight gone, hearing gone, only feeling was left and smell. A wracking brilliance overtook him, a powerful surge of energy at the primitive delight of fucking the girl pinned under him by his own hands, by the force of his body driving her into the bed. She was writhing - pain or pleasure he knew not which, cared not which, but that he could eke that response from her. Oh glorious! He was running sweat. It ran from his hair into his eyes, lashing, and still a part of him held back, held the force at bay with an effort of tremendous will.
"Oh please," the girl exclaimed. Whether it was begging yes or begging no, he didn't know. But that was what he had waited to hear. He clasped her hips in his hands, sunk in her, moving so violently with her that it hardly seemed anything at all. They were simply one creature, as in the beginning of creation. The world spun iridescent and he lost himself, coming with the strangled cry of a single word:
"Molly!"
He roused himself after what seemed an eternity. The girl, nudging him gently off her. She sat up, smoothing her hair coolly from her face while he raised himself on his elbows and shook his head to clear it. After a moment he rose and began to dress. The room reeked of sex and the girl had a mark on her neck. He pinpointed the moment in his memory, and sighed heavily. Good it was, to remember. Not as good as the moment itself, but almost. Images distilled in the memory until they were potent as brandy.... When he was shoving his shirt-tails into his trousers, the girl asked him with casual nonchalance,
"So who's this girl you want so bad?"
He stopped cold, staring at her. How dare she bring her up here, in this place; a whore speaking of a lady. Irrationally, it offended him.
"No one," he muttered shortly.
"Oh, married is she," she said lightly, without looking at him. It was all of the most sublime indifference to her, a matter for jokes. He was mad at her contempt. It took everything he had not to leap across the room and strike her. He shook with it. He'd have struck a man for less.
"You shut your fucking mouth," he warned, glaring.
She shrugged. "It don't matter to me," she said.
"Shut up!" He was shouting. He stopped, ran his hands through his hair, pulled up his braces, bent for his tie. The girl said nothing, and neither did he. The silence stretched long. He wouldn't apologise to a whore, especially a nosy one. He was tying his laces when there came a knock at the door, twice. Time called. He heard the landlady go back down the hall. He picked up his hat, looked at the girl. She was sitting cross-legged in the bed, her head tilted down, watching him half from behind her fallen hair. He could paint her; it said everything about her life, and their exchange. His anger left him then and he regretted his rudeness. Pulling on his hat, his hand on the doorknob, he turned.
"Good-bye, Molly."
Their eyes met. She was young, he saw; his own age. But years older in her experience of the world. She tossed her head, her expression cynical, and he opened the door. And left.
-The Cavan Girl, Traditional Irish
So Mick had gone, walking up with Paddy from his office in Botany Bay at the end of day the next Wednesday; they had come upon each other in the stairwell. The light was already fading in the east as they crossed the Liffey at Eden Quay, and the evening foot-traffic was illuminated by the golden glow of the gaslights in the streets, and shrouded by the hastening shadows in the unlit lanes. Only in O’Connell Street were the lamps electrified yet. The winter evening was snug and close, with the damp gathering along the corridor of the river. There would be rain tonight. The sunset beyond sprawled beneath the clouds like the tumbling battle of a half-forgotten dream.
“Ah, she’s a fine sunset, so,” Paddy said easily, reverting to the country speech. His robe was thrown over his arm, as if the whole burden of his profession were thrown off with it, and he was, at last, only a young man. He walked with a loose, reaching, easy stride, a man used to covering great distances afoot. His colouring was ruddy, lit dramatically by the sky, so that he seemed at one with it, a god come down from the thundering heavens to bestride the narrow world of mortals.
“Aye,” Mick agreed soberly, much taken with the analogy. He was on fire with it, in an itchy, nervous, irritable way, almost swooningly. He wanted so much to capture it on canvas, the shocking vitality of this man. His desire and the admiration that sparked it ran ahead of him, and he could scarcely take note of ordinary things – the rubbish blowing about the pavement before St. Michael’s, swirling into little eddies, like dogs at heel, to trip them up. But he was tongue-tied at the asking. Every time he steeled himself to it, his heart gave a leap and he almost suffocated with dread. Yet he hardly knew what he was afraid of.
“I mind sunsets like that in Kerry in the winter when I was a lad,” Paddy said, pulling out his cigarette case. “It was always a storm coming on the heels of it.” He lit a cigarette.
“Aye. It was the same at home,” Mick agreed. He smiled a little. “Always of a Saturday night, and the devil to get home from the docks.”
Paddy squinted at him through the smoke. “What was it like, being a docker?”
Mickey glanced at him, startled, and laughed, holding out his right hand palm up. There were still calluses and old scars. “Bloody hard labour. Bloody mindless, numbing hard labour. Endless, aching days to wither the soul to the level of a beast. No soul about it. Not like farming. We’d have done well with more machines and less hard labour. It felt like a prison sentence sometimes, endless days with no reprieve in sight.” He looked up the length of Gardiner Street musingly.
“And so you sat the exams,” Paddy said softly, almost as if to himself. “To escape.”
Mick looked at him askance. “Yeah, I suppose I did. Never thought about it that way exactly, but I suppose it’s true.”
“Could you have stuck it?” Paddy asked him, softly, fiercely. “Could you have stuck it?”
“How do you mean?” He asked for the sake of argument.
Paddy smirked, tossing the fag end away. “Michael, for Jaysus sake, you’ve the soul of a bloody poet, you apprehend things, man! Not for you, not for neither of us the deadening round of bestial existence promulgated to the common man by every self-appointed guardian of civilisation.” He looked at him keenly, his dark eyes alight in the deepening twilight. “We’re a fine brace of rebels.”
It was true, so shockingly true that he had to deny it, make light of it. They were alike, were rebels, both of them, against fettered minds, fettered souls; their own, anybody’s.
“Oh yeah,” he laughed, disingenuously. “And what are we rebels against, is it?”
The look in Paddy’s eyes halted his forced gaiety; it was vibrant, earnest, sunderingly intense. Tyger, tyger, burning bright/In the forests of the night. The lines from Blake assailed him. Burnt in distant deeps or skies/The cruel fire of thine eyes/Could heart descend or wings aspire/ What the hand dare sieze the fire/When the stars threw down their spears/And watered heaven with their tears/Did he smile his work to see/did he who made the lamb make thee. The essence of the man was so clearly exposed, shockingly, heartbreakingly.
“Against mortality, Michael,” Paddy murmured slowly. “Against mortality.”
Mickey gulped, and could say nothing, engulfed in the fire of that man’s exposed soul. No one had ever dared speak the words aloud to him before, the words of his own inner being. The impact made him want to cry, with relief, with the gladness of recognition, with love. The queer nervy feeling washed over him again as they came to the juncture of Gloucester Street. He had never felt this way about his own brothers, and was not really close enough to other men as friends to have experienced it. It was exhilarating and frightening, like falling in love.
They went into Leary’s house in the Square, and he called out to his wife. It was one of the old Georgian townhouses of the 18th century, genteely seedy about the edges, but still elegant. The chandelier in the foyer was genuine, illuminating this dull day the spectacular stuccowork ceiling. They were passing into the house proper, when Paddy caught his arm.
“Go on in,” he said, with a jerk of his head. “It’s through the back. I won’t be a moment. I want to put these things away.” He meant his satchel and robe. He had already thrown his hat on the hall table when he halooed his wife.
“Aye, so.” The first room was a high ceilinged parlour, ornate and proper, but it was empty. He went down the long hall, painted a pale buttery shade of yellow, soft as candlelight.
It was hung with hunting prints, and small studies of thoroughbred horses. Odd. There was a carpet runner, a soft Wedgewood blue patterned in yellow and red flowers. Turkish. Real. It was hard to believe that they had just moved in. Already, everything was settled and comfortable in the way of minor gentry houses. He went through to the back. The door to the private back room was open and light poured through the window at the far end. The woman there, invisible at first in a white dress, turned.
“Hello darling,” she began brightly, and halted in mid-step at the sight of him. “Oh, I do beg your pardon, I thought you were my husband.” It was the dark girl of the Rotunda concert. So Paddy had married her. At close quarters now, he saw why: she was stunning. He coloured.
“No, um… I’m Michael Rafferty. And I’m here to see the professor, like.”
“Oh I say,” she said, as catching on belatedly to some joke. “How plumy. Well, of course you are.” She came forward now, holding out her hand. “How d’you do, I am Mrs. Leary. Won’t you come and make yourself at home… Michael. May I call you that?” She looked directly into his eyes. She was very tall, and her grip was sure and strong, her touch electric. He stepped back, numb and confused. She was his own age, or younger, with a languorous, dolorous beauty, enmeshing as opium.
“No, I--” He wanted to run. He knew by instinct that both the Learys were terribly dangerous to his peace of mind. Paddy came in behind him as he turned and he was trapped between them like some ancient sacrifice.
“I see you’ve met Molly,” Paddy said. “Hallo, darlin’,” he went and kissed her decorously. “Well, it’s begun.” His hazel eyes crinkled in a warm intimate smile. “We are now properly the ‘varsity set.” The self-mocking joke went over Mickey’s head, but not Molly’s.
“Yes, I was on the ‘phone twice to Frances Mahaffy today, and my mother.”
Paddy patted her shoulder. “We’ll do swimmingly, darling girl, not to worry.” He looked up, squinting at Mick. “Do you fancy a drink,” he asked, grinning, “or would you rather wait for the sherry?”
He needed a stiff drink. “Now, please,” he laughed ruefully, eyeing Molly.
Martin Cummings had popped round not long after, with Marjorie Reckle and the lads from the Mediaeval course, all together again for the Romantics. It was only a crowd of young people, Paddy and Molly Leary included, and between the drink and the terrible, obscure puns he recovered himself.
He was chatting with Margie about the upcoming scholarship exams for English in April, for which they were in something of a competition. Margie blew out smoke sharply from her cigarette and called to Paddy, who lounged in the overstuffed chair talking to Martin and Lennox Robinson,
“Paddy, which exams are you proctoring this term?”
“Yes,” Martin said, with a droll glance, “ she has two in English and needs to know if she should panic in advance of them.”
Paddy laughed and throwing back his head, quoted, “’Oh weary life! Why sit I here & give up all my powers to indolence, to the night of death, when indolence and mourning sit hovering over my dark threshold.’” He drank his seltzer. “Still your faint hearts, I am not proctoring any of your exams. I am given over to the entrances examinations for the autumn term.”
“Poor innocents!” Martin murmured in mock-pity. “All unawares! ‘Would that the little flowers were born to live, Conscious of half the pleasure which they give.’”
Paddy smiled, continuing, “’ So might he ken how by his sovereign aid, These delicate companionships are made; And how he rules the pomp of light and shade.’”
“’He replied at hazard,’” Martin countered, “’with a modest confidence and calm assurance, which lent his lucubrations pith.’” And laughed. The company did not miss the lurking comparison to Byron’s famed roué. Margie snorted, blushing scarlet up her neck, and several of the young men fell out of their chairs chortling. Robinson smiled primly, his ankle thrown across his knee, and smoked his cigarette intently. Paddy was not in the least outdone, and hardly embarrassed by the allusion; on the contrary, despite the fact that his wife sat above him on the back of the chair. Molly’s expression was innocent of grasping the double-entendre. She was, Mick saw, neither a mental not an emotional creature, but all sensation.
Paddy challenged the company by voicing the unspoken thought,
“’Juan knew several languages – as well he might – and brought them up with skill, in time to save his fame with each accomplish’d belle, who still regretted that he did not rhyme.’”
That produced a hoot from Martin and Stuart, who had been subjected to the professor’s free versifying on every conceivable occasion.
“Match point,” Martin admitted, shaking his head. “I could not do it one better.”
“You do well enough, my Idiot Boy,” Paddy drawled lazily, a smile glimmering round his eyes. Affection lay there. He glanced at Mick, who had watched all this banter with relish, and a secret, intimate expression flickered there almost imperceptible. “That’s why you have top marks.”
“Top marks,” Martin said, rolling his eyes. “95 and fourth in the running.”
Mickey flushed. He had ended the year at 99 and tied for firsts. Best not to mention it here! That was what the look was for, he realised, a private comment on his esteem in that man’s eyes.
Paddy shrugged. “The university know what it means from me, as opposed to, say, Oliver,” he murmured slyly. A low exclamation went round the room. Paddy flung his arm behind his head, leaning into his wife’s lap on the back of the chair. “I should tell you all, if it needs saying, that it is for such as yourselves I am a Demogorgon. You make the whole venture worth my while. The unworthies run and hide their faces at first sight, but I can count on the like of you to see through my seeming chaos…” he smiled a little, a self-deprecating smile. “Even if I remain the dreaded name.” He glanced round the room. “You make it worth it,” he repeated, softly, “every day.” There was a hush, and the words were felt by everyone there. Paddy’s mouth twitched then. “But that doesn’t mean I’ll let up on you, not one whit!”
By such means, he made himself beloved, for all his exactitude. And Mick did love him, wholly, as one loves the lightning storm and the thunder-cloud from the safe harbour of the hearth.
Now, three and a half years later, he was preparing for oral examinations, and working on the thesis for the Bachelor of Arts. An Exegesis of Occult Symbolism in Yeats. In the Square the leaves were just beginning to turn. There was the crisp scent of death in the air, the last pell-mell burst of life before dying, Mickey thought as he stood before the door of Number 60, like the rush that spurred a man coming. He smiled at the rude thought. He had been too long a sensualist, a symbolist, relating life to art in ways that the workaday world missed. But he wouldn't have it otherwise. He shifted the satchel to his left hand as the door opened to Rosie's round sweet face. She was the day-maid.
"Afternoon, Rose," he touched his hat. He grinned at her and resisted the impulse to pinch her cheek as he sauntered by. "Is the Professor in?" He asked, looking over his shoulder as he passed through the doorway of the entrance hall.
"No, Mick. Not yet," the girl said, blushing. "But herself is in the back parlour."
"Ah." Herself. Molly. "Thanks." He tossed his bag into the study on the right and went past the stairs, down the hall and into the sunny back parlour where he found her sitting at the desk before the window, her silk-stockinged legs crossed at the ankle and the sunlight gleaming on her hair that was glossy as a raven's wing. She did not look up, reckoning her accounts as she was. She had suffered a miscarriage recently and was still pale, but for all that she was lovely as porcelain. He recalled the first time he saw her, standing before that same window in a white linen dress looking down into the garden. He had never seen a woman so beautiful. He had pestered her to allow him to use her as a model over the years, but she had always refused with a quick blush, saying that Paddy would not allow it. Doubtless he would not, but Mickey suspected there were other reasons due to that blush. So he sketched her surreptitiously while she was doing something else. He had a hundred or so sketches of her, or parts of her - hands, feet, torsos, medallion portraits - one from a photograph on the mantel of her and her brother in hunt clothes.
"Hello," he said.
"Hello." She did not look up, her gaze turning from one column to another as she wrote. "Would you care for tea? It's time."
He squinted at her through the pouring sunlight. "Thank you."
"Good. I'll tell Mac." She did look up now, her clear grey eyes untroubled and rose to tug the bellpull on the wall. Then she went back to her accounts, all serene, completely unaware how the sound of her dress moving against her stockings quickened his blood. He flung himself into one of the overstuffed chairs in agitation. Mrs. MacElwee appeared at the door.
"Ma'am?' She inquired garrulously in her deep voice. She did not care to climb the stairs from the kitchen.
"Mr. Rafferty will be having tea, Mac, if you please." Molly said in drawling tones, looking up but shortly. "And Mr. Leary is expected, so please have the tongue sandwiches." She looked at him "Unless you prefer sherry?"
He shook his head. "No." Altar wine, far too sweet so early in the day.
"Very good. Just tea then, Mac. Thank you." She went back to her accounts. He picked up a magazine - The London Magazine, a society paper - and leafed through it distractedly. The other reading fare on the small table betrayed no further literary pretensions - the Tattler, the Spectator, Country Life - there was a book on Irish and English bloodstock of horses, but not a book of poetry or even a romance in sight. Molly didn't share Paddy's love of books. It was too evident what their bond was. In the three years they had been married, the girl had been pregnant as many times. He thought the upper classes took a dim view of such goings-on, but obviously that was not the case, at least with her. He sat looking at her while she wrote, under the pretext of staring vaguely out the window, until her children's nurse came in with wee Joe and the baby, Sally. Both were red-haired and volatile like their father.
Nancy had Joe by the hand. He was whining disorientedly, sleepy-eyed yet. Molly instantly put down her pen and went to him, kneeling on the floor before him and smoothing his wild, curling hair.
"What's wrong Joejoe? Ah, did Mummy's darling just have a nasty dream? Ah, come here darling," she picked him up, cradling him, rising to her full height. "Come sit with Mummy. You'll be better soon. Mac is bringing tea, would you like a biscuit? Yes, there's a good boy. Dada will be home too in a little." She looked over the child's head to Nancy. "Thanks for bringing him down Nancy. You can put Sally on the floor over here if you like." It was not a request, but a polite command, uttered in a smooth drawl. But whatever her defects with the servants, Molly plainly loved her children and she was very good with them.
"Yes, ma'am," Nancy said, and carried the girl over to the sunny patch on the floor and sat her down. She was not sitting for long. The child was everywhere, and for the rest of the time Mickey was in the room, either Nancy or Molly was running after her, endeavouring to distract her attention with some bauble or soothing her bumps when she fell. For the moment, though, Molly sat with Joe on her lap at the desk, letting him draw all over the blotter with a pencil. It was not quiet: Mrs Mac came in with the tea and the longed-for biscuits were produced, then Paddy came in and the children were all over him. But Mickey was used to such intimate scenes now, having been witness to them as long as there were children between these two.
Paddy threw his satchel on the floor and flung himself into the opposite overstuffed chair, wincing over the children's heads as they climbed up on his lap, the boy shouting "Dada! Dada!" He smiled with weary patience and kissed his child before looking pleadingly at his wife. She was beside him in an instant.
"Is it your headache?" She asked. He nodded, wincing, and she went to fetch him a dose of aspirin from the mantel.
"Mac will be in soon with some tea," she said. "Then you can have a lie down."
Paddy had been in O'Connell Street last month when the DMP, sensing trouble from an appearance of the labour agitator Jim Larkin, had been in the street in great numbers. Larkin appeared, the crowd cheered, the police panicked, and several hundred people, most of them innocently returning from Mass in the nearby Pro-Cathedral, were beaten into a state of insensibility or killed. Paddy was one of the former; he had been on his way to the university for a book from his office. He was away from Trinity since, only two days ago having resumed his tutorials. His arm was still in a sling, and his forehead still bore a plaster. He had complained privately in the tutor's lounge that his ribs were still taped, and professed a new sympathy with women wearing corsets.
He shook his head. "No, you mustn't cosset me, I have work to do," he looked at Mick. Despite he rebuke, his hand sought his wife's on his shoulder. She came round him and took up the boy, who was bouncing on his lap.
"Come along, darling. Here comes Mac with your tea. Wouldn't you like a biscuit? Come now," she took him over to her desk by the window, then retrieved her daughter in the same way.
She poured out tea for all, gave the boy his promised sweet, then retired to the corner with them to play with Joejoe's trains. She actually sat on the floor with them, an amazement to Mick. He didn't think women of her station sat on the floors. But there she was, clambering after the baby when she escaped, and crouching with her nose practically on the floor, listening very earnestly to the little boy's play. She'd have made a fine nanny herself, he thought, or a governess. Yes, she would be as one of those upper-class ladies in the last century, doling out soup and grammar and Protestant manners to starveling Catholics during the Famine with every good intent, never seeing why it was wrong. Such musings were short-lived. He hardly had time to bolt down a cup of very hot tea before Paddy was on his feet, saying,
"Well, let's to work," and was striding down the hall towards his study unceremoniously.
They were drilling on the major shifts in English Literature, from the romances of the early Middle Ages through the era of modern realism. Paddy would like to have included the current upsurge of interest in myth and legend, being one of the examiners, but he admitted sardonically that it would be stacking the deck, as he was known for his writings in symbolism throughout the academic community.
So that Mick should not be intimidated by facing the board of examiners, it was Paddy's custom to have him sit in a hard chair in the middle of the room and fire questions at him at random while he paced the floor; it was his goal that he should be able to answer anything immediately and in detail, no matter how unrelated the flow of topics. The point of university was, after all, to train one to think, no matter the subject studied, but even Paddy admitted that it was a stretch to his imagination to gather topics from different periods willy-nilly on the spot. At the moment they were focused on the Romantics.
"Mr. Rafferty," Paddy said in his slow Kerry drawl as he walked. "Please explain the commonly accepted beginning of the Romantic Movement and its actual roots. You have ten minutes. Please be succinct."
Mickey nodded. "Samuel Taylor Coleridge is acknowledged to be the first of the Romantic Poets in Britain, beginning with the publication of his first play, The Fall of Robespierre, written with Robert Southey in 1794, Southey being one of the co-founding members of the Pantisocracy. However, more properly, the Romantic Movement can be said to be popularised by William Blake in the decade and a half before. Already London literary society was infiltrated by men of the artisan and merchant classes, men such as MacPherson, Burns, and Blake himself whose poetry was self-taught and sprang from a reaction against the strict neo-classicism of the so-called Age of Reason. They were alarmed by the encroachment of mechanisation into the rural areas and its effects on the both the rural mind and rural society in general. They feared, as did Mary Wollestencraft Shelley, that the humanity would be pressed out of the working classes by the use of engines and machinery to accomplish what ever once the crafts of artisans, and sought to restore the importance of human feeling to social interaction, through literature; it was a social rebellion, which went to extremes in some cases - that of George Gordon most notably - but as with all such reactions endeavoured to strike a balance between cognition and empathy.” He paused, sighing, and rested his hands on his knees, hardly aware of what he had said; his head was spinning.
"Good. Very good," Paddy said thoughtfully. "But you must train yourself to have no physical reaction. Simply stop. Show no emotion or reaction whatever."
"Aye."
Paddy smiled at that country expression, rare in Mickey these days, looking over his shoulder. "The oral examination is the most difficult," he admitted. "The written will not have such constraints." He grinned. "Think of it as a stage role..." for Mick had painted not a few backdrops for the National Theatre since meeting Lennox Robinson four years ago, and had consequently seen the actors and actresses there in rehearsal. "Every move you make, every thing you say is imbued with meaning to those observing.... It's true in life as well, but we are unconscious of that for the most part."
Molly came into his mind, inexplicably, sitting at her desk in the sunshine, studiously ignoring him. He didn't think her half-clever enough for such artifice, but it was possible... possible that her manner had been a carefully constructed act to induce certain feelings in him.... She was a performer too, after all, or had been, with her piano concerts. The prospect filled him with a strange mixture of pleasure and annoyance. It roused his curiosity. He would have to test the idea next time he saw her....
"---contrast with the purport of Keats' Endymion...."
Mickey stirred out of his self-absorption. "I'm sorry," he shook his head. "I missed the first bit."
Paddy was scowling. "Micko, for Jaysus sake, the one thing you must not do is let your mind wander!" He exclaimed. "These old fellows will forgive a good deal, but never that!"
"I'm sorry....It won't happen again. You were saying?"
Paddy drew himself up, saying harshly, "No, Mr. Rafferty, that question is gone."
Mickey gave an inarticulate cry of protest.
"That is what will occur," Paddy said shortly. "You must be prepared." He began walking again.
Shite, Mickey thought. But this time he was listening for the question, and not letting his mind wander to Molly and the question of whether there was any hope with her.
The next Wednesday he came to Paddy's student afternoon, to be informed at the door by Rose that the professor was ill and not attending, but that Mrs. was keeping the house open nevertheless. Curious, he went down the hall to find Molly Leary standing in a dark-blue crepe dress with cerulean trim before the side table, arranging the flowers in a Chinese export vase. Her hair was a perfect fashionable mass of carefully casual curls. An hour with the curling tongs, that, for her hair was naturally straight as his own. Why? They were alone, as he was the first one to arrive. She turned and smiled at him as if there were twenty years between them, instead of three-months' age. He half expected her to say, as Paddy did, "Ah, there you are, my dear boy...." He had been to the Mahaffys' Thursday afternoons, so he knew where it came from. She did not however, but said instead,
"How nice to see you. You know I hope that Paddy is ill. One of his headaches, I'm afraid. But that shouldn't stop you enjoying yourselves." She shook her head. "There simply wasn't time to ring everyone, and some aren't on the 'phone, of course, so Rose is telling the arrivals." She turned back to her flowers, placid as always.
He came forward. "What's the matter?"
"With Paddy?" She asked without looking. "Oh, I expect he's had a difficult time. You'd be more qualified to say than I, seeing more of him as you do," she looked over her shoulder at him briefly. "He came home quite ill about half an hour ago, and is now abovestairs with a dose of morphia. I offered to ring the doctor, but he refused." She smiled a little, and said with affection, "he's stubborn that way."
No, he thought, I mean with you. Why do you treat me like you’re my old auntie?
"Is something the matter?" She asked in casual concern. He realised that he had been staring at her. Her clear grey eyes were innocently untroubled. Too innocently? A blush had crept up her cheeks.
"May I make a drink?" he asked abruptly.
"Certainly," she said in surprise, waving her hand toward a small cabinet on the opposite side of the room. "The glasses are just there. The key's under the bowl." --"The bowl" was Royal Doulton, filled with tiny violet pastilles - doubtless to cover the scent of drink after. She did everything just so, did she not? So coolly, so properly. He fought down a feeling of rage and shoved the key into the lock of the Sheraton cabinet. He poured out a neat whiskey and tossed it back at a gulp, poured another, and took it to stand before the windows, looking down on her burgeoning garden. The ormolu clock ticked, but otherwise there was silence. His hands were shaking. He put the drink on the desk.
"I still would like to paint you," he said suddenly. To his dismay, she laughed, coming away from the flowers.
"Is that's what troubling you? Oh Mick!"
He could not bear her closeness, the familiarity, and the light touch of her fingers on his arm, the scent of her hair. She was as tall as he, and he could look directly into her eyes.
"I have explained to you before that Paddy is against it," she said gently.
"Did you ask?" He barked, though he knew it was neither proper nor fair.
She hesitated. "I broached the topic in a general way," she hedged, shaking her head. "He is a proud man, as you know, and quite old fashioned in many ways for all his arty ideas." She took her hand from his arm, twisted the sapphire ring on her right hand. "He would prefer a photograph," she said. "A studio with people, rather than -" her breath caught " - my being alone with an artist for weeks on end." Her cheeks were scarlet, and she did not look at him, but out the window at the spire of the church beyond.
"You must understand." She did look at him now, and something in the depths of her eyes quelled the bitterness in him.
"You can hardly have given him reason to be so suspicious," he said, more gently than he would have a moment ago. The reference to her continual pregnancies did not escape her. It produced the hint of a crooked smile from her.
"Perhaps it is just for that reason that he is 'suspicious' as you say -" She turned her gaze on him fully. Her eyes were like the sky on a stormy day, full of depth and unleashed passion. "Because he knows what others do not." It was tit for tat, a sly-witted reprimand for his prying where he should not. She was far more subtle than he had supposed. It gave him something to think about as the doorbell rang and she went into the hall while Rose answered it. She could certainly be a bitch when she wanted to.
The bitch was all society smiles when she brought Marjorie Reckle into his company. He was genuinely glad to see Margie, and sank instantly into conversation with her, ignoring Molly altogether. That she didn't appear to notice or care irked him. But she was busy with guests for the next two hours, and he was caught up in conversations and the only time they spoke again was when he left.
"You will think about my request, I hope," he said in an undertone, standing under the muted sparkle of the unlit chandelier in the entrance hall. They were very close. She wore a flowery perfume, he noticed, heavy and languid. Jasmine or the like. Inciting and cloying at once at close quarters; as she was.
"I'm afraid that's not possible," she said coolly, not looking at him. “I have told you my husband's feeling on the matter." She looked up now, breathlessly. "Would you have me defy him?"
He took a step back, glaring at her, angry at the blatancy of such a coy tease. "Good evening, Mrs. Leary," he said shortly, and turned on his heel. He was out the door in an instant, pulling on his hat and stalking angrily towards Montgomery Street and the river. The bloody bitch. He shoved his hands in his pockets, his hat pulled low. She had tormented him these three years, and it was poisoning everything, especially his relationship with Paddy, which he could ill-afford at the moment; they were thrown together closely for the better part of every day now, working hard. Did she want to wreck it, wreck him? Maybe she did. It barely occurred to him that she might be jealous of his relationship with her husband; the notion only danced at the outer verge of his consciousness. Right now he hated her enough and wanted her enough to believe anything of her.
The evening was settling in, with the air cool and the just moon rising over the Customs House, the sky around it deepening to azure. He came to Montgomery Street, and stood at the corner while he waited for traffic to pass, looking up in the direction of the kips undecidedly. He had half a mind to find a whore. He had not been to "Monto" in better than a year - maybe closer to two now, his work keeping him from such entertainment. Peter Krisham had done him a better kindness than he knew in introducing him there, in his first days in Dublin. It was a touchstone to the college men - a focal point when nothing else could be agreed on and when all else was a balls-up. He considered. In his pocket was about a guinea in odd change. Well, it would be a mighty cheap whore or a mighty quick go, either or both. He had a painting to finish at home, and reading to do. But he knew that in his present mood it was no good; the options were to get drunk or get laid, and he had to get up early in the morning, so on to Monto it was.
Number 35 Montgomery Street was a decent house. The girls were youngish and clean, if not always pretty. The landlady, as she preferred to be called, was a woman from Mayo who used to be a schoolteacher - so she said - and fallen on hard times. It was as good a tale as any. He walked up the steps and let the knocker fall.
A young girl in a shiny brown cotton dress answered the door. The skivvy. She was pale with thin blonde hair and enormous eyes. Something wrong with that one.... what did Pete call it? Goiter.....
"Ya, mister?"
He nodded grimly at the greeting. "Is the landlady to be seen?"
The girl opened the door wider. "Ay. C'min...." He followed her into a long narrow hall that smelled of cabbage, down to a back parlour decorated in third-hand gentry cast-off furniture, heavy, dark Victorian pieces with fringe. The landlady was likewise dark and heavily upholstered, with black hair and an old-fashioned basque. The only clue as to her calling was a profusion of rings on her fingers - three or four on almost every finger - and two dark patches of rouge on her cheeks. She wore carpet slippers and smoked a cigarette. She squinted at him through the haze of smoke.
"Eh? Who's this, Nancy? One of the Trinity boys be the look of ya."
Again, he nodded, silently, feeling rather surly about the whole business now he was here. He wished he'd gone home, gone to dinner, stayed at Paddy's, forced Molly's hand.... Ah, he was working himself into a fine rage....
"Well, don't be so coy," the landlady said. "Come here where the light’s better and let's have a look at ya."
He took off his hat and walked forward three paces. The landlady squinted at him again, at closer quarters, and cackled. "Ha, a fine strappin' lad ya are!" If she touched him, he'd flee. But she did not. "What'd ya have in mind?"
Well, that was getting down to business. He spoke in his best Trinity accents, since she thought him the typical sort; he was glad he was not so regular a customer that she remembered him instantly. He challenged her,
"A pretty, slender, dark-haired girl," he ground out between his teeth, forcing the words out past the bitterness that welled up in him at the thought of Molly. "Tall preferably. No blowsy."
"Ooh, hoity-toity!" She mocked. "Aren't we the gent! This ain't the regatta, me laddie!"
He said nothing. All he wanted was half an hour of forgetting.
"As it happens, I do have such a gel. Mary'll do." She held out her hand. "A shillin'." He gave it to her. "Number ten," she nodded, with a jerk of her head. He nodded again, and went out, up the squeaking stairs to the third floor. Number ten was at the far end of the hall, on the river side. He rapped on the door twice shortly with his knuckles and went in.
The girl who sat on the rumpled bed in a threadbare chemise in the ochre room was indeed slender, with black hair hanging down her back to between her shoulder blades. She was brushing her hair and turned at the noise. Her eyes were pale blue. She had once been very pretty, but now looked tired. He nodded to her, scowling intently.
"Hullo!" she said in surprise. She put down the brush and leaned enticingly on the bed, her uncorsetted breasts spilling over the top of the chemise. "How long are you for?"
"Half an hour," he returned shortly, yanking off his necktie and throwing it on the floor. "So I don't want chat." The girl gave him a shrugging glance.
"Suit yourself." Her face lit then with a coaxing, professional smile. "Wha'd you want?"
He knew what he wanted. "Take that off," he told her shortly, gesturing at her underwear with his sock as he bent to unlaced his other shoe. He wanted no distractions of class to spoil the fantasy. "And no chat," he reminded her. He yanked off his remaining sock, rose to his full height, and grinned, tossing his head to move his hair out of his eyes. "Other noises are fine." He divested himself of the rest of his clothes unceremoniously. The girl was more deliberate, he noticed, watching her steadily as he threw his braces, shirt, and trousers on the floor piecemeal. She was good; she guessed his game: she waited with her eyes downcast, looking at him from under her lashes, until he stood naked before her - a fit and handsome young man in his prime. Then she looked, appraisingly, and smiled archly. He held out a hand.
"Come here," he said, more gently than he had before. She got off the bed and sauntered over with brilliant eyes, the slow sensuous walk reminding him of Molly. It was at variance with the wraith-like quality of her figure. The variance itself was thrilling. She came to him and pressed herself close of habit, raising her face with an expression that was triumphant.
"Let me lead," he murmured, cupping her face in his paint-stained hand. His gaze roved over her face and shoulders. She was not as tall, but tall enough. So close she was.... so close, close enough to make it work. A strange humming began in his ears. Her expression changed. Her eyes lost their hard-edged brilliance and with it her face became soft. It sent a jolt through him that reverberated, his cock leaping against the belly of the girl.
"Ah, yes," he breathed. His hand closed on her hair, and he kissed her. She was good to the bargain, and did only what she was told, venturing not at all into the usual whore's tricks to make him come off sooner than he wanted to. He'd have preferred, oh, a trip around the world, but there wasn't time.
"We have only this little while," he murmured against her neck. Eyes half-closed as if in a dream he touched her everywhere, letting the memory soak into his fingers, eking into the canvas of his mind - Galatea to his Pygmalion, he would remember this when he was alone, when he looked at Molly. He was not ashamed of having her this way; it's what whores were for. He played with the girl, teasing, and brought a muffled response from her. Smiling, he nudged her to the bed, cushioned the slow fall, and rolled her in his arms so that she was caught. He had learned from William Orpen how to still time when he was painting - to accomplish much in a little time - and he used that now, falling into every taste and texture of the girl, burning sensation into his brain as with an engraving stylus. The room was forgotten, his rage was forgotten. There was only the girl. He took her slowly, more slowly than he wanted to because he wanted it to last forever in his mind. He was shaking now strongly, holding back, wanting so much to use her well. She was so responsive to his brief commands, going with him everywhere, all with that melting expression. He raised himself on his hands and looked at her. Her face was flushed, a flush that spread down her neck and across her breasts; blissful face, she was with him, wanting but not asking, her mouth half-open in delight, her black hair tumbled over the tangled linens.
"All right, then," he smiled. Her answer was a low murmur, and she clasped him by arms and legs as he plunged in.
He let go. Mind gone, sight gone, hearing gone, only feeling was left and smell. A wracking brilliance overtook him, a powerful surge of energy at the primitive delight of fucking the girl pinned under him by his own hands, by the force of his body driving her into the bed. She was writhing - pain or pleasure he knew not which, cared not which, but that he could eke that response from her. Oh glorious! He was running sweat. It ran from his hair into his eyes, lashing, and still a part of him held back, held the force at bay with an effort of tremendous will.
"Oh please," the girl exclaimed. Whether it was begging yes or begging no, he didn't know. But that was what he had waited to hear. He clasped her hips in his hands, sunk in her, moving so violently with her that it hardly seemed anything at all. They were simply one creature, as in the beginning of creation. The world spun iridescent and he lost himself, coming with the strangled cry of a single word:
"Molly!"
He roused himself after what seemed an eternity. The girl, nudging him gently off her. She sat up, smoothing her hair coolly from her face while he raised himself on his elbows and shook his head to clear it. After a moment he rose and began to dress. The room reeked of sex and the girl had a mark on her neck. He pinpointed the moment in his memory, and sighed heavily. Good it was, to remember. Not as good as the moment itself, but almost. Images distilled in the memory until they were potent as brandy.... When he was shoving his shirt-tails into his trousers, the girl asked him with casual nonchalance,
"So who's this girl you want so bad?"
He stopped cold, staring at her. How dare she bring her up here, in this place; a whore speaking of a lady. Irrationally, it offended him.
"No one," he muttered shortly.
"Oh, married is she," she said lightly, without looking at him. It was all of the most sublime indifference to her, a matter for jokes. He was mad at her contempt. It took everything he had not to leap across the room and strike her. He shook with it. He'd have struck a man for less.
"You shut your fucking mouth," he warned, glaring.
She shrugged. "It don't matter to me," she said.
"Shut up!" He was shouting. He stopped, ran his hands through his hair, pulled up his braces, bent for his tie. The girl said nothing, and neither did he. The silence stretched long. He wouldn't apologise to a whore, especially a nosy one. He was tying his laces when there came a knock at the door, twice. Time called. He heard the landlady go back down the hall. He picked up his hat, looked at the girl. She was sitting cross-legged in the bed, her head tilted down, watching him half from behind her fallen hair. He could paint her; it said everything about her life, and their exchange. His anger left him then and he regretted his rudeness. Pulling on his hat, his hand on the doorknob, he turned.
"Good-bye, Molly."
Their eyes met. She was young, he saw; his own age. But years older in her experience of the world. She tossed her head, her expression cynical, and he opened the door. And left.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home